Zimbabwe - Cry the Beloved Country

Dear all,

In which Ilana goes to Zimbabwe to join the first Children in the Wilderness camps run there. Warning – mainly heavy bits. “Cry the beloved country” was a refrain that went through my head a lot here as I watched so many Zimbabweans who love their country try to help. Hence the title.

I returned a month ago determined to write this up on the first day back! (And how’s that working for you, Ilana?) Problem has been that I tried, I really did, but it always seemed to devolve into a very intense and let’s face it, fairly depressing read. Not my usual, but then, Zim hasn’t been usual for a good many years. I decided that I wanted you to know what is happening there – the good and the bad. Because I think the point is that Zim – like many tragedies in the world – brings out both what’s best and worst of the human spirit. From the Old Man as Mugabe is called and his henchmen to those who are a little better off thanks to a job with Wilderness but who do more than just their jobs; they go out of their way to help others.

So a quick recap on Children in the Wilderness. Feel free to skip.

As you all know, CITW is our programme where we host a group of disadvantaged, poverty stricken children, who are also often AIDS orphans or HIV-positive, at one of our camps. We close down one of our luxurious places that I certainly can’t afford and we bring in the kids for a week of fun and lots of excellent programmes – on AIDS, nutrition, and most importantly to teach them about their natural environment. Before this, when they see an elephant it’s usually as a threat to their vegetable patch and now we show them the ellies in the wild which begins the process of seeing wildlife as a resource and not a negative/white colonialist invention.

The thing is that when I see these lovely happy black faces having a ball, it always gets me by the throat. One can never smile at them running around playing games or singing a beautiful prayer before a meal without getting tears in one’s eyes at the same time. In Zimbabwe that feeling – of laughing while your heart breaks – was magnified a thousandfold. 20 children from a village called Mpindo arrived at Linkwasha Camp in Hwange National Park for five days. While thin, we couldn’t tell how bad things were at home for them (we also had a bit of a language barrier – well, those of us who don’t speak Ndebele – the others were fine), but when we read their profiles – there are no words to truly describe the emotion that comes from facing horror, real horror, head on. Written on a few pages torn from an exercise book by their teacher, each profile read like an indictment of the evil Old Man:

Buhle: 11 years
No parents living; lives with her aunt. Seems to be abused.
Eats once a day, usually fruit off wild trees if she can get them.

Sunboy: 14 years
Father died, lives with mother who is very sick.
Eats once a day. Eats fruit off wild trees.

Gugulethu: 13 years
No father. Mother at home, no work for her.
Eats once a day, sometimes less. Intelligent but doesn’t always come to school because she’s too hungry to walk.

And on and on and on. It’s real. I saw it with my own eyes.

And then we realised that the slowness in some of the kids, the unwillingness to engage was not about intelligence or lack thereof. It was about malnutrition. In fact, on the first day, we thought they’d attack the food, but on the contrary they held back and we worried like Jewish mothers, nu, why aren’t you eating? But by the second day, perhaps they’d realised – yes, this is for me, I can have some! And they would scoff their heaped, steaming plates of sadza (mealiemeal/maize/pap) and chicken or beef and salad – and come back for seconds! By the last day they were trying to stuff in thirds and fourths – they know better than we do what they’re going back to.

On the first day we wondered if little Buhle was mentally disabled. She couldn’t seem to keep up, her eyes a fog of incomprehension looking at us doubtfully as we tried to explain a game. Five days later, this little girl chattered gaily to her tent leader and apparently was singing “Ride, ride, ride the zebra!” (an energiser game they played every morning) in the shower!

This is the power of CITW. And of course especially in this group where malnutrition is such a big factor. We couldn’t ‘cure’ Buhle of course, but her potential crept through by the end. And it’s not just the food. It’s the discovery by these kids of a world filled with possibilities (admittedly here in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe these are almost nil for rural children). But the glimpse they had of these has hopefully changed them, given them hope in a land where there’s little of everything including hope. Now, Marvellous, Given and Khaliphani (who would grin at me whenever he saw me – apparently he’d never seen a white person before) confidently state they want to be game rangers as they loved learning about the animals. Another amazing thing was that when they had to write what they liked best at the end, many of them said that what they liked best at the camp was learning about HIV/AIDS. Knowledge – even a little – is power in this land of the powerless.

The most heartbreaking thing for us was the fact that we could only do so much for them. We couldn’t teach them the usual CITW things about nutrition (there is none) or the importance of education (no teachers). But we can feed some – so on the day they left, I took a drive with Obert Mafuka (assistant manager and guide extraordinaire of Linkwasha Camp) and Sue (who runs CITW in Zimbabwe and is one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met – just won’t give up) to the communities who live just outside Hwange National Park’s Ngamo Gate. Sue wanted to see at which schools we could start a feeding programme for the kids. More like where not to start - it was an eye opener and heartbreaker of note. The villages are all very pretty, neat round huts of mud decorated with lovely designs – but there’s nothing happening in them, there are no crops growing because there are no seeds. Luckily the Christmas beetles are out, says Obert, these are a good source of food now that much of the wild fruit is finished….

And the schools – we saw four – are devastatingly broken down. We met the aptly named headmaster Moses at Zika Village School – who was so excited that we’d come. All his teachers have run away to South Africa (because here they get paid in Zim dollars, might as well receive old toilet paper) so there’s just him, his deputy and two women who are volunteers from the village; he tells them what to teach). All the children came pouring out of their classrooms (if one can grace the broken-down, missing bits of roof building with such a name) to sing and dance in welcome. Again, that tear-filled smile came into use.

We visited Mpindo School too, where ‘our’ children had just been dropped off after their week – they were proudly showing off all that they had received to the younger kids – T-shirts, trousers (from a French tour operator), stationery, ‘lap-desks’ (great invention: large round hard piece of plastic that you put on your lap – and voila – a desk!), drawings they had done and masks and beads that they’d made. When we walked into the classroom they burst into song and told the other children (wide-eyed at these unexpected visitors) that “you must smile for the camera!” You could see so clearly the ones who had been fed and loved – their confidence shone out of their faces.

Things got even worse. Mpindo’s headmaster asked us if we could take him, the teacher and Sunboy, one of the kids we’d had on the camp, to Sunboy’s village a few kilometres away. Why? Because Sunboy’s mother had passed away the day before. She’d been sick for two years and there was nothing anyone could do for her, the clinic is too far away, so she lay in the village, slipping away. So they jumped on the vehicle with us along with a few other kids who were going in the same direction. But when we got to the village, a red rag was flying outside. Some men were sitting on the side of the path/road next to a rough-hewn coffin. And Gugu, Sunboy’s cousin, burst into tears; they all knew something had gone wrong. Sunboy got down as in a dream and was covered in ashes by his grandmother and other old women. It is a tradition that if a twin has lost his brother, and then loses someone else, he must have ash put on him to stop his heart breaking. And Sunboy lost his twin brother a long time ago.

But combined always with the horror of the wasted opportunity and lives, is the inspiration of the beautiful people of this land of lost hope. The volunteers for CITW camp, both black and white, worked hard to give these kids the time of their lives, from energiser games at 6 in the morning to running all the brilliant programmes that Sue put together, to serving meals, going on game drives, you name it there was plenty to do – well, just think back to any Bnei camp. Zimbabweans of all colour showed me what it means to have hope in a land that has none.

