Zanzibar and Mzuzu Photos

by Dom on April 29th, 2008

Yes, you read that correctly. I have added photos from my recent trip to Zanzibar and some others I took a few months ago of Mzuzu the biggest town closest to me; and my personal favorite of the three big towns.

Currently I’m just hanging out in Lilongwe. Getting VAC stuff done as well as working on term reports, seeing the doctors about glasses, looking for grad schools and some other things.

Zanzibar Finale

by Dom on April 7th, 2008

The trip home was long; and since we were taking a night ferry we had a day to wander with nothing to do so it seemed even longer. The night ferry straight to an all day bus, then stayed a night in Mbeya then took four buses back to Mzuzu. We were a bit tired.

The boat was heaving and someone had a TV on loud the whole night so I got to listen to some super crappy soap opera movie thing. Ridiculous. Saw more elephants and giraffes and impalas as we drove through the park.

Some other tidbits. They had some real great carbonated beverages there. There was one called Bitter Lemon. Yorgos speculated it was their way of making tonic water drinkable. He then enlightened me that it was originally used as an anti-malarial; I noticed it had quinine in it. Of course some med students we met at the beach said they did some calculations and figured you’d have to drink like 40 gallons of tonic water a day for it to be effective. There was also an excellent ginger ale. Very strong.

The sugar cane juice was excellent. They just took sugar cane and ran it through a press a few times putting a lime in with it sometimes. It tasted like lemonade but better.

We met this American grad student who was doing research on the art. I don’t remember exactly but something about how much culture is for sale. There are a lot of generic Masai paintings sold in the shops. By that I mean almost identical paintings in almost every shop. She was trying to figure out why there weren’t many real artists making real art. She showed us some shops though owned by this art co-op. They had some great paintings and drawings. Watercolors and oils and all that, big and small. There was some real good stuff there, it was refreshing.

It was the start of the rainy season so we got wet a lot. I didn’t feel it was worth it to purchase an umbrella mostly because it was just a vacation but also because the streets were so narrow and there were so many awnings that you could almost just stay close to the buildings and stay dry. That is except that some streets would still flood. So you’d be stomping through water up to maybe 8 inches deep. It was mostly clear water, not too muddy so it seemed ok.

It was just nice in general. The people seemed to not notice us and the children seemed clean. It seemed like the standard of living was worlds better though I’m not sure how accurate that is. It was a good trip but I’m glad to be home. Not knowing any of the language really wears on you. Especially when your used to atleast knowing a little.

Hubba soda and Octopus soup

by Dom on April 4th, 2008

So the food here is pretty good. Hubba soda is this strange dark topping on this strange date(fruit) based drink; which to order I was told to say “one to one” or something that sounded like that. No clue. Octopus soup was good too. I had it for lunch yesterday, red like tomato but real lemony. The little suckers kept popping off in my mouth when I’d bite into a tentacle. Good stuff.

The beach was real nice. Expansive white sand with that teal water that you can see through to the floor. Scuba didn’t work out but Yorgos and I did a snorkeling trip and it was beautiful on the reef except for all the broken coral. Saw a lot of very colorful fish but I know jack about fish so who knows what they were…besides colorful that is. There was this crazy Italian only place right down the beach from us. That’s about all there is to say about that. Laid in the hammocks a lot, got a little burnt, played a lot of bao and pool and swam a good bit. Life at the beach huh.

The rainy season is just starting here and so it’s a good time to be heading out. It’s been a great trip

Zanzibar, so far.

by Dom on March 29th, 2008

Stone town, right now. That’s the historic part of Zanzibar town, the capital of Zanzibar. Heading to the after dark fish market for dinner again; probably to get tuna and lobster and prawns on skewers and sugar cane juice with lime. The food here is amazing. Swahili is a mix of so many different languages and it really seems like the people here are too, tho it’s mostly muslim so there aren’t many bars. That was a bit dissappointing considering I’ve a craving for draft beer but otherwise it’s pretty cool. Everyone seems real kind and helpful and I like how uninterested in tourists the children are here as compared to Malawi. I think maybe just because there are so many tourists always here. This is the first place I’ve been that’s got those crazy and confusing narrow alleyways everywhere. It’s pretty cool. It also seems famous for their doors, they have these awesome spiky bolts to hold the boards together. They’re fantastic. This place is also famous for their coffee and tea. I’ve spent a hours hanging out in this one intersection called Jaws Corner sipping the coffee and playing bao. Good times.

