Sunday, January 27, 2013

Backdated-Pt 1


For Everett’s (our newest recruit) first two weekends, we really stacked up the activities and Africa beat down on him pretty bad for it. First, we ventured north to beloved Nkhata Bay for a weekend of relaxing, scuba diving and good eats. Highlights definitely included the owner of the establishment at which we stay not remembering me (this is the 6th time we have been introduced, I also did their books one quarter) and during introductions confusing Everett’s name for “Marvin.”

We got in two scuba dives in beautiful Lake Malawi (see Planet Earth for details). A day dive where we saw a sweet mouth-breeding fish collect all its babies like Jonah the Whale and a night dive with the Dolphin Fish, who sleeked around us barracuda-like in the night. It was a very relaxing weekend indeed.

After a week of serious work and catching up, we headed to Blantyre for some meetings before pressing on to Mount Mulanje, one of the tallest mountains in Africa. To get there, you head about an hour and a half south of Blantyre through gorgeous tea estates. The mountain (or really a series of peaks on top of a plateau) is massive both in height and girth. We got there around midafternoon and immediately dove into the hike, trying to hike 4 tough hours the first day to get up to one of the cabins on top of the escarpment, about 1.2 miles up. Because of the size of the mountain, you are encouraged to hire guides, porters or both. For three people we hired two porters to carry one of our bags and the other the food and sleeping bags we brought. The person who had been in Malawi the shortest ended up with one porter carrying his bag and the other two of us carried our bags—it takes some time to learn how to pack and generally be filthy.

Our porters, Rabson and Edmond, struggled to keep up with us on the first day, but were fine afterwards. Mulanje is a massive green and granite plateau expanding out into northern Mozambique like the Misty Mountains. Rising up the side of the plateau, it is dusty and craggily: rocks jut out of the side of the mountain and the makeshift paths wind through them often at a steeper pitch than 45 degrees. But once you reach the beginning of the plateau, the landscape changes into a beautiful set of rolling plains, like undulating green waves interrupted intermittently by great round granite ice cream scoops. Beautiful.

The first night we were all pretty exhausted when we arrived at our sleep spot. The forestry service of Malawi first put these cabins up to monitor the mountain’s extensive logging operations, but now there are a number of very basic log cabins, which have the look and feel of a Manifest-Destiny-pioneer-adventure and although we bought a good amount of food before the trip, we hadn’t planned extensively for a range of meals. So for most meals we choose between peanut butter and smooshed bread or the lengthy process of preparing dry beans and rice. It was rice and beans: and LOTS of water the first night as Noah, our porters and I packed in as much food as we could to prepare for the long day, while Everett (who was suffering from blisters, altitude sickness and exhaustion) slept. We all passed out rather early to rise for a traverse from one plateau peak to another the next day.

The next day was easier and filled with beautiful views as we crossed a section of the great Mulanje Plateau, passing underneath its highest peak, through valleys of controlled burning, black and white with ash and reaching edges of the plateau looking out over the dusky Malawian plains or at the prehistoric buttresses of the mountain. We reached our second location and in the afternoon, Noah and I attempted to reach another peak of the mountain, sprinting up the damp jungle-like sides of the mountain. We ended the day with another lengthily-prepared meal of rice and beans and passed out.

On our final day, we woke before dawn to begin the trip down in hopes of arriving at the base in time to get all the way back to Lilongwe that day. We took off down the mountain at full-tilt, resting occasionally to let the porters catch up. From the top the landscapes we encountered changed from green plains and damp air to boulder fields and sharp, rocky declines to an autumn-like forest in New England. On the final part of the descent, as we rested by a little creek I was stung by a bee. It hurt a little, but nothing too bad.

Once we reached the bottom, we tried to arrange a ride into town to catch a minibus back to Blantyre and a bus to Lilongwe after that. But, as with most plans in Malawi, we had to abandon it within a couple hours as our ride never arrived so we hopped on the back of bicycles to take us into town, then our minibus took nearly twice as long to take us back to Blantyre as we would’ve expected. So we spent the night in Blantyre. The next morning, I woke with Everett still feeling tremendously sick and the bee bite on my arm swelled up to the size of a tennis ball. I went to a clinic  for an opinion on it and after the doctor drained it and gave me some steroids to treat it, he finally told me it was a “killer bee bite.” I felt dizzy for a couple of days, but survived the killer bee.

Glad to be back, it’s raining like crazy here, and for some reason the running water is out. Feels like the Fourth World.

Steven

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