I passed quickly through Zambia because, overall, the main attractions are the national parks, but I’ve already seen many, and pretty much all the animals, so I didn’t really feel the need to see more. As for the cities, they’re rather plain and unremarkable, like most of the African cities.
The past few days have been mostly spent traveling: from Maun to Kasane in Botswana, then back into Zambia to Livingstone and the capital, Lusaka, and from there a bus that arrived in the middle of the night in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi.
Oh, every time I take a night bus, a beautiful girl ends up falling asleep next to me. On the trip from Cape Town to Windhoek it was the hostess, as I mentioned before. This time it was a singer, Musoa, who was heading to Malawi for a couple of concerts. She even invited me to her show in Lilongwe, but I didn’t quite understand where it was, so in the end I didn’t go.
After Lilongwe, I arrived near Senga Bay at a beautiful lakeside campsite where I was the only one there, total peace. I hadn’t mentioned it before, but I now also have a tent, which I sometimes sleep in instead of a room, depending on the situation.
In Zambia and Malawi, Africa is more like what you imagine it to be: denser, greener vegetation, lots and lots of huts, hardly any white people around, chaotic markets where everyone is trying to sell anything and everything, and a general sense of chaos, especially in places like bus stations, where people immediately gather around you insisting on taking you here or there, while arguing among themselves.
At the Lilongwe station, I realized that the equivalent of about 3 euros had been stolen from my backpack (so nothing serious). Shortly after, I witnessed a strange scene: a sort of cheering crowd moving forward with two guys in the middle, almost as if they were being carried in triumph. The two didn’t look happy at all, and each had a large bag over his head. In reality, they were two thieves who had been caught stealing those bags, and now they were being taken, I guess to the police, amid general excitement.
Another slightly surreal scene occurred at the next station: basically, when you get off a bus, people immediately try to figure out where you’re going and then end up arguing among themselves to get hold of your luggage. Whoever manages to grab it effectively “wins”, you follow them, and they’ll either earn a commission or sometimes they’re the owner of the minibus or van you’ll get into. So as soon as the backpack touches the ground, the struggle begins.
At one point, a woman got off a minibus with her child in her arms. She put him down on the ground and turned to speak with some of these people trying to get customers. Immediately, others grabbed the child and literally started tossing him around, holding him by the legs and arms! The kid naturally started screaming, which caught the mother’s attention. When she turned around and saw what was happening, she understandably got very angry.
So I ended up in Cape Maclear, where I stayed for four days. It’s a fishing village with thatched-roof huts and baobab trees along the main road. The view over the lake is very beautiful, with a narrow beach, and as far as I understood there has been a certain influx of tourists at some point (and maybe still during the high season), but during my stay I didn’t count even ten foreigners in total. Probably as a result of this, it was almost impossible to walk even a few meters without someone coming alongside you offering, in an endless sequence, canoe trips, necklaces, beach barbecues, and more and more. In the end, it became a bit exhausting.
From Monkey Bay, near Cape Maclear, I took the boat that goes up the lake once a week. Since I was short of cash and ATMs in Malawi are only found in three cities (the capital, a city in the south, and one in the north near Nkhata Bay where I am now), I couldn’t afford both days in first class, so I spent the first day in second class (which Lonely Planet described as fairly hellish).
At the next stop of the boat, a Canadian girl of Chinese origin, Min, came on board. I had met her in Botswana at a sun-baked gas station in the middle of nowhere, and from there we had travelled together for a couple of days.
Anyway, second class, despite being much cheaper, wasn’t that different from first class, apart from the beautiful view, since first class was on the upper deck. In fact, Min, even though she had a first-class ticket, came down to sleep in second class at night, both because it was covered (while upstairs it was starting to get a bit chilly) and because there were long, soft benches where we could lie down. All in all, it wasn’t bad.
Oh, there were mice, but as Min rightly said: after so much time in Africa, do you still even notice these things? And anyway, they kept to themselves, on the floor or the walls, far from our benches.
The next day I did myself up (just kidding of course 😉) and went up to first class, while second class was indeed filling up with lots of people and starting to smell bad due to loads of dried fish. The lake was shining deep blue, and from time to time small, lush green islands of dense vegetation appeared.
I met a group of Italians travelling with a missionary, and a guy, Giancarlo, who was with them and doing volunteer work, carrying out a project to build a well in a village that needs it.
Both the group of Italians and Min got off on the two small islands before Nkhata Bay. I think they are beautiful, but unfortunately I needed to find an ATM, so now I’m here. I think I’ll continue north afterwards, skipping Zimbabwe because there is a cholera outbreak (for the record, some cases have also been reported in Zambia and Malawi). There is also a strange disease here called bilharzia, which you can catch when swimming in the lake or even from showering, since the water ultimately comes from there. It is basically a small parasite that enters through the skin and lives in your blood, causing damage.
And of course there’s malaria too. In Johannesburg, right at the beginning of the trip, a very kind French man gave me a pack of anti-malaria pills because he no longer needed them, which I used in Mozambique. They were the most expensive ones and, in fact, they had no side effects at all.
After that I spent some time in areas with no malaria risk, and now I need to take preventive pills again. The ones I’m using now are very cheap and you only need to take one a week. Some travelers in Mozambique who were taking them told me they cause nightmares, and most of them had actually stopped taking them because of this. I thought they were exaggerating, but it turns out it’s true: I’m having very vivid, almost hallucination-like dreams!
They’re not really nightmares, more like thriller-horror stories, with complex but coherent plots and extremely vivid images and colours. In the end I actually like them, it’s like real emotions without any real danger.
Photos:
From ten trillion dollars I’ve already reached one hundred trillion!! This is pure capitalist genius and if you can’t do the same there’s no point complaining! And please, stop whining about this so-called crisis... be creative, analyze the markets, study the stock exchange...
Cholera prevention poster in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.
Girl in Senga Bay, Malawi.
People in a village near Senga Bay.
View of Lake Malawi from Senga Bay.
Guys making me a pancake for breakfast in Cape Maclear.
Fisherman in a dugout canoe.
Water pump, Cape Maclear.
Fish market in Cape Maclear.
Girl selling fish in Cape Maclear.
Canoe on Lake Malawi, Cape Maclear.
Cape Maclear.
Brewing beer, Cape Maclear.
Lake Malawi from Cape Maclear.
Boat in Monkey Bay. The men didn’t seem very happy to be photographed, as is often the case here.
The boat that goes up the lake once a week.
Nkhata Bay.
People in Nkhata Bay.
Sellers at the minibus window.
