Blantyre, Malawi

As usual I have fallen behind in my blogs. I am no longer in Malawi, but will show you a few pictures of places we visited and lived.


This was the walk from our home to the large grocer and the University.


Polina was one of Nigel's coleagues who we got along with swimmingly well.


A shot of downtown Blantyre. It wasn't a big city in terms of western cities, but you could find a lot of stuff if you poked around in all the shops. It is Malawi's biggest city.


A man carries crates of pop on his head.


This is the mini bus station. All the white vehicles are the regular mode of transport in Malawi. it is cheap and relatively fast. You will be crammed in with 20 people, children and animals. Don't get on an empty mini bus as you could be waiting an hour. They don't leave until they are full.


The Malawi market was one of my favourites. You could get anything in there, including deep fried intestines of some sort! I did a lot of my shopping for produce and other things there.



Inside the market. The chetengies on the right were yards of fabric that women used for all sorts of things including carrying their children on their backs, skirts, blankets, etc..


A typical street in Malawi. During evening rush hour instead of cars there were crowds of people walking in the streets to get home.



Our Street.


A short cut path to a different neighbourhood.


A dried out Maize field.


Following some Malawian women.

Nigel's Incident

Nigel points out to me the drama with which I retell my harrowing experiences. He also points out very occasionally how he too had an experience that he does not dramatize or retell everyone in ear shot. I firmly believe that is why I am the perfect partner for him: I can dramatize everything for him!

During the same weekend away as my "bug in ear" incident (in Chinguni Hills in Malawi), we were lucky enough to have a family of 81 elephants come through the camp. They are extremely dangerous and we were watching from a safe spot. I had my camera and was ready to shoot any that came into good view. I didn't want to miss a moment.

They were moving closer every moment. From behind me I hear, "Michal. Michal, I can't see". I turn to see Nigel standing behind me facing another other direction, obviously not aware of where I was. I quickly go over to him, as I have some good shots to get and don't want to be distracted longer that I need to be.

I look at him and he has approximately 10 black bugs (a bit bigger than fruit flies) latched to his bottom eye lid, their heads in his eye. "Where are those from?", I exclaim. "I think they are coming from the elephants", Nigel responds. I reach for a bug, not sure whether they are dead or not. I grab it and as soon as I let go it flies away. They seemed to be sucking his eye juice. I grab the rest one at a time in a fast motion. He blinks as the last one is removed and is relieved he can see again. I return my focus quickly to the excitement of the elephants eating shrubs metres from where I am.

Mere minutes later I hear again from behind me, "Michal, I can't see! Can you get the bugs out of my eyes again?" I turn around again, not wanting to take more than a few moments and see his lower lids covered in bugs sucking the liquid from his eyes. I remove them again.

Needless to say, we went through this scene a few times. Nigel neither complained or panicked. I was always distracted and more interested in the elephants. He never told his story to illustrate how he suffered or how dramatic his life was. Most of all, he tolerated being dealt with in a rush (all for elephants) incredibly well.

Nigel, you are a star!

The Bug

I finally downloaded the picture of the ACTUAL bug that was in my ear. The body was extracted from my ear first so what you are looking is mostly the head and wings.

My Incidents with the Malawian Animals: Part 3

Here is the last installment of my personally harrowing experiences with animals in Malawi. I have saved the most traumatic for last. After our mountains trips we took a weekend to go to a safari lodge. The thatched tents hung down to the ground and it was up to the animals and bugs to know they were not allowed to tuck under and cozy up into our beds with us. I saw a giant lizard creep in at one point.

I love animals and am fascinated by bugs, but ever since seeing the movie "Mountains of the Moon" (Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke, two of history's most remarkable adventurers, set out to Africa in 1854 to find the mysterious source of the Nile River) I have thought it a terrible nightmare to have a bug in my ear. This I mentioned to Nigel the day before "the incident".

The next day I innocently walked into the shower block. There were the familiar gecko like frogs covering the walls, bugs flying around, and an open air concept. I was pulling my shirt over my head and a bug must have gotten caught between my shirt and my face. In a moment of panic he dove into my ear.

Now there are few moments where I can look back to a moment of complete lack of self-awareness where I say or do anything that comes into my head. It was only in looking back that I recalled jumping around yelling "my eardrum is going to break! Get it out!" Nigel was there and he can attest to my insanity. He immediately looked in my ear only to discover it had crawled too deep to see. He assured me my eardrum was not going to break, nor would it crawl into my head, but that the eardrum was a block it couldn't pass.

Panic beset me. A bug in the ear is the absolute loudest thing I have ever heard. It was panicking and flapping. When it flapped, I can only assume to get out, the noise vibrated in my head. The moments it stopped there was a loud rumbling or buzzing. I was less panicked during these times. I couldn't think beyond getting this thing out.

