Lilongwe Strikes Back!

Lilongwe must have a close relationship with Rumphi, maybe it didn't like the way we pre-judged Rumphi, we should've sent an apology to Lilongwe too, lesson learned. Either way, Lilongwe must've been upset at us. You'd have thought we were safely back in Lilongwe, said our good-byes with Moya and should have had a nice quiet night before flying out the next day. Boy, were we wrong.

On the bus, Dan mentioned receiving a message about an incident back at the house with his roommate and a Rasta front-man son of the landlord. Details not really important, we'll get back to that. Malawi wasn't going to let us go quietly:

After spending the entire day on the bus traveling back to Lilongwe, we were hungry so we decided to go to a restaurant for dinner that Dan had mentioned previously. We took a cab from the bus depot to the restaurant. The restaurant was not located in an area from which it would be easy to hail a cab, so we asked the cab driver to return in about an hour to drive us the rest of the way to the house. I don't think the cab driver understood what Dan was saying. Anyway, I don't remember what the specialty at the restaurant is but once we walked in the doors, the power went out, Lilongwe was laughing. (Fortunately, they had some food cooked, it was something).

We waited around awhile after dinner for the cab driver to return. He never did. So we made out on our own. On the way out to find a ride, Katy puts one foot in a gaping gutter and fell flat on her face bruising both knees and scraping up both hands pretty bad. Katy fought back tears.

Dan negotiated with the driver of a flat-bed truck who was parked next to an adjacent gas station to take us the rest of the way to the house. It worked out pretty well actually.

So this brings me back to the incident at the house while we were away. Like I said, details of what happened aren't too important, I really don't remember. The important part is that there was some sort of altercation and the guy from the VSO who was renting the house decided, without consulting Dan, to move everything out of the house, including all of the mattresses. Lucky for Dan, he had locked his door and there was still one twin mattress.

After all of that, we thought we would have to sleep on the linoleum floor without blankets or any other cushion for our last night in Malawi. Very compassionately, Noel, who worked at the house, lent us a foam mattress and blanket for the night for Katy, Ryan, and me. He insisted his family didn't use the mattress themselves, but I have my doubts. Thank you Noel!

Malawi had one more surprise in store for us, however: our flight from Lilongwe to Joburg. Someone wasn't feeling well on the flight before us, not feeling well at all, not feeling well at all and sitting in the last row. We were sitting in the 2nd to the last row. It didn't smell very good, like the smelly guy sitting on the bus but a little worse. (RS: They threw a blanket over it and sprayed some air freshener, but that was about it. Jon, Katy, and I were sitting as close to the mess as anyone on the plane could sit.)

Later Lilongwe.