And a refusal to give in. For example, we usually give the kids a little daypack at the beginning of camp with all sorts of goodies including a toothbrush and toothpaste. It seems that, on their way over the border from SA, the stuff was stopped by customs officials and inexplicably the toothbrushes didn’t make it in. No matter. Obert went to some blue bushes just nearby and cut of twigs for everyone and showed the kids how to use it – and how important it was to brush your teeth every day – even if just with a twig!

One afternoon we watched a sensational performance by a dance troupe called Ingonyama – local guys from Dete, a town outside Hwange, have formed this troupe with the theme “Conservation and Creativity” – where they use large amounts of the latter to teach the former. They tell a simple story through song and dance of a young man obeying his aging grandfather to go out and discover nature and to rekindle his relationship with it. Out in the bush he meets a variety of animals – and just by using a few sticks and their bodies they transformed into elephant or giraffe, imitated a baboon or lion – Broadway Lion King eat your heart out. And as always with such a performance, at the end, everyone jumped up to dance and sing, feet moving with speed and grace that my two left Jewish feet envied. (By the way, we wanted to show them the Lion King one evening, and had a DVD which apparently was made in China nudge nudge, anyway, when we opened the folder to find the Lion King to play – it wasn’t there. They did have the Loin King though… numbers 1, 2, and 3, but we decided not to take a chance on its possible subject matter and showed them A Bug’s Life instead.)

Moving off heavy stuff for a while, I must describe Linkwasha Camp to you – wouldn’t be my dear all without it would it? It’s an older camp (in fact it was built 10 years ago and the people who built it have all been employed at the camp ever since, such as Isaya who began as builder, then became a lamp lighter – lighting all the lanterns that hang outside each tent – then cleaned the kitchen, and today he’s a chef! In fact Robson the maintenance man was a tent leader for the kids – big, smiling man who was fabulous with them – another instance where CITW brings out the best in the people you don’t even see in a luxury camp. And everyone here has the most beautiful smiles that light you up inside….

But where was I? Oh yes, so the camp – Wilderness style tents made up of canvas walls with thatched roofs and old-style scarlet stoep-type floors – overlooking a pan surrounded by a dry and dusty plain (that’s cos it’s the end of the dry season see). But it’s not raised so that when you look out across the plain you really feel part of the landscape, looking eyeball to eyeball with any passing animal (well, they don’t come that close, but you’re on the same level as them, which makes them seem closer). When I sat reading by the ‘window’ (gauze) one night, I heard loud crunching sounds just outside. I was sure it was a buffalo at least – but it turned out to be a springhare, a little critter that makes a really loud noise eating grass, who knew. It stopped after a bit and in the silence I heard a soft crackle of a twig being snapped. I turned off the light and looked out to see a row of dark shapes moving silently across the full-moonlit plain: elephants who had come to drink at the pan and were moving off. The sight of pachyderm-shaped darkness moving in single file across the blue moon-shaded sand was a mixture of otherworldly yet comforting, homely feeling. Of being in my place. (Elephants can do that to you.)

At this time of year, Hwange – no make that southern Africa – transforms into YBK land. Huh? Yellow-billed kites my friends – large, yellow-beaked raptors who’ve arrived for the summer and they’re everywhere, flapping enormous wings, diving low at insects and other prey, being chased around by lilac-breasted rollers, hanging out at the pans to drink, all over the runway at Vic Falls… there are so many they’re like pigeons – only larger and much better looking.

One morning we went on a bushwalk. And in true bushwalk style, Obert would stop every 10 steps at something – a termite mound (he showed them how to eat them, smacking his lips in delight), some dung, and finally at a full elephant skeleton. It must have died a while back, the bones bleached white in the sun strewn across a wide area. Obert told the kids they had to rebuild the elephant, and so, shouting and laughing, they all hauled bones into a semblance of an ex-elephant (dem bones are HEAVY!) until the skeleton sprawled out in front of us in a semblance of its former self. There was a quiet sadness about the old bones, a feeling that we needed to respect them for the incredible creature they once carried. The kids moved off to make bracelets out of twine but I sat a while looking at the world through the circular frame that the hip bones made. (Weird, I know. Elephants can do that to you.)

I know it’s odd but I need to talk about the weather. Or rather the rain. I admit, for someone who prides herself on being all oh so natural, I do a lot of whinging about the rain in Johannesburg. I have been rebuked about this – “never complain about the rain in Africa” – and I hear it, I really do, but I haven’t listened.

But I need to tell you that after seeing the dry dusty bowl of the earth, watching the heat haze shimmer day after day across the yellow sands – at 9 in the morning! – watching the clouds build up day after day, then slide past leaving behind just that tantalising moist smell and a few paltry drops, feeling my bones fairly crack from dryness and lethargy stealthily take me – after that, I figure I learned that lesson – at least for a week or so.

The first three days at Linkwasha were cloudy and hot, a fierce wind blowing through in the afternoon which helped give us a little more energy but mainly hurled dust across the plain in front of camp in choking mist-like waves, leaving us all covered in the stuff. Eventually on Shabbat, it dawned clear and bright, but got hotter and hotter as the day wore on; we became obsessed with the weather, and by three o’clock we all watched the dark grey skies to the north “it’s coming this way,” “no, it’s sliding past,” etc, and then we saw the trees on the horizon disappear into what were clearly sheets of rain.

And wham! That storm hit us, sideways rain, mad wind and lightning and thunder. Bridget and I went and stood in the wet howling madness while the children sang and played games in the dining area and the camp staff tried desperately to keep some of the (very open) camp dry. It was over in half an hour but oh, the difference!

When we pray for rain we ask for rain that is a blessing not a curse and I saw that day what happens when the rain is a blessed one. As the earth became saturated, it exploded with life. Not plants – these would appear only in a few days – but tiny frogs, dung beetles and dragonflies all leapt, crawled and flew out of the womb of the Earth, followed by the acrobatic contortions of bulbuls, starlings and yellow-billed kites as they flew to catch the bounty. The air, clear of the dust and sparkling, was filled with the sounds of frogs burping and some seriously happy ducks.

(Of course all this profusion and explosion of life becomes less attractive when most of it starts clustering around your light when you’re trying to read at night. Well okay, not the ducks but otherwise….)

The pan tripled in size in that half hour, and when we plopped through the mud to the edge of the pan (following in the frogs’ um footsteps), we found that it consisted of shallow water no more than 20cm deep literally heaving with millions of tadpoles.

Dead earth comes to life. The world is bright with colour again and life is pregnant with possibility.

I thought then that this might be the other explanation for that statement in our prayer for rain: not only that too much rain can be bad, but that we should be given the eyes to see the rain as a blessing and not as a curse. Funny how I got the message with all my senses in the ravaged, beautiful land of Zimbabwe.

Two-in-one: DumaTau and a weekend in the Strip – the Caprivi Strip that is.

Dear all,

Elephants, alive and dead, sitatungas and hippos and, if you read to the end, something that went bump in the boat... (Pic is courtesy of Wilderness Safaris - Caroline to be precise.)

DumaTau means ‘roar of the lion’ but I didn’t hear any. (Mind you Zibadianja means Lagoon of the Lechwe and I didn’t see any of those either, but no matter.) It is in the Linyanti concession, an enormous 125 000-ha area near Chobe for those of you who know northern Botswana, that has all of four camps, so it’s all very exclusive don’tcha know. But after the four tents of Zib it felt more like a big happy party, with a camp full of Americans who were having a whale of a time and very enthusiastic, warm, personable and efficient staff – all of whom are local Motswana (i.e. Botswananans see). Everyone was so friendly, including the Bradfield’s Hornbills and squirrels who were our companions during brunch.

