MAFIA! (some journal entries from the past week)

8/12

at chileka airport. waiting. air malawi said the plane is fine today, but we were still supposed to take off an hour ago. watching the airline worker in an orange vest push luggage around in a shopping cart. i’d read but all i have with me is Moby Dick, which i thought would be cutely appropriate for a trip to dive with whalesharks, but really its just a more efficient substitute for prescription insomnia meds. (sorry ali)

although in the first chapter, Ishmael says he’s ‘ tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote’  I know the feeling, buddy

11/12

pruney. woke up. swam.dove. they took us out in the dhow to mageni -small rocks. Saw a lion fish an a spiney lobster on the reef directly under the boat. A little ways off, huge coral towers looming over head, 7ft moray eel threading though the fan coral below me. A giant parrot fish chomp away on coral morsels, their huge teeth remind me of a clown in some distant, creepy, memory. A bright yellow and blue school weaves around me. Giggling to myself makes a bubbly cloud. Some candy cane striped shrimp remind me that its almost Christmas. Serious visual overload at this point. Some nudibranchs flutter over the white sand bottom. Neon blue, they don’t give a damn about camoflage. Cant adequately describe the colors, the busy-ness of this underwater metropolis.  luscious.

the dive boat 

13/12

another day, another dive. Saw another lionfish, some black and white fluttering around in an anemone. Anemones like the ones in the little mermaid pop back into their spouts when I flick at them. An Indian ocean cushion star sat unassumingly on the bottom. Highlight? The turtle. A huge female hawksbill ate a coral lunch about 18meters down. Heard her munching before I saw her and then when she was full, we watched her paddle off.

Its sometime around 6:30 or 7 ( not really sure.. no watch, no phone), and twittering bat calls to feed are blending with Islamic  calls to prayer. Every night around dusk swarms of flying foxes cross the channel from Chole island to feed on Mafia mangoes. They look like birds of prey, or blackback seagulls. Flapping their wings slowly and elegantly, not at all like the tiny zig-zagging insect bats at home.

flying foxes over Chole bay 

So soothing to breathe salty air and hear the waves, I forgot how much I miss the ocean. Maybe I didn’t forget, I was just forcing myself not to remember so I wouldn’t feel deprived. Dhows are beached in the sand flats of the east African coast’s exaggerated tides, completely exposed, anchors and all. I wonder if boats feel naked when they’re out of the water?

My new Mafian friends taught me to play bao (a mancala-ish, bead game) after a dinner of charred changu –snapper- and mango with chili sauce. God its nice to speak Kiswahili again and actually hang out with people, unbound by the limitations of broken English. 

14/12

Whale sharks whale sharks! So amazing. Papapoto = sharkwhale kwa Kiswahili. We saw two (wapapapoto wawili) the first was a ‘baby’. 9 ft. Swimming along, mouth wide open, sucking in plankton filled seawater, tail swishing back and forth, wagging like a giant puppy. Still, getting in the water with him was super intimidating. Such poor visibility with all the plankton, that once I was in the water I couldn’t see him until he was 2 ft away. Felt the pulsing water from his gils before I saw the telltale gray polka-dotted skin, then I swam along side him, parallel to the remoras latched on to his belly.

 The second one was bigger, 6 meters and still juvenile. unlike the first, this one swam about a foot under the surface making him even harder to spot, and the water was murkier too. I had no idea where the  shark was when Musa the guide pushed me off the boat. Landed on top of papapoto. Again the soft jets of filtered gil-water pulsed against my belly.  Swimming as fast as I possibly could, I barely kept up. so amazing. When I was too tired to go on, I kicked back to dodge the massive tail. Incredible day. 

interesting to think that a year ago I was tramping around in snowy Wisconsin, finishing a final project (on microfinance, clearly), probably drinking a starbucks latte and stressing out that my advisor hadn’t emailed me back. Mmm college.

Anyway, before I head off to decidedly non-snowy TZ, I want to share with you my also decidedly non-snowy home.



This is my house.  It is also the home of a lovely family of British ex-pats, including misters Luke and Joshua. I live in the guest wing. 

Luke and Joshua are six and four and they enjoy LEGOs, submarines, paper airplanes, racing their ‘BMX’ bikes, watching Top Gear, bouncing on the trampoline, and scouting for elephants when they go on safari.



