Like I said, I have no idea where to begin with telling you about my awesome time in Malawi. I suppose the best way to start is with the end, since that was the most recent part. In the coming weeks, I'll post some snippets from the journal I kept. You can look through some of my photos here in the meantime.
Yesterday morning, the team had a nice breakfast together with our hosts in Blantyre, the Machinjili family. The power was out, which is actually unusual-- there are planned power outages several times a week, but those happen at night when everyone is using the most electricity. Even so, Serah provided us with plenty of cereals, fruits and bread as well as our morning tea.
Breakfast felt relaxed. We spent a few minutes celebrating Crystal's 17th birthday, too. Once we got in the cars though, we ran all over Blantyre trying to accomplish last minute errands, deposits, purchases, goodbyes. We arrived at Chileka Airport a little bit later than anticipated, but as we learned over the past two weeks, very little runs on time. It was a small airport, and it took us a while to get through security, but our plane didn't even arrive until it was time for us to depart... so... yeah.
The amazing part about leaving was that a women's prayer group that we met early in the trip took minibuses from their village all the way to the airport just to send us off. They stood at the edge of the parking lot singing and dancing and hugging. It was really joyful and amazing. Then, even after we parted ways there, they remained and took over the end of this balcony overlooking the runway, so they could wave to us as we got on the plane and took off-- that wasn't for about another hour! That was the warmest farewell I may ever have received.
Chinupule women
Then things got a bit sticky. During the two hour flight from Blantyre to Johannesburg, I learned that I wasn't booked as a vegetarian and there weren't any extra veggie meals. Two hour flight? Not a big deal. Enjoyed the bread and salad that comes with the meal. They suggested that when I checked in at Johannesburg, I let them know that they needed to get an extra emergency vegetarian option on board, because an 18 hour flight is a whole different story.
No such luck. I understand these things need to be planned ahead of time, but in a travel/ hospitality/ service industry, I expected some sort of flexibility or contingency plan to accommodate crazy people like me. Nope. There was no chance of me getting a proper meal unless some vegetarian didn't show up. And of course, it seems that I am currently out of good travel karma... I obviously lived on bread and salad and crackers but it was a bit frustrating. At least the team was able to relax and share beers in O.R. Tambo Airport before flying to Dakar and New York City... the organization's president bought us all Castle, a South African brew, which were probably nothing exciting by any means, but was absolutely perfect in the moment.
Today's sunrise caught up with us as we passed between Bermuda and Nova Scotia. The colors were really amazing. I found myself thinking about the next few days-- I head to Virginia to celebrate a friend's wedding this weekend, and then back to school on Tuesday (to teach. I'm done with courses!). I've been trying really hard all day to stay awake, hoping that if I went to bed at a reasonable hour and was super exhausted, I might sleep off some of the six hour time difference. I don't really have time to recover from the travel part of my trip (the homecoming took over 26 hours, start to finish), but my life keeps moving forward and I'm happy to keep up as best I can!
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