Because the camp was full, Caroline and I were put in the honeymoon suite which seemed small after the enormous rooms of Zibadianja, but we managed…. The suite has a ‘sala’ added to it with a comfy mattress on which one can lie and contemplate the shining waters and afternoon sun. But the vervet monkeys it seems have taken ownership of the place and they leaped about on the mattress and cushions, clearly appreciating what Wilderness has done to the place.

The main excitement about this particular area (apart from the leopard and her cub who had taken up residence in a hamerkop’s nest but had left the morning we got there, go figure) is the filling of the Savute Channel. The Savute Channel used to flow from the Linyanti River further north and unaccountably stopped in the 1980s (probably due to tectonic movements deep below), leaving behind large dry grassy riverbeds instead. This year, what with the rain and other factors, it began again, and everyone has watched breathlessly as it has crept further and further down its former bed. But it’s not just a small stream; it has become a wide, flowing river that looks – to my first-time eyes – like it has always been there. I couldn’t appreciate it quite as much as those who have seen it empty; they let out yells of delight and wonder when they saw vast expanses of blue water glinting in the sunlight where there once was grass. The water birds seem to have taken to it with similar delight, but the hippo are more wary; they know the Savute will retreat once more.

So we had to experience and celebrate the waters creeping towards Savuti Camp. We drove to the point at which the ‘head’ of the waters can be found: a trickle that slowly but inexorably oozes its way through the dry grass. Each day the head-trickle disappears into the ground but the next day it has overcome this dry soil problem and creeps a little further forward. In honour of the occasion we all pulled off one sock and one shoe and precariously yet ceremoniously put one bare foot into the Channel – a historic moment captured on camera.

Game viewing-wise, we spent time driving between DumaTau and the other two camps in the area so that we could see them, which meant that any game we saw along the way was a bonus. We enjoyed what the Channel had to offer in terms of water birds, and also saw some interesting bateleur congregations (no, not like Glenhazel congregation, a whole bunch of these eagles in a tree together, fascinating sighting), great elephant crossings (as opposed to zebra crossings my favourite game reserve joke as some of you will know) – we watched a small herd of elephant come down to the Channel to cross. As they got closer, they bunched together and the trunks all lifted into the air to smell for danger. Then, still tightly bunched, they literally ran across the river as fast as they could, sloshing madly, trunks wobbling from side to side!

We had to drive through the mopane woodlands which tend to not have a whole horde of game, except for more excellent elephants. Including a dead one. Which had two big male lions feeding on it. So that was interesting. What was more interesting was seeing if Moss our guide could find his way to the sighting and back out when everything looks the same and each mopane tree looks like the other… but he was really good at bundu bashing and we did make it back to the sand road with sighs of relief.

After two nights, the time came for us to move on. So on Thursday morning we were taken to the airstrip where we hopped on a small plane to fly to the Kwando Airstrip where you have to do the following to get into Namibia: land at airstrip, walk 800 metres through the grass (on a soft sand road, with your guides helping you carry all those tins of kosher tuna) to the river, where you load your stuff on an aluminium boat and putter down past the Botswana army base (on our way back out we watched two elephants walk through it) where either an official gets into the boat with you or comes in his own boat to the Botswana Immigrations… um… office? This is a large canvas tent, no sides to it, some sand bags scattered for some kind of ‘official’ décor type thing, and a buffalo skull presumably for ambiance. A tattered Botswana flag flaps in the wind. Here you get stamped out of Botswana and into Namibia or vice versa depending if you know if you’re coming or going. An adventure in the middle of nowhere which creates an incredibly intrepid feeling of being a ‘real’ explorer – even though we’re not really, let’s face it.

On our way out of Botswana the soldier was smartly turned out in an army uniform, but on the way back in, it was Sunday gear - he stamped away at passports in shorts and a T-shirt… Of course no photos may be taken they get quite upset about that. After all the border formalities, we met our guide Justin and trainee guide Poniso and boarded the little boat again to begin the 25-minute cruise upriver to camp.

There’s something to be said for sailing between two countries as we puttered along the Kwando River (which is the border between the two), with Botswana on the left and Namibia on the right. I definitely got a thrill of being in no-man’s land (or no-woman’s water to be accurate) – floating as it were in mid-geography.

And what a river. The water reminds me intensely of the Delta with that mirror-stillness, crystal clarity all the way to the desert sands two metres deep, the upside-down trees and sky, all framed by the papyrus reeds. But when the engine stops, you realise it is indeed a river as the boat is taken quite quickly downstream towards the Indian Ocean. Well, eventually.

Lovely Lianshulu. It rolls off the tongue and is pretty accurate too. While the camp itself is quite old-style and not Wilderness-style accommodation – bricks and mortar etc – it is one of the most scenic camps I’ve seen, lying as it does along that stunning Kwando River, and shaded beneath riverine vegetation.

Although not known as a wildlife destination we actually had some amazing sightings. On that first journey to camp, we spotted an elephant feeding in the reeds. Justin killed the engine and floated the boat into an inlet, bumping onto the banks. The elephant, not 3 metres away, rose up out of the water. And I mean up: as he was clearly standing in deeper water, he climbed up out onto the banks and he grew and grew until we were literally staring up at him. While he stared down at us. Ears fanning out, this magnificent bull was obviously contemplating whether to charge these pesky intruders but changed his mind and had a drink instead. All was so silent around us that we could here the sucking noise as the water whooshed up his trunk, and then the echoing water-hitting-large-empty-bucket noise as he emptied it down his cavernous throat. He did this a few times then flapped his ears at us from that dizzy height and finally turn away, leaving us with beating hearts and pictures that definitely didn’t need the zoom!

On our sundowner cruise we saw a sitatunga! (Cue excitement for those of us who know it is a rarely seen antelope that loves to lurk in the reeds.) Even Justin last saw one five months ago. Then there was the fish eagle feeding on a bank who took off when we arrived, giving us that classic ‘raptor with fish in talon’ scene, a Nile monitor (leguaan) in a hamerkop nest, lots of hippo heads snorting at us and a group of Americans drinking their sundowners pretty much finished that trip off.

I’m not sure why but the staff at this camp specialise in very different names: There’s Cacius, Shylock, Brighton, Creandz and a Calicious. Yes, he says, it’s like ‘delicious’ but no, he doesn’t know what it means either. But names aside, very friendly bunch. They all were thoroughly entranced at the whole kashrut thing as usual. Shabbat at Lianshulu was scenic but not adventurous as there are no walks in the area, however nothing wrong with just sitting on the deck and watching the stars as they shine upside down in the river.

On the last morning I met Nandi the muffin-eating crocodile. While feeding the wildlife isn’t my favourite idea, she was brought up from a croclet in the water next to the camp and seems to have been fed muffins since then. She is a big mama now, who glides in stealthily when her name is called – and then you drop a muffin next to her head and that typical croc behaviour – lethal teeth in yawning gape, thrashing body and tail – takes place. All for a muffin. Seems a bit of an anticlimax really. The guests like it though.

Our last boat cruise back to the border post was as magical as the first, with great sightings of birds such as western banded snake eagle and an African skimmer! Once again a very rare sighting in this area, so we were all transfixed on the red-beaked creature, Caroline trying to catch a good shot – when something went BUMP on the bottom of the boat, almost tipping it! Sour (another interestingly named guide) hit the throttle and the boat leaped forward – we all turned around to see a disgruntled hippo glare at us….

