Hello world! From Malawi, it is I, World Traveler Jess Scott, writing to give you all a good reason to piss off of work and surf the web. That, and because I thought that maybe a few members of my friends and family would be pleased to hear that I'm alive.
Well, I'm alive! And having a wonderful time. And wanted to write to tell you about it ... after a brief reminder that I've been writing occasional posts for this other awesome website called Pink Pangea. Well, they've decided to publish another of my posts (golly, gee), which, if you're interested, can be found at this link! It'll take you all the way back to my Sweden days, but should extend your web surfing session to at least half an hour. And be mildly interesting, I'm guessing, especially if you've never been to Sweden, or even if you have.
Anyway, on to Malawi! Our arrival in Malawi was no different than any other border crossing I’ve ever made – loud, insistent taxi touts trying to drag you to this car or that, shifty money changers whispering “good rate, fair price” from behind an endless line of lorries waiting to cross this way or that. However, my traveling companion Mikael and I, upon receiving our entry stamps, high-fived and hugged, exuberant at our successful entrance. We then changed money with the shiftiest guy we could find, jumped in the only registered taxi available, and sped off toward our destiny.
Okay, destiny might be a little much, I’ll give you that. But here we are, sitting comfortably at a table in the bar of The Mushroom Farm, and there’s more than just a nice view in front of us (and it is definitely nice). We’ve signed on to spend 9 months as co-managers of this extraordinary eco-backpackers camp, isolated 11km up a hillside in northern Malawi, nearish to both the towns of Karonga and the mission Livingstonia. Owned by Mickie Wild, an adventurous Australian who stumbled upon this perfect piece of hillside 10 years ago, the Mushroom Farm is a destination that requires commitment to visit – you can arrive only on foot (3-4 hours uphill), or if lucky, by hitching an irregular ride with whatever transport will brave the 15 sharp, unmaintained switchbacks to leave you at our doorstep. I like to say that the camp self-selects for cool people (read: people I get along with) – you’ve got to be pretty cool to be willing to hike for 4 hours to reach a pretty nice view and little else.
Well, okay, this time I under exaggerate – we also have cold beer, hot showers, and some of the best food in Malawi. The camp has enough power on sunny days, thanks be to a small collection of solar panels, to run a fridge, charge a few batteries for lights in the evening, and keep our iPod’s happy; our showers and food are all heated by fire, a seemingly endless supply of wood just a forest away; and our local cook, Efreeda, has been here for 5 years – enough time to perfect a menu that makes my mouth water just thinking about it (Banana pancakes! Onion bhajis! Did I mention banana pancakes?) . We have a handy man to help build things, an excentric night watchman who is seriously afraid of snakes, and another lady from the nearby village to help Efreeda with all of the chores that make this place run smoothly. So what is there left for Mikael and I to do but sit back, knock back a few beers, and contemplate life?
Rightttttt. While we’ve done quite a bit of this in our first 3 weeks here, much encouraged by our fearless leader Mick, we’ve still managed to fall asleep exhausted every night in our home for the next 9 months, a bright yellow tent (with all of the modern conveniences of a mattress and rain fly, and the current inconvenience of a termite invasion). Mick has trusted us with the responsibility of running the camp solo twice in the past 3 weeks – the first time merely 5 days after our arrival, and now again 3 weeks in, for business trips to the “big cities” in the south. I’m impressed every day with what it takes to run this camp, from keeping finances so that we don’t miss the 16.5% VAT or 1% tourism levy payments, to building a second shower and composting toilet with nothing but hand tools and lots of sweat, to keeping a sharp eye on our staff to ensure that more work than gossip happens around here. Oh, not to mention taking care of the guests, helping the ladies in the kitchen (I can cook over fire without burning everything!!), feeding the animals, making sure we’re not dangerously close to running out of tomatoes or water (like we did the other day, thanks a lot dry season), and whatever else crops up. Today’s special projects including finishing fixing the Land Rover and taking it on its maiden voyage to Livingstonia to get vegetables, deposit money, sell eggs (we have 17 rather productive chickens) and buy roof-thatching grass; hanging another triangle canvas over the bar area to shade it from the afternoon sun; and writing this blog to you J. We also had 6 new guests arrive on top of the 4 who were already staying, making it an exciting evening for Mikael and I – this being the high season, we should be this busy (or more) every night, but the pesky Malawian riots in combination with a bad financial year for the majority of tourist countries have caused a decrease in the number of people passing through this beautiful country.
