Well here we are again sitting on the condi (verandah) with a cuppa tea after a long and tiring but fun day with the kids – looking out over the beautiful grounds of open arms home (please see picture above). In the background we can hear the hustle and bustle of the local township and a train chugging past. Its dusk, with no cloud in the sky and the sun is setting, after another hot a humid morning with some afternoon rain which gratefully cools the air down. Ok, now that we have set the scene, we need to update you on what we have been up to the past couple of weeks.The nursery teacher Eniffer took us to her local village where the infant home built their first feeding station, which is a nursery school and daily lunch time meal for the local children. We were introduced to the village head man and his wife who were a real charismatic pair and they ensure that the feeding station runs smoothly. We sat in front of their rural home and they made us feel very welcome. Once they found out that Kim was South African, they became extremely expressive and called him a fellow African friend, with lots of hand shaking and smiles. Just one of our many experiences which proves once again that Malawian’s are a very friendly nation.
Back at the home we were being kept busy with the children. One afternoon we treated two of the older children from Harrogate house by taking them to a swimming pool at a local restaurant. As you can imagine they had loads of fun splashing around in the water, with lots of shrieks of laughter. Afterwards we brought them each an ice cream, which they savoured until the last drop. During our time here we want to take all of the older children swimming, as we left many upset children at the home.
The trip to Lake Malawi for Kim’s Birthday was much needed after our busy week. We got a lift up with the Director of the home, Neville who’s an English guy and has been running the home for 10 years. We heard all the stories about what led him to Africa and the amazing things he’s done for these children, which was all very inspirational to hear. Neville stopped on the way up to stock up on fresh fruit for our stay at his cottage and we managed to sample a fruit called a custard apple, which was soft and fleshy on the outside with loads of pips in the centre. The fruit here in Malawi is amazing and there is always one or another fruit in season, so we have taken to buying whatever we can get our hands on and making fruit salad. We spent the first night in Mangochi which is at the southern most point of Lake Malawi, and his cottage looks right over the lake – a beautiful spot. The next morning, in the much needed rain with our backpacks and ponchos on we set off to Cape Maclear, a popular tourist spot at the Lake, set in a rural fishing village. Much of our time was spent relaxing and reading our books in the sun, during the morning and then watching the mesmerising storms hitting the lake in the afternoons. On Kim’s birthday we hired a double kayak, which we thought would be relaxing, however the lake was very choppy that day and we didn’t prove to have good kayaking skills, as we kept drifting in the wrong direction!! Nonetheless we got a good workout!
The rest of the week we spent helping at the other infant home in Mangochi and due to the building being purpose built for an infant home it has a very different feel to the one in Blantyre. We went along on one of the days to the local market to help out with the weekly shop. It was a great little bustling market with loads of fresh fruit, veg and fish which you could smell even before you could see it. Besides helping with the feeding we also tidied up and sorted out the toys, books and puzzles in the classroom which is part of the home. 
We stayed at Neville’s cottage on the lake and had some regular cheeky visitors – vervet monkeys. One afternoon a monkey managed to jump up and open the door to the house, eating our bread and pineapple!! After being chased out of the house they scampered into the nearest tree and looked down at us munching away on the food they had stolen!
After visiting an art gallery in Blantyre a few weeks ago which is also a quaint place to grab a coffee we saw some great paintings by an artist who Neville later informed us lives in Mangochi. He told us we would be better off visiting him while we were in Mangochi and buying a painting straight from him. So we went and visited Jomwa Phiri, the artist, and had a look at some of his work. We were told afterwards by the administrator of Open Arms Mangochi, Thomasina who was helpful, lovely…and Irish (that may be why), that Jomwa’s son Isaac paints exactly like his Dad, well pretty much copies his dads style and charges half the price. So we managed to get hold of Isaac and have commissioned him to paint a us a picture of a busy village scene which he will send down to us in Blantyre when its done. Its always very difficult to decide on a price that you think is worth paying as they always start off really high but we managed to bargain him down and get what we thought was a reasonable price. Lets just hope now that its what we want!
Our trip back down to Blantyre took us 4 hours by minibus and was pretty interesting as we stopped in every town along the way so we constantly had new people squashed up against us. We have a new volunteer in the house with us, a lady called Corrine from Harrogate in the UK, which is nice as its just been us for the last 3 weeks. Next on our list of places to visit is Mount Mulanje which everyone here has advised us to go and see, so this coming weekend we are heading off to Mulanje to do some hiking. It should be good as you hike for most of the day through some amazing scenery and then we’ll spend the evenings in huts which are dotted along the various paths. But I’ll be able to tell you more in our next blog. By the way we worked out last week that we have now been away from home for 6 months! Its flown by and to think we have another 6 months left so at least you still have loads more blog entries to keep you busy with ;-).
We hope you are all keeping well and for those of you in the UK keeping warm.
Love Kim + Nat xxx
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