Quite a way to end the trip but actually the final bit was that as we roared away from the hippo and the now forgotten skimmer, hearts thumping madly, my coat flew gracefully into the water – effectively ending this journey with a Kwando baptism.

Even though Poniso successfully fished it out, I think it’s a sign: I have to return to the Strip.

Botswana Again - the Water-filled North

Dear all,

In which Ilana visits northern Botswana, has a weekend in Namibia, and meets a pangolin. Now some of you will have read that and hissed in frustration that you weren’t with me. Others of you will have shrugged your shoulders and said: Wha…?

By the way, I just read that “to explore” in Latin means “to cry out”. The people who used to go before the others on a journey would cry out about where the wildlife was. [As per dictionary: explôrâre to search out, examine, + plôrâre to cry out, prob. orig. with reference to hunting cries.] Now they still cry out – or write out, if you’re me – about yes, where the wildlife was three weeks ago.

And also by the way, the pics here are courtesy of Wilderness Safaris.

But to begin at the beginning. Colleague Caroline and I decided that neither of us had been to the Selinda Reserve in northern Botswana and I hadn’t been to our Linyanti Concession in that area either. Added to this we’ve just started to market a camp called Lianshulu Lodge just over the border in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip, so we put it to boss Chris to make a week of it. He obliged by saying yes and so on a merry Sunday morning, laden with cooler bags for me and camera bags for Caro, we boarded an Air Botswana plane to fly to Maun, to board a Caravan (plane, remember) to take off again for our first port of call: the Selinda Reserve.

Selinda means “place of many pools” and at the moment that’s exactly what it is. Thanks to amazing rains in summer (which weren’t so incredibly amazing to plod through in Joburg as I recall whinging several times) the grasslands and floodplains are punctuated with bodies of still water, scenically stunning, reflecting the cloudy sky and just clumps of reeds and hippo heads breaking the surface. In fact, the water-filled ground was the leitmotif, the theme throughout our journey as each place we went to had more water than there had been for many a year – about which more anon.

I won’t go into details of the general game – elephant, buffalo, impala etc etc but I do need to tell you about the flocks of red-billed queleas (tiny birds like small sparrows) that are currently swarming in enormous numbers – I use the word ‘swarm’ because there are so many of them and they’re so small that it looks like a swarm or a cloud, while the noise that this swarm makes as these birds fly is such a loud rumble it reminded me uncannily of the London underground which is a weird surreal feeling when you’re standing in the middle of the bush.

We spent the first night at Selinda Camp, which is very pretty, and then used the morning game drive as a transfer to Zibadianja Camp so that we could spend good daylight hours at the latter for photographing – it’s been upgraded to “premier” i.e. very zhoosh in Wilderness standards. A quiet morning suddenly became exciting when first we came across a herd of about 2 000 buffalo and then we off-roaded to where Dukes, a Zibadianja guide, had tracked the Selinda Pride – all 12 of them (2 males, 3 females, 5 juvenile males and 2 juvenile females) – who were all very alert, attempting to attack another, smaller herd of buffalo. The latter bunched up, horns facing outwards, and the situation ended in a stalemate – still, an amazing interaction to watch.

We spent the afternoon photographing the stunning Zibadianja Camp – well, that was Caroline’s job. Mine was to test the outdoor shower – which works very well I’m happy to report – and to sit on the deck made of railway sleeper-wood, which gives a colonial historical feel to the place, added to all the campaign-style furniture, brass-studded wooden boxes that hold whiskey or coffee depending but I digress… and watch the elephants come down to the Zibadianja Lagoon to drink.

The game drive that afternoon turned out to be the GDL – Game Drive of a Lifetime. We headed off to see the two Selinda Brothers – cheetah siblings that our guide Gordie and Dukes had spotted earlier. We found them lying nonchalantly and nobly as only these Egyptian royalty cats can on a termite mound, showing off their photogenic skills. They did the cat thing – dozed then looked up at us, yawned and plopped down again. But it was a very close sighting and we eventually left them (it did seem sacrilegious I agree) to see if we could find the lions for the two new guests on the vehicle – Doug and Sheryl from Seattle.

But the lions would have to wait. On the way, Gordon spotted a small brown mound shuffling through the grass a few metres away from the road. He gave a yelp, echoed by Caroline and me as we realised what it was, and whirled the vehicle around to stop next to what was undeniably and thrillingly a pangolin! The poor beast tried to waddle off but to no avail, he (unless it was a she) had some incredibly excited people around him all yelping and taking photos so he just curled his snout under him and pretended he was a large artichoke (this animal is covered with large scales that look like artichoke leaves, but they’re hard as nails and made of the same substance). But it was too late, we had realised we were looking at a once-in-a-lifetime sighting and hurled ourselves after him.

It’s also meant to be good luck to see one according to local lore, so all guides in the area raced over to spend time with it. As the sun went down, we had three vehicles, their occupants alternately taking pictures of the pangolin (after we’d explained what it was to some of the bemused Americans, they got almost as excited as we had) or sipping drinks and marvelling at this creature – “how complex are Your works,” I found myself thinking, looking at a creature that occasionally – very occasionally – would allow us a glance of a face with a long snout, almost no mouth, and bleary eyes. The pangolin – for those of you who shrugged at the beginning of this email – looks similar to the South American armadillo but is in another family, eats ants, is secretive, nocturnal and small and endangered – hence the almost impossibility of seeing one and hence the incredible warm fuzzies we had on doing so. His official name is Temminck's or Ground Pangolin and he is the only one of three species in Africa and the ONLY one to be found in Southern Africa. So there.

After an hour (by which time I was worrying about the traumatic affect we were having on the poor fellow), the sun had set and we all left him to waddle determinedly off and hopefully calm himself down after that dreadful experience with a helping of termites. There was no time to see the lions now so we turned around and chugged home, each of us feeling immensely satisfied with the sighting. But the night wasn’t over, for as it got truly dark, what should come padding down the road towards us but a leopard. Instead of turning off and disappearing into the darkness providing that usual thrilling 3-second sighting, she just continued walking towards us. Gordie stopped the vehicle and switched off. The friendly beast didn’t falter, but continued towards us and started to walk around the vehicle so close that she could have rubbed herself on the wheel. She stopped just below where I was sitting holding camera and breath, looked up at me, those green eyes lazily taking me in – and purred. I’m not really sure if it was a purr but that’s what it sounded like. If you take a cat’s purr and slow it down so you can hear each click in it, then lower it to a deep base sound: that was the noise. But it crossed my mesmerised mind that if she had decided to jump up and bite my face it wouldn’t take too much effort on her part and I couldn’t do a thing about it. Anyway, she didn’t, which is probably a good thing, and continued her minute examination of the vehicle, circling it, looking under it and around, before deciding we were no use to her and continuing down the road. We still followed her for a while; she circled us again, and then finally ditched us for the darkness of the bush.

GDL indeed.

The day was brought to a perfect end when we had dinner at TV dinner tables all set around the campfire, and served from food cooked on said fire. Even mine, albeit in layers of tinfoil.

Tuesday morning was a great if cloudy game drive, which while not living up to the previous evening, didn’t hurt either. Our cheetah brothers were walking from one hillock or termite mound to the next scent marking, and we followed them for a while before leaving them to do their thing. Gordie then found the lion pride again for Doug and Sheryl but this time they were sleeping, and watching sleeping lions after the first 5 minutes is like watching grass grow. I’m afraid to sound so spoilt but it’s true.

