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Saturday 24th December
We drove through Udzungwa National Park to get to Chitimba to a camp called Kande Beach. On the way here we bought clothes for fancy dress on New Years Eve. We each had to pick a name out of hat of one of the other truck passengers. I got a cow-girls outfit for Louise. Not too offensive - I'd be quite happy if someone got me that.
Some of the music on the trip has been great - we can play our Ipod's through the speakers on the truck and I've been introduced to The Cat Empire, The Shins and The Pippets.
The National Park is beautiful with lots of giraffes and elephants roaming around plus every other tree is a Jacaranda (hope that's how you spell it) or Acacia. Apparently they have lots of them in Australia - they're just lovely.
The countryside is changing as we head further south and it now looks more like the Africa you see on the TV with the great rolling plains interspersed with the odd tree.
The rivers are red as the soil is clay based. Lake Malawi is huge - it's actually bigger than the country Malawi! There are huge swarms of flies that fly in columns in the middle of the lake - apparently they are a bit of a 24 hour wonder. They start as larvae in the lake, then fly upwards when they hatch, mate then die. It's quite a sight to see them.
Monday 25th December - Christmas Day
It doesn't feel like Christmas and my phone doesn't work here so I borrow a phone to call home. How lovely to speak to Mum & Dad. It's strange not being at home for Christmas. Mum said James was so excited - I would love to have been there.
We bought Secret Santa presents for each other - I was given "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" carved monkeys which are just lovely plus we each got a water pistol and some sweets from Oasis.
I had also brought with me some presents from home - it was lovely to open them and one from Kate too. Now it feels like Christmas.
We had 2 spit-roast pigs for dinner with lots of crackling, potato salad and green salad. Yum.
Wednesday 27th December
We walked around the village at Chitimba - quite harrowing - our guide's 7 month old son, Francis, had contracted malaria for the second time and was dying. They have no access to malaria medication and all we could do was give them some rehydration sachets and a sterile needle to feed water to the baby. Tragic.
The men still have to pay a dowry to a girls father if he wants to marry her - around 6,000 Kwacha - or 45 US dollars. That's a lot of money here!
The children in the village danced for us in the evening and soon enough some of our group joined in. Very funny.
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