Dedza Trip

For my third and final 4^th of July holiday weekend in Malawi, I decided to go visit my friend Sheila in Dedza. Dedza is in the central region of Malawi, and is known for its colder climate, abundant potatoes and the rock art. It’s been on my to-do list to visit here, and since I COS this month(!) it was a good time to make the trip up.

We met up in the Boma at the bus depot and had lunch (beans and rice and veggies, always one of my local favorites) before heading over to Dedza Pottery. Dedza Pottery is a cute little lodge, café and shop where they sell handmade plates, cups and all other kinds of pottery. In honor of the holiday weekend, we decided to stay here for the night. Our room was really nice, especially the spacious bathroom with tiled floors and walls. The tiles over the sink featured zebras. Very cool.

One thing missing at “The Pottery” (as it is called locally) was good internet though. No wi-fi and the internet access was about the same as in my village. So much for getting work done. But we had fun playing word games and hanging out. The food was really good, and I finally got to try the cheesecake that I had heard so much about. It was more like firm bread pudding than cheesecake, but still tasty.

The next day we headed to Sheila's site. From there it was just a short walk to a place where we could see Prehistoric petroglyphs. Here are some photos:

It was a great weekend, even despite the fact that I was battling a cold-flu thing the whole time. It’s mostly gone now except for a bit of a runny nose and cough. Hopefully this will be my last sickness in Malawi. But not my last trip—I still have one or two more things I want to do before I finish my service.

A brief detour to Moz

Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Mozambique? I went with three of my PCV friends (Shamie, Sheila and Steph—we confused everyone with our similar names) a few months ago. We were supposed to go to Tofo in the southern part of the country, which is supposed to be a really fun tourist spot, but to get there you have to pass through this district where people are randomly shooting at cars, so Peace Corps told us we couldn’t go that way, which was a good call on their part. So we stayed in the North and ended up at Pemba instead.

Beach in Pemba, Mozambique

Since this was only the second country I have visited on this continent, I couldn’t help but compare it to the first one, my host country Malawi. Here are my thoughts:

• Size: Mozambique is huge! It completely surrounds the southern part of Malawi, and goes on all the way to the ocean. We met a PCV there and he said that when PCVs need to travel to their capital in Maputo for trainings, they actually have to fly because it takes so long to travel there. Crazy!

• Transportation: Another reason it takes so long to travel in Mozambique is because the roads in are not so good. We’re talking massive amounts of unpaved dirt roads that are no fun to ride on, and would be almost impossible to cross in the rain. It got to the point where we cheered when we reached a paved road. We did see lots of new roads being built, so things will probably improve in 5-10 years. They have minibuses there, but I didn’t see as many big buses like we have here for longer journeys. Of course, this was just the bit we saw on our trip, so other parts of Mozambique might be different.

• People: The people there were definitely not as friendly as in Malawi. I felt like people there were almost a little bit hostile to foreigners. Compare that to Malawi, where people go out of their way to greet and help foreigners. Don’t get me wrong, we met lots of nice people and had a good time. But I just didn’t feel as welcomed as I did in Malawi.

• Language - Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique, as it was once a colony of Portugal. This is the language for all government business and the language that is taught in schools. But in the rural areas, many people only know the local tribal language. So it’s similar to English in Malawi. None of us had ever studied Portuguese, but by learning a few key phrases and relying on our high school and college Spanish, we were able to get by in the urban areas.

• Currency – The currency in Mozambique is called Meticals (pronounced “metacash” which is kinda funny). The exchange rate was something like 10 Malawian Kwacha to 1 Mozambiquan Metical, which made it kind of easy to do the conversions. Since their currency isn’t as inflated as Malawi, they had a lot more bills and the ATMs gave a variety of bills, instead of just 500s and 1000s like here in Malawi.

• Food: We were on vacation, so we didn’t really try the local fare. But we did try lots of fresh seafood. I am still kind of getting my “sea legs” when it comes to meat, so I haven’t had much seafood since I was a teenager except sushi and salmon in the States and a little chambo (a native Malawian fish) here. But Shamie took me under her culinary wing and introduced me to fresh shrimp, fresh tuna, cod, lobster and more. So good!

• Recreation – In Malawi we have the lake, but in Mozambique they have—the Indian Ocean! It was off-season so it wasn’t very crowded where we went. We mostly had the beaches to ourselves. The water was really turquoise and pretty in the sun. We saw little sandcrabs on the beach, and lots of jellyfish in the water. But they weren’t the kind that were poisonous, according to a few of the locals. I was so excited to put my feet in the Indian Ocean! It was nice and warm.

 

The 4 S's, enjoying a day at the beach!

Summer Holiday

It's summer holiday for us PCV teachers so that means vacation! Colii and I spent a month together, visiting each other's host countries. It was such an amazing time! She loved Malawi and I loved Moldova. We took a ton of photos and have lots to say about our travels so be on the lookout for blog posts to come. I'll try to make a special trip to the Boma sometime soon so I can post my photos.

Here is a little preview-- Colii's host mom took this photo of us at her house in Moldova:

Cape Mac

After Camp Sky ended, most of us headed to Cape Mac for a couple days. Cape Maclear is located along Lake Malawi, southeast of Lilongwe. To access it you have to drive about 10km on a dirt road before the road becomes paved again. After about ten more minutes you start to see signs and lodgings.

