August 14
Hello everyone!
How many places in the world can you truly escape a city
centre into another world within half an hour?
Lilongwe is not a massive city. It is a bit of a sprawl and
having a car would certainly be helpful, however it pales in comparison to the
likes of Kampala, Addis Ababa and many of the South African cities.
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| An aerial view of Nairobi, Kenya's sprawling capital city |
In spite of its middling size, it’s always nice to be able
to escape a capital city into more natural surroundings. The most obvious
destination from Lilongwe is Malawi’s treasure: Lake Malawi. This, however, is
about a 90 minute drive if traffic is good. Not a guarantee around here.
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| An old newspaper picture showing the potential traffic jams we'll experience in Lilongwe in the future |
Closer to home is a lodge in a village called Namitete,
where we spent our final day before the invasion of new children into our
lives.
Namitete is a popular expat spot, a lovely and peaceful setting
approximately 30 minutes outside of the capital, on the way to the western
border with Mozambique.
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| Arriving early in the morning meant we had the place to ourselves for a little while |
The main feature of Namitete is its small lake, on which you
can sail and canoe. We did the latter and paddled our way around in glorious
sunshine. It was almost silent as we glided along a meandering stream in the
corner of the lake. The lack of noise was only occasionally curtailed, either
by animals or by a large machine on the riverbank. I’m not sure what it was
doing.
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| We paid the princely sum of MWK1000 - £1 - to use the canoe |
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| Whereas much of the country is dusty brown with drought, the grass here is much greener |
In this peaceful setting, away from the noise of Lilongwe,
lots of different wildlife can be found. We rowed past some vervet monkeys and
some striking white birds.
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| Here and in the video below, the monkeys are bouncing around about 15 metres from our canoe |
We found the tree below particularly interesting. The
bareness visualised by the lack of leaves is offset by the extraordinary number
of bird nests hanging from the branches. The holes on the nests were on the
bottom. It looked like a rather lovely bunch of coconuts.
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| The nests up close |
Namitete is a lovely place to relax and forget about city
life. We’ll definitely be back in the near future!
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| There didn't seem to be enough wind for a sailboat but we'll be sure to try at some point soon! |
Love you all
Matt
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