After brunch on the sleeper deck under a beautiful blue sky with elephant drinking in a couple of directions, we headed to our next destination: DumaTau.

Mad about Malawi IV: Back to the Lake

Dear all,

In which Ilana stays on an island in the Lake and has a stormy experience. Apologies for the tardiness of this, the last of the Malawi blurbs.

It’s possible that I’ve died and actually got into heaven (probably on a technicality). I’m sitting on a deck high on the rocks of a small island called Mumbo. At one square kilometre it’s exactly the right size for a private island – and here’s the thing: there are just two ‘guests’ on the entire piece of land (again a technicality as it’s Verena and me), and then there’s our chef and Ibrahim and Justice who take care of our every whim. (I’m writing this as I wait for that bucket shower to arrive....)

To backtrack a little: We had left Mvuu as you may remember, and trundled down very wet, potholed yadda yadda, you know the drill, roads. There’s a quirkiness about Malawi that had odd little episodes happening every now and then. One tableau I need to share with you is that we stopped for petrol in a little village, and I hopped out to begin saying morning brachot (blessings). The odd thing was that as I began to say the one about “shenatan lesechvi bina – who gives understanding to the rooster that it is day” – what do you know, a rooster crowed just behind me! I turned around, overjoyed at the (non-)coincidence – to find a wooden box perched on a bicycle. In the box sat the rooster along with several hens, so he may have been calling for help which sort of spoilt all that serendipity.

Where was I? Oh yes, the four-five hour trip to Cape Maclear, a village at the very south of the Lake. It was to be our last night before boarding a 3:00 flight back to Joeys the next day. We were supposed to spend a few hours driving to Cape Maclear, take a boat over to Mumbo, quickly see the island, snorkel, kayak, and boat back to the Cape, hop in car, drive four-five hours to Lilongwe, taking care to get back before dark, then potter around the next day until our flight.

Encouraged by our superb, knowledgeable, sensitive, humorous, smiling, good-looking etc etc driver-guide Michael, we decided to ask, nay beg, if we could stay at Cape Mac at least, even though the Island itself was closed to guests for maintenance. The office chaps were great about us changing plans, and said that we could actually stay on the island if we liked – but we’d have to bring our own food... Hmm, let me see, said the kosher kid lugging a big blue cooler bag around darkest Africa, I think I can manage that.

So it was settled. And it turned out that there were people on the island, as they had just finished a training course there, so Verena didn’t have to eat my tuna and provita and in fact had a delicious meal just for her. We were very grateful that some of the staff stayed on the island just for us, we did feel a bit bad but it’s hard to feel very bad in paradise. And anyway, the chaps were so nice about it, relaxed and all, with that quintessential “Wilderness Way” where, even if they didn’t want to be there, you’d have to run them down with a herd of elephants to get them to admit it.

So with all that background, we arrived at the “seaside” village of Cape Maclear, the weather deigning to stop pouring, Lake Malawi looking a bit choppy but not unnavigable, and got into a large weather-beaten boat to putter for an hour until we reached the island where we were received as usual with open arms – much-needed as you have to jump off the boat onto a barely submerged jetty.

Six tents are perched high amongst the pile of rounded boulders that sits a few metres off the ‘mainland’ of the island – an island off an island as it were. The mainland has the dining area set just above the tiny bay with a sandy beach from which kayaking and snorkelling take place and where you can chill on a beach lounger. You get to the tents over a bridge of wooden slats (which only shakes slightly) and up a winding path, monitor lizards whisking their tails out of your way. There are some funky eco-friendly things: the paths are lit at night by lights that are powered during the day by small solar panels, and there are eco-loos. While it sounds like just another name for a long drop it isn’t really; the feel-good aspect of being environmentally friendly should override the smell….

So here I am, sitting on my wooden deck. I can look straight down into the proverbial (sort of) crystal clear bright turquoise-blue waters of the small bay. A little to the right is the bay in which we just kayaked and snorkelled for two hours. Directly across from me is the other finger of the bay – a jutted edge of the island mainland covered in thickly wooded vegetation, in which is perched one of a pair of Fish Eagles which hang out here, crying their liquid call at regular intervals. Further out, the still waters of the Lake become more windswept and silver-grey, ending in the misty mountains of the western shores of Malawi – currently disappearing into clouds as the inevitable rain begins to move towards us. Thunder is doing its ominous thing, but is undercut by the soothing lapping of the blue-green mini-waves below me.

The double entendre of thinking I’m at the sea but really being on a lake lent a surreal layer to everything. I kept mentally shaking my head to remind myself of where I was.

I sat and looked around at my island MINE ALL MINE HA HA HA sorry, sorry. One tends to feel like a god/goddess/other deity on this gorgeous blip of land surrounded by an ocean of a lake. And God was definitely with us, as the sun came out just in time to go kayaking which was a lot of fun. Although as you move away from the shelter of the island, the wind picks up and there are enormous waves – and I nearly got shipwrecked on a rock! It’s difficult not to panic as I was sure I’d be swept away by the sea – forgetting that it isn’t a sea and barely 500 metres back to shore. (Mind you, there have been shipwrecks and drownings in this Lake - it's big enough and the waters can get wild enough.)

I’d been looking forward to snorkelling in the clear waters for which this part of Lake Malawi is so famous. But we’d been warned that as usual the rainy season cuts down the water’s clarity. Those of you who have dived in Bass Lake will understand the murkiness we now encountered, which was a pity but it means I’ll have to come back…. But on the other hand, when have you ever dipped your mask into the water to see 20 to 30 types of fish of all shapes, colours and sizes – then lifted your head to hear the Fish Eagle or see weavers squabbling in their overhanging nests? And the funniest sight I've seen in a while: two Pied Kingfishers crashed into each other in some sort of weird aerodynamic mistake – clearly their control tower had closed for the day.

Ignoring the lowering clouds, we pottered off for a walk around the island but funnily enough it’s a lot bigger when you walk through a still green forest that sprouts weirdly shaped mushrooms and alien-seeming round rocks in equal measures.

We were looking forward to a nice relaxing supper in the dining area before retiring early to bed in our tents on the rocks, overlooking that peaceful water. But nature had other ideas.

And lo the storm came forth and yea it was very mighty. And the [insert deity/evolutionary force here] sent a nine-hour storm of lightning and thunder and sideways rain and wind that blew from the east as if it would split the very sea in twain. And even I who love storms, e’en I felt like a cosmic speck of pink dust on a slightly larger speck of earth afloat on a sea (yes I knew it was a lake, but still…) that lit up brighter than day with blinding whiteness as the [insert deity etc here] smote the water and the very air with flashes of lightning. And every time the lightning flashed and seemed to miss us by but an inch, the thunder would crash like an atom bomb had dropped inside the tent. And each time I said verily: Yikes! Or even more verily: Ye gads! And I cowered under the covers. But the lightning was of such brightness that it bypassed my tightly closed eyelids and hit the back of my brain with a CLANG while the thunder caused my brain to shake inside my skull and the very rock on which we perched seemed to shudder so that I thought we would roll off slowly and ponderously into the sea. (Lake, dammit! It’s a lake!)

It is difficult not to get a bit biblical with a storm of this magnitude or length; indeed it is difficult not to lose one’s sense of perspective or one’s mind, or in my case both.