Went on a spice tour today where we saw things like ginger, nutmeg and vanilla. There were some others but I don’t remember them right now. Nutmeg, it’s crazy looking in the fruit. Haley just informed me that I should have got some of the vanilla extract because it was so cheap here and relatively impossible to get elsewhere.

Tomorrow we’re heading north to Kendwa beach, hang out there for a bit and then backtrack all the back to Luviri. It’s been a good time so far, I’m sure it will continue.

Mozambique

by Dom on December 9th, 2007

So I know it’s been a while but I’ve been busy, I tried to type these offline as I went while it was all still fresh in my mind, and I’m paying for internet, as usual, so I’m just making one huge post. Enjoy.

The Plan

wake up early hitch out to Mwanza(the Malawian border town), buy visas, and minibus(chapa as called in Mozambique) it to Tete hopefully in time to get tickets on the flight leaving that day. If not, spend the night in Tete and take the next flight. Tickets should be around $100, and the thought of saving two days transport is well worth it. Hang in Maputo for a couple days enjoying a first-world-ish city and food and then bus it to Tofo. Spend a few days in Tofo diving, learning to surf and eating lobster. Then backtrack through Maputo and Tete via plane again to get back to Lilongwe in time for Thanksgiving. Now what actually happened…

So we woke up early planned on leaving around 5:30 but didn’t actually end up leaving until 6. It turned out ok though we got real good hitches. It was kind of crazy. There was this dude that was actually going all the way to Mwanza, but he said he would be going to slow, and we actually never did see him again so I guess we got there before him. We had made a sign the minibus on the way out to the hitching point and I held it up as I sat in the bed of the truck of the first hitch to the passing cars to see if they would pity us. It worked. Strangely enough. The guy made no sign though except that he turned his turn signal off, it was weird. He wasn’t going all the way but it was definitely enough. Then after him and a 5min wait we had a ride in a taxi to the border, but the guy riding didn’t ask for any money which was cool.

We got the exit stamp in Malawi no problem and took the K100 ride to Zobwe, the Mozambican border town. There the border people proceeded to take two or three hours of our time. They called us back after an hour and made us all write our middle names. It was great. real great. Otherwise it was smooth, just long. We finally got out of the office around 10:30. Then we spent a good little bit waiting on a minibus(chapa) to go while Jenn tried to hitch for us. It turned into a bit of a fiasco. We all took off in the bus, hitching failed, went about three K only to turn around and come right back. That was obnoxious so Jenn got out again. Her and I were shotgun. Ron and Catherine were in the back. She got us a ride on a truck just as the bus was about to leave, but he wasn’t going to charge us and possibly could end up being faster so we chose him. He wan’t us there in a hury so I ran out and over there with Jenn and my stuff. Only to sit and wait for Ron and Catherine. After what I deemed too long while Jenn was out talking with the driver still I went back to check on them. The bus conductor wouldn’t let them out. He had locked the door and no one would move out of their way or unlock it to help them. They didn’t give me any hassle though as I reached through the open window unlocked and swung open the door in a rush. They piled out then we all piled into the truck to take off, but then we had to wait like another half hour with the driver to get change. Turned out he wasn’t in such a hury. Super nice guy though.

