Malawi!!

Hello Everyone!

We are now in Lilongwe, Malawi and enjoying the beautiful scenery. Our first day into Malawi was an explosion of humidity and heat as well as immense beauty! We learned a few days ago that Malawi is sometimes called the "Warm Heart of Africa", because of the kindness of the people. All along the roads kids are waving and smiling, shouting "Azungu" (which literally translated from Chichewa is "white person") trying to get our attention. We were a little bit disapointed when kids started shouting what we thought was 'money', turns out the Chichewa greeting for 'hello' is 'moni'. That lifted our spirits! To further exemplify how kindhearted people here are I'll tell a little story of what happened to us yesterday (although I'm sure my mom will kill me for this!) While riding yesterday into a strong headwind in the hot, sticky afternoon Andrew & I decided that we were sick of riding out bikes. We have two support trucks that come with us, but one was gone ahead to scout the campsite, and we knew the other was still at the lunch stop and wouldn't be along for another 2 hours or so, our end result was that we decided to hitchhike. Neither of us having done this before, we were a little short of knowledge about how to hail down a vehicle, and secondly we needed one that would accomoade not only us, but both of our bikes. Fortunately for us, around the next corner was one of many police checkpoints. Just our luck as well, a huge flatbed truck was stopped there. We promptly rolled up, knocked on the drivers window and asked if we could hop in the back. The driver spoke very little english, but quite kindly the police officer offered to be our translator. So here we are in the middle of a Malawian highway asking a cop to translate for us so that we can hitch a ride. Once the driver caught on to what we were doing he immediately smiled and gestured that we should throw our bikes up to one of the other people hitching a ride in the back & then hop up. We told him where we were headed & he promised to drop us off as close as he could to our destination. Half an hour later the truck pulled into a gas station and they helped us unload our bikes & asked us what the heck we were doing riding our bikes across Africa (it is a bit of a crazy endeavour!) so we told them about the TDA & our fundraising & where we were from, what we did back home and so on. It was at this point that the drivers assistant spoke up and in immaculate english started asking us about Canadian unversities. He expressed his desire to us that he one day wanted to go to Canada and go to school. We swapped e-mail adressess and promised to send him whatever info we could about schools back home once we got there. Then we said goodbye and were on our merry way to camp. - Now for my mothers sake (and Andrew's too) let me elaborate on how safe it is to hitch a ride in Africa and how it differs from Canada. Here, very few people can afford vehicles but still need to get places further than walking or biking distance. Most people who have vehicles drive trucks of one sort or another, so the natural thing to do is pull over an offer anyone (& often their multitudes of stuff) a lift, I mean you're going in the same direction anyways. Everyone here hithes rides, mothers with tiny babies slung on their backs, old men with canes, children on their way to and from school...the list goes on. Now, back in Canada, I would likely never hitchhike, because no one in their right mind does it at home, and no one in their right mind picks up a stranger wandering down the side of the road, but the culture here is different, and I really like it. Everyone is your brother or your sister, and it seems that although in extreme poverty (especially here in Malawi) someone would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. Anyhow, this long meanering ramble is to express the kind hearts of people here.

On to the trip; we spent as beautiful day relaxing on Chitimba Beach, on Laka Malawi and were supposed to spend the next 4 days riding along Lake Malawi into Lilongwe, however plans change. The rains have been excessive here this year, and as a result the road we were supposed to take had been partially washed away and a bridge was destroyed, so we stayed inland & got to Lilongwe a day early, so now we get two rest days here instead of one.

In other 'exciting' news, Madonna is here in Lilongwe. We had some greasy paparazzi guy staying at our campsite last night. I've never seen camera lenses so big! I guess she's here to "adopt" another baby, clearly at a great personal cost. I guess money can buy anything these days. So far we haven't seen her, (that being said, we're not really looking to either, we have much better things to do, like wash laundry and oil our bikes).

We're off to Zambia next, and will be back on Canadian soil in 6 weeks; which brings the point that if you are still interested in donating, you still have time! We are continuing to fundraise until we get back home. The easiest way to donate (since you are reading this you are already at a computor) is online at www.tourdafrique.com/donate - please put "In support of Judy Garnier & Andrew McLellan's Fundrasing" in the comments box. Every penny helps and we've been to a couple of bike donation ceremonies and its amazing to hear the stories from local hospitals and aid organizations of the bikes help and what it really means for them! We just passed day 80 of the tour, and despite torrential rains our little tent has managed to stay intact. We had an ant invation of it this morning, it seems overnight a colony of sugar ants (the teeny tiny ones) decided to build a next under our tent, and so this morning we found they had chewed holes through the floor and were invading. We wiped them out with about half a bottle of mosquito spray and patched the holes in true Canadian fashion with seam-sealewr and duct-tape. Mission accomplised!

Judy & Andrew