Friday 8th

Hi folks, it’s back to Mick D to bring you the latest and greatest from Mzuzu town here in Malawi.
So the day started like any other…alarms going off at half five to get up and get showered closely followed by the dreaded church bells accompanied by the howling of the dogs. You can kind of get the picture by now…half six mass, half shut knives and breakfast. After breakfast, we got ready to head down to the schools for our last day of teaching, however, as this was the last day, Caroline, Louise and I didn’t need to be at the school until half nine as the girls were having their end of year assembly and receiving their report cards. The group that was teaching at St Peters were told after an hour and a half that they were finished and could go home.

Earlier in the week, the teachers at St Peters had invited us to have lunch with them…this was something that we were dreading as, on the last visit, the children had prepared local traditional food for us including the rather bizarre combination of bananas boiled with meat and tomato. So as you can imagine, we were a little apprehensive about going. We arrived and were seated. The usual formalities followed, including a prayer from a Jehovah witness and a lengthy speech from the head mistress. The food was then brought out and to our delight; it was prepared by Irene and the people from Mary’s Meals and not a boiled banana in sight. After the food, the speeches resumed, including a presentation of gifts from Anne on behalf of St Mary’s which included two new laptops, one of which contained a dongle for internet access.

After lunch, we headed back to the house for a quick change to head into town. The first point of call again was the dodgy guy that changed our money. The man was very happy to see us considering the amount of business that we have provided for him over the past week and as a result Bernadette tried to get him to increase the exchange rate claiming that we were now ‘good friends’. So we all crammed into the little room that was the guys’ office and started to change our money. However, considering that it is anywhere between k250 and k280 to the pound the man soon ran out of Malawian notes. At this point he shouted one of the workers in the shop; spoke some Tumbuka at which the man disappeared, only to reappear a few minutes later carrying a very large plastic bag stuffed with Malawian K500 notes. Once all of the money had been sorted, we headed into the heart of town; some broke off to do their own thing however the majority decided to stay together. We made our way to PEP, a clothing store, to help find Monica some clothes to buy. Once Monica had been kitted out, including a few pairs of rather hideous ‘Bridget Jones’ style underwear, we went for some pizza. After which we met back up with Bernadette and Celia in a small internet café, who were accompanied by some of the street dealers that we had gotten to know.

After ten minutes of internet and bargaining with the dealers for paintings, we headed home only to be told that we only had 40 mins to get ready to go for dinner. After a quick shower and change, it wasn’t long before, ‘Cabs are here’ rang out. After a rather bumpy ride, we arrived at the Key lounge where we were having dinner. We ordered our food and after over an hour of waiting we could finally eat. During this time, Monica was complaining that one of her ears was freezing and the other roasting. Bearing in mind that it was pitch black out side and the fact that we were inside, Bernadette said that she might have got a bit too much sun on that side of her face through the day, to which Monica turned around to see if where the sun was, providing much hilarity. But the food came and was devoured rather quickly, however, Bernadette failed to tell me that when you order fish in Malawi, you get the WHOLE fish…including everything inside it. I found this out the hard way as after eating half of it I turned it round only to have the fish staring straight back at me. Don’t think that Ann-Mary would fancy coming here for her holidays… After dinner we made our way through to the dance floor where we threw down our best shapes to the African music. After a few hours we decided to head home, not too late as Bernadette had to be up early the next morning to travel to Galamalla for a celebration (will be explained later). And then it was off to bed rather happy as we could have a lie in the next morning…

Best wishes from all in Mzuzu. xx