Relaxing, Running and Reggae

Sunday was actually was a pretty early morning as we wanted to catch Laurie and share some breakfast before she and Dickson from MUSCCO headed south to Blantyre.

Afterwards I grabbed a rare nap and spent some time catching up on my blog.  I took a quick dip in the pool and got ready for the rest of the day. 

After a late lunch we decided to walk to find a local private school where a friend of mine who has been here previously said there was some Ultimate Frisbee going on.  It was a long walk (when you are not sure where you are going) but we managed to get there eventually.  The challenge is that on a map all the streets are named but in real life most of them are not as people don’t refer to them anyway.  The residences in the area had high fences and guard dogs etc. but that afternoon it was pretty quiet.  About 100 metres from the site someone stopped and offered me us a ride, but since I didn’t know where on the campus I was going it was a good idea regardless.

Once we got there, I threw on my shoes and jumped on the field.  It was +30 and VERY muggy but it was cool to play with some locals and ex-pats from 8 or 9 different countries.  Once the games came to a wind-sucking and sweaty end, we took a tour of the school.  It was a slightly informal tour as the gate we came in was locked so we wondered around looking for an exit.

We were already near the golf course, so we made are way down to the “Black Missionaries”, a Malawian Reggae band who was playing on the concert grounds there.  The music was great and fortunately with Reggae it really doesn’t matter if some songs are in Chechewa as it’s the melody that takes you away.  There might have been a couple thousand people there but I am pretty sure we were the only two ‘mazungos’. 

We enjoyed the music for a bit and were asked to join in some dancing by a mellow Rastafarian guy and a few kids.  The 3 kids turned to about 13 and it was so much fun!  We gave them some Canada pins and took their pictures which they could not get enough of, but I think some of the crowd was busy taking pictures of Erin and I and all the kids dancing!   It was a really good time that I won't soon forget. 

We should all at least once in our lives know what it’s like to be the minority, and hopefully realise that like through the eyes of children, it really doesn’t matter much at all...and it’s always fun to dance!

Until next time,

Tionana!