© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

Malawi is situated in the Great Rift Valley, the capital is Lilongwe. Malawi is the former Nyasaland, a British protectorate from 1891, following Livingstone’s exploration, and from 1953 to 1963 a part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. It became an independent Commonwealth state under President Hastings Banda in 1964 and a republic in 1966.

BLANTYRE

We arrived in Blantyre hot, weary and hungry, after a slow bus journey from Tete in Mozambique. Blantyre is the chief commercial and industrial city of Malawi. The city was founded in 1876 as a Church of Scotland mission, it is named after the explorer David Livingstone’s birthplace in Scotland. We knew where we wanted to stay, Doogles backpackers lodge, so we walked there. It was quite busy, but thankfully they had a double en-suite room available. We were pleased that we didn’t have to sleep in a dormitory. Our room was nice and private, situated at the back of the property. It had a pleasant view of the garden, where there were a couple of fully loaded Land Rovers parked. We enjoyed talking to one of the Land Rover owners, who told us about his interesting expedition across Africa. Blantyre was not overflowing with major attractions, but there was the Sanjika Palace, the National Museum, and you could go on a guided tour of the Carlsberg Brewery complete with free tasting, if you were desperately thirsty! More energetic yearnings could be satisfied by conquering one or all three of Blantyre’s large hills. They are officially called mountains but are not exactly Kilimanjaro. They are MT Ndirande 1610m, in the Ndirande Forest Reserve, its name means Sleeping Man, so called because viewed from Blantyre the profile resembles a man lying down. MT Soche 1530m, in the Soche Forest Reserve, which you can walk to the top of using a local schoolboy acting as a guide. Lastly MT Michiru 1473m, which is considered the best of the three, in the centre of Michiru Forest Reserve where it is possible to see monkeys, bush bucks, and apparently even leopard. Although it is more likely that you will be rewarded with the sighting of a bird or two, as there have been over 400 species discovered. We were happy doing nothing, relaxing and chatting in the bar at Doogles. It was always fairly busy, and very popular with expats, and local workers. The restaurant at Doogles served snacks, lunch and dinner. We ate a few meals there, the food was good but not cheap. We were on a mainly liquid diet, drinking lots of large bottles of cold Carlsberg lager! When we weren't keeping the seats warm in Doogles bar, we walked to the local shops. The main street is Victoria Avenue, where there were several large shops, as well as banks and other useful services. Haile Selassie Road had lots of smaller shops worth browsing. At the junction where Victoria Avenue meets Glyn Jones Road is Le Meridien Mount Soche Hotel. We liked to go there for a drink, sitting outside in the lovely garden by the pool. It was a peaceful oasis away from the noise of central Blantyre. We had seen some lovely wooden masks in Blantyre, in fact there were two huge ones on the wall at Doogles. We wanted to buy some of these masks and also a chiefs chair if possible. So one day, Richard, myself, and an Australian guy, who we met in Mozambique and travelled to Malawi with, went out in search of souvenirs. We found Blantyre’s main market, just off Kaoshiung Road. It sold everything from fruit and vegetables to clothes and shoes. There were lots of stalls selling Kangas, the large rectangles of material worn by the local women as skirts, similar to a sarong. There were so many different designs of every colour, most of which had a Nyanja (local language), saying on the hem. These sayings were often funny and usually relevant to the image on the Kanga. We liked so many of them, it was hard to decide which ones to purchase. Eventually we picked out half a dozen, and began haggling with the stall owner until we were all happy. Now we wanted to find some good wooden masks, but we were all beginning to feel warm so we headed to Le Meridien Mount Soche Hotel, for drinks. After sitting in the garden for a while we ventured out again, this time we walked to the PTC supermarket on Victoria Avenue, as we had seen lots of stalls there selling various crafts. It was definitely the place for us to purchase all of the things we wanted, and more. There were so many different stalls selling everything, jewellery, baskets, wire models, furniture, masks, and lots of the stalls had paintings on display. We were very happy as we knew we would be able to get everything in the one place. We saw some great chairs, and after lots of haggling with the seller, we agreed a good price. He told us the cost for postage back to the U.K. There was no way we wanted to lug something this large and heavy with us for the rest of our trip. So we told him we would go to the post office and check the price of the postage. We also found a stall selling the huge wooden masks we liked so much. Once again we haggled until we arrived at a price we liked, and we told the seller that we would check the price of postage to the U.K. before we parted with any money. He tried to assure us that he knew the postage, but we went off to the post office to make sure. As we expected, the post was considerably more expensive than we had been told by both stall holders. In fact it was so expensive that we didn’t buy either the chiefs chair or any of the huge wooden masks. We were slightly disappointed but continued to browse the goods on sale. We found lots of other things that we liked, all much lighter than the chair and masks, and we now had a rough idea how much the postage would cost. We hadn’t really thought about buying any paintings, but the Australian guy we were with had stopped to look at some and was haggling with the seller. So while he chatted to the stall owner we looked at some of the paintings. They were actually quite good, lots of landscapes, not our first choice. But there were lots of paintings of African women, which were beginning to grow on us. Our friend had found a set of four paintings that he quite liked, but he only wanted to buy two. He couldn’t decide which two at first, but eventually chose his favourites and a deal was done. We liked the remaining two and asked how much they were. Obviously we were told the same price as our friend had just paid. We didn’t want to pay that price so we walked away, we were called back, and in the end we got them for half the price our friend paid for his. We were surprised that the shopping was not really that stressful. Obviously the stall owners wanted to make a sale, but they were not too aggressive about it. So it was a real pleasure taking our time and looking at everything on offer and doing business with them. This probably explains why we bought so much, that and the seriously low prices. We were happy with the two paintings we had already bought and happy to look for more things to buy. We saw another really nice painting of a women breast feeding a baby, it was mounted in a wooden frame, we didn’t want the frame. We began haggling and ages later agreed a price, the stall holder removed the painting from the frame before rolling up the painting for us to post home. When we settled in France we had all three paintings mounted and they look great. They are up on the wall in front of me now as I type this, a perfect reminder of our time in Malawi. We bought so much that day, the paintings, some wooden masks, candle sticks, candle holders, pen holders, pens, carved statues, and from a nearby shop lots of material with African scenes printed along the bottom. We also had the Kangas we had bought earlier, once everything was packed securely in a cardboard box we posted it home. This was probably one of the largest boxes, although not the heaviest, that we ever sent home from our travels. After all of the haggling and sun exposure we were all in need of another drink, so we headed back to Doogles bar. We had enjoyed our time in Blantyre, most of which we spent drinking or eating at Doogles, but now we wanted to move on. We left bright and early one morning travelling to Monkey Bay.

MONKEY BAY

We caught a very early morning bus from Blantyre to Monkey Bay. Our Australian friend travelled with us and by the time we arrived we were all hot and tired. We stopped for a drink, only staying in Monkey Bay until we could get a lift to Cape Maclear.

CAPE MACLEAR BEACH

From Monkey Bay we caught a local pick up truck, which took us further along the coast to Cape Maclear Beach. Richard and I were lucky enough to have sat together in the truck cab with the driver. All of the other passengers were sitting in the back on top of luggage, sacks of maize, and junk. It was quite a long journey on a very dusty bumpy dirt track. We were pleased when we arrived at Fat Monkeys, which is where we wanted to stay. We jumped out of the van and headed to the bar. It looked okay and fairly modern, there were some newly built accommodation blocks nearby and there were a few people sitting drinking and eating in the bar/restaurant.

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