Fond Farewells and Future Plans No 17

Our last day at Open Arms has finally arrived. Although our day is very busy with packing for the next leg of our journey and saying our final goodbyes to the children and all the staff here, we thought we’d take the opportunity to keep all you guys back home updated of our travel plans. During our final week here, we have experienced the warmth and generosity that Malawians are renowned for. A nurse at Open Arms called Gladys, kindly invited us around to her house to have afternoon tea and cake. We sat and chatted about her long and interesting life, and also met her granddaughter who was lots of fun. We were then served an array of yummy cakes and tea to wash it down, so it felt like home away from home! Due to their being a rotation of three shifts at Open Arms, we have spent the week saying goodbye to all the mothers and gave them some sweets, as a very small gesture to say thank you for looking after us during our stay here. Whilst visiting a group of mothers on their night shift, as we were about to leave they sang a goodbye song to us, in beautiful harmony, which made me and even Kim very emotional. This just emphasised the kindness that is always expressed here and rarely shown in the same way back home.
Within the last week two new volunteers have arrived, Issy and Alyssia, both from the UK. This has given us the excuse to take them around the sites of Blantyre, as it was our last time to experience the things we enjoy about the area. Along with the two new arrivals over the last few weeks we have had a regular visitor in the back garden….. a chameleon! It has been fascinating to watch whilst it has been shedding its skin and moving from one tree to the other but it is now a permanent fixture, and so it is the pet to the volunteers house. Luckily the extremely large black and red spiders to the side of the house haven’t decided to migrate inside! This is how we’d like it to stay!We are having a farewell meal tonight with our fellow volunteers and Neville (the director) and his partner Ennifer. Neville has made us feel so at home here, from inviting us around to watch all the 6 Nations rugby games at his home and allowing us to get really involved with all the different areas of Open Arms. He does an extremely selfless job, and it gives Kim and I something to really aspire to.

So now we have come to the final leg of our journey where we will be travelling around Southern Africa for 4 months before coming back home to the UK on July 31st (pop it in to your diary). We wanted to give you an idea of where and when we are planning to go, as we may have limited internet access. From here we are travelling up to Lilongwe for the weekend, and have kindly been offered to stay at Julie’s house, where we stayed previously. We are then going back to Luwawa Forest to the school we are continuing to help build, to see its progress and to see all the children and the Head teacher George. From there our journey becomes far more interesting and adventurous as we are crossing Lake Malawi via the Illala ferry (which is known to be temperamental) to an island called Likomo and then over to Mozambique. We will travel up the coast of Mozambique and over the border to Tanzania. This is the more remote part of both Mozambique and Tanzania but luckily the roads have been improved recently. Once we arrive in Dar-es-Salaam we hope to go over to Zanzibar and from there get a train all the way south in to Zambia. Whilst in Zambia we are going to visit our friend Lara’s parents, who run a game lodge and also do community work, so it is great to have some connections. Of course we will visit the infamous Victoria Falls and then hope to briefly go through Botswana to the Okavango Delta. We then travel through our final country, Namibia and end in South Africa, to see Kim’s mum before our flight home.

I feel exhausted just writing about it but I am sure it is going to be a fascinating and rewarding journey. We will keep in touch as much as we can and look forward to hearing all the news back home as well.

Lots of love,
Nat and Kim xxx