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After a breakfast of a little bread and fruit I waited outside the house for the guide who was to take Sheila and I on a walk to the waterfall. Peter and Barry were looking at the Land Rover which seemed to have developed yet another puncture. Rather than leave it and waste time when Geoff and the others returned we decided to put on the spare wheel and then for Barry and Peter to take the damaged one to town for repair. They were on their way by the time the guide, Anthony, arrived.
The first section of our walk followed the route taken yesterday by our more adventurous colleagues. We started off up the hill and I was surprised to discover that our houses were only the start of a fairly extensive village with some quite affluent looking buildings including a school and a community hall.
Anthony proved to be a chatty sort of a guide. He was, we discovered, in the final year of high school and worked as a guide in his holidays to earn money ready for University in Zomba. He wanted to go to Chancellor College to study medicine but after that he wanted to work in the villages not at the more lucrative city clinics. We talked as we walked. The views back down the hill and out across the valley were spectacular and while there were no animals and few birds to be seen there were lots of colourful flowers and occasional bright butterflies.
Anthony's school curriculum consisted of maths, English, biology, geography and bible knowledge - all of which were compulsory. I questioned him more closely. His courses seemed to be an eccentric blend. In biology he had learned basic anatomy and how to distil spirits. His history lessons, while largely restricted to Malawian history were often entirely contradictory on even such elementary facts as when Hastings Banda was born. In English the set books were Macbeth and The Diary of Anne Frank. This led us to another peculiar discrepancy - this time in his English which was really very good. While he knew words like 'pulmonary' and 'aorta' he had just come across the phrase 'Is this a dagger that I see before me ?' and had no idea at all of what a dagger might be. Having told him, I then found myself discussing the guilt that Macbeth felt and the way that it led to the visions of ghosts and phantom daggers. He seemed to be memorising every word I said.
After about half an hour the route separated from the one to the mountain hut and levelled out. At the top of the rise we came to a logging camp. We went through it and started down the other side. At the bottom was the waterfall. This was hardly spectacular but was a pleasant place to stop made more pleasant by the flask of tea and packet of biscuits that we had brought with us.
We returned by a different but no less scenic route. Anthony obligingly pointed out whatever animals and flowers he could find and while the animals were mainly lizards and frogs they were nevertheless interesting. One lizard, only feet away from us was almost invisible against the bark of a tree until it moved its head. On a moss covered rock face there were tiny green and yellow frogs, less than a centimetre long. A large red and black insect buzzed around a group of purple flowers.
We were off course still on the lookout for the absent birds. It was Sheila who spotted the large bird of prey in the distance. We watched for some time through binoculars, carefully noting down everything we could about it to help in later identification. When we got back to the houses Barry was sitting outside talking to two Malawi children, aged about six or seven who had been playing with Kenny. We quickly borrowed his books and soon had it worked identified as a Honey Buzzard.While we had been away the power had failed and the meat which Peter had transferred from the trailer to the refrigerator in the house had gone off. Not to be defeated by this he lit a fire on the back porch and cooked us a delicious concoction from tinned tuna fish and vegetables. I decided that if I wasn't cured by now I wasn't going to be and joined in the meal which we ate by candle light. As the power hadn't returned when we had finished we chose to have an early night.
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