20 days in...

I cannot believe it but I have already been in Malawi for 20 days! Seems more like one week. Days just flies by!

I am still working on painting at the primary school. We have painted the walls white in two class rooms and now I am working on my drawings that I sketched up for the wall where the black board is. It is coming along but is a working progress but I should be finished with it this week. I can only go and paint there after 15.00 when the kids are out and then the sun sets around 17.30. They do not have electricity at school so I can only be there during day light. Well, everything takes it's divine time in Malawi and I am also in no rush. That's what I like about this country... there is no stress and no timetable :)

I like it here in Nkhata Bay and it is a good place to stay if you want to meet new people. Besides the locals, you also get the chance to meet many other travellers as the Bay is a stop over for many backpackers going or coming from Tanzania. It is easy to spot the 'muzungus' on the street. This is what  the Malawians call us. It means 'white person' and is not in any way a bad word. Like when you walk down the street the kids can shout 'muzungu muzungu' and wave their little hands. Ah, the kids are so adorable here and so curious. They love being in school and learning new things. They always come up to you saying 'hello, how are you?' or some other random thing like 'I love you' or 'my name is Grace'. I guess it is all those small phrases they learn in school. But sometimes you end up having this how are you game. The kids say 'Hello, how are you?", I answer 'I am good, how are you?', they say, 'I am good, how are you?', I say ' I am good, and you?' and so it continues... :)

The locals here speak Chi Tonga, besides Chi Chewa and English, which are both official languages they study in school. I know they start learning English in third grade and Chi Chewa in first grade. I am yet to learn the local language but haven't decided yet if I should learn Chi Chewa or Chi Tonga. They only speak Tonga here in Nkhata Bay so maybe Chi Chewa would be smart to learn if I want to go other places in Malawi... So far I only know 'Mwe ouli '(how are you) and 'Ta wonga' (thank you) in Chi Tonga. I usually pick up languages pretty fast but here I have for some reason got stuck. So today I will make  an effort to start writing some words down. I will have a chat with to our kitchen staff, who I hang out with at times. I am sure they will teach me some words. Hey, most of them have already proposed to me!

So talking about meeting other muzungus here in the Bay, I bumped into Markus Varjonen and his Lotta the other night at the bar. Waaaa did I get surprised when I discovered they are from Finland and Finnish-Swedes just like me... I have never met any Finnish-Swedes on any of my backpacking trips! I mean there are only 300,000 of us and the likelihood of meeting two of them in Nkhata Bay in Africa is very slim! Ah so nice, made me happy! And then on top of that I discovered that Markus is a former co-worker with my best friend Maria in Helsinki.. aaah waaaaaaaaa the world is small! So we just had to send her a facebook message and take a picture :)

This weekend I also made many new friends in Mzuzu, a town 1h away. About 10 of us went there to listen and dance to Black Missionaries, Malawi's biggest reggae band. It was an afternoon gig in the park with loads of people. The pre-band played for hours and then Black Missionaries played for about 2 hours as well so we had music for the whole afternoon. Malawin's love to dance (and drink beer by the way) and in a split second tons of people, young and old, where dancing at the stage. This I love, the fact that they just go up and dance with no hesitation and no shame. Definitely something we stiff Westerners should learn. We had a great day at the park and splashed out on a pizza afterwards, which almost tasted like a real pizza back home. Yum yum yum!

I also met two lovely girl from The Netherlands, Jeanette and Veronica, this weekend. They are both teachers, who have spent the last 2 months in Malawi training teachers how to teach. Really nice friendly women and on Saturday we went together on a snorkling trip on the lake. Besides the tree of us there was Ravid, from Israel, Tom from Holland, and another guy from Kenya with us. We  went cliff jumping, swimming, snorkling, and hanging out with local kids on a beautiful remote beach. It was a beautiful afternoon on the lake :)

Yes, there are many nice things you can do here in Nkhata Bay. Maybe it is not representing the "real Africa" but it is sure a nice spot to hang at for some months while volunteering and trying to help out where it is needed. I could not ask for more.

Maybe this is also the reason why I have not managed to blog so much and upload any pictures. Well another reason is that the internet here is just very very slow. At night time it is suppose to be faster so tonight, if I have nothing better to do, I will try upload some pictures. I get to use the computers  (I do not have my own with me) and the internet 24/7 here at Butterfly as I pay for an Internet package. I am also eager to share my pictures with you as a picture always says more than a thousand words and waaaaaa... uploading a picture  would save me a lot of words!!! So I will do my best!

Until next, carpe diem.