"Exterminate all the Brutes"

It’s now a Week ago when we came back from Malawi. The temperature difference is about 30°C. Our bodies have adapted the centralafrican climate within the 10 weeks we stayed in Malawi. Sometimes it was hard to sleep because of the heat and Nathalie dreamed of flying over the Kongo with a small propeller plane because of the ventilator that stood next to our bed. Today I opened my personal sauna season. The first round of saunarium at 60°C felt like a hot day at the lake Malawi. Let me give a short explanation to my Malawian friends about what a sauna is: It’s a traditional finnish wooden cabine that is heated up dry to 90°C and one goes into it for about 15 minutes. Afterwards one cools down the body jumping into icecold water and short walk in the fresh winter air (below 0°C). That’s how the body is cooled down to activate the blood circulation to protect the body against cold and illness and activate the immune system. (You can find more information about sauna on the Wikipedia website.)

Nyasa is the Yao (one of the 4 spoken languages in Malawi) word for “lake”. When the british colonialists came into Malawi they asked the native for the name of the lake. They said it was “Nyasa”. So the british called the lake “Lake Nyasa”, which effectively means “Lake Lake”! The lake Malawi is 560 km long and 75 km large. The boarders of Malawi, Moħambique and Tanzania meet at that lake. Fishing is a pretty important income for the native who catch Chambo and Kampango. One can see the importance of Chambo when you see it printed on many things like textiles:

Sengabay is about 18 km away from Salima at the south of lake Malawi. The beach is original and has not yet seen many foreign tourists. The beach is used by native people for washing, bathing, fixing fishing-nets etc. But men and women bath seperately. The foam of the withe soap looks funny on the black bodies of the Malawians. Because the holydays have started some school classes visit the lake and are very excited taking a bath.

Seeing this idyllic lake one often forgets that there are crocodiles and hippos some of the time. The locals say that one should not go for a swim after 5 pm. That is the time when hippos are crossing at about 15 meters away from the beach.

Nathalie has taken some pictures of the drapery she bought in Malawi. You can find more of them in the image gallery. 🙂

Apart of the big collection of digital images that Nathalie has taken, she also took some middleformat pictures with her anaolg Mamya camera. The films and pictures will be developed within the next weeks.

A small preview can be seen here.

It’s not just the big temperature difference (Blantyre 35°C, Zurich 3°C), but mostly the hudge culture differende that makes us feelt sad after 10 week of stay in Malawi. Back in Zurich it’s the colored and happy faces in the streets, the colors and forms of the surroundings, the green of the rainy season that are missing. The way towards the office in the morning feels like a funeral. It looks like as if remote controlled people are beeing shifted through the public space. The grey and misty winter is written into the peoples faces. After spotting the first colored person in the bus a “shap-shap” escapes out of my mouth. People then look at me irritated. Maybe it’s the genuine italian Pizza that will save me today. After eating nsima (malawian mais food) for 10 weeks I really look forward to that.

On nov.3. I posted on this blog one of my drawings about an african market. Andrews girlfriend Lucie downloaded that drawing, printed and hanged it on the wall at her home. Vanessa is the daugther of Lucie. She is 8 jears old and likes to draw. She can tell you the meaning of every single detail from her drawings. As she saws my drawing, she kind of “copied” it. Or maby its better to call it, was inspired to this drawing you can see above.

In a night and fog action, we became part of the new videoclip from Joseph Nkasa yesterday evening. The clip mainly shows the singer with his wife. The lyrics talk about love. He sings that she is his backbone.To give some amusement and spice to ouf black friends, Andrew ask us to play a short sentence for that clip. We had to dance, to sing and also to kiss under the full moon.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

To refresh our brains after this weeks of work, last week-end we climbed the mulanje mountain. Our 2 friends from Germany and a guide are part of this adventure. The path is steep, very steep, the heat makes you think, you’ re walkint throug a oven, climbing a cake. The vegetation is amazing. From above, you can have a look down to the villages, the rooves made out of metall, are funkling like stars on the red floor. The floor is plain and wide. Out of nothing, there are this hills and mountains. They look as if a big animals had stoppet, desciding to take a rest.

On the way we cross one of this mans, walking down the mountain, carying a tree on his back. Once more very uncommen for our eyes. As higher we get, as fresher the temperatures are getting. When the nights falls, we finaly arrive to the hat, with a big big hunger.

This big hunger, as also the fact that 4 europeans are meeting who eated in the last 2 month nothing else than nsima or rice with chicken, jambo or beef, provoces long conversations about things like pizza, risotto, olives, gorgonzola, curry and chocolate…

This morning, when I wanted to put on my trousers, the one my tailor in Blanytre made, there was a huge tarantula on it. It must have come in our sleepingroom during the night.

It’s part of our all-days ritual to beat the shoes and the cloths. 🙂