Never thought you would hear that combination eh? Yes, in fact we did have dinner with Julius Caesar and his brother (cousin maybe) Mel Gibson. Apparently it is quite the fashion here to acquire a change of names and go with something, well, something…not sure if they really know what they have chosen as their statement name but they had quite a range. In the past four days I have met – Donald Duck, Dodgy Geeser, Sweet Talker, Fabulous Thief, Giraffe, Superman, Puff Daddy and many many more – not forgetting Julius and Mel. We did in fact have dinner at Mel’s house…not sure if Julius was there or not as we were eating by gas ship lantern type things out under the stars. It was a very basic meal of beans, rice, spinach/kale stuff, sweet potato soup and some sort of meat thing, which I passed off to one of the men on the truck, who was very happy to have it an obviously not as picky as I was. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was and it was sort of all attached together with other stuff that was also unidentifiable. Guess I reverted to my old ways for a moment – where is mom to cut my meat when I need her!
The night before that – Oh, we are at Lake Malawi in Malawi – we had a pig roast with one of the other trucks AND a bad taste dress party. My friend Jules decided it would be fun to dress me in a fairly godmother type outfit. It was a lovely shade of pint with gold lace sleeves and a gold cape to match. Can’t beat that now can you? In fact, it was in quite good taste for a Halloween costume but incredibly hot for a lakeside beach resort. The one bonus was that it kept all the midges (very small incredibly pesky flies) off of my arms. Didn’t help much with the face and hair but it was a small reprieve. Pig was a little bland but still fun as it was fresh slaughtered that morning and we (well not me) put it on the spits and spent the day turning it. Neeta and I conjured up some apple sauce to go with it so that was fun and it even turned out really tasty.
Lake Malawi is absolutely gorgeous. It is hard to believe you are sitting on a lake with its wide beaches and lapping waves. The color is a deep blue greed and just beautiful. One draw back is that it has bilharzia, a tiny worm that lives in snails in the reeds that digests itself into your skin and ultimately can do some un-repairable damage to your internal organs. It supposedly wasn’t in the area we were in but I wasn’t going to risk it. A few others did and we will have to see. Regardless it was a lovely place. Got some walks down the beach in to the local fishing village and us Mzungu challenged the locals to a soccer match on the beach for one of the evening’s activities. The match was great and I am happy to say that I can still play soccer. At first the guys on the other team were apologizing to me but then they realized us four girls that were playing were actually quite tough and did not need apologizing too – thus, out came the grabbing. We held our own though and actually won the game two to one. Go Mzungu!
So basically, as you can see, I have been sitting on beached and doing lots of relaxing the past week or so. We are now heading into Zambia to another game park where we will get in a couple of night drives…can’t wait!
All my love, Steph
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