Adventure Part 1: Angonia, Dedza, and a Pathetic Excuse for a Tent

Behold! I'm back from my blogging hiatus, and I'm happy, healthy, tan, and safe. These last two weeks were a blast, I have so much to write about that I can hardly pick where to start!

I think I'll start from the very beginning. I hear that's a very good place to start.

Two weeks ago, I set out with these two lovely ladies to explore our corner of Africa together.

1. Visiting Mark and Penny in Angonia

 

 I set out two weeks ago with Szasha (from Kaunda, 20 mins away on the road to Zambia) and Joanna (from Catandica, 5 hours away on the road to Chimoio). After hearing so much about the beautiful mountains in the northern parts of Tete, we finally had the time and a compelling reason to make the five-hour journey to Angonia and visit our fellow volunteers Mark and Penny.

 Angonia is well-known among volunteers both because it's practically in Malawi (the closest volunteers to Angonia are in Malawi) and because it's the coldest site in Mozambique -- ironic, considering it's in Tete Province, the Oven of Mozambique. Mark and Penny are older (more mature?) volunteers, and they have a pretty nice setup. Penny teaches at a an IFP (Teacher Training Institute) and Mark teaches at the local secondary school. They live on the IFP grounds in a very cute little house that both of them worked hard to make cozy and welcoming. Gemütlich.

Penny gave me lots of ideas for sprucing up my own house!

  Mark and Penny have a really good Mozambican friend named Eddie who showed us around Angonia in his van.  Eddie is a very hard-working and proactive dude who runs a little school. He has a lot of plans for his school that Mark and Penny will try to help him with.
 

The playground at Eddie's school.

Eddie was nice enough to drive us all to the Malawian border, to a town called Dedza. I haven't crossed many borders by land in my life (except in Europe, where it doesn't count thanks to Schengen) so it was interesting to go through the process of stamping the passport, crossing the border, and stamping again. It was my first time leaving Mozambique since I got here in September -- how exciting!

Dedza is famous for a couple things, the most important for me being Dedza Pottery. The pottery was opened in 1987 by a British expat couple, and they produce a bunch of beautiful ceramic items with African designs made from Malawian materials. They have a little shop, and since pottery is a hobby of mine, I really enjoyed looking at their products -- and I couldn't help buying a little candleholder to take home with me in case of power outages.

(1) The pottery building (2) Beautiful English garden (3) Painted tiles

The most important thing about Dedza Pottery, however, is that they have a little restaurant there that sells, among other things, delicious cheesecake.

Deciding what to eat for lunch.

B.C. : "Before Cheesecake"

After cheesecake. Happy as a clam.

It. Was. Awesome.

After our little detour into the first-world environment of manicured gardens and gourmet desserts, Szasha, Joanna and I parted from Mark and Penny and went on our merry way. We managed to hitch a ride to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, with two missionary couples that happened to be going there from Dedza Pottery.

Lilongwe is an odd city. It's big, but spread out and green. The city center feels and looks like an American strip mall, just with more homeless people and um... interesting... fashion choices.

We didn't have much time to spend in Lilongwe, but we hit up the Game (just like Walmart), the Shoprite (the cheap grocery store) and the Spar (the expensive grocery store.) Soon it started to get dark, though, so we went to crash for the night at Mabuya Camp Backpackers. Since the weather was nice, we decided to skip the dorm beds (Bed bugs? No thank you!) and camp.

"You have a tent?" the man at reception asked us.

"Sure," we told him, "Kind of."


What we had was a Bug Hut, a see-through mesh tent meant to be used as a free-standing mosquito net for two people. We tied some capulanas on the sides for extra shelter. It looked pretty ridiculous, especially with the three of us crammed in there. At one point in the middle of the night, a drunk British guy wandered by and exclaimed to his friend in surprise,

"Blimey! There are three of them in there!"

Did you know that this is the exact setup that David Attenborough prefers?

Still, it did the trick, and we slept relatively well.  The next morning, we woke up ridiculously early and took a bike taxi (SUPER FUN) to the bus stop, where we hopped on the early bus that took us straight to our next destination.

To be continued in the next post!

Coming up: The glorious Cape Maclear, Lake Malawi