"Exterminate all the Brutes"

Chishango (Chichewa) means Shield

The Problems that concernes Aids and HIV in Afrika, should be known. In Malawi there is more and more publicity, that tells about the virus and motives to the use of condoms. In every bottelstore and in every kiosk you can find packages of condoms, redy to buy. One package with 3 condomes costs about 30Kwatcha (30Rp).

Chichewa is beside english the official language in Malawi and spoken from 50% as a native tonge. The habitants do take it as very respectfully and surprising, if an azungu (a white) is able to great and speaks some words in chichewa to them. Our host David connected us with his chichewateacher, and this is how it came that we take 2hours a week chichewalessons.
Here you can see a Picture out of my schoolbook. 🙂

Here is a small piece of our sundays Chichewa lesson: Chichewalesson.ogg

In the Picturegallery you can find from now on a folder with my drawings orginated up to now in Malawi.

copyleft 2006 by Nathalie Bissig. Feel free to share and copy them, they are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which gives you that freedom.

This sunday was the long expected day for the trial of courage of the Blantyre Karatekidz. Meanwile we cultivate a very close contact to them, so they aloud us to be part of it. The duty of the trial was based on touching a chamaeleon. To really understand the dimension of this duty, i ve to tell at this point that the Malawian usally fear this animal and keep the distance to it. The myth about chamaeleons tells that this animals is the messenger of death.
Each and every kid did pass with flying colours.

* Madonnas new kid
In the Weekend Newspaper “Nation Malawi” there was an amusing comic about Madonnas orphan:

Mwana amweneyo abwerako kuno mwamwa? (Chichewa)

This kid has to come back soon, understand?
Thandize = Help me

As some of you might know: I’m a cycle nerd. When I saw some cyclists, I had to take a picture of them 🙂

Before visiting Chancellor College in Zomba, we drive up Zombamountain, that is 2800m heigh, to look down to the city of Zomba, that is the fourth biggest city in Malawi. Driving upwards, the air gets cooler and fresh, the environment green. The smell of ceder and pine wood is in the air. For our understanding somehow shocking is to see men and women carrying big amounts of wood on top of their heads. Down in the City they will spilt the wood to sell it as firewood.

The “University of Malawi” consists 5 Colleges in the Cities of Zomba (Chancellor College), Blantyre (Polytechnic, College of Medicine, Kamuzu College of Nursing), Lilongwe (Bunda College of agriculture, Kamuzu College of Nusing). The chair of the “University of Malawi” is found in Zomba next to the buildings of the Chancellor College.

The lodge is inside the Nationalpark up on a bank. Our Friends Andrew and David join are joining us.
Otherwise a lot of white germans and very white english and dutch people. This place is quiet, the dorms are hidden inconspicuous between the bushes. As inconspicuous, that the gekos, the saurians and spiders and also the monkays and hippos agree to share their place with us. We descide to go for a nightsafari. The term safari comes out of the arabic word of traval. Erlier it ment a travel who mainly had the aim to bag the big fives. Today it mostly meens a travel into wildrich areas, on wich is shot at the most with the camera.

The guide combs with a very bright ligh the flor and the trees, to find some animals. His eyes are sharp, as sharp as he is even able to find a chameleon hidden into the bush. Nightsafari has something from a ride trough a dream. For our two natives friends indeed, is the question about the possibility of preparation and taste of the different animals in the foreground.

Very enthusiastic from this safari thing, we descide also to go for a morning safari by walking. After a early the, we go to walk long distances over the steppe and aproches us slowly the herds of watterbags, hippos, krokodiles and elafants. We go as far, as we can look with the binoculars into the eyes of his animals. Anyways, we are still alive, and also the animals, exept the cockroach who wanted to be confortable in our car.

Monday afternoon, the 9th of october 2006, 16:41h CAT sharp, we’re lucky to meet some karatekidz from Blantyre on their secret mission.
The kids hide in the bushes near our home. After some negotiation with the “head” of the gang, they’re posing for some pictures.

Just that everybody can relax: We’ve arrived safely in Blantyre last Saturday. It was just very difficult the last days, to get Internet and a working cell phone number. And monday-thuesday we had some troubles with the immigration offices and our visas. As Switzerland doesn’t belong to the european union, swiss people are treated differently, when entering Malawi. “Teo nana mawa” (Cya tomorrow).