So, perhaps you’re wondering if it’s what I expected so far? That’s an emphatic “definitely”! Maybe I expected to jump right into learning to build new chalets and collect wood on my head – but we have local staff who are much better at the latter, and it turns out you have to first learn to use a saw in order to do the former (I’m getting there, people – just don’t ask Mikael’s opinion). I think that Mikael and I have complementary skill sets, in that I’m good at getting up early and doing the people/paperwork stuff and helping in the kitchen (surprising no-one more than myself), and Mikael is good at staying up late and fixing/building/carrying stuff with often incorrect (or missing entirely) tools and lots of ingenuity. And we don’t hate each other yet, which is always a bonus when you’re planning to spend a bunch of time with the same person. We’ve had our share of “oops” moments so far, like when it turned out I had fed the ducks some version of husk with zero nutritional value for 2 days in a row rather than their actual food; and when we let the water in the tank run out because there were leaks in the pipes and too many showers and too little water flow in general; and when the camp dog ended up following some guests up to the mission (Livingstonia), staying the night, and following totally unrelated white people all the way back down the hill to Chitimba… 10KM past our camp (that one’s not our fault, but it IS funny that we had to make a special trip down the hill to pick up our silly dog). And there have even been unexpected pleasures, like cooking dishes with meat in them (which Mick didn’t do here last year) whenever we go down the hill and can get some (it only lasts for a few days up here without steady refrigeration), and not having to wash our own laundry (a million thanks to Efreeda, who I personally believe could wash the dirt out of the ground), and drinking all of the cocktails off of the new cocktail menu one Sunday afternoon because we had to know what they tasted like according to Mick. But I can honestly say I’m looking forward to everything the Mushroom Farm has in store for my Swedish companion and I – from the quiet moments alone at sunrise to the early-but-rowdy nights of debauchery around the fire, from the driest of dry seasons to the camp trying to wash away during the long rains, and from the furthest shores of lake Malawi to the spot where I now sit, overlooking this place that has so quickly become my home, and signing off.
With love,
Jess (WTS)
P.S. I would love to share pictures, especially depicting my use of power tools and the strange variety of things I have so far carried on my head, but Malawian internet is just not quite good enough to upload photos. So, we'll have to wait until I have enough patience to manage such adventures in interweb data transfer. Sorry, ya'll!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
A quick hello, and an older blog...
Hi Everyone!
A quick hello from Malawi, where Mikael and I have spent the past week learning lots about the running of the Mushroom Farm Campsite, our home for the next 9ish months. We're here alone right now, on a little managing-test run, thinking about all of you wonderful people out there at home.
More will eventually come regarding the Cairo escapade (at least a brief summary of the results, but suffice it to say that we obviously made it here), but until then, here's an old blog post to keep you busy! It goes all the way back to my visit to Rian in Holland, and features dance parties and prostitutes (which may not be surprising at all if any of you have been to Holland). Check out the rest of Pink Pangea while you're at it -- they kinda rock.
Love to all, and a super special shoutout to WTK, whom I miss more with each passing day. Wish you were here, friend! :)
Jess
A quick hello from Malawi, where Mikael and I have spent the past week learning lots about the running of the Mushroom Farm Campsite, our home for the next 9ish months. We're here alone right now, on a little managing-test run, thinking about all of you wonderful people out there at home.
More will eventually come regarding the Cairo escapade (at least a brief summary of the results, but suffice it to say that we obviously made it here), but until then, here's an old blog post to keep you busy! It goes all the way back to my visit to Rian in Holland, and features dance parties and prostitutes (which may not be surprising at all if any of you have been to Holland). Check out the rest of Pink Pangea while you're at it -- they kinda rock.
Love to all, and a super special shoutout to WTK, whom I miss more with each passing day. Wish you were here, friend! :)
Jess
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
23-07-2011, 1400 hours to 24-07-2011, 0210 hours
Note: The general content of this blog was originally written by Mikael (the Swede), then translated by Google, then reinterpreted by yours truly. Therefore, the content will be very similar to the next few blogs appearing on Mikael’s website, www.2cape.com.
I consider myself to be equipped with a lot of patience. Probably more patience than the average American, enough patience to deal with multiple-day-long train rides through China or with waiting for hours for the daladalas to leave the African bus stands. But this, well this pretty much killed it. Strap in and enjoy the next few blogs, as I explain exactly what we went through to get to Malawi.
Everything was fine (note the “was”). We were having a wonderful time in Istanbul, after having visited a university I’m interested in attending in Estonia (anyone want to study Semiotics with me?). We were staying with the same CS host that Em and I stayed with last time we were in Istanbul, and visiting places both new and familiar. We went to the Grand Bazaar, full of pushy salespeople and brightly colored things of every variety; walked over, under, and around bridges day after day; drank tea and ate donuts by the sea in the evening sun; visited the magnificent Basilica Cistern under the streets of Istanbul; and even went to Asia on a day (well, night) trip. Time passed quickly in Istanbul, 4 days too short a time to explore this city (even for both Mikael’s and my second time), and we were off to new places – our flight was leaving for Dar es Salaam (via Cairo and Addis) the afternoon of Saturday the 23rd. We bid our host farewell, made it to the airport, and checked in (as you do when you go to the airport). We were informed at the counter that our bags would be checked all the way to Dar, a relief, as everyone likes to avoid having to collect them and recheck-in at each layover destination. We were asked if we had gotten visas to our final destination , Tanzania, but replied that we could purchase them at the airport – once confirmed, the nice lady gave us our boarding passes, sent our bags off down the conveyor belt (why does it feel like you’ll never see them again, no matter how many times you’ve flown?), and we were off on the first leg of our flight – to Cairo.