Anyway, it went on like that I kid you not for eight or nine hours. Verena and I lay in our separate tents both wide awake and worrying about a. the boat being cast from its moorings and disappearing into the black lake, b. the roads back out of Cape Maclear being impassable and c. that I needed the loo. That was the scariest, because the loo is in a separate little room along the path just across from the tent so I had to walk across the deck clutching torch and umbrella and then that lightning/thunder bit would of course happen as I did, so that I would yelp and jump three feet, then heart thumping madly I would slip and slither, arms flailing, to the relative safety of the loo. Did I mention there is no electricity here?

Shew. But the night did end at last as some song has it. Morning dawned allegedly, dull grey and wet and by now we wanted to leave paradise and come back when the sun came out again, so we were out of our tents by five o’clock and waiting expectantly to be hauled on board the boat – which had not sunk – and putter upsy-downsy through the choppy waters back to Cape Maclear. And the roads were barely passable but pass them we did – that’s also because Michael is the best driver-guide in the world.

And so we made our way up the Golomoti Pass through lowering, glowering clouds and past brown houses and beige maize fields, four-five hours back to Lilongwe. Malawi smelled of water, fetidly moist and cool through the hills, muddy puddles and raging torrents of rivers that had risen thanks to the storm in the valleys. All that remained was to say goodbye to fabulous Michael and our new friends at the Wilderness office, buy vitally important Malawian coffee to take home, and board that lovely bus at the terminal to drive 20 metres to the aircraft. As we took off through the duvet of clouds covering the mountains, I had the bizarre thought (no doubt lack-of-sleep-induced) that the clouds were echoing my feelings and kissing the lush, quirky, friendly-as-a-puppy land of Malawi goodbye.

Mad about Malawi III: Shabbat on the Shire

Dear all,

Warning! Large epiphany ahead! I promise I don’t do it on purpose!

Where were we? Ah yes. I returned to Lilongwe where I was joined by colleague Verena (one of our graphic designers from Johannesburg) for
the rest of the trip – which included four days in Liwonde National Park, Malawi’s main wildlife area, and a last day sitting on an island on the Lake in a storm (of which more anon).

Off we bumped (for four-five hours) down the potholed roads south to Liwonde, with the requisite rain, donkeys and goats along the way. Finally we arrived at the banks of the Shire River, where we boarded a boat and chugged 45 minutes downriver until we reached Mvuu.

A note on the Shire River. I know it sounds like Frodo Baggins should be hanging about twiddling his ring, but it is in fact pronounced “Sheereh”. Broad and flat, it flows out of Lake Malawi down to the Zambezi, and is usually clear but of course muddy at this time of the year with flotsam and jetsam (always wanted to use that in a sentence) thanks to the rains. And hundreds of hippo too – but here, these hippo are the friendliest in Africa. In fact, when I ask our guide McCloud about the dangers of this many hanging about, he looked at me in bemusement: “but hippo aren’t dangerous!” Seems the friendliness of the people has rubbed off on the beasts. (McCloud, so you understand, is yet another wonderful Malawian, who, like many of his race, has a free and easy attitude to the use of the letters L and R in a sentence; hence we would see a “led-necked flancorin on the light hand side of the load.” Work that out.)

Wilderness has two camps almost next to each other: the more ‘zhoosh’ Mvuu Lodge and the simpler yet still delicious Mvuu Camp (Mvuu means ‘hippo’ – of course). We stayed at the former, which has its tents fronting a brown, slow-moving stream that flows into the Shire. While this doesn’t sound exciting, it turns out that this – it’s larger than a stream, more of a riverlet – is quite a highway, with hippo and crocs floating up and down it and of course all manner of birds. But the feeling is secretive, away from the main highway that is the Shire.

Once again at Mvuu, the people around us were just incredible. From Richard the camp manager (he began as a ‘houseboy’ – his own words – and gradually worked his way up to being a guide and manager. Look, you have to read about him – it’s on our website, go on, be inspired by Africa! Or directly here.), to James the Seventh Day Adventist barman (who has the nicest, whitest, shyest smile you’ve ever seen; on Friday night he joined me for Kiddush and we compared notes on various explanations for verses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy according to the Oral Law which his teacher taught him; an excellent dvar Torah for Shabbat!). I was provided with my own private chef – Hussein (we bonded over the differences between Halaal and Kosher) and they made half the kitchen kosher for my use, clearing out cupboards and putting every spice or ingredient with The Sign in one place for me!

The Mvuu experience is mainly a study in sound and colour, a profusion and bursting-out of life that took my breath away every day. Leaves rustle from a riot of bushes and trees – the leaves of the towering palm trees crackle as if an elephant is hiding in them – and a mass confusion of bird sound (and thunder of course – as I write the clouds have come down again). Thanks to the rain, it is so green that an Irishman would burst into tears at the sight.

Our tent (classic Wilderness, large and luxurious, outdoor shower, funny towel shapes on the beds) looked out over that gently flowing stream, complete with Brown-throated Weavers enthusiastically making their nests in the reeds, Bohm’s Bee-eaters just sitting there waiting for twitchers to get excited and tick them – and several rude, brash Hadeda Ibises perching on the top of the palm trunks and shouting insults across the river at us. But the African Fish Eagle that sat regally watching me watching him more than made up for his bourgeois neighbours.

Friday afternoon, as Shabbat approached, had the by-now prerequisite evocative, dark, glowering clouds. I was ready to be all sad that I was going to miss my Friday evening sunset and have to make do with towering – or lowering – cloud formations (depends on if it’s about to pour or just building up to it) – all a bit too moody sometimes, you know? Not bad moody or depressing, just moody. Like too much Beethoven Sturm und Drang music.

The bird cacophony died down to that special pre-Shabbat peace, when you’ve done all you can do and there is nothing more than to light the candles and enter a different place. An Emerald-spotted Wood Dove was calling plaintively about his/her dead relatives, a hippo snorted
somewhere in the Shire, the palms continued rustling manfully and a few desultory drops of rain fell. The night insects and frogs were tuning up for the big performance later while the Collared Palm Thrush perched almost on my shoulder tried out a new song.

Head spinning from all this mood stuff, I tottered off to the main lounge area to light candles. And the miracle occurred. As I lit, from somewhere behind me the sun broke through, strong yellow rays lighting up the dark-grey clouds. Colour returned to the leaves and trees across
the now-sparkling river with a vengeance and even that blasted hadeda’s wings shone metallic green-purple. And Shabbat duly came in with a drum roll of thunder and in a blaze of glory!

Perhaps encouraged by the last burst of sunlight, the birds decided to give it one last go and burst into louder song, if that were possible. Even the tiny flying jewels that are the Malachite Kingfishers chirped reedily down by the river – and the African Fish Eagle gave a clear, high cry that seemed to echo across the whole world – indeed, as if he was the chazzan (prayer leader) beginning the universal service: “Lechu neranena – let us go and rejoice!” At that moment it occurred to me that – to mangle the immortal words of the Bard – “all the world’s a shul and
all its birds and beasts say many prayers...”. What I mean is that every bird, every living thing, seemed to be joining me in praising the Creator and bringing in the Shabbat.

As the sun disappeared – for good this time - they were joined by the reed frogs and the clear peeping of the bats that swooped down around my head. (Best not to make sudden moves in case one of them was in the slow Reflexes class…) But the point is that, on my little deck with the brown river meandering below, I felt as if I was standing in the middle of the greatest choir on Earth, who were singing the loudest, purest paean in the world to He who made it. A sublime moment indeed; I couldn’t have asked for a better one.