We arrive at Tete around 1:30, unsure if today the flight is at 1, 2 or 1:30 or what. So we rush straight to the airport knowing they only sell tickets in town(stupid). No dice the plane is about to leave. We missed it. Oh well, a night in Tete would be cool we thought. Little did we know we’d spend most of our time there. We got a ride into town with some lady we met at the airport. She showed us a hostel, some banks and the LAM(Mozambican airlines) office. We got out at the office and tried to get some tickets. Our reservations had been cancelled by LAM because we didn’t pay before a certain date so we tried to get some more. Today is a thursday now, and there were none for friday or saturday and only two for sunday supposedly. We left double dejected because they claimed the tickets were like $200+. Which is twice what we expected, not good. So we just wandered around the town for a bit, got some food and speculated about other options while looking for a place to stay. We finally ended up at this place called Hotel Kassuende. On the brink of sketch but seemed like a solid enough place and it had A/C which we hadn’t seen in years, or months atleast. It also just happened to be across the street from a travel agent. We decided to check about flights with him, because the 32hour bus leaving a two days later for $50-ish didn’t sound too enjoyable…The travel agent said he had four tickets for Saturday. Sweet. But his were like $250. After a few hours deliberation and a no money scare, when the international bank declined our ATM cards, we decided it was worth it to keep the trip going and just do it. So we brought him the money, cash and he got us our tickets and a reciept from LAM. However he said there was a problem with the fact that we had reservations that had been cancelled by LAM and so our names were in the computer twice and I don’t know maybe people aren’t allowed to buy two tickets or aren’t allowed to buy some cancel and buy more who knows. He said he got it cleared up and the portugese made it kind of hard to really follow up other than just taking his word for it. The flight was two days later too though, so we had an extra day in Tete. It wasn’t going to be too bad though Tete has a couple good bakery’s and some good pizza and the beer options were just so much better. So we did the hanging out and then trucked it to the airport. High spirits and excited. We were at the airport around 9. The flight was at 1. We were by far the first in line. As it turned out though that just meant we got rejected sooner. As it turned out our travel agent didn’t clear up the problem with Maputo and we, in a moment of stupidity didn’t get his number. So we had to sit there beside the front of the line watching the plane fill up. Flying standby for $250 in Mozambique. Not too fun. We were all in peices by the time the end of the line finally arrived. All four of us were up at the desk the whole time in the guys face pretty much and he let people on before us and then offered us 3 seats. We didn’t even have time to debate leaving someone behind for a day when he gave another seat away, 2. Then 1, then none. We were livid and distraught. We did happen to meet another PCV in Mozambique, there were some PCT’s heading back to Maputo. They helped us get one person confirmed for the flight the next day so only three flying standby. We rode back to Tete ate lots of pizza, I had two calzones the size of half a large pizza each, they were soooooo good. The next day we were there again at the same time. Got another one of us confirmed so then, as it happened, only the girls were flying standby. We sat there through everyone getting on again until, except this time we brought our travel agent. The mean manager women in Tete told him we declined the three standby tickets because we decided to take the bus. How stupid would that be, that was lady was so atrocious. Jenn begged at a clutch moment and the lady permitted the boarding guy to take our tickets and give us boarding passes we were on, three days later. Sunday, not saturday, not the Maputo yearly holiday, not the curio market day or the live music day, but Sunday.

So we got our bags at the airport, a cooler with fish in it that someone had checked(africa…) had opened and spilled on Jenn’s bag so she checked trash cans and turned in circles for a bit looking for what smelled and then we informed her…it didn’t make her any happier about LAM. We taxied it to the hostel and our driver showed us the tallest building in Mozambique, SWEET. The dude at our hostel was a boob too. A weird dude with a weird accent that forced his laugh at things he was out of the loop on. And a bit too particular. Oh well enough about him, another odd thing was the lack of mosquito nets at a place where it’s obvious whitey’s are gonna be where it’s also obviously malaria ridden. The people there weren’t especially friendly. I’ve just realized I’ve been pretty negative so far. Don’t worry it gets AWESOME. We went pretty much immediately out on the town looking for food. We ended up at this place that must we decided was like the chili’s of Moz. It was good though. I don’t remember what I got but I remember it was good. Seafood pasta I think.

