Malawi

We spent quite a bit of time here in 'the heart of Africa'. This place is so poor and driving through some of the villages was a real eye opener. They really don't have alot of anything.They were however, some of the friendliest people and the kids were amazing with massive smiles always on their faces!!

We spent the majority of our time in Kande Beach and Chitimba which is on the west coast of Lake Malawi.In Kande Beach we visited the village where we went to the local school, hospital and chiefs house.The chief's nephew took us around the village showing us what they eat which is mainly a local root vegetable which grows everywhere and is eaten practically at every meal and cooked up in a million different ways...and honks!! It is called Cassava. The school experience was total madness.There were masses of kids who literally ran up to us and grabbed our hands walking us into the school - no joke, there were about 10 kids to one hand!They were so excited and clearly loved having visitors in their school.Again, the school is very poor but the kids were all beaming with their little smiles and it was fantastic to experience.As per usual Stef was the child magnet and the kids were literally hanging off him.He was swinging them around, they were climbing up on him and they were just loving it (so was he!).The kids were also fascinated by our cameras and Stef let them play with his (I'm not allowed to touch it but 9353 million African kids are!!).Then it was onto the hospital which was quite a shocker. They didn't have pain relief, forceps and other basic equipmentwhich was quite scary.The women have to go to the hospital one month before their baby is due and stay there to have the baby as they don't have cars/ambulance service.Little things we take for granted in our own world.

On the way to and from the village we had the local guys show us the way and talked us along the way and they were really friendly and quite funny.Their names were things like sugar and spice, dj cool, bushbaby, cheese on toast etc - just so we could remember them obviously.Stef's new best friend for the week was sugar and spice who he met in the village and he invited Stef to go fishing with him in his dug out canoe the next day.The next day however, Stef ended up going sailing with one of the guys.Old sugar and spice dropped by the campsite to find him and was told that Stef was long gone and had gone sailing.Well.....the next thing Stef saw was his mate sugar and spice in his dug out canoe by the sail boat.He was clearly on a mission to take Stef out fishing and tracked him down nicely! On the way back Stef tried out paddling in the canoe and managed to capsize twice.Not sure how sugar and spice felt about this 6 foot muzungu (white man) after that!!!!

Stef and I also went for a walk along the beach one day on our own and came across a little school which seemed to have their classes literally on the beach.One class were singing and dancing to some kind of banana song....sooo cute!!! Then the kids swarmed us. There must have been about 50 or more of them that surrounded us trying to hold our hands and all waving to us. We spent a bit of time with them playing with them and talking to them - they were amazing little things.

While we were in Chitimba we pretty much relaxed and bought 934534 wood carvings.Stef did his epic journey here though - a 30k hike directly uphill in the crazy heat.Not sure what possessed him but him and two others did it and came back looking a little worse for wear but very chuffed they did it and made it back in one piece thankfully.