Jun. 22, 2007 - On to Lake Malawi...
After over a week of being on the road, our dirty laundry pile is growing. We thought we would have access to laundry facilities here in Blantyre at the guest house, but that is not the case. The hotel charges a fortune to do your laundry...$1.25 for a pair of underwear and the prices go up from there. We did hand wash a few things, but thought we would try to find someone else to wash our clothes. Yesterday as we were waiting for Shannon to come back out to the car, we saw a laundry service truck pull out of the hotel service entry. Shannon was just getting back into the car at that point and we took off following the truck to their facility...surely going directly to the source would cost less. So first thing this morning, we picked up our laundry...$124. Can you believe that? Guy talked them down to about $80, but still... Anyway, clean clothes again.
Now on to Lake Malawi. Guy had such fond memories of going to the lake as a child. It was supposed to be about a 2-3 hour drive. About half way there, we stopped for a potty break and happened to be right at the base of the Zomba Plateau and decided to go up for lunch at the hotel there. What an experience. It was so worth the drive up the mountain. It was cold, but so beautiful. The plateau is so big, there are lakes, waterfalls and lots to see up there. And to top it off, lunch was fabulous. Hot tea and fresh coconut soup...WOW! The most amazing thing was seeing the men on bicycles travel up the mountain (about 7km) to gather wood. For whatever reason, they got their wood at the top of the plateau, loaded their bike and then walked it back down. Try to control a bike pilled high full of wood DOWN a mountain...hard work. The things they will do for what they need is amazing. The Malawians are hard working people.
Back on the road and realized we were going to be pushing it to get to the hotel before dark. We thought we were getting close and the road seemed to go on forever. The last 30 minutes or so of the drive was on a terrible road full of pot holes, gravel and people walking and biking their way home in the dark. It was a very stressful drive. When we arrived at the hotel, we were very tired and the room was horrible. It looked great on the internet, but it was not as it appeared. We did sleep fairly well that night, but the next morning decided to head out for Lilongwe instead of staying another night...our flight out to Nairobi is tomorrow morning anyway. We had planned on the stay at the lake to be our time of rest, but we ended up spending another day on the road. Guy was disappointed that what we thought would be a restful day of remembering good times at the lake turned out to be a disappointment. Leaving turned out to be a good decision.
After a couple of hours on the road, we came to a small town, Salima, and saw a sign for another hotel by the lake and decided to stop for lunch. Lunch was great, by the lake with a traditional band playing. The drummer had traditional African drums and his cymbals were bottle caps strung on a piece of wire...it was cool. We decided to stay there for the night as we were only about an hour from the airport.
After lunch and checking in, we went back toward town to see what the local curio vendors had to sell. We had a bunch of Christian pamplets (tracts) and decided to give them out there. Guy was immediately surrounded by all the vendors wanting whatever it was he was giving away for free. Guy would ask "do you read English?" the man responded yes and Guy gave him a tract. He would ask another man, "do you read English?" They responded no and Guy would say, "well it's time you learned" and gave him a tract. Too funny...they all laughed. As we went to each vendors stand, we would see them sitting in the shack reading the tract. We pray God would use those tracts to touch lives and change hearts and the efforts would produce fruit for the Kingdom of God.
Our stay at this hotel has been much better and Guy once again has a great memory of the lake.
