It was an all too familiar feeling. The alarm went off far too early and I woke up after going to bed far too late and wondering if it was really such a good idea to have that final beer last night. No time to hang around in Mzuzu though – we had to get down to Lilongwe as my parents were already in South Africa and arriving soon. The all-too-familiar trudge to the bus station at the crack of dawn began.
This time, however, we didn't make it to the bus station – after a few minutes of walking, a car pulled up and a couple of guys jumped out. “Are you going to Lilongwe? Get in, we'll take you down there”. For the price of a cheap bus, we got the entire back seat of a car and we'd avoid the trudge from the bus station at the other end. A good deal for us, and nice for the guys as we financed their trip down to the capital to get their car fixed. A few stops en route gave us a break and suddenly we were being woken up from a slumber we'd accidentally fallen into at the door of Mabuya Camp in Lilongwe. One of the guys used to work as a tour guide and thought this was the best deal we could get. We wandered in and took a room in a true backpacker crash-pad – bar in the reception, overland truck parked in the courtyard, grassy areas all over the place, and a weird and wonderful mix of people going from one place to another. That, and an antique German fire engine which someone was driving around. As you do.
M gets herself into the only picture of Lilongwe that we managed to take
Lilongwe itself could be the strangest capital city I've been to with the possible exception of Banjul. It was clean, everything seemed new, there were no people, cars or streetlights and seemingly no centre of town. On the one hand it felt like a small village, and on the other it felt like a large town which had just been built and was waiting for people to move in. It was perfectly pleasant but not particularly lively or interesting. We set about finding a place to eat and to have an evening walk. “But you mustn't walk around at night anywhere in Lilongwe, it's dangerous. We cannot recommend it”. Even walking to the next block would be risky (apparently) and given that we didn't know the place, and that it seemed very quiet at the best of times, we followed the advice for once and hopped into a taxi, cruising the wide, dark and empty streets to find a bite to eat, ending up at “Don Brioni's Bistro”. It was tasty.
Meanwhile, M's giardia bugs were plotting their revenge after she'd attacked them with drugs in Kampala and they picked the next morning to stage a surprise attack. We trekked off to the nearest clinic to get some medicine for her and, just when we were considering what to do for the rest of the day, she providing a spectacular bout of sickage into the bushes. It seemed that a day of rest would be on the agenda. And if there's anything we do well, it's days of rest. Snoozing, football and the odd beer saw us to the end of the day, before an early morning wake-up to head out to meet my parents at the airport the next day. Final decision – maybe we should come back to Lilongwe to see a little more of it later...
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