Maputo Day 1

So the next day we all ventured out together looking for breakfast. I mean if Tete has that bakery Maputo must have something as good atleast or better hopefully. We find an awesome little bakery, and had coffee. Then Ron and I went looking for the ForEx for him while Catherine and Ron went looking for a western union. That ended up eating up the whole morning. And we finally got on our way to the fish market around 12:30. It was pretty straight forward to get to but just kind of far. Like after a few diversions we arrived around 4. The diversions included stopping at this veritable shopping mall and just wandering around feeling a bit to village to walk in a Lacoste or Monte Blanc store. I did manage to get into some african jewelry store. Beautiful stuff, real expensive too. The exchange rate really threw me for a loop, its so much better there. its like $4 for every 100 metcais. Of course they drop a few zeros so like 10metcais is actually a million or something like that. It was close to confusing the entire time. I digress, we also got ice cream and checked out some curious and spray painted lilies. As in a lily that was cut and spray painted hunter orange, why…who knows. Over halfway there the road ran along the water for a while, it was nice, there were embassies from like everywhere, but we really needed to go to the bathroom and couldn’t find the American one, so we ended up in the bushes/park. The market was real neat though. Just 30L buckets full of mussels and clams, and baskets full of crab, coolers full of snapper and mackrel, buckets of prawns and lobsters just chillin on tables. This time we opted for sharing a little of each and ended up with mackrel steak, prawns, crab and calimari. About 3kg’s, that’s like 6.6lbs of sea food. We had a dude from a market resteraunt walking around with us helping and then he cooked it all up, gourmet style, for 70Mc per Kg. It was so good we knew we had to come back. We hitched back into town with some drunk dudes and possible prostitutes. Ron and I in the bed while the girls were in the cab. Beautiful seaside ride. Well the water was pretty dirty but it was the Indian Ocean! Then we got ice cream again and took another cab back to the hostel, I got a waffle with my ice cream. Tried to order pizza at 8:50, but they stopped delivering at 9 and wouldn’t budge. I was truly sad. Delivered pizza, what a wonderful luxury. The stuff I’ll love when I do finally get home…

Maputo Day 2

We slept in and got up around 8. Wandered out and got coffee and breakfast again. Then started again for the market. Hopefully for lunch this time. However we did stop for ice cream at the nicest hotel I saw in Moz the whole time. It was weird. Then chapa-ed it to the fish market again. I had a 1kg lobster and a kg of prawns, I think I paid about $20 for it all. It was good but quite filling. Then we hitched back in a chapa owned by a rwandan refugee whod been in maputo for about 5 years he said. We had to go to the LAM office to try to get return tickets. And I’m not even going to try to remember all the in’s and out’s of that story but just know it was atrocious and it haunted our every move that whole vacation. Dinner we looked for an often rumored good Thai resteraunt but ended up back at that first nights resteraunt. It was quite good again. Not let down.

Tavel

The next morning we got in a pre-arrange taxi to the bus depot and passed a KFC, if only we’d known that was there! I’ve been craving a bucket of chicken for literally years. I could never pull the trigger in atl. Found the express bus to Tofo, no problem. Then we sat for another hour and pulled out. It was a decent bus too, a coaster one per seat. We took up the back row. Bought cashews and beer from the vendors shoving them in our faces at the stops and even bought a coconut. Apparently I paid a bit too much for the coconut because after we pulled away and I Was like whatever, change lost, the conductor asked and Jenn told him we were waiting for change, how much, 100Mc, for what, coconut. He talked to the driver and we busted a u-turn after having gone over 2k down the road. As we rolled back into the village I pointed at the vendor, he came over and gave me a 20 change, the conductor yelled, a 50 came through my window, the conductor(who is bigger than me) got out screaming at this little vendor guy and chasing him down. Finally the conductor came and brought me the rest of my change. I ended up paying 5Mc for it. About 20cents. It took about eight hours on the bus to get there. Not too bad, we rolled in at 2 and it almost felt like a whole day there. The water was gorgeous and felt spectacular. Checked in to our hostel on the beach, checked out one dive spot and then went swimming again. Apparently there were small jellyfish in the water. I got stung twice, which was pretty lucky Ron must have gotten stung like 20 times over the whole time we were there. Our place was a little reed hut with sand floor and like 20 shelves it seemed, a woven banana leaf roof and a fan. ELECTRICITY! That fan was clutch but it ended up the power was out more than on it seemed.

