This morning we woke up to the coldest weather yet on our trip! We put everything on we practically had. We were told later that Katete is one of three of the coldest areas in Zambia. Besides some home-made soap and postcards, I bought one of the shawls which was weaved by a Tiko volunteer. It's beautifully crafted and very warm.
Although we could've had cereal and bread for breakfast from our Foxy stash, it felt only right to continue sampling Tikondane's menu and report back to Guy ;)
Although it took a while for our food to come, the wait was worthwhile. I had a delicious omelette with bread while Matt had mashed sweet yam, sausages and fried eggs. We drank some instant coffee with hot fresh milk. Apparently they even produce and sell their own soy milk!
While we were enjoying our meal, Sheila Dix and her companion (Brian, the bishop's son) came in. Sheila is the representative from Jersey Overseas Aid who is here to take pictures of the site and to organize a bit of what the volunteers will be doing when they arrive in August. It was interesting to chat to her and to hear about the projects they've been involved in. Besides having contributed to Tikondane and the St. Francis Hospital for several years, they have also sent volunteers to Uganda and Kenya, among other developing countries around the world.
After breakfast, Matt and I walked over to the St. Francis Hospital where we were given a tour of the premises by hospital worker, Lucas. From what we saw, the hospital is incredibly well laid-out and well-maintained. We were impressed with the facilities, the equipment, and the staff in general. Along with her highly trained and professional team, executive director Dr. Parkinson (who was in a rush to get to her board meeting), seemed to have put enormous efforts into making and sustaining one of Zambia's most successful hospitals here in Katete. Just a few weeks ago, a man in a wheelchair came from Malawi for treatment.
Back at Tikondane, we packed up Foxy and prepared ourselves for an easy 80km ride to Chipata, Sheila and Brian came up to us and told us they finally found out what the Jersey Overseas Team will be doing when they come. Because Sister Elke was "out on tour" for 3 months back in her native Australia, it was difficult to get any reliable information. However, it seems that the Team will be completing a half-finished hall just behind the guesthouses at Tikondane.
Apparently some Guernsey funds were sent last year to build the great hall, which is supposed to hold a few hundred school children and their activities, but not enough to complete the building. So there it lies, with half built brick walls and a sheet of corrugated iron for a roof. It will certainly be an impressive building when it is finished and I can't wait to see the fruits of the Jersey Volunteers' labour.
Overall, I've been very impressed with the entire project and how it's run. It is one of those little gems in Africa where grassroot development has gone right for all the right reasons.
I'm in the middle of reading a book called "The Trouble with Africa" by Robert Calderisi, purchased at a bookstore in Windhoek. I protested at first about buying a new book when we had just sent about 8 books back to our shipping container in Cape Town to reduce Foxy's volume and weight. But it looked too good to pass up and Matt didn't need to convince me for very long.
It's an excellent read if anyone is interested in aid relief and what exactly went/is going wrong with aid work in Africa. Though he is quite direct, frank and harsh, one of the points he mentions is how one of the best possible development efforts are when it's local-to-local aid. Instead of having money funnelling from big international NGO's to African government officials, to then be distributed to the locals, having regular willing citizens contribute (either by money, materials or labour is still a debatable subject) to other willing citizens proves to be the most efficient, corrupt-free, and direct form of aid. And isn't the case anywhere? Don't we normally tend to give when the matter is closer to our hearts?
After posting some postcards at the very bare Katete post office, we sailed onwards to Chipata on the newly-paved highway. After spending about an hour trying to locate a couple of the guesthouses and campsites which were listed in our guidebooks, we decided in the end to press on to the Malawi border post, just a few km east.
I was secretly hoping we wouldn't have to face another border post until tomorrow, fearing the worst, but in the end continuing onto Lilongwe (capital of Malawi) was the best decision we made.
I could hardly believe how incredibly fast and easy - and cost FREE - the whole procedure was. No visa fee, no car fee, no silly carbon tax! Literally you blink and it's all over! It was like a magician had waved his wand over us and poof, we were in Malawi. Magic.
Whizzing through the last hundred or so kms to Lilongwe on amazingly smooth road, we noticed that the number of people and bicycles nearly tripled.
We camped in the backpacker's lodge of Mabuya, close to the city-centre. It was the first time where we met a lot of independent travelers criss-crossing around Africa, most using public transport. As luck would have it, we met George from the island of Sark, who had taken his motorbike all the way down the Middle East and Africa, eventually aiming for SA.
What a Channel Islands day we had; we started it off by meeting a woman from Jersey and ended it by listening to tales from a young Sark traveler while eating canned curry and veg, finishing it off with bottles of Carlsburg Beer (fyi: Blantyre in Malawi is the only place in Africa to have a Carlsburg brewery).
From what George told us (ie "Zanzibar was just too easy and predictable for me"), I gather he's quite an adventurer and one of those people who actually craves continuous excitement. But he's had his share of accidents on his trip, but they were not all unwelcome. Apparently after one horrific motorbike fall in southern Ethiopia, he came across an overland group of young beautiful nurses who provided all the sympathy and care he could dream of, and just having spent weeks crossing Sudan where men have little contact with women, meeting the nurses were sure a welcome sight!
Start: Katete, ZAM. 11:31
End: Lilongwe, MAL. 16:45
Distance Traveled: 275 km
Road Conditions: smooth tar road all the way to Lilongwe, well marked and all.
Temperature: COLD turning to a pleasant comfortable day
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