Bad decision #1: We arrived in Cairo pretty much on schedule, at 1730 hours. It wasn’t a bad decision that we arrived (thank goodness, even Egypt Air’s pilots can land an airplane), but a bad decision that we arrived on time, because frankly it extended the rest of the scenario I’m about to begin describing. We had our hand luggage (consisting in total of a sweater, iPad, phone charger, USD, visa cards, laptop, laptop charger, and some pens), the clothing we were wearing, and our passports. Upon arrival, we were referred to the “transfer desk”, to be sure we’d get to the appropriate gate for our next flight to Addis. We also needed our boarding passes for this next leg – but, seeing as that we had an 11 hour layover in this airport (oh, cheap flight tickets), we were not concerned about the timeliness of any of this happening. At the transfer desk, our passports were taken, and we were told to wait in some chairs for further instruction. Well we waited, and waited, and got hungry, and waited some more, and finally found the guy who had originally taken our passports and enquired about our ability to get them back, and to move to another terminal that perhaps had some dinner in it (this terminal was, apparently, not the terminal with food). The guy seemed rather confused by this question, as if people wanting dinner and their passports back was something he had never, ever encountered before in his life. He seemed, as Mikael put it, to be facing some unprecedented challenge that his office had never before encountered – and so we agreed to wait just a little while longer while he worked it out. By now, it was probably around 1900 or 1930.
Well, we waited. The folks on our plane left, and we waited. New planes arrived, and we waited. Finally, fortuitously, something happened. We were bundled with the other white people who had magically appeared (4 Germans, I think), loaded into a van, and transported to the magical other terminal. Satisfied with our new location, we ordered a beer, Mikael spilled most of it on my laptop, we ordered another beer, met some Americans, ate hamburgers, and prepared ourselves for our next stop: Africa. Point to note: our passports, during this entire encounter, had been kept by a nice airport employee who told us we could have them back, along with our boarding passes, at midnight (3 hours before we were supposed to leave).
When the clock approached midnight, we found the nice guy who had had our passports, and asked about their whereabouts and our boarding passes. Seeming unclear, he made plans to meet us at the McDonalds in half an hour to straighten things out. He met us, eventually, and told us our passports were actually at our gate, waiting for the departure of the plane. We could collect them there, though to be honest, we were still unsure as to why they had been taken in the first place. I assume it was to keep us from running off into Cairo, as if we had any intention of exploring that city ever again (sorry, once in that chaotic mess is enough for me for a decade or two).
So, we continued to do nothing, though we moved toward our gate to wait for departure. We figured bureaucracy would run its course, as it often needs to in Egypt, and though we hadn’t been in possession of our passports for nearly 12 hours, we were content to let things work themselves out. When a guy arrived with a big bunch of passports with papers and tickets sticking out of them, we thought we were free and clear. However, he tossed the passports into a big plastic box (no security, no locks, no lids); started shrieking at the other staff members in a way very typical to the country, until the shrieking turned into a quarrel, and the highest ranking staff member had to get involved. How did he solve the problem quarrel? By lighting a cigarette, on the spot, inside the airport (a non-smoking area), totally unperturbed that there were 50 people clustered around him waiting for their passports, while another 50 sat nearby waiting for something to happen. Including us…
0210, 24th of July… plane scheduled to take off at 0250…
To be continued ...
p.s. Friends, we are on our way to Malawi tomorrow! We will keep you abreast of any political developments in our once peaceful, now-less-peaceful-but-probably-still-okay country. And in the coming days, I will be posting various blogs that I wrote earlier in these travels that will be posted on Pink Pangea, that travel website for women that I've been writing for, in the coming weeks -- so don't get confused as I mess up the timeline a little bit!
I consider myself to be equipped with a lot of patience. Probably more patience than the average American, enough patience to deal with multiple-day-long train rides through China or with waiting for hours for the daladalas to leave the African bus stands. But this, well this pretty much killed it. Strap in and enjoy the next few blogs, as I explain exactly what we went through to get to Malawi.