Tofo Day 1

So we woke up went swimmin, got some breakfast and wandered over to Diversity Scuba. Ended up signing up for a dive and a whale shark safari. The former for the same day and the latter for the next day. The dive was at 1 that day so we went next door and got some lunch at this surf shop/diner, it was cool. That’s where Jenn asked what prego was and we found it was steak not liver like previously suspected. The dive was so freakin’ awesome. It ended up just being Jenn, Catherine, Me and people from the shop. We had to push the boat around on the beach so we could get it in the water and out. It had twin 85hp johnsons and just tore through the ocean to the dive spot. Where we went was called the Salon. I was pretty dang nervous at the beginning huffing hard on my regulator as I sunk into the salty water but I started to get comfortable once we were going. Saw lion fish, octapus, scorpion fish, trigger fish, moorish idols, nudy branches(that’s what it sounded like the divemaster kept sayin), trigger fish, flute fish, anemone crabs, and all kinds of other stuff. It was real awesome, real awesome. It also had that feeling like I accomplished something really cool, like after that first mountain biking trip we all went on. It was like 4-ish by then, we got debriefed, went next door again for snack, then went back to the hostel to shower and change and head to dinner. We decided not to eat at the place we were staying, didn’t hear good things nor experiences, and went for a walk down the beach and ate at this sweet place that served an awesome pizza.

Tofo Day 2

The next day we woke up early ate some breakfast and snagged some body boards that were sitting out to really have some fun in the water. About 10 minutes later, however, this dude came down and asked us who we had spoken with about the baords because we had to rent them for 200Mc’s a day. You have no sign, they are just sitting out and we don’t want them for a day, we told the guy. he was upset, said something about his sign blowing away cause it was windy and about how we shouldn’t just take things. Jenn told him things like that are normally included with your stay in America, He said this wasn’t America and asked how long we’d been here. He was surprised at that answer and then told Jenn she probably didn’t even know how to use a body board. She told him she was sponsored…Ah good times. That place did cause some Likoma flash backs from time to time. Around 11 we headed out for lunch and to prepare for our whale shark safari. We had made some friends at the dive shop so we got the good snorkels. booya. How this works is we take a boat out, similar to the one the day before but with a small spotting tower on there. We tool up and down the coast looking for dark spots in the water and when we see one we verify and hope in, snorkeling only. They stay close to the surface for the most part. The one we saw was about 6m long. It was a baby. We also saw a manta and a ton of dolphin. That was a pretty sweet little adventure too. Afterwards we had a meal at the internet place in town which made one mean iced coffee. then went swimming and headed to that same reseraunt for dinner again.

