Off to Salima...

The welding instructor stopped by this morning and is remarkably improved. The swelling is reduced by at least 50% and he was able to move his thumb, which had been impossible 3 days before. He was also in much less pain and very grateful. In a place like Malawi, an infection like this one could have caused him to lose his livelihood. Thank goodness we were here.   I hope we are able to get some kind of follow up on the little girl with the apparent skin cancer and the little boy with the large tumor on his cheek.

I was so sad to say goodbye to Big E Tuesday morning. He knew I was wearing my sunglasses so he wouldn't see my tears. It felt like I was leaving family. Then as we were heading toward Lilongwe, and just as my sniffles were drying up, Ray gets pulled over at a speed trap. There are police officers standing in the middle of the M1to slow traffic. There is an officer on the side of the road with a primitive radar gun turning back and forth to oncoming traffic from both directions supposedly clocking speeds. They appear to be randomly flagging cars over and then letting some of them pass. A stern police woman walks up, looks the car over, then looks us over. She proceeds to tell Ray he was doing 65 km/hr in a 30 km/hr zone. Ray attempts to argue (because there really is no way we were going that fast) but then says “Just tell me what I have to do to pass”. The answer “Pay the fine.” There was no ticket or record of the offense. He goes to the makeshift office and pays 5000 kwacha which is about $15, does not get a receipt and we are allowed to drive off. The only way to explain away this event was “TIA” which means “This is Africa”.

So we head off for Salima, a town on the west shore of Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi makes up about one fourth of the country and is the third largest lake in the world. We had been booked to stay at a place called the Red Zebra Resort, which was established by a British couple three or four decades ago. The family runs a bed and breakfast of sorts, but the main business is harvesting cychlids from the lake and shipping them to other countries for sale in aquarium shops. They ship most of the fish to China.

When we arrived, we found that the Malawi military, who is conducting drills nearby, had booked the entire place for their officers. We were moved to the Wheelhouse Resort on the next property over. It was very nice with the rooms right next to the water. Lake Malawi is so large it has a tide. So we fell asleep to and woke up to the sound of the waves. (I found this so much more pleasant than the banging of the pipe on the pole or the rooster crowing.)

On Wednesday morning we went into the village to the market stalls to shop for gifts and souvenirs. This experience can be really stressful because there is a great deal of competition among the vendors, we know how poor the people are here, and we know they jack up the prices when they see the mzungus coming. All in all, I think we did okay and so did the sellers. I guess that's fair.