Unfortunate events, luxury and geography

What a title on this post! I love to put geography in sentences wherever I can, and why not in my post today? Anyway, I will begin with some facts. Øyvind the travelling peace builder has only taken 11 photos so far? Why? Because I felt unsafe walking with my huge camera bag in Lilongwe, and I didn't want to put the camera in the face of the people I lived together with in the hostel. No pictures of them unfortunately. Another myth/fact: One of the cool things about travelling alone is that you meet a lot of people doing exactly what you?re doing. Yes, it may well be true, and all my former experience told me that this would happen this time too. However, all the people I have met so far are not travellers like me. They work with organisations like the Peace Corps or IRC, or they are working with research much like I did 6 years ago in Ghana, thus meaning that they have a lot of other things to do during the day when I would like to hook up with some people to share travelling moments. Anyway, that does not imply that I haven't met interesting people, I just did not get to spend enough time with them. You can feel very lonely sometimes when you're travelling, but I chose to go on this trip all alone so can't really blame anyone but myself.

I will however tell you a little bit about this one person that I met. She is a really nice girl, whose opinions I respect a lot. It's not often I say that about Americans, even though I could say it more often. I know only really nice American people. It's the stereotypes that just tend to make it difficult for them. But meeting this girl was a little bit surrealistic. I teach in conflict resolution, and guess what she has a master's degree in? Exactly! It was so cool to finally meet someone who studied this topic, and someone who understood what I do for a living. She's now working for the Peace Corps for two years, all alone in a small town in Malawi. What's even more interesting is that she is engaged to a Norwegian-American and has big plans to come to Norway sometime in the future, so I had to give her my email address, and the promise that I could give her suggestions and travel advice if she's ever coming. She was not very impressed when I told her that I converted to supporting the Trailblazers after many years of following the Supersonics, but when your team does not exist anymore you can understand it. The point of this last sentence was that we?re now supporting the same basketball team. We just had many things in common, and it was really nice meeting her.

If we go back to the title of this post, I started this day really early. I was up at 4:50, getting ready to go to the bus station at 6:15. The manager of Mufasa Lodge drove me, and I was happy about that. The bus station is a scary place. So, I got a ticket to the bus and found a seat. What happened? Nothing! One of the things you'll experience in Africa is that the buses don't leave until they?re full, and I mean really packed with people. The seats were as uncomfortable as the ones in the bus going from Chisinau to Odessa last year. I had a very painful time. The bus left two hours later going to Zomba. I probably didn't tell you this, but I changed plans. Instead of going to Cape Maclear this weekend, I chose to go to Zomba first. The reason is simple, I did not enjoy my time in Lilongwe, and I just wanted to get back the feeling of Africa that I had when I was in Cape Coast. Zomba is a much smaller town, and also a former colonial capital, just like Cape Coast. It also has the main university in Malawi, and one of my plans while staying here is to try to find Thokozani at the Department of Geography. I hope I can do that on Monday.

Back to the bus ride, what made it even worse was that the bus driver was stopping at every small place along the road, even though I asked him if it was a bus going directly to Zomba. That was not the worst thing however. What made this bus journey the worst I ever experienced was the fact that one of the small children of the woman sitting next to me had a small accident making both me and his mother wet. So, I will probably always remember this trip. It was actually about thousand times worse than the experience in Moldova ( I hope you're reading this Robert). I didn't complain to anyone on the bus and just smiled to the mother, but I chose to do something that I normally don't do while travelling due to this incident. I chose to go to a better hotel in Zomba, and book three nights there. To tell you the truth it is not that expensive, but for a shoestring traveller it is way above the daily budget, and the worst thing is really that I won't meet any other travellers here. That's why I hope that I will find Thoko. I will stay here three nights and catch a bus to Monkey Bay on Tuesday, going by matola to Cape Maclear.

Zomba is actually a very nice looking city, situated right below a mountain range called the Zomba Plateau, (often compared with the Scottish highlands). You?re supposed to have a nice view from the hotel, but I haven't checked it out yet. Back to the geography: This is the 42^nd country that I visit, but it is actually the first time south of the Equator, and I am not hundred percent sure whether Zomba or Lusaka (going there in 10 days) will be the southernmost point that I have been to. I will check my book a little bit later. I have been really close to the Equator before, but both Cape Coast and Los Llanos (Venezuela) is some few degrees north of the famous circle that splits the Earth in two.

I will end this post by showing you two photos:

Some fish from Lake Malawi, quite good but with lots of bones and scary teeth...

My room in Zomba:)

Big hugs!