Lake Malawi at sunset
14th March 2008

Its not all hard work on an Act4africa Overland trip.
Naomi, Frank and Helen enjoying some well earned rest.
Martin

Neal and Sarahs BLOG 6th March 2008- Malawi
10th March 2008

Another week passes  and we’re now ¾ of the way through our trip, unbelievable! This week we have moved out of the capital, Lilongwe, and are more remote again to a place called Ekwendeni in the north. We’re staying in a hostel in the mission base, which covers a huge area and includes schools, a hospital, and churches  amongst other things.

It’s been a good week, we’ve worked with the Girl’s Brigade, an all girl’s secondary school, another secondary, and a primary with a unit for children who are visually impaired. The welcome has been great, their knowledge has been good, but we’ve been able to take them on further through the workshops and discussions that we’ve led with them. We’ve also run some programmes with local youth groups who receive training from the Youth VCT (Voluntary Counselling & Testing (for HIV)) centre, but who asked us to train them further in their drama skills and activities. The training went really well, and as these groups cover the district of Ekwendeni, it’s great to know that this will benefit large numbers of young people in the area. It’s not all been hard work though.

On Monday we spent our day off at Lake Malawi, at a campsite on the beach. The Lake is stunning and we had great fun chillaxing, enjoying the sunshine and some good rest. We stayed to watch the sunset which was beautiful, and we could also see 3 storms in the distance, it was great to watch the lightening lighting up the clouds in front of it.

We’ve had some heavy rain at times, which also stopped us packing up our tents last Monday morning as we tried to move more locally to our work in Ekwendeni. But the weather here is drier due to the position of the town, so we’re back to hot and sunny most of the time!

Saturday we move on again and leave Malawi for Tanzania, first of all stopping in a place called Mbeya where we’ll be for a couple of days before moving on to Iringa.

Everyone’s doing well, despite some dips in energy, which isn’t surprising as everyone is putting in good effort into all that we’re doing. 

Overland 2008 - Gweru update
30th January 2008

Hello Everyone, all of us here (well, a representation!)

Well, we'll pick up where Martin left off. After Martins departure, we had an afternoon at the local community centre. This was slightly frustrating, in that some of the people seemed resistant to our teaching. However, after discussing the days events, we discovered that many people had appreciated our efforts and actually taken a lot from it. So, yeah, pretty good in the end! That night we dressed up- grease/fame/80s/anything we could find to dress up in styleee! Lots of fun, many pics...
On Sunday we were meant to assist (well, Neal!) with some baptisms at a church a bit of a distance away . But our truck broke down en route and so we were left to sing/push truck/wait for transport. We got there in the end, but no water was available- kind of vital! A search for water ensued...some of the locals walked for literally hours to get to where we thought there was water...but the stream had dried up. Disappointing. Had a service outside anyway, well hot, Neals sermon was great. But we were kinda hungry...left at 9am, got back to camp at 4.30 pm! But we survived- hardened campers!
The rest of the week consisted of school visits- primary and secondary. We had to be quite flexible with material, but I think we all now know our stuff! The secondary school pupils seemed a more relevant age, but the primary schools were so fun to work with! Lots of positive feedback, lots of shouts of 'Usa Bata' ('Don't touch' in Shona) , which was one of our dramas that they had obviously picked up on. It was quite tiring but rewarding.

THEN WE TRAVELLED TO ANTELOPE PARK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We were told by our lovely guides that we would be bush camping/digging our toilets. SO you can imagine our delight when we discovered HOT SHOWERS, FLUSHING TOILETS, INTERNET, MASSAGES, AND LIONS - all on tap. We have walked with and stroked lions- sooo cute!; Swam with elephants; horse back and horse drawn carriage safari; and general chilling, swimming, film watchin, hot chocolate drinking fun! Great, because next week we really are bush camping, digging our own toilets, etc etc. Its raining though...unexpected, a bit annoying, very much like Britain though so we are used to it! But next week its gonna be boiling- one extreme to the other.

That's all we've got time for folks,

We have been Act4Africa. (something Neal said to a class of 4-7yr olds...hahaha)

 Lots of Love to all

The Team (the best one ever innit)