Everything was fine (note the “was”). We were having a wonderful time in Istanbul, after having visited a university I’m interested in attending in Estonia (anyone want to study Semiotics with me?). We were staying with the same CS host that Em and I stayed with last time we were in Istanbul, and visiting places both new and familiar. We went to the Grand Bazaar, full of pushy salespeople and brightly colored things of every variety; walked over, under, and around bridges day after day; drank tea and ate donuts by the sea in the evening sun; visited the magnificent Basilica Cistern under the streets of Istanbul; and even went to Asia on a day (well, night) trip. Time passed quickly in Istanbul, 4 days too short a time to explore this city (even for both Mikael’s and my second time), and we were off to new places – our flight was leaving for Dar es Salaam (via Cairo and Addis) the afternoon of Saturday the 23rd. We bid our host farewell, made it to the airport, and checked in (as you do when you go to the airport). We were informed at the counter that our bags would be checked all the way to Dar, a relief, as everyone likes to avoid having to collect them and recheck-in at each layover destination. We were asked if we had gotten visas to our final destination , Tanzania, but replied that we could purchase them at the airport – once confirmed, the nice lady gave us our boarding passes, sent our bags off down the conveyor belt (why does it feel like you’ll never see them again, no matter how many times you’ve flown?), and we were off on the first leg of our flight – to Cairo.
Bad decision #1: We arrived in Cairo pretty much on schedule, at 1730 hours. It wasn’t a bad decision that we arrived (thank goodness, even Egypt Air’s pilots can land an airplane), but a bad decision that we arrived on time, because frankly it extended the rest of the scenario I’m about to begin describing. We had our hand luggage (consisting in total of a sweater, iPad, phone charger, USD, visa cards, laptop, laptop charger, and some pens), the clothing we were wearing, and our passports. Upon arrival, we were referred to the “transfer desk”, to be sure we’d get to the appropriate gate for our next flight to Addis. We also needed our boarding passes for this next leg – but, seeing as that we had an 11 hour layover in this airport (oh, cheap flight tickets), we were not concerned about the timeliness of any of this happening. At the transfer desk, our passports were taken, and we were told to wait in some chairs for further instruction. Well we waited, and waited, and got hungry, and waited some more, and finally found the guy who had originally taken our passports and enquired about our ability to get them back, and to move to another terminal that perhaps had some dinner in it (this terminal was, apparently, not the terminal with food). The guy seemed rather confused by this question, as if people wanting dinner and their passports back was something he had never, ever encountered before in his life. He seemed, as Mikael put it, to be facing some unprecedented challenge that his office had never before encountered – and so we agreed to wait just a little while longer while he worked it out. By now, it was probably around 1900 or 1930.
Well, we waited. The folks on our plane left, and we waited. New planes arrived, and we waited. Finally, fortuitously, something happened. We were bundled with the other white people who had magically appeared (4 Germans, I think), loaded into a van, and transported to the magical other terminal. Satisfied with our new location, we ordered a beer, Mikael spilled most of it on my laptop, we ordered another beer, met some Americans, ate hamburgers, and prepared ourselves for our next stop: Africa. Point to note: our passports, during this entire encounter, had been kept by a nice airport employee who told us we could have them back, along with our boarding passes, at midnight (3 hours before we were supposed to leave).
When the clock approached midnight, we found the nice guy who had had our passports, and asked about their whereabouts and our boarding passes. Seeming unclear, he made plans to meet us at the McDonalds in half an hour to straighten things out. He met us, eventually, and told us our passports were actually at our gate, waiting for the departure of the plane. We could collect them there, though to be honest, we were still unsure as to why they had been taken in the first place. I assume it was to keep us from running off into Cairo, as if we had any intention of exploring that city ever again (sorry, once in that chaotic mess is enough for me for a decade or two).
So, we continued to do nothing, though we moved toward our gate to wait for departure. We figured bureaucracy would run its course, as it often needs to in Egypt, and though we hadn’t been in possession of our passports for nearly 12 hours, we were content to let things work themselves out. When a guy arrived with a big bunch of passports with papers and tickets sticking out of them, we thought we were free and clear. However, he tossed the passports into a big plastic box (no security, no locks, no lids); started shrieking at the other staff members in a way very typical to the country, until the shrieking turned into a quarrel, and the highest ranking staff member had to get involved. How did he solve the problem quarrel? By lighting a cigarette, on the spot, inside the airport (a non-smoking area), totally unperturbed that there were 50 people clustered around him waiting for their passports, while another 50 sat nearby waiting for something to happen. Including us…
0210, 24th of July… plane scheduled to take off at 0250…
To be continued ...
p.s. Friends, we are on our way to Malawi tomorrow! We will keep you abreast of any political developments in our once peaceful, now-less-peaceful-but-probably-still-okay country. And in the coming days, I will be posting various blogs that I wrote earlier in these travels that will be posted on Pink Pangea, that travel website for women that I've been writing for, in the coming weeks -- so don't get confused as I mess up the timeline a little bit!
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