Tofo Day 3

So this day was a more individual day. Ron had a massage scheduled, Catherine and Jenn went on a deep dive to Manta Reef and I tried to find a surf board and teach myself how to do things with it. The one place next to the dive shop was closed and as long as the walk ended up being it was probably good. I heard of another place from the dive shop and went to check it out. It was too early so the bartender wasn’t there, so some of the other staff told me to just take it and talk to the bartender when I returned(if I returned). IT was a 8′ foam board and like a 20 min walk. Tofinho was the corner of town I was trying to find. The guy at the surf resteraunt showed me it in some worldwide surf book so I was determined to find it. It was real nice. There were some 2′-3′ waves but the currrent was real strong. I only mustered up the courage a few times to try. Otherwise I was on the beach practicing some techniques Jenn suggested before I left her for her deep dive. We had decided to meet back around 11 so after my initial solid attempts I returned the board and headed back to meet them. Don’t worry the plan was to all go surf after lunch. Went back to that internet place for lunch. It was good again. Battin’ a thousand. Then I showed them how to get to this surf spot. Well not really I got a hitch the first time from our friend at the dive shop and then he ended up picking us up again, which was pretty great. It’s a bit of a haul, especially with an 8′ board. We started off in this little cove. I wasn’t sure if it was any better or worse than where I was before but I was tired of walking. So we hung out there for a while until the current had us in the reef wall. A bit dangerous. I thought it’d be cool until Jenn said we were being stupid. Then I got a bit nervous. We made it ok though, a few scrapes, no biggie. This new side, where I was earlier, was much better. Much less dangerous, more open and a bit closer breaking waves. So we surfed for a good bit longer, swapping off for the body board when I got too tired. I did stand up a few times. Never for anything significant but it was definitely a good time. A very good time. Need to work on paddling. I’d presume that’s most newbies problems. We ended up taking trying to take photos of each other jumping and writing in the sand with a stick and messing with these little sand snail things. Afterwards we walked the boards back and paid and stopped to check out this other restaurant on the way home. We decided, since it was the last night to try to something new. So after showers we headed back. Nice thing about Mozambique and especially Tofo is that we could walk around after dark. We then decided that instead of taking the 4am bus for 400Mc we would just hitch to Inhanmbane and take a bus for 200Mc back to Maputo. We were told they left continually from 6 to 11.

Travel Back

Apparently on sundays they only leave at 11. We waited on the bus for like 2-3 hours and didn’t get into maputo until like 5. Very annoying because we were flying out of Maputo the next day and hence essentially now had zero time in Maputo. We made the best of it and got ice cream/gelato and I got like three dinners at some restaurant. Never did make it to KFC. That’s a bummer man…

Flying out of Maputo

So we got there and paid for our tickets and got our boarding passes no problem. We tried again to get some kind of compensation (thanks Jenn), but turns out that for a third world african country they are a bit of a stickler for following processes for reparations. Who knew. Anyway we made it to Tete no problem. We didn’t stop in Quelimane, or get our two meals/snacks, only one. Our goal for Tete was stay at the place with TV, and get some pizza and in the morning get some breakfast at one of the bakeries before rollin out. As it turned out, none of that was possible. Tete just doesn’t like us. Oh well, we made it back. Hitching wasn’t too much of a problem, we did happen to find, luckily enough, the slowest minibus in Malawi to take us from Mwanza to Zalewa. A few hitches later we were chillin in Lilongwe preparing for sleep, going out to dinner and looking forward to Thanksgiving. So, that was Mozambique.

Nkhata Bay and Likoma Island(or Chizimulu)

by Dom on August 24th, 2007

So I went and got scuba certified. Pretty sweet. Went at this place called Aqua Africa, supposedly the cheapest place in the world. So I’ve now done six dives in Lake Malawi. It was really sweet. I did it in hopes of doing some even better stuff in Mozambique and Zanzibar when I finally make it there.

Jenn and I went out to Likoma island. That was a bit of a trip. We got on the boat, The Illala, at 6pm on Monday, it left Nkhata Bay around 8, and we got to the first island, Chizimulu, around midnight. We stayed at that island until 6am and then went the last hour and a half to Likoma in the daylight. A good bit absurd I thought, but whatever. We got lucky and met an former VSO couple that was doing it right and had bought a cabin to likoma but decided to get off at Chizimulu and so they let us stay in their cabin the remaining time. We didn’t realize it would be another 8 hours until Likoma so we kept waking up in a panic only to find out that the boat hadn’t left. Then we get there, there’s only two ports with an actual pier so they drop the life boats to ferry people to shore. It’s everyman for themselves at that point and what a pain. Jenn got a fishhook threw her foot while waiting to get on the little boat.

