A Malawi Christmas

For Christmas I decided that I’d hitch hike North to a fellow PCVs site in Nkotakota. Her house was about 9 Km from Lake Malawi, so I was pretty stoked to finally swim in it. Hitching (or hitch hiking for those out of the loop) went very smoothly and cost me nothing to travel a solid 600 Km (some chaps make you pay). It took me two days to hitch North from my site (I had overnighter in Lilongwe) before I arrived on Dec. 24th in Nkotakota. That day 12 PCVs from my education group arrived at Jesi’s house.

Dec. 24
This Christmas was awesome. I had a blast everyday, but I’m going to have to compare this Christmas to a roller coaster. It started off slowly, while taking you to the top, and then it was all down hill from there (at least “health” wise for me). The first night can’t be put into words so I’ll just throw some phrases at you: boxed wine, mashed potato chippies (not my fault), failed pasta dinner (again not my fault…), ketchup in my belly button, Oreos, being sneaky, jumping over brick walls, late night arrivals, basi (that’s it).

Dec. 25
Christmas came early because we were all woken up at 5:15 a.m. just to be informed that our group had lunch reservations at 10:00 a.m. (completely necessary?). The group managed to get up and moving by about 8ish to head out to Nkotakota Pottery (a nice guest house and restaurant for bwana people). The first obstacle we faced was that Nkotakota Pottery is about 20 km from Nkotakota boma (the main town center) and we were a solid six km from the boma in the opposite direction. The second issue was that it was (and still is) rainy season in Malawi. So we did what any sensible and slightly tipsy (from the previous night) person would do: we started walking. A torrential rainstorm hit before we were out the door, but we pressed on (what would you do in a situation like that? GOSH!). We stayed mostly dry until all 12 of us piled into the back of this dudes truck who was heading to the boma, which saved us the six km walk, but totally drenched every inch of our bodies. I don’t think any one of us could have pictured that on Christmas day we would all be piled in a truck bed/swimming pool, going like 80 km/hr, just to eat lunch. It was quite the humorous journey, but it didn’t end here.

Once we made it to the main road we had to wait for a bus to drive us the remaining 20ish km to our destination. We caught a bus, laughed about what had just happened during the ride, and disembarked the after seeing a sign the read “Nkotakota Pottery: right 200 m”. We’d made it! Only a small 200 m walk to go and it would be breakfast and lunch on the lake. After walking about 10 minutes we started thinking, “This is a pretty long 200 m”. Last time I checked I could walk two football fields in less than ten minutes. When we still hadn’t arrived 30 minutes later you could say that we became a little bitter. It had been a long day up to this point. Finally after about 45 minutes of walking we had made it. We literally stayed at Nkotakota Pottery for 5ish hours. We ate breakfast, napped (on tables and benches), and then had lunch. At this point we walked back to the main road. Here we found a sign that read, “Nkotakota Pottery: 5 km”. It wasn’t until this point in time that we realized the first sign meant that the “turn” for Pottery was 200 m from that sign and once one has made the turn they must then travel another 5 km to the final destination. We got a pretty good laugh out of the whole situation and I was glad that we had solved “the mystery of the never ending 200 meters”.

At this point we broke into smaller groups in order to hitch back to the boma. I boarded an already overcrowded pickup truck bed with Amy, Alexis, and Elisabeth. Amy packed in the back by the cab, I sat next to her in the middle of the truck bed, Alexis sat next to me but closer to the tailgate, and Elisabeth barley made it on the truck before we took off. She was kneeling on the tailgate hunched over grabbing Amy’s and my hands for dear life. After a moment of panic we got Elisabeth safely on board. It was at this point that Alexis realized she was sitting on/next to a goat that had been hog tied to the inside of the truck bed. Every few minutes it would freak out and start kicking, but the two men closest to it would just grab its leg until it was finished. Also, on this ride we learned that while sitting in a packed truck bed you only know someone’s boot is up your butt when that person decides to reposition his or her foot.

By the end of the day we had walked about 16 km. I now have strep throat because if this epic Christmas Holiday.