(Of course, like all good shuls, there are always the two women in the front row shouting to each other: “So I said to him, STUNNING doll!” in raucous tones – the blaring voices of the hadedas hit the right note there.)

Shew, well after that, seems a bit of a comedown but as I mentioned, I discussed the parsha with James the Seventh Day Adventist, and sat down to a delicious Hussein-inspired Shabbat dinner (the local fish, chambo, is delicious!) with Verena and Richard. The candles flickered in the wind, and we tried out Kuche Kuche (pronounced coochie coochie), the local Malawian beer, which was very nice and went well with challa.

It poured Friday night so that both Verena and I slept badly, disturbed by worries that we wouldn’t be able to go walking in the morning. But Malawians don’t let a little damp stop them, and after much-needed coffee at 5:30 (it was the Netz minyan for me) we started off. Oy vos it
muddy! I thought to myself, “Embrace the mud, Ilana” as we slipped, slid and splatted our way through the bush. (“Embrace the mud – but not too close, ooh, a little too close!”)

Mud aside, it was a stupendous walk. Liwonde does not have any large cats (no one is sure why this is so), but the herbivores are everywhere and less skittish about walkers than any I’ve seen. So everywhere we stomped were impala, warthog, yellow baboons, kudu, bushbuck – and of
course the birds!

The rest of Shabbat was peaceful and easy. I tried out the hammock on our deck and am happy to report that it works fine. Several birds insisted on visiting me which I thought was very kind of them as I could not go to them. After Shabbat, we were joined for supper by Jillian Wolstein and volunteers – she is financing the building of a school in a village across the river. They are doing an amazing job and we went to visit the school on Sunday afternoon, after a SPECTACULAR game drive in the morning (too muddy even for the intrepid Richard to walk), and a boat cruise along the smooth-as-glass Shire. You shouldn’t trail your fingers in the water for obvious reasons, but that aside, it is just as scenic as can be.

Of course, I whinged like mad about leaving Mvuu. But Monday morning dawned – allegedly, since it was cloud-covered and splattering – and we had to take the boat back out of Liwonde. On the way, we were treated to our one elephant – a damp, dark grey individual who moved rapidly into the bushes, disappearing completely as only a hefelump can. We also saw two African Skimmers skimming across the smooth Shire (hence their name, see) their beaks dipping into the water. We got a special thrill out of this, not only because you don't see these birds often, but because this is Wilderness’ logo come alive. (The two orange and brown sort of
double-ewes are in fact birds’ wings, see?) I know, it’s sad how patriotic we are, but it was lovely way of saying farewell to the Shire.

Mad about Malawi II: Tu Bishvat on the Lake

A stranger Tu Bishvat I haven't had. (Tu Bishvat is a Jewish holiday: the New Year of the trees, look, it's complicated, ask me if you need to.) Usually I haul over various unsuspecting friends to my house, where I make them eat various fruits and nuts and drink wine. But there I was in the middle of Malawi, surrounded by a group of children and adults, all singing softly in Tonga. Sitting on cool, white sand on the banks of the enormous Lake, the full moon seemed to laugh as it rose out of the still black water. It blazed down, mirrored like a black and white Salvador Dali painting. The fire crackled and 24 kids and their mentors watched transfixed as "Rabbi" (seriously – real name: Matthews, a guide at Mvuu but volunteers at Children in the Wilderness, calls himself this because he says, he's not an official teacher but wants to show the children the way – and that is his idea of a rabbi. Not having met one personally himself, mind you – he has to explain to them that that is what a rabbi is, but he doesn't tell them it's a Jewish thing cos they don't know from Jewish…), with a jersey worn upside down on his legs – the sleeves become trouser legs – and a blanket wrapped around him elder-like, gosh this is a long sentence sits at a fire and tells the children the following:

"Don't be afraid of learning. You have come here to have fun but also to learn and learning is the best thing in life. Don't be afraid of it."

A very good lesson I think.

In between each sentence he breaks into song – and the kids pick up the refrain. All their songs are very simple, with one or two words repeated over and over. For example, one song that even I could sing went: "Folwahd, folwahd…" – and then I realised that meant 'forward'… followed by a Tonga word meaning backward which I didn't get so well. (Another one is "sehko, sehko, sehko" – circle, as in: get into a circle, see.) The song they sing around the flickering firelight that turns the sand golden is "Hazaa zaa zaa" and is sung between all the acts of the campfire show that the mentors and leaders put on for the children on their first day. There's a magic show and a skit on poaching and a doctor joke – each one very simple, the magician using not-so-fast sleight of hand but these kids have never seen anything like it and are enthralled. At the end, we all stand in a circle, small, warm hands in each of mine and sing a slow good night song that brings the tempo right down and envelopes them in a warm bubble – just right to send them to sleep.

The next morning… ahh… the sublime Lake lies silver-smooth and silent. The view straight out my room is of the water, the clouds reflected in its perfectly still surface at this time of the morning. And the birds are... well actually they're drowned out by screams and yells as the children, up since 5:00, play an extremely noisy game of catch with their mentors who clearly have an incredible amount of energy at this time of the morning. (Mind you, they are very well organised – they all have turns to be on early morning duty while the rest sleep in.) Bit of a clash of audio and visual here!

Hence my davening was slightly different today – not the elevated type, but rather one that is filled with what it means to live life with a sense of meaning – to give of yourself somehow in this world, because let's face it, in Africa, there's plenty of places to give. This is emphasised by the mentors who are running around madly with the children. They are generally between 18 and 20 and have the life that they're trying to move the kids away from: they haven't finished school and live in the villages continuing to do what their parents do – fishing or subsistence farming. A beautiful girl named Desire (seriously, not a pun) shrugs her shoulders and avoids the question when I ask her what she 'does'. What she 'does', what they all 'do' is look after children once a year for six weeks – and then for the rest of the year, they do 'follow-up' – in other words, keep in touch with the kids, make sure they're okay, encourage them to study and continue their schooling and to perhaps look at another future for themselves – an opportunity that they, the mentors, have never had themselves.

There were a couple of volunteers around too, including a Scottish boy who talked about a "wee house" and he didn't mean the bathroom, a Zimbabwean boy called Pule, pronounced Pulleh (his English name is Andrew but no one calls him that) whose parents are missionaries somewhere in darkest Zimbabwe, and a nurse from the Peace Corps with Hebrew letters tattooed on her toes…

Then there's the African rhythm that one must gently descend into: where one instruction takes ten minutes to give over, because a whole story, no, an entire production, is made of it, complete with enormous facial expressions, leaping, shouting and then dramatically dropping the voice to a whisper, with the final denouement or moment of humour – and the whole table erupts into laughter. I do too, delighted by the wonderful heart-filling giggles of a child. (Apparently the instruction was: please turn off your lights when you leave the room.)

There are many more memories of the few days I spent with these people: the words they begin to instil in the children (RTC – stands for Respecti, Teamworki and Challengi; the 'i' is at the end of the word in Tonga, not the beginning), or the Nutrition Game (do you know how to act like a vitamin? Or be a carbohydrate? I do!) and other games, all educational. The children who if not malnourished are not exactly well-fed, stand politely in line to get their food and then all wait before diving in, while one of them says grace. (The first little girl to do so, appropriately named Grace – seriously – went on for about 10 minutes – Sephardic grace I suppose.)

Then there was the 'swimming test' where everyone gets a chance to see if they can swim before they go on a 'boat safari.' The boys swim better than the girls - that's because they are the ones being taught to fish and therefore need to know. One little girl, as she tried to swim across the width of the pool, clearly thought the test was how long she could keep her face underwater - luckily Pule pulled her out after a bit....