Nigel led me to the main lodge where we asked the manager if they had dealt with this before. They had not. Nigel decided the bug needed to be killed. He procured a bottle of olive oil from the kitchen and poured it down my ear. It oozed warm.

Having a bug in your ear is traumatic. Listening to a bug drown in oil in your ear is gross. I couldn't look away. I couldn't plug my ear. I sat there and listened to every last noise it made. I swear I heard some sort of crying after the movement had stopped. Nigel suggested it might have been secretions being released on death. Someone had a syringe and we tried flushing it out with water, but to no avail.

That night I slept with toilet paper stuffed in my ear. There was a constant dripping of olive oil. This wasn't so bad. Since the bug had died so had my panic. There were no more loud rustling and flapping, just the realization there was a dead bug rotting my in ear. We would have to wait until we were back in Blantyre to extract it.

By the end of the second day we were back and I began experiencing pain. My glands and sinuses hurt on the side the bug was on. Swallowing hurt. Nigel found an otoscope and peered into the depths of my ear. "It is huge! I think it is a wasp." I did not need to know that before the bug came out! It was so big it was wedged into the end of the canal. To end a long story, the bug was extracted by a ENT doctor at Queens hospital the following day in two bits...body first, wings and head second. I asked to keep it, although I only got the second bit intact.

My incidents with Malawian Animals: Part 2

My second incident with a Malawian "animal" took place during our second trip out of Blantyre. This time we went to Zomba Plateau. It is also a mountain, but less steep than Mulanje and instead of trudging up 6 hours you hitch a ride to find opulent to basic accommodation at the top. We managed to catch a ride and after some confusion with bookings (overbooking is common) we found ourselves housed with two Dutch girls in a very basic log cabin at a Trout Farm.

This time we noticed there were mosquito nets hanging in the familiar knot above the beds. Despite this we saw no mosquitoes. Nigel was convinced the elevation was too high for mosquitoes on Zomba and I reluctantly agreed to ignore the net and just sleep without it. It was nicer without the net draping like an inverted cone and tucked in tight to your mattress despite keeping out reptiles and bugs. Did I mention that Malawi is a malarial zone?

The hum of mosquitoes just on the other side took a while to get used to when we first arrived in Malawi. If you were to accidentally lean a limb against the net at some point during the night you would find a welt of bites from well fed mosquitoes. In order to avoid this you had to lie much closer to the middle of the bed. In the day they would hide in our closets, under beds, and in any cracks. Unlike mosquitoes back home they were almost impossible to kill. They had some sort of aerodynamic body that must have carried them off on a slight current of air from a swift movement towards them in murder.

I went to sleep on this particular night feeling the current of air that is usually stifled by the drapery of net. I blissfully floated off to dream land. Sigh.

I awoke at some point in the middle of the night in the dark to at least one mosquito buzzing around my head. For any of you who have tried to cover your head with a blanket and then became so suffocatingly hot and lacking in oxygen, you will understand my only thought was to get the mosquito net over me. I sat up and as I opened what was supposed to be two eyes, only one fully opened. The other lid had been sucked of all its blood and replaced with what felt like a quart of mosquito venom. I could not open it. It was swollen shut.

I fumbled with the mosquito net knot as Nigel stirred. "What are you doing?!" "I am getting the net down" "Why!?" "Because apparently we are low enough to get mosquitoes, I have one buzzing around my head and I can't even open one of my eye lids I have been bitten so badly! But don't worry I will just put the net around me and not bother you any more." As I continue I hear him say, "You could put it around me too if you want."

I should follow this story by saying that both Nigel and my entire family say I am an exaggerator. I say people like an interesting story and would rather hear a bit of elaboration than a hum drum monotone meandering. All of these stories are true, they were just seen through my fantastical eyes!

My Incidents with Malawian Animals: Part 1

Throughout my stay in Malawi I had several "encounters" with animals. I like animals. I like bugs. I am not opposed to being in the same environment with them. Every second weekend we took a mini bus out of the city of Blantyre to a new destination where I had a strange encounter with one.

ENCOUNTER 1: Our first weekend away we set off for Mulanje, one of the major mountains in Malawi. The Plateau takes 5-6 hours of hiking to reach, climbing 2000 metres. There are several huts on top that one can spend several days hiking around and lodging at. Ours was a log cabin that I noted did not have mosquito nets. Malawi is a malaria zone. It was too high (and cold) for mosquitoes we were told. The cabin was composed of several dorm style rooms and I chose a bottom bunk to hunker down for the night. I dozed off quickly into dreamland.

