Day 13, April 20, 2018

Our day at the beach! We drove all together in a large bus with enough seats for everyone. Yippee! It is often the small things in life that make me smile.

We stopped in a small village with a tiny trading center to get cold drinks and snacks but mostly bought street foods like bananas, oranges, avocados and peanuts. Perfect lunch food for us today.

Next, we stopped to buy crafts. A row of 20 or so huts held lots of bowls, statues, paintings, etc. I bought a few more things to sell at MoonBees and then hurried away from the overly insistent and somewhat annoying sales men who promised you could just “feast your eyes” but then delivered a sad story about how you were the only customer today and you just had to buy something from him. Oh dear, it’s hard to say no but also hard to hear it over and over.

We arrived at the Red Zebra Hotel, changed into our swimming suits and left for the beach. I swear my temperature dropped ten degrees when I got into that water. It was very hot today so even though the water was nearly warm as bathwater, it felt refreshing and welcome. I went in and out several times, had beer with Kelly, scrambled around on the big rocks and all in all felt like I was on vacation for a few hours.

Dinner with the gang, elephant necklaces from Brian and a walk to the end of the pier, ended this day. Off to bed. We start for home tomorrow.

It’s been a wonderful, frustrating, magical, trip with lots of twists and turns. I just remembered something that happened yesterday the helps to explain why we do this work …

We were sitting under the shade trees at the Chamama School, having just given out 180 kits to all those girls, when Lori asked me “what keeps you passionate about this project?” I answered, “Did you see those smiles?”

Our hosts in Mtunthama, Alice and Andy

Lake Malawi