Many other quirky happenings, but most in the context of "you had to be there" so I'll leave it for now. With the shlush-shlush of the Lake and chanting "sehko sehko" of the children still ringing in my ears I reluctantly dragged myself away, returning to Lilongwe to grandmother Tammie at Heuglin's Lodge for a night.

Mad about Malawi I

Dear all,
In which Ilana visits Malawi in the rainy season and spends time with Children in the Wilderness, and some other lovely people, hippos and birds.

"’Tis the season to be rainy…" This version of the song went through my head during my ten days in Malawi. See, ’twas the rainy season indeed – and the thing about the rainy season in almost central Africa is that it tends to well, rain. A lot. To make things a little um wetter, this rainy season was rainier than most apparently (something that the whole of southern Africa has been experiencing actually) so that my overall impression of the country was one of water – from Lake to River to heavy skies and muddy puddles; the sounds were musical drips and plops. Not that that put a dampener on my trip at all har har.

I landed on a (grey, rain-speckled) Sunday afternoon in Lilongwe, capital of Malawi and immediately began to enjoy the quirkiness that is Malawi. Lilongwe International looks like many other African airports – one, simple large building – and the plane came to a stop about a two-minute walk from said building. But when we alighted, we were told we had to wait for the bus. Somewhat bemused, we watched as the bus left the airport building – just over there – and drove around to us. Then some of us didn’t fit in so we had to wait for it to come back…

Lilongwe is another typical African city, with spurts of ‘city’ interspersed with suburbs and maize fields. When I was ‘in town’ I stayed at Heuglin’s Lodge (named after the White-browed Robin Chat, confusing I know, but that’s its new name – it’s still a beautiful bird with a gorgeous deep orange chest, striking white eyebrow and delicious song), a large rambling house in the suburbs that feels like I’ve wandered into a grandmother’s home and have ended up in one of her many bedrooms. Between its old-style cupboards, highly polished wooden floors, wrought-iron bed posts and Tammie, who plays the grandmother part very well – I could just relax and potter in the garden checking out the birds….

I was a bit impatient, as I just wanted to get going, you know, get to the Children in the Wilderness programme – until I realised that this is the real Africa – where things take a bit longer than you’d expect, and we’d go when we went!

Finally on Monday afternoon (after I had pottered around Lilongwe, seen memorials and markets) I found myself travelling along the potholed roads with Gladys, (programme coordinator of CITW for Malawi) with a bucket of chickens covered with ice cubes in the back seat. Apparently this isn’t a custom of the country, it’s because they didn’t all fit into the freezer box she had, and she had to get 50 chickens to Chintheche Inn where she was running the next CITW camp. Good thing she was picking up chickens cos then I got a ride too but at least I didn’t have to sit in the bucket.

Driving through Malawi is like being in the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz – remember how everyone had to wear green-tinted spectacles? Here you don’t need the spectacles because the country is bright green everywhere, except for the lake which is a blue-green. Of course when I comment on this to Malawians, they all crack up laughing at my naïveté – during the dry season (April to November) this country is brown and dry!

Can’t imagine it myself.

Everyone rides on bikes here and the bikes carry everything, from bags of charcoal, chickens (these ones seemed to be alive, as opposed to ours which were frozen and in polystyrene from Shoprite, I’m happy to say. I don’t think the chickens were that happy but they don’t need to worry about it now do they?), piles of clothes and I even saw a man with two goats on his bike rack. They looked a bit seasick, but goats generally don’t look happy with the world. Mind you, there are lots of goats in Malawi, some with distinct suicidal tendencies as Gladys drove at 100km or so an hour, avoiding potholes and goats with equal calm. My yells at several near-misses just made her crack up laughing. Quite a jolt for the lily-livered mzungu (white person) as she chats to me, swerving around a bike that just popped out of nowhere while she’s passing a massive lopsided truck and a suicidal dog wanders into the road on the right. All this while humming to strains of "Jesus is my friend…" playing on the CD.

Meanwhile, the countryside is a patchwork of maize fields dotted with low mud, thatch-roofed houses – there is no electricity out in the rural areas, only in the towns (which, considering the whinging of South Africans, makes one think). As it got darker, the only lights anywhere were small fires on which supper was being made and paraffin lanterns hanging in the windows of the houses, oddly enough reminding me of Chanuka. Oh and there was a bit of lightning and a small moon struggling through the clouds.

Thanks to the clouds I never saw a sunset in Malawi, something I missed. But on the other hand, they were redolent with atmosphere at all times of the day or night. They hung low and heavy over the landscape, so that I am convinced that either the clouds are lower here than in any other country, or the land itself is higher, closer to the sky than anywhere else, green touching grey. Today they piled up high, white and grey in Renaissance shapes and colours, brooding grey bracketed by bright sun-reflecting pink.

We eventually got to the Lake (it takes "four-five" hours to get everywhere here), and its dark mass ringed the horizon on our right, the peaks of mountains kissed by clouds on the left.
You’ll notice that we spell the Lake with a capital L – that’s because something this big deserves a little respect. The Lake is about 600km long and about 80km at its widest point, and 100m deep on average with 700m being the deepest – with some interesting characters that live in it like a 10-foot catfish named Henry but I digress.

So you’ll remember the Children in the Wilderness programme that I took part in at Pafuri a few years ago? Well, this time I was asked (I didn’t beg, okay a bit) to go to one in Malawi, to film some of the kids, take pictures and write about it – well of course! And then while I was here I could visit some other spots so it all worked out well. Gladys and Simon (a marvellous man who is an excellent Rosh Machaneh – camp director – as well as being comfortable in a dress) work full-time for CITW here and they run six or seven camps a year – two in our Mvuu Camp in Liwonde National Park and four or five here at Chintheche Inn.

Chintheche, about halfway up the western coast of the Lake, is perfect for a beach holiday, despite the fact that it’s not the sea. But a body of water that big causes confusion in the mind, because one thinks that it must be the sea, but then one wonders what is missing from the air – oh, it’s the smell of salt! But there’s soft white sand, lapping cool blue water that is crisscrossed by small dugout boats with fishermen, beautiful snorkelling, birding and swimming – what more can a girl ask for?

However, because I was here to watch the CITW camp and not to indulge my senses, I didn’t get to kayak or snorkel at this point. But I did get to sit on the long sandy beach, with the sound of the waves – small ones, that go shlush-shlush all day long in the ears, a calm background noise. After the rain (yes, plenty), the sky above would clear to a pale blue, but the horizon and hence the edges of my eyes were filled with cumulonimbus – burgeoning Renaissance clouds that towered kilometres high, blinding white in the rare sunshine.

If the sun is too bright you can sit in the shade of the enormous mango trees that grow in the beach sand, the fruit falling with a gentle thump every now and then. And occasionally, if you’re very lucky, you’ll see large squirrels moving up and down the branches enjoying pre-lapsed fruit (garden of Eden reference, get it); these are called Mutable Sun Squirrels and are different to the usual tree squirrels, so a privilege to see. The Collared Palm-Thrushes with their amazing repertoire of sweet song are also everywhere and one of those that you get really excited about (never having seen them elsewhere) until you realise the little chap lives practically on your shoulder and then you shrug nonchalantly when you see him – a good lesson not to take CPTs or anything else for that matter for granted!

Here endeth that lesson. Next time – Tu Bishvat on the Lake.