My Travel Adventures

I had arranged to leave for the airport at ten o’clock in the morning, which I figured would get me there with time to spare. The road was bumpier than I remembered it being on the way to Cape Maclear, possibly because on the way back we took a different route, but probably because this time I was trying to read a book. We made four stops altogether: two for the driver to pee behind the car, one for us to buy lunch, and one for the driver to buy two giant sacks of rice. He explained that since it was a Sunday, most stores were closed, and the price he had seen from the road was a real bargain.

I arranged for a boat ride yesterday, and the boat was ready at nine o’clock as we had agreed. The guide, John, quickly introduced the crew with whom I would spend the morning: besides himself, there was the captain (John had to repeat the captain’s name twice before I accepted that the man was named “Comment”) and Moses, a tourism student from another town. John did most of the talking, making many oblique references to his appreciation of a potential tip. The profits of his tours, he said, do not go directly to him but are divided among several dozen official tour guides in the area. Furthermore, the people who own hotels in the area are foreigners and keep their earnings to themselves; John complained that the Afrikaners were especially tough.

Direct flights from Nairobi to Lilongwe are not scheduled for every day, so I was lucky that Ethiopian (which owns a large stake in Malawi’s national carrier) just so happened to have an itinerary perfectly suited to my needs. My plan for Malawi was the following: On the first day, I would see the Chongoni Rock-Art Area en route to Lake Malawi; on the second day, I would telework from the shores of Lake Malawi; on the third day, I would explore Lake Malawi; and on the fourth day, I would return to Lilongwe and then Nairobi. I would need to take no time off for this, as I had planned my itinerary to begin with the Labour Day holiday, which falls on a Thursday this year.