Travelling from Exeter to London, Heathrow to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Malawi Airport near Lilongwe. 26 hours door to door...
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner courtesy of Ethiopian Airlines: aeroplane food served at peculiar times.
We flew from Heathrow at 930pm to Addis Ababa 630am a hub airport in Ethiopia. Here it was great for people watching and we saw many nationalities. The landscape was under much development with diggers and high rise buildings. We departed at 940am and arrived at Lilongwe at 1250 to enter ‘Malawi time’ sorting cash, visas, phones, Sims and taxis in 3.5 hours. We were welcomed by a police officer, Sapuline known by our trip coordinator, his wife and their two young children.
We started on our journey to Mtunthama in a 6 seater safari jeep but it didn’t get us very far as it wasn’t really road worthy. It shook so much the passing people were staring and looked concerned. We had to wait in a village for a replacement vehicle. Here we bought newspapers and again watched the world go by. Many stood and sat chatting, some cycled by carrying supplies, goats and chickens trotted around and numerous cars beeped past. We soon attracted attention from the local children and were surrounded by about 20 children aged between 2-13 with names such as Innocent and Angelica. We chatted and took their photos and gave them biscuits. Many were muddy and unkempt and some didn’t have shoes. We showed them photos of our family.
There was a bright orange sunset and then we got a new van and drove for an hour or so to St. Peter’s House in Mtunthama. Here we were greeted by Nelson, James, Stanley and Frank.
Dinner at St Peter's House: pasta, rice, vegetables and chicken. Fruit and tea.
Time: GMT +1. Dark at 5pm approx and bed at around 10pm.