We finally get to shore and have no clue where we’re going. So we start asking how to get to Mango Drift, the backpackers lodge we hoped to stay at. (I say hoped because there was no means of contacting them for prices or reservations so you just have to hope it all works out). It turned out to be almost an hour walk. But we made it with the help of a random kid guiding us. It was kind of hidden tucked up under a little ledge right behind a few village houses. I’m not sure what we were really expecting but the place was sparce. There were a few huts with nice concrete floors and bamboo walls and one big straw roofed pavilion where the bar and tables were. The only people staying there were the seven of us that just walked up.

The staff turned out to be less than pleased to help and, we found out later, there was an electricity problem on the island and so there wasn’t much food to be had. So after the un-welcomeing welcome we decided to try to get back to Chizimulu because it sounded much better. But it turns out we couldn’t use credit cards at this place, which honestly does seem a bit ridiculous but we were so reassured we believed. So therefore we were a bit strapped for cash and couldn’t afford the ferry over and just decided to go back and suffer through.

It turns out the only real problem with the place was the staff and not all of them at that. The hut was fine, the beach was beautiful, and the food we could get was pretty good (no cheese, no fruit, no oatmeal…) we ended up just getting the same thing every meal, except dinner. Dinner was a one kind thing meat or vegetarian, and everyone got the same thing.

After a day or two the others who had come with us had gone off on further travels to Mozambique or to Chizimulu and so we had the place to ourselves. It was really nice, I did absolutely nothing. There supposedly was a really nice cathedral on the island, never saw it. The most I did was go to the other really nice resort twice. Once to complain about the staff where we were and the other to get first-aid stuff for Jenn. She had the good fortune to almost rip her pinky toenail off from hitting a rock in the water. She’s doing good now though.

So she did that on the last day we were there, so I guess that’s some kind of luck…then we were waiting for the Illala again. It’s suppose to arrive at 4pm. We paid K600 to be ferried to the Illala whenever it does decide to show. We ended up getting on around 3am, after another stop in Chizimulu we finally made it back to Nkhata bay around 5pm. So our 12hr initial trip was trumped by the 14hr return trip. yay. There were 10′ seas coming back too that boat, though fairly big was rolling.

The VSO couple we met came to Likoma a few days later and also realized the error they made. The stories they told of the other place with it’s two bars, one for day and the other for night, and it’s multiple little paved alcoves to lay out in at different times of the day, and more food options and cheaper prices made us realize what to do next time. Chizimulu’s a shorter trip on the boat both ways too. I think the highlight of the unwelcomeness was when we asked to get a fire started under the water in the outdoor shower and the guy said only if there was already water in it because he wouldn’t get water for just two people, and then, I guess there was enough water, he yelled at Jenn in Chichewa to help him carry firewood. Good times.

All in all though it was still a solid vacation and if we wouldn’t have gone we’d still be wondering “what about Likoma” but now we know. Chizimulu’s the place to go.

I don’t want to die tonight…

by Dom on August 1st, 2007

So got back from Liwonde. It was pretty awesome. Saw a whole lot of sweet animals. The place we stayed had a porch that overlooked a lagoon on the Shire river and we could just sit there and see hippos and crocs and all kinds of birds and warthogs and lizards and all that stuff just go trotting by, drinking, and trying to eat other. Real sweet. Went on a couple safari drives saw some elephant too, just not really by the room. Ran up on three coming back from dinner the last night though, that was a bit scary, but still awesome. And then walking back to the room that same night there was a hippo and it’s kid chillin like 30 yards away staring us down. Went into the rino sanctuary and almost might have seen one. We scared something big gray and fast, but I just heard it two others saw the thing move. Thats were we also saw the water buffalo and all the different kinds of antelope. Saw so many impala we just stopped stopping to see them, it was like “Oh, impala…” Went on two night drives too, the driver was pretty good at spotting stuff. One time he stopped so we could look at this thumb sized chameleon he spotted, in the dark, at night under a moving spotlight while driving. We then spent like 20 minutes trying to figure out where he saw this thing. All in all though it was real awesome. There was a dead hippo too, just floating down the river like some evil carnival boat ride, pretty disgusting. It just looked fake. We were told by the others who saw it the day before that crocs were attacking it but it’s skin was still too tough. Oh yeah, saw a ton of monkeys and baboons too. Like all over the place, up in the room and at dinner trying to steal our stuff. Good times, good times. I’ll try to get some pictures up eventually…I think we all have seen how this will probably go though. Sorry.

