Onwards to the very green and easy Malawi!

I flew via Lubumbashi in the Congo which was an interesting experience.
The land around there seemed so flat as far as you could see. It was quite a big town/city. Loads of Chinese people got on and off the plane, it turns out it’s a big mining place for something that goes in mobile phones. I was wondering what they were doing flying in and out this random place?! We were the only commercial plane there, the rest were cargo planes delivering boxes of various supplies. The aircon on the plane broke and it was hot and stuffy. I managed to sneak out to stand on the plane stairs for a while because we were hanging around there for about 3 hours. Anyway eventually we headed on to Malawi, landed in Lilongwe, fought with the new crazy taxi prices and happily hitched a lift right to my hotel door in the end.

I quickly noticed how good everyone was at English and it suddenly seemed so much more developed, compared to where I’d been! So I’ve found a really exciting destination for those more adventurous volunteers in Ethiopia and I think it will be perfect to combine it with something a little different and tame here in Malawi. 

I planned to check out Lake Malawi National Park and Liwonde National Park for potential for Big Beyond sites. I did my masters dissertation at Liwonde a few years back so knew a lot of the issues there already. A friend of mine called Darren used to run a lodge in the Liwonde National Park which I knew had closed but I discovered from someone in Lilongwe he’d set up a new one. I tracked his number down but couldn’t get through. Jumped on a bus to Liwonde the next morning anyway in the hope of finding him. Still couldn’t get him on the phone but got hold of the lodge name and number eventually and headed over there. He was away at the lake but his manager Maria was around and chatted to her in the evening. Darren turned up the next day and it involved large quantities of ‘greens‘ (carlsberg) and lost of laughs and celebrations for reuniting after all these years! I also met a girl called Sarah that day, a US Peace Corps volunteer in Liwonde who was coming to the end of a 3 year term. Great girl, totally fluent in the local lingo, and she’s now actually jumped on board as the Big Beyond Malawi Manager. And Big Beyond Malawi brainstorms began…