Hello!
We finally managed to get out of Blantyre this weekend. To save diesel we went to a local national park Liwonde National Park, which is on the shire river as it flows out of Lake Malawi on its way to Mozambique and the coast. The entire park is based around the river and has a huge elephant, hippo and croc population plus masses of birds. We drove up on Friday afternoon and arrived at sunset at the camp site, where we stayed in a ‘luxury’ tent – double bed and ensuite hot shower is pretty luxurious in the African bush. . The camp was run by a charming Carlsberg-marinated muzei muzungu (wise white man) called Darren, who immediately supplied us with cold beer to watch the sunset over the baobab trees. We did two safari drives the next day and saw masses of beautiful birds but no large animals close up – this is typical of safari in Malawi as the big animal populations have been severely decimated through poaching in the Banda years and are now starting to be restocked. But the trees, light, river and birds were utterly stunning and we had a really relaxing weekend, and Joshi even managed to sleep in his travel safari cot and instead of sleepy music he had the sounds of the African bush including grunting hippos to lull him to sleep!
Gav has started work full time as a lecturer in the College of Medicine today and managed to get diesel today, so we are celebrating our full tank. Blantyre is very quiet when there is no diesel. Our water problems might get better if we can get a special valve fitted (on average we have hot showers currently twice a week, usually v late at night and Joshi gets washed in a bucket each night) so fingers crossed the valve will sort our problems. More demonstrations are planned for August 17th and we are all hoping they are more peaceful this time.
That’s all the news for now – we hope you enjoy the photos of our trip
Lots of love Emma Joshi and Gav
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