1st visit summary

As we will be on our second round of visits soon I will try and share with you some photos from the first visit – I would say due to popular demand but it was only Peter that asked, so here you go Pete, with 3 included in there of me as requested (I don’t ‘take’ great pics but you did ask so that's what you get!) :-)

Matema Beach is on the shore of Lake Nyasa (which the Malawians call Lake Malawi – touchy subject) where we were taken by the lovely principal of Mpuguso TTC for a cultural visit. I think you’ll agree that the scenery is spectacular!

Unfortunately it was a rather cold morning when we got there so we didn’t get to swim, but we had a lunch of lake fish (with rice) and where I saw a very cool shelf unit made from one of the fishing boats. 

After lunch we had a walk to the market place, where earthenware pots and pans are sold for very little – Juanito bought us a frying pan for our house, which you can see him using when we stopped on the route back to Mpuguso for the principal to buy a sack of rice and they gave us a handful to smell – lovely!

Here are some photos of life on the shore, where bananas have been put down next to some drying fish, and the children playing on the boats: one of the boys made the young girl cry (surprise, surprise!) but it cheered her up to have her photo taken. The magic of digital: they love to see the photo straight away! They all crowd round to have a look!

Then in Tandala you can see us in the principal’s office where Carla and Juanito are dutifully paying attention.

In Tukuyu my favourite plant is all around: the ficus, surviving outside even, so next time we go I am hoping to get some cuttings, and as that’s Juanito’s field of expertise he promised me we would...

Although you can see in the next photo in Tukuyu I have my hands on my hips, which is because I am pointing out repeat spelling mistakes in Juanito’s work (I am smiling but I was cross really) so whether I get any ficus from Tukuyu actually remains to be seen...

We also had the strange experience of having rain while we were in Tukuyu and while the poor student teachers were outside, so of course we had to take photos.