We stayed at the Funky Cichlid, a nice little place at the end of the road with private rooms and dorms, a decent bathroom, and a little bar and restaurant with good food and decent prices. You are only a few meters from the water. Here is a view of the lake from the beach:

And here I am getting ready to go swimming. Because it is the lake so it is hot. I'm wearing my favorite chitenje.

Similar to Senga Bay, the lodgings are located in a village, so as you
walk to a restaurant for dinner you might see a goat amble by, and you
will pass mud brick houses with a thatched roofs. As you swim in the water, you might look over and see a woman washing her clothes or her dishes in the lake. It's kind of strange because in the village a woman would never wear shorts (and even trousers are kind of a big deal), but here you go swimming in a bathing suit in full view of the villagers. Weird.

The beach was a bit gravelly, so it wasn't very nice to walk on, but the water was clear and warm to a girl used to the Pacific Ocean. You could hire a boat to take you to the island to go snorkeling, or go jet-skiing or tubing. The costs are steep for a PCV, but for a tourist it is affordable.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to enjoy the water. The first night I started to feel odd during dinner, and by the next morning I knew I was sick. I spent the rest of the day either on the toilet (yes, an actual toilet!) or lying in bed, suffering from stomach pains, fever and body aches. I slept most of the day, and tried to drink a lot of water since I was dehydrated and it was very hot. The
next day I felt a lot better, but more people from my group were sick. We decided it was probably the stomach flu because so many of us got ill at different times, and we had all eaten different things.

Despite the stomach bug, I had fun at Cape Mac, and I would like to go
back. It was kind of a pain to get to, but once you are there it is
really nice.

Turkey Vacation - day 9: even more of Istanbul

Today was Christine's last day in Turkey...back to Moldova...

2nd to last Turkish breakfast!

I had the Borek with spinach...pretty good!

But my fave was the traditional salep! 

It's super thick, like sweetened condensed milk, but not as sweet, but still sweet enough, and hot and mixed with cinnamon and oooooooooo soooooooooo gooooooooood!!!!!!

One of the things I'm going to miss about Turkey is how they treat their strays. They treat them with love and respect. They're all well fed and are not afraid of people.They come up to you and just want to be loved. Right when you start petting them they just start closing their eyes in sweet bliss! Below are 3 dogs curled up still not having woken to the day.

Across from the dogs was what we called "Cat Island". We counted about 15 cats there!

Again, super friendly and love to be loved!

Hilarious mannequin!

Last dinner in Turkey - I went Italian - gnocchi with shrimp and calamari! DELICIOUS!

Turkey Vacation - day 8: continuing with Istanbul...

1st stop of the day: Topkapi Palace. It was the primary residence of the Ottoman sultans for approximately 400 years (1465–1856) of their 624-year reign.

A cool picture i liked in their palace restaurant.

We found some random lion statues and decided to play!

The entrance to the harem...

A fancy faucet in the wall.

The fancy bed.

The fancy floor couches where you lie around and smoke shisha, or hookah, all night.

The harem's courtyard.

Selfie at the Harem mirror!

Path leading out of the harem.

Cool garden we found by happenchance.

Another happenchance find. We walked by this mural trying to find our way back to the main street after leaving the garden. It's the history of Turkey in mural form!

Including the original Batman!!

A whirling dervish and shisha, of course.

Fun spiral staircase.

View from the boat ride on the Bosphorous.

Sun starting to set...

Another stand that sells loaded baked potatos.

A cute little bean-shaped shop selling coffee and hot chocolate. I would've bought one, but the 5-story Starbuck's caught my attention first!

It's hard to see in this picture, but that whole line of food stands are just selling loaded baked potatos! Talk about competition! And they're all the same price! I don't understand how it works!

Another popular street food: loaded waffles (no maple syrup though ;o[).

Christine bought one - loaded with fruits, nuts, all kinds of syrups (no maple), and stuff i didn't know what was - and they wrap it so it can be eaten with your hands. It was pretty good, but it made Rosemary and me really want maple syrup!

The guy who made Christine's waffle gave us all samples of a banana dipped in chocolate and pistachio crumbs! YUMMZ!

Rosza and me just havn fun!

Not only do payphones exist, but they come in dolphin shapes!

butter head

cool whimsical bike

We walked down this street looking for Taksim Square and came across another market...

Finally found Taksim Square by taksi (taxi).

An Orthodox church in the middle of Taksim Square.

Finally found the whole reason why we came back to Taksim Square in the first place: Shake Shack. Ever since Rosemary heard there was one in Taksim Square, she had been talking about having to go there for a burger and shake.

I got the Shake Stack which is the cheeseburger and shroomburger stacked...and as you can see..TABASCO!!!!!!!!! I also got the "Concrete" ice cream which is whipped frozen chocolate custard with marshmallow cream, shortbread cookie, and pistachio!!!

Paul's concoction: mustard with Tabasco - great for dipping!!

A couple of us didn't eat at Shake Shack and instead got chicken, rice, and chickpeas from this street vendor.

We ended the night at a super chill shisha bar.

Squampous helping himself to some fine shisha.

Squampous sitting on Christine's head ;op

Maybe too much shisha? ;op

Uh-oh, Squampous gettin into the beer...

Goodnight Squampous!