A slightly more interesting blog post

This past weekend, our entire team needed to get out of Mzuzu for some relatively unearned R&R and time away from school.  Nevertheless it was a great excuse to go back to Nkhata Bay and visit Butterfly, and our growing collection of American, European, and other friends.  On the way up to Butterfly, Alice (who owns the lodge) was able to coordinate her grocery run to Mzuzu and pick us up in her truck (for the safety disclaimer, we did not ride in the back of Alice’s pickup truck for the 45 minute drive up to Nkhata Bay). 

 

Not riding in the back of a truck

Before leaving, Rachel and I were able to make a relatively simple Banana Loaf, and Peanut butter cookies.  The great thing about baking or cooking in Malawi, if you don’t have all the ingredients, don’t worry when you are hungry enough, things taste amazing anyways.  If you don’t have all the correct cookware, that’s ok too, neither does anyone else and it usually turns out pretty good.  Both baking projects were a success, and here is a little secret:  If you have an evil midget stove that only has two settings, off and super heated burning fire, and you happen to burn your peanut butter cookies, you can take a little peanut butter and spread it over the burnt part and it’s like frosting!  ….well no that’s false, it tastes like peanut butter on burnt cookies, but do you really think that I would ever say no to more peanut butter? Pfffft! Who are you?

Nkhata Bay was good this weekend, some nights are getting rather cool, as it is winter here, but sachets (twice the size of ketchup packet sized packets of alcohol – essentially shots) please pronounce them ‘sach-ets’ not ‘sash-ehs’ like people from the UK.  We got into a pointless debate with one guy from England about how to properly pronounce it, until we realised that too many had been consumed to care.  They come on a strip, so you can sling them around your neck and away you go.  They taste like ethanol, and fake banana or pineapple flavour.  To counteract the repulsive taste, leave it to the Americans to come up with the perfect counter measure “Slap Shots,” the action by which one rips the sachet open with their teeth and takes the shot, and their “friend” is waiting for the signal to slap them as hard as possible across the face – fun to watch, but not my kind of thing.

We spent a little time on the beach, looking out over Lake Malawi.  Rachel commented on the rising columns of smoke to one of our Peace Corp friends, who told us where Malawi’s name apparently comes from – the land of smoking waters.  However, although it was an interesting sight, this was false.  These columns of smoke were in fact gigantic swarms of flies, about the size of fruit flies, and they were several kilometres away.  Think of how many flies it would take to create that optical illusion.  We decided that we would tough it out and stay on the beach.  Then the students came, did I mention that it is orientation week at Mzuzu University?  We came to Nkhata to get away from the students, but they showed up and started taking pictures of everyone, so we left – back to Butterfly, our home away from home, away from home.  What does that say about our group? It wasn’t the bugs that scared us away, just the people.