fun in malawi

We made a trip to the lake--Lake Malawi. About 1-1/2 hour drive from Lilongwe. The beach is beautiful and we had a great time.




On the way we passed many villages with native mud huts. And we saw a huge baobab tree.




Mike satisfied his hunter-gatherer passion by climbing our mango tree and harvesting 5 mangoes. Yummy!











The rains arrived last week. We didn't realize what a big deal this was until someone told us there had not been even a drop of rain since last march. We had quite a downpour for about an hour and we were told that everything begins to green-up. A welcome change from the hot, dry and dusty landscape we are used to. However other things come up after the rain as well--these termites are one example. The 2 evenings following the first rain at dusk, thousands of flying termites filled the sky. Heather was lucky enough to be out on a run when this happened the second night. It was like being in a snowstorm, there were so many. They eventually lose their wings and crawl around the ground. Then the local Malawians catch them, boil and fry them up for a tasty treat. We haven't had the courage to try it yet, but our friends say they take like bacon.

Today we had our first official Chichewa lesson. Our heads were spinning after just an hour, but we are excited to be moving forward in language learning. We look forward to the day when we can converse with native speakers--right now that seems very far away. But as they would say in Malawi---pong'ono pong'ono--little by little.