Hakuna Matata!

Where has the time gone?

I swear I blinked and 2 months went by. I have about 2 weeks left in Malawi and it’s really scaring me. So here’s what I’ve been up to recently.

 The first week of June saw Louise and I performing in the Lion King. I said in a previous post that I was Zazu and Timon and Louise was Sarabi. However, because one of the actresses dropped out at the last minute, Louise filled in for Nala instead. It was one of the best weeks I have ever had in Malawi. We got really great feedback and basically had an amazing time. I’ve made some great friends because of it, with some really talented people. For the first time in my year, I really felt that I had been accepted into a community. We did 5 performances, each with its own hiccups, but on one of the nights there was a power cut right before we were meant to start which delayed us by about 30mins. It was so purely Malawi. As the week went on, word began to spread, so that on the last night the audience was the largest ever in Nanzikambe history.

 Julian (co-director and Banzai) and Louise (Nala)

 

Me as Zazu and the hyenas

  

Joshua (Simba) and Matilda (co-director and Rafiki)

 I was given the unofficial duty of repairing Chimwemwe's trousers...

 The masks

The aforementioned Matilda, our friend and fellow volunteer, has now gone home. It was really sad to see her go, especially as we’d spent so much time with her at rehearsals over the past 2 months. Matilda is an incredibly talented singer and actor – she’s one of those people that you know you will be a success one day, and you’ll be able to say “She asked me to sing harmony with her once!” A hard part of a temporary volunteer is that you have to say goodbye to a lot of people, without any certainty that you’ll see them again. We had to do this with our friends of the first 4 months (who we went to the Lake with) Walter and Sung, they were both off to university in South Africa. However, we were walking to town a couple of weeks ago, when a car beeped at us as it went by. Now this is really common, as some people know us, or think they know us, or want to give us a lift. Also, minibuses are always beeping their horns to try to get the attention of those walking past – so you usually don’t even look up when you hear a horn. So we look up at the last minute and get a glimpse of a guy in a 4 by 4. So we then go through every guy we know, and who it could possibly be. We both thought he looked a bit like Walter, but dismissed this as he’s in South Africa! Why would he be back in Malawi?

Long story short, I get a call from Walt ten minutes later to say yes, that was him we just saw and yes, he is back in Blantyre to help his parents move. I said my goodbyes to Walt in December, before I went to Dubai, fully aware that I wasn’t likely to ever see him again, so this was amazing! We met up with him at Doogles that night, saw a lot of old faces as everyone is back for the holidays and basically had a really nice night. It goes to show that you really never know when you might see an old friend again.

So something I haven’t been mentioning in these posts is that for about a month, from mid May to the end of June, Louise and I had been staying in an expat area of Blantyre called Namiwawa. This is because Sylvia, the head of the NGO Joshua Orphan and Community Care that helps to fund Nama Simba, went back to England to see her family and go house hunting (among other things). Sylvia kindly let us stay in her lovely house with fellow volunteers Jean and Jessie while she was away – giving us hot water, constant electricity, a fridge and an oven! It was a nice break from the living in the village – which can be really tough at times. No kids following us home and trying to break into our house, no chasing up the guard for not turning up every other day, no finding lizard poop all over the house. While it was a welcome respite from village life, we were glad to get back to our old routine, our old house with all its faults. It was more expensive to travel to and from Nanzikambe and TST from Namiwawa, and would had to do a lot more walking, and it was just nice to be back at home. Nevertheless, we are extremely grateful towards Sylvia for her generosity and kindness towards us.

Work has been pretty regular, after a small break right before the Lion King performances for daily rehearsals, but we have recently been told that Project Trust are not sending any volunteers to TST or Nama Simba next year. This means that there won’t be anyone living in our house next year. This means that we have to get rid of a lot of stuff that we had assumed we could just leave for next year’s vols. A lot of stuff we plan to give to the kids at TST or stuff like matches and salt to Nama Simba, but other things, like books we use to teach or paper, we’ll give to another Project Trust project. We’ve recently starting being a lot more generous with stickers, as we have hundreds to get through before we leave.

 Phillip hard at work...

 Louise and the boys

 Saidi and Me

 Dyna and Me

‘Leaving’ seems really soon now. We have 3 weekends left to do the things we’ve been meaning to do since we got here. We made a resolution to climb the three mountains surrounding Blantyre – Mt. Michiru, Mt. Ndirande and Mt. Soche. About 2 weeks ago, we went to Zomba to climb up to the Zomba Plateau, a week ago we climbed up Mt. Michiru and last weekend we climbed to the top of Mt. Ndirande. With plans to go to the top of Mt. Soche next week, we’ve become the kind of people who go hiking in their spare time, which still baffles us.

 Moon at Zomba

 Found a ginger tree

 

Me kicking Julian's ass at chess on Zomba Plateau

  

Mount Michiru

 

 Louise being Nala in the Hyena Hide

 Wobbly table!

 Found these awesome leaves

A couple of weeks ago, the African Netball Tournament was hosted in Blantyre. I went to see some Nanzikambe Arts dancers perform at the opening ceremony, then went to see the final a couple of days later – South Africa vs. Malawi. Malawi are said to be the best team in Africa and 5^thin the world, but unfortunately we lost by two points. It was really close… or so I’m told, because I couldn’t really see what was going on. It was all standing, unless you were a netball official. Louise saw most of it, though, and got some good pictures.

So, that’s about it! I’m working on a mammoth blog post to put up right before I leave, so I promise there will be another one of these before I’m home. It’s coming up to the point that it would be risky to send me anymore mail, as I won’t be here to receive it. So no more letters please! I will see everyone really soon.

TTFN