Another weekend on Mulanje!

Starting off up through tea estates



Looking up at our route



Palm trees half way up!



The top of the route is pretty steep...



Crossing the plateau, heading for Lichenya hut



Rach and I approaching Lichenya hut



Dancing the night away!



The back of CCAP hut, nestled in among a beautiful grove of trees



The view from CCAP hut across to an old air strip!



The group (more like an expedition!) on Sunday morning at CCAP hut



Tree ferns



A wee chat at a stream crossing on the way down



Jungle!



descending a steep, and rather slippery path through the jungle-like vegetation



Pineapple growing on the lower slopes of the mountain, near Nessa village

On arrival back from our week away with Ian we came straight back down to reality with a thud! Rachel has been involved in sending one of the local AYISE volunteers to South Korea to run inductions into Malawi for some SK volunteers who will be coming out shortly. The combination of South Korea and Malawi is not an easy one, with super efficiency on one side, and Malawi on the other! Stuck in the middle negotiating extra time was Rachel. While we were on holiday some developments occurred which she had been awaiting and had asked our colleagues to look out for…which they did not – so she arrived back to very tight deadlines imposed by the South Koreans, and a somewhat lacklustre performance of covering her work by our colleagues…slightly infuriating!

My return was less of a shock as a lot of what I am doing is not particularly time-defined, nor urgent for the day-to-day running of the organisation, so I can sort of plod along at my own pace to a certain extent. I’m currently working on getting 3 HUGE funding applications off before Mum arrives in mid September, along with writing and expanding on AYISE’s Environmental Policy (which now involves me reading through half the policies of the Malawian Government!), and trying to update the website using what appears to be some shoddy pirated software which is rather temperamental! In other Malawian news, “his excellency”(what a joke!) has sacked a whole load of cabinet members (I’m not entirely sure why) including the entirely problematic minister for Gender who was instrumental in the vitriolic treatment of the homosexual couple. So that at least is good…even if he has now placed his new wife in as head of the ministry of Women and Motherhood (or something equally sexist!). Corruption all round.

In weather news (which I’m sure you are all interested in) we had a beautiful day yesterday, and I hoped we were over the winter…then today has been horrific! High winds, cold temperatures and heavy rain. So who knows what the weather will do from one day to the next…this place has so many similarities to Scotland, it’s a bit ridiculous!

The weekend:

This weekend found us heading for Mulanje again, but not before we had fitted in our first proper night out with the Glaswegians. Good times abounded! A fun night of drinking in the compound followed by taxis to town to strut our stuff on the dancefloor, with some excellent moves pulled by some members of the group. Rach and I left them to it at 12.30 as we had to be vaguely healthy and awake the next day to climb Mulanje.
After a slightly delayed pick-up due to a faulty speed-o leading to a speeding fine we arrived at Mulanje town and arranged some porters. Food duties for the weekend had been allocated, and Rach and I only had to do pudding, so we didn’t have much to carry and so we didn’t bother with an official porter…just me! There followed a large amount of faff, which was to recur regularly, but our route was short and steep and after our night’s exertions Rach and I were quite happy to have a wee sit down. Eventually we set off up a new path to me, the Boma (Town) Path. This is one of the steepest routes up to the plateau, but was beautifully varied. The pace was fairly slow due to a mixed group, and so we had plenty of time and breath to chat and take in the views. The chat was great, we had a really fun group. All other trips up Mulanje have been great, but socially this was the most fun! Lots of like-minded people enjoying the fantastic scenery and irreverent company. We passed through the tea estates and rainforest at the bottom, up onto grass and sparse cover of Mulanje Cedars, passed some palm trees in a ravine, then up onto the more typical (and Scottish) alpine grasses and flowers of the higher reaches. The plateau at the top of this very steep path is really rather flat in comparison to other areas, and was a pleasure to walk along to our destination Lichenya hut…Until we arrived at the hut and found it full! Luckily, in this area of the mountain there is another hut around 45 minutes away, so we raised some reserves of energy and headed off (trying to avoid darkness). Our ‘guide’ was fairly useless, and tried to take us a shortcut which inevitably ended up with retracing steps and p*ssing people off. However, just as the last light was fading from the sky, and the last ounce of strength was leaving some of the group, we found the CCAP hut (CCAP = Church of Central Africa Presbytarian or something like that). This private hut comes complete with mattresses and cooking equipment, which in other huts you can only access if you are a Mountain Club Member. There was another small group there, who we tried to interact with but they were generally quite quiet (in comparison to our mob anyway!). Lots of good food, wine (or ‘Goon’ as our Australian friend called it) and dancing to an iPod which had been brought up (the benefits of taking porters) saw us up late into the night dancing and singing away! Great times!

The next morning the other group headed off…except for 2 who were ill and stayed behind to rest. One of our group is a doctor and reckoned that one of the invalids was too ill to stay up the mountain another night as he had planned, and so we effectively frog-marched him down the hill, much to his unending dismay! Sick Nick as he became known was a medical student on elective at Zomba. Our team doc reckoned at first malaria, but as SN’s condition improved she down graded him to some gastro problem. I helpfully teased him for having the infamous Man Flu…which of course he didn’t, as if he did he would never have made it down the mountain! A rearrangement of porters and bags was required, as at times SN required (but hated) to be carried due to his weakened state. Rach and I hung back with the invalid group, while sending the others ahead so they could sort out the car shuttle etc. We descended by the Nessa path, which is fairly long but very beautiful, with more mixed walking and good views. It finishes off through pineapple fields into the town of Nessa. I did not before have much of an opinion about how pineapples grow, but was surprised to find them growing in dense spikey grasses on the ground. The doctor who was with us was on her last Mulanje trip as she was finishing her year of VSO, so she was quite happy to have a bit more time on the mountain. No Mulanje trip would be complete without the obligatory pizza at the end, and despite having consumed vast quantities of banoffee pie the night before, Rach and I still managed to devour a couple…yum!

A really fun trip, no peaks but lots of perks!