Here is next month’s breakfast: mango and pawpaw (papaya) ripening in the garden-orchard



Our gardener, Rolex (yea, his name is Rolex. it’s pretty sweet) gathering eggs from our chickens. and since were on the topic...why is it still so entertaining every time i see chickens crossing the road? that joke isn't even funny

Aaand… the neighborhood ninjas were gracious enough to pose for the camera

stream...no, flood of consciousness

one of those mornings. i call them the i love malawi mornings. everything is great. no trace of the fever that transformed me into a contagious zombie all of last week. practically skpped to work, listening to some hideously random playlist on my un-updated ipod. looked up and thought..ohhhh yea, i'm in malawi! riiight. hmmm. i really like it here. then started thinking about not being in malawi, like, for example on thursday, when i go to tanzania.

flying to dar es salaam on the infamous Air Malawi - last person i know who tried it, left dar after a 4 hour delay, then had some issue 10 minutes out. they ended up dumping all their jet fuel in the indian ocean and making an emergency landing. back in dar- but i'm trying my luck with air malawi anyway, because theyre cheap and because Remson at the customer service desk says he has my back (not sure how thats going to help if i blow up over the serengetti, but okay) from dar, i'm off to Mafia Island, a blip off the TZ coastline, where i will dive and sleep in a hammock on the beach and swim across the channel to chole island, the land of the flying foxes

then thoughts turned from bats to vampires to other blood suckers to sucking juice out of a fresh coconut to the fact that i should probably take a machete to the coconut i bought in the market yesterday. then i nearly stepped in roadkill chameleon.


have a nice day!

Descent to Madzibango

joined the mountain club. last saturday we went mountain biking. the route took us down a winding red dirt road (~60km) deep into the bush and down the Chikwawa escarpment to a place called Madzibango- literally woods near the water

anticipating a beautiful, spring morning ride, i arrived at the predetermined meeting place, ready to go at 7am. lo, and behold, around the corner came my co-riders... a collection of 7 absurdly fit ex-pats, all orthopedic surgeons or some other form of medical god, and all armed with camelbacks and more suspension than i knew was possible. average height: 6'2''

the ride was absolutely stunning, which i know only because whenever i felt like i was too exhausted to go on i would stop and pretend to be absorbing the view.

and being last in a chain of sweaty azungu (white people, remember?) had its advantages. word spreads fast in tiny bush villages, so by the time i passed through the entire village population had gathered along the road shouting and cheering me on, and a swarm of barefoot children chased me until i pedaled past the last clay hut.

all in all a great day. but by the end of the ride it was 1:30pm, and 42degrees C.

check out the mountain club website: http://www.mcm.org.mw/index.php



the (back) route to Madzibango



Zikomo kwambiri!

no thanksgiving in malawi. duh. but even though i'm going to miss the traditional glassie thanksgiving march... i'm still thankful for some stuff...

1.  that i havent gotten malaria yet, even though i'm too...lazy... to set up my mosquito net sometimes...

2.  for mango season, so i can still have a feast today!

3. that malawi actually turned out to be amazing.. it easily could have been a nightmare..

4.  for the most amazing pair of little blue merrils for letting me (painlessly) trek all over this country

5.  to the assortment of amazing people at home who call, skype, text, email, send candy! and keep me from being lonely even when i'm completely alone

6. for adreneline for tricking me into being brave when any rational creature would turn tail and run

7. for deodorant. i would be lost without you!

sorry. haven't written in a while. 

 so apparently, i'm supposed to be excited that alot of people are reading this.. but the overwhelming number of page visits (thanks?) in the past month is sort of weirding me out. especially since i only have 12 official followers... i do appreciate the interest, but who are you?

i'll write something more interesting in a few days once the minor apprehension dissipates. in the meantime send me an email or something, so i dont have nightmares about mystery blog stalkers.

meteorological schizophrenia

Rains started up again today. Not sure if it’s the real beginning of the rainy season or just another tease. Either way it’s a much needed drenching.

Confused by the early october showers –i blame global warming, the real summer rainy season is from mid-november to february- some people planted. Then, once the dry springtime heat took over, the sun scorched the tiny maize shoots. The leaves of the now fanlike stalks started to wrinkle and curl from dehydration. There was talk of replanting, and for those who couldn’t afford to start over, stunted harvests and hunger this time next year.

But now its raining! Really really raining! And the fresh peaty smell of the wet soon-to-be-mud is simply intoxicating. going to go stand outside now.