At some point in the middle of the night I was startled awake from a dream. It is important to note that I was dreaming. I even specifically remember what I was dreaming about when I suddenly was lying awake feeling something rather large gnawing at the side of my eye. As my mind quickly cleared, I automatically reasoned there must be either a giant cockroach or a rodent on my face. Without a seconds thought, I swatted away whatever was there and bolted out of bed. I felt my face. I could feel that it had been eating the sleep crusted near my eye. I felt around in the dark for our carefully placed flashlight and flicked it on. I scanned the floor, the bed, the room...nothing.

Nigel was roused from sleep and in that voice he often uses at these hours (that "you are the weirdest person I could have married" voice) he croaked, "What on earth are you doing?" There was something big gnawing on the side of my face! "You were just dreaming, go back to sleep". This is where my clear recollection of what I had been dreaming about backed me up.

Despite my scan of the room there was nothing I could find and the only thing to do was go back to sleep. I would ask our guide in the morning what sort of animals lived around the area. I settled back into bed content in my belief that my startled reaction would have scared whatever it was away and the chances it would come back were slim.

The next morning I asked our guide what might have been eating my face. He laughed and told me it was most likely a rat. It turns out Nigel had trouble sleeping after the whole episode while I fell back to sleep like a baby.

New Year Update from Nigel and Michal

It is a little late to say Merry Christmas but we wish you all a healthy and Happy New Year. We arrived back in the UK on Christmas Eve in time to celebrate with Nigel’s family. It was a bit of a change after 3 months in Malawi, sudden cold and Christmas bits and pieces everywhere. We said to each other days before we flew back that it was hard to believe it was going to be Christmas in a few days. I was still in flip flops, we had just visited Lake Malawi, which seemed like a tropical paradise and we were living in one of the poorest countries in the world which meant there were very little Christmas decorations. The main concern for the majority was having enough food and clothes for their children. Malawi certainly lives up to its reputation as the ‘warm heart of Africa’. The people we met were very decent and honest. They would often stop you along the paths to say hello and have a chat. If it rained, they would hold their umbrella over you. In the markets, there was a whole range of fresh produce for sale and no one ever tried to sell their items at inflated prices. In fact, most would throw in a little extra with a big smile. We struggled with the wealthy lifestyles that many foreigners had in comparison and the lack of opportunity the Malawians had, however determined, to rise above their “fate”. As we left, Malawi was well into the wet season. It rained heavily each day. Consistent rain is promising for a good maize harvest, the staple food in an economy based on subsistence farming.

The country is beautiful. The red earth and green tea plantations are an amazing visual sight. Lake Malawi is a tropical paradise with its warm and clear green/blue water, home to five hundred different types of colourful cichlid fish (along with hippos and crocodiles). We had a chance to explore outside of Blantyre, Malawi’s largest city, on weekends and visit the nearby mountains and safari parks. Without our own transport, we piled into the local mini buses along with 18 other people, babies, chickens, and enormous sacks of food. Near the end of our stay we hopped over to visit Nigel’s relatives in Johannesburg, South Africa. We were spoiled rotten!

As for work, Nigel has been working at the Beit Cure International Hospital teaching (and learning from) the anaesthetic clinical officers there. The hospital treats children from all over the country with limb deformities, burn contractures and cleft lips. The standards are good and to date the hospital has performed five thousand anaesthetics without serious complications. It was really moving to be present as each patient was prayed over before their operation. Nigel occasionally worked at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, a large public hospital over the road where conditions were extremely different. He admired their staff who worked in frustrating conditions. The equipment frequently malfunctioned and drugs were often out of date or in very short supply. It hit home very quickly, how much easier his working environment is in the UK. During his last few weeks Nigel helped teach on a Paediatric Anaesthesia Course co-run by a Sheffield colleague, Nigel Pereira. I went to Malawi with the intention of painting. Our weekend adventures gave me an overload of material. I talked with several Malawian artists and discovered that all the art being produced was very similar. I began work on a series of paintings that depicted the various Malawian landscapes as I saw them. It wasn’t difficult. The colours blew me away. I managed to find the only gallery in Blantyre (run by a Canadian woman with her Italian husband), book a solo show and sell out. I am still stunned that I had this outrageous and amazing opportunity in the midst of Malawi. Now we are back in Manchester, England, enjoying Christmas and New Years with Nigel’s family and regularly calling my family in Vancouver, Canada. We are here for 3 more weeks before heading off to the Canary Islands to join the Africa Mercy, a floating hospital, sailing to Liberia (no longer Sierra Leone) until next fall. Nigel will be one of 3 anaesthetists on board and I will be an assistant chef. Liberia has recently come out of a 14 year civil war and lacks the infrastructure to support a health care system. It is currently overrun with 15,000 UN Peacekeeping Troops. We are looking forward to another adventure and have been told to expect equatorial heat. As always, keep in touch!