Malawi Day 11: Farewell Mtunthama!

We spent the morning walking around Mtunthama looking at things for the last time of this visit. It was beautiful out: hot with the perfect amount of breeze and those Malawi clouds didn’t disappoint!

Resting a bit outside of Alice and Andy’s house.

 After packing and organizing ourselves a bit we sat on the front porch enjoying some quiet time while we waited for lunch. Alice made us a wonderful soy concoction that we immediately wanted to know about. Ends up you can buy it dried in a little package that looks like the ramen noodle packaging at home. It costs about fifty cents and unlike our ramen isn’t full of chemicals and salt. It’s actually a great source of protein and way more affordable than meat.

Charlotte drove from Kasungu to Olipa’s house in Lilongwe four hours from Andy and Alice’s house. We laughed a lot at the number of potholes and the strategies to try to avoid them. Some were more successful than others. At one point she just couldn’t get up a bank in the middle of the road and a lovely man guided her to back up, straighten her wheels and try again.  When she was successful, people were clapping and someone yelled out “WELCOME TO MALAWI”. That made us laugh because this experience is sooo Malawian. Charlotte did a great job though and I’m sure she will sleep well tonight.

Olipa’s house is lovely. It’s filled with the giggles of children. She has four and they are all delightful. We brought the last of our bubbles, balls and art supplies. We gave the two girls dolls and juggling balls. But the most popular gift was glow sticks that totally fascinated them as they made necklaces and jump ropes and long chains of them all linked together. We played cards with Desire who is six and her older cousin Moses. In short, it all was fun and silly.

We helped chop veggies for dinner and ate with children asking us questions and entertaining us throughout the meal.

Eddie, age 8, gave up his room for us. He proudly showed us where it was and we thanked him for being so kind. We are now nestled into our mosquito netting doing our “homework” and getting ready for sleep.