Majete Crossover hike

Aloe plant



A goat corral we walked past before entering the park (our first 6km on Saturday was outside the park boundary)



Prickly Pear



Twisted Baobab




Monitor Lizard



Hippo guarding a beautiful looking play-wave for kayaking!



bathing/wallowing spot near the camp



flowers of an invasive species



large pod of hippos!



leopard tortoise



elephant family crossing to an island in the Shire River



A big bull elephant



Finishing off at the falls near the park entrance - see previous Majete post for more photos



Last week was rather stressful for us. Absence of key members of staff, looming project deadlines and large chunks of missing vital information – combined with an apparent lack of acceptance of any requirement for speedy action was not a good combination!

However, there were also some really good bits too. Sister A has arrived from the emerald Isle. This is her 8th or 9th year of volunteering in various areas of work in various African country and she gets around the apathy and lethargy which plagues most progress in the area by doing loads of fundraising before she leaves (by selling what sounds like a very popular recipe book) and arriving with enough money to make things happen immediately! A novel approach to us, but it certainly seems effective as she has already arranged for 2 boreholes in outlying villages in Rural Blantyre region, before her main body of work which is to take part in one of Rachel’s work camps building a school. She is quite an amazing lady, very very generous to us and to the locals, but also with a good understanding of the complex issues of aid. While understanding to a certain extent about aid dependency, she doesn’t take the approach we are heading towards which is rather pessimistic – she takes a more short term approach which is ‘these people are poor, I can help them, I’m going to help them’. This results in her being able to achieve her goals very quickly and easily. For Rachel and I it is harder, as we are walking the metaphorical minefield of trying to support Malawians to enable them to support themselves long term…a much bigger issue as it deals with culture change rather than just donations and infrastructure project. However, both are valuable and we have really appreciated Sister A’s presence and calming influence!

On Friday we finished early (apparently we should only work a half day every Friday anyway) and went to our favourite greasy-spoon in town to have a beer and watch the first game of the world cup. Having heard practically nothing else on the radio for weeks we figured, ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!’. We were the only asungu in the bar, but the locals were friendly and nonchalant to our presence as it is in the middle of Blantyre, so they are more exposed to asungu. The game was pretty mediocre, with some moments of interest, but it was great to be there when South Africa scored, as most Malawians seem to be supporting AAT (Any African Team), which is nice to see. After the game, our friend AP came to meet us for beer and food and then we headed back to her side of town to stay over night at her neighbour AB (who climbed Sapitwa last weekend with me). We needed to stay over as we had to be at the Blantyre Sports Club for 5.30 in the morning, and AB had a reliable taxi arranged from her place. It was also lovely to have a nice relaxing evening socialising with friends.

Saturday morning arrived far to early and the taxi was surprisingly on time. We arrived at the designated spot to meet up with the Wildlife and Environment Society of Malawi (WESM) for their annual Majete Crossover hike. Majete wildlife park is a reserve around 90 minutes from Blantyre with loads of wonderful wildlife and scenery (the observant among you will notice we have been there before…). Every year the WESM run a hike which requires the group to split into 2 teams – one enters the park from the North and the other from the South. Meeting in the middle to camp, vehicle keys are swapped and each group continues to the opposite side of the park to drive home in the vehicles of the other team.

We opted (upon good authority) to walk North to South and were very glad we had as this put us into a delightful group of people, meant the sun was behind us rather than in our face all day, meant that we did the longer day on Saturday and saved the best of the wildlife for Sunday. Also, our WESM organisers were L & J who spoiled the whole group of us with fantastic food all weekend, from croissants and fresh coffee on Saturday morning, a fantastic Bolognese with all the trimmings on Saturday night (including red wine!) and bacon rolls (on fresh home made rolls) on Sunday morning…we definitely landed on our feet! In case you are wondering, no we did not have to carry all this food in, nor did we have porters, but we had a crew of WESM members who drove a vehicle in to the campsite, loaded to the gunwales with our tents and food - very very luxurious camping!

As well as the culinary highlights we also saw some fantastic animals, and we had a few people in our group who were particularly knowledgeable about the various birds and beasts, so that really helped. We saw (in no particular order, and with lots of omissions and spelling mistakes)

• Boham’s bee eaters
• Little bee eaters
• Baboons
• Hippos
• Elephants
• Monitor lizard
• Tortoise
• Fish and Snake Eagles
• Ibis (or something like it)
• Hornbills
• Perhaps parrots, not entirely sure
• Wart hogs
• Élan
• Some other wild deer-type things
• And loads of butterflies and dragon flies

Once we got to the park (the first 6km of our walk on Saturday was outside the park) we were met by 2 park wardens who would act as scouts/guides/protect us from a charging elephant with their rifles, as well as making sure we didn't get lost. It was certainly reassuring to have them with us when we came across a rather large bull elephant near the end of Sunday who would have been quite a terrifying sight otherwise. How effective the wardens' rifles would have been against a charging elephant I wouldn't like to know...

It was great to walk along the banks of the Shire which looks like it would be a beautiful and exciting white water trip if it weren't for the massive population of hippos (and croc's too apparently, but we didn't see any).

A great trip, and a wonderful culinary experience (which as you will all know, is of almost equal importance for us!).

Tiwonana!