On a different note, last month I went on a little adventure with a few buddies of mine.
We climbed the highest peak in Malawi: Mount Mulanje. It was a lot of fun, with gorgeous views, good exercise, and interesting people along the way. However, it was a lot of work as well. It was about 14 hours climbing up. The first day was the hardest. What is commonly called Mount Mulanje is actually a massif, or giant plateau up in the sky. The first day mostly consisted of getting up onto the massif, climbing out of the hot plains and going up and up for about five hours, and then hiking for a few hours on rolling terrain to a nice chalet provided by the Mulanje Forestry Department. At this point, we were on the massif.
On the massif/plataue there are a handful of peaks, but we had our eyes set on one-Sapitwa. In Chichewa, sapitwa means something like “don’t go.” It’s cool to go up onto the plataue, but you’re asking for trouble if you climb Sapitwa since it is known by locals to be inhabited by unfriendly spirits. Well, the next day, going up Sapitwa, we didn’t run into any spirits (maybe my bandana and polarized shades scared them all away). I’ll admit that I feared for my life a few times. I’m not used to scrambling up mountains, but I steadily built up confidence to the point where I was a bit reckless on the way down and no longer worried about making one small mistake and falling hundreds of feet. The top of Sapitwa, which is the top of Malawi (OK, I know that’s not saying a lot), had a breathtaking panoramic view.
However, as I can imagine is the case climbing most mountains, the arrival on top was a bit anticlimactic. We took our time going down, and thanks to Newton’s invention of gravity, the descent was a lot easier (if my knees and quads had a conscience, they might not agree with this statement). There’s a nice pool/waterfall near the entrance to the park that we used, and we thought it would be wise for us to bathe our disgusting bodies in there before we returned to society. That was the end of the excitement. I then headed back north. I must say that I felt much more safe climbing the mountain than I did traveling back on Malawi’s killer highways with demonic minibus drivers, swindling bus conductors, drunken truck drivers, pot hole polka dotted pavement, and 120 mph BMWs. Nevertheless, I got back to Mitundu, with its easy-to-dodge oxcarts and bikes, in one piece-happy to be safe at home.
I don’t have much more to say right now. Work’s coming along slowly, but things should pick up a lot this month as the funding for our girl’s hostel and food security projects comes in. I’m also getting started with teaching about fifteen secondary school graduates (such as health and agricultural workers, primary school teachers, and other younger adults looking to improve their lot in life) in the evenings. The idea is that I’ll help them with a few subjects, most likely Biology; Physical Science; and Math, so that they can retake the national exams next year, hopefully do better than the last time they took it, and then ideally move forward on their career path. It might be a little chaotic leaving all this behind for thirthy days when I come home next month, but what isn’t chaotic in Malawi?
"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." Mahandas Gandhi