Mother and daughter

...on a very hot winter's day on Likoma. Heavy loads and quilted jacket.

Guard dogs...

... doing what they do best and conserving energy

Presidential races

I've written before about the Presidential motorcade which is large and travels on both sides of the road at high speed. Here we are pulled off the road while the first police vehicle passes by. The police line the roads and wait for hours for him to come.

School days

So, here I am on a remote Malawian island in Mozambican waters (Likoma), and I see this flash-back to school days. I never had a tin of Oxford instruments but I think my brother may have done. The boy's bemused expression is probably because I explained that we had those tins at school and I now live in Oxford. He didn't understand a word.

Trees and slaves

Slaving was common up to the19th century and Nkhotakota was a principal focus. This wall is from Malawi's first mosque, next to a stockade for slaves.

In 1861, Dr Livingstone sat under this fig tree to negotiate with local chiefs to stop the trade.

He sat under this one in 1863 and gave a chief an umbrella before sailing off to intervene in more slave trading.

Here the first post-independance president of Malawi, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, held his first political rally.

Crumbliest, flakiest.....

Certainly is.   Something of a rarity here and I can see (and taste) why demand might be low.

Lazy days, watching the world go by

A secluded spot from which to watch the world go by in Mulanje. Several happy hours spent here watching tea-workers, bicycle taxis, wood-carriers and anyone else. All while munching a pizza.

The one and only...

The only escalator in Malawi (if you don't count its twin just to the right) in the new Crossroads Mall. Not always working but used a lot by giggling children and their friends and parents who photograph them.

Wax removal?

A very old Kudu grandmother looks a bit resigned to the attentions of the Red-billed Oxpecker, and yes, it did go inside her ear. Parasite removal is thought to be beneficial.
  

Way of the Cross

Starting at St Joseph's in Chilimoni township

The way winds over the Michiru foothills to the summit cross (look carefully or click to enlarge)

past 14 iron crosses with bronze sculptures

to the final plain cross.

A hazy view of Blantyre in wet season. St Joseph's twin towers visible to the right.

Recycled lawnmower

Some of the kids who wave and call out to me every time I walk or drive past. They recently acquired two lawnmower frames to push around.

Hospital Fire

This post is not amusing but it is also not a tragedy.

Somewhere down the page, I posted items from Mangochi District Hospital, where we were due to take students next week.
Sadly, on Sunday there was a major fire caused by an electrical surge after a blackout. The out-patient area caught fire and is gutted. Family and maternity clinics were lost. The locals and staff tried to put the fire out but the town does not have fire-fighting equipment, so a whole building was lost.
Mercifully, no staff or patients were hurt and the rest of the hospital is OK. (The pharmacy store is on the right of the picture and the main pharmacy is just behind it, even closer to the flames. The wards are further away.)

60 years is a lot of time (pieces)

Yesterday, my watch stopped and I wanted to replace the battery.  Watch-repairers are to be found interspersed with tailors and shoe-shiners along Haile Selassie Street so I beetled along there to ask them to open the watch and replace the cell.
Sadly, the youngsters plied their pliers and failed to budge it.

Not really wanting to buy a new watch, I asked around last night and was told of "a little old man who sits near the steps" , so I went again today and found Mr. Waziri.

It took a long time (including waiting 40 mins for the shop where he stored his vice to be opened) and a lot of effort with his Swiss watch-opening tools, but it gave me time to chat and watch some high-speed games of advanced-level Bao. (I felt declining to take part was just sheer common sense.)

It turns out that Waziri has been repairing watches since 1958, which is indeed a lot of time-pieces...
   

Breakfast in Liwonde

Eating breakfast in the lodge at Liwonde can be a hazardous thing. Here is the anti-monkey patrol armed with water cannon

... and here is the planning committee working on a flanking movement

Perils of life

  

Er... there are crocodiles in this river. And all for scraping a living.

District work

Special facilities at a district hospital in Mangochi.

New bicycles for village workers (and an old bed frame).

Isolation facilities for examining suspected cholera cases

Official advice

Maternity ward

More or less potholes

Two posts below, I discussed the state of the roads. I am happy to provide an update, and even happier that there are fewer potholes to report on. (I know the title should be fewer, but it's a pun...)
I am hoping that this will be the final episode of a trilogy and not part of a quartet.

Not elegant but effective now they have bedded down a bit.

Much better!

Grit on top of mud. When spread out it looks OK but hasn't been rolled and has cut the road to one car width instead of two. We'll see what happens when it rains.

An inflationary tale

Slow punctures are common here; mostly nails in the tread that are fixed by Kwik-Fit for about £1.80 a go. When I filled-up with petrol at Zomba, an hour from Blantyre, the front left was looking a bit floppy but not too bad. The Puma garage didn't have a working airline but they did have a boy with a stirrup pump, a bit of hose-pipe and a plastic bag to make a seal. He gave the pump some wellie while his friend held the pipe on the valve and the tyre reinflated to some unknown pressure.

He then pronounced that the valve was leaking and dribbled some water on it to prove the point; I was a bit dubious and decided to head for Liwonde and then Mangochi where there might be air-lines and pressure gauges.

All was well when I arrived and so I felt justified and parked-up for the night.

Next morning was another story; one clearly deflated tyre too soft to drive on. I was with colleagues and decided to do our work before coming back to change the wheel and get the valve replaced in the afternoon. But at noon, when we came back to change the wheel, behold there was a fully-inflated tyre!

A university driver emerged from under a mango tree where he had been waiting for someone, and claimed the credit. His car had an air pump powered from a car cigarette lighter, and he had seen the problem and decided to deal with it. 

Now, if I'd believed the man in Zomba, I'd have missed the low of deflation and the subsequent greater high of reinflation. Discuss.

   

Potholes

I get a bit blase about potholes (chuck holes to my American audience) but they certainly can be irritating.  Now the army/council blew up the bridge to my road, the only way out is a twisty road with an impressive pothole count.



Potholes start roundish (but with sharp edges which makes them worse for the car than dirt tracks).








Occasionally (just once actually) one might find an African Land Snail (foot for size comparison).

Periodically, enterprising people fill holes with mud or with brick bits and then hold out a bowl for tips. The benefits are welcome but not long-lasting.












Today, official repairers started by making the holes square and then they poured in grit and tamped it down.












This is when it started to rain again, so I guess there will be more stages tomorrow.














Meanwhile, The road right next to the house hasn't had much tarmac for some time.
















Indeed one car got completely stuck in the mud when trying to visit us. It was about this spot, but this photo was in dry season.












But maybe the arrival of heaps of grit is cause for hope...