The good times

by Dom on April 24th, 2007

Things these past weeks have been pretty cool. Probably the best time I’ve had in this country. It began with the wardrobe malfunction during the bike training in dedza. Stupid crappy abercrombie and fitch jeans. Then, on into IST, down to blantyre and mulanje, back up through lilongwe and on to nkhata bay to stay at mayoka village on the lake. That place was awesome, right on the water, awesome atmosphere, good food, cool people, and just all around real laid back. Sergio came with me and we met some others volunteers there. Ended up meeting a lot of real cool people too, some gap year british folk, some irish folk, two sweedish girls, a peruvian and another dude from LA. All of them, save the brit’s, got a minibus with sergio and are headed north (to alaska, goin’ north the rush is on). He should have a good time, I’m sure it’s the trip of a life time. It was pretty crazy to meet people with zero affiliation with the US. It was great though, it really gives a new perspective on everything.

Also, in the midst of a site-change process. I just don’t like my site and it makes me feel ill when I realize it’s time to go back. The same feeling I used to have when I realized I had to do dynamics homework. Not good. Also, I’m going to try a toned down version of “the book” the one for teaching reference, not “the book” for language reference, gunda icho. The latter has actually come along quite nicely. The former however has a long way to go. I think it will be good though. I’m suppose to get a call tomorrow from Dora and we can talk some more, she called me today and we had some discussions but it was more about how my expectations weren’t going to be met, as usual. So hopefully these talks will be relatively fruitful tomorrow.

It’s sad to have chris gone and sergio re-gone, but when I think about the site change and the book, I get a little excited and that’s something that hasn’t happened in, oh say, 7 months. And I know sergio’s going to have a good time, and chris has to be loving it, literally.

Lastly, I’m over 6 months out of date on the music scene, but the eagles of death metal, ok go, incubus, gnarls barkley, and hellogoodbye are still rockin’. Do it.

P.S. Elin, that paper you wrote the email address of that icelandic slaughterhouse on got all smeared in my wet pocket and now it’s un-readable, I’m retarded I know. Anyway, could you leave me that email address again if you have it? tak(?)

The hotel

by Dom on September 28th, 2006

This place seems pretty swank. It’s costing me 25 rand to use this computer for 15 minutes. I got complimentary wine while I checked in. Red, and it was good, though I don’t know what it was. Our rooms are nice, but there’s nothing that crazy about them save the light switches working oppositely and the toillet handle on the other side. Kind of a let down, but I guess I now have a pretty good idea of how Britain will work if I ever go there.

Seeing all the cars with the steering wheels on the wrong side was amusing. I was even surprised when one of the other volunteers got in the shuttle on what would have been the drivers seat but was actually shotgun. It’s the little things. Anyway, my time is running short and nothing really fantastic has happened so I’m going to wrap it up.

The Flight

by Dom on September 28th, 2006

I think the flight ended up being about 18hrs, including a 1hr stop in Dakar in which we weren’t suppose to use the bathroom or get in the way of the cleaners. So basically don’t move.

Overall it was pretty good. We mostly sat near each other so we could chat and a couple of us switched seats because it wasn’t a full load so we spread out a bit. They had some ok movies though I only ended up watching Akeelah and the Bee within the final three hours. A fine movie. The food was good; I’d never eaten on a plan before so that was an experience.

The plane was surprisingly small. I expected the biggest but it wasn’t. There was a middle row, which is where I was confined too, though I had an aisle seat. I couldn’t see much through the windows as a result. A bit of a let down. The crew was nice and you could get almost anything you wanted so that made things interesting.

Everything really went off without a hitch. They only weighed one of my bags at the check-in so I was pleased. Apparently I could have taken my guitar as a carry-on, which I am bummed about. C’est la vie.