Victoria Falls

 The bridge to Zimbabwe, and the view from above the falls and the view from the bridge

School children in Livingstone...we walked to school together where I met the teachers

Zambia

 Drove from Lilongwe in Malawi to Lusaka in Zambia, 12 hours on a bus. While in Lusaka we visited the baby orphaned elephant refuge. 30,000 elephants are illegally killed each year in Africa, the orphanage is trying to save 3 of them, so they can go back in the wild.  Then we visited the human orphanage and played various forms of soccer.  Many times I see people playing games of checkers on improvised checker boards. At the craft fair park place, I am most interested in the old animals, worn and faded, stacked in the corner.

At the orphanage

 There seemed to lots of large spiders hanging from the trees

this is a walking stick

And these are the baby elephants who drink lots of special formula baby elephant milk, then they roll around in the mud.  

nkhona mountain

One of the best days in Malawi and the trip, really. I got early, around 4:55 when they started the prayer song at the mosque. Right after the prayer a few birds start chirping, then a lot more birds. When it got a little lighter I went out to the porch and did a drawing, the air was very misty, partly smoky but made for good atmospheric effects.




After breakfast, the same thing every day, scrambled eggs and chips (fries), sometimes fruit, I took my malaria pill and we went to the close village to pick up a couple of the women to take to town. They were not quite ready, so we gave out the soccer ball and the older girls and young women, some with babies strapped to their back started throwing it back and forth and around. I was struck by how gracefully they caught and threw the ball, never dropping it, in their bare feet on the ground.

We drove the women to town.  We had the earrings all mounted on paper, with a stamp we had printed that told about the work, also one nativity scene, actually we brought 4 or 5, each with a Mary, Joseph, and baby on the back of Mary, African style, and a star made out of sticks.  But only one could stand up. We took everything to a crafts store, one of the more fancy ones.  The owner looked at everything and then took a bunch of the earrings and the nativity scene, talked with the women about how to get their money and encouraged them to make more, he was very nice to them.  It was quite a different scene, seeing the women more dressed up, in town, instead of sitting on the ground in the village.  The students were pretty excited to have got this far, especially since the nativity scene has been such a problem for months, even when we were in Provo.

I wanted to go climb up this mountain called Nkhoma mountain, it is close to a hospital and some kind of a mission, about an hour away. First the other adults thought it would be dangerous because of the deadly black mombo snake, or we wouldn’t have time, but some of the kids kept bringing it up, so today, instead of going to parliament, 9 of us went to the mountain place in one of the vans. It was such a nice place, we walked through the hospital, which was kind of indoor and outdoor, then along some wide very pleasant roads/trails with beautiful flowers, big palm trees, flowering trees, and brick English like cottages. It was the best thing I had seen yet. The mountain was breezy with great views and lots of rock. The students were very excited to be outside hiking. I met an old man in the house about halfway up, I felt very glad to see him. 

Liwonde National Park

 Lilongwe street from the back porch.

5 hours south is Liwonde National Park

 This is not a very large park, but dry with some animals that have been brought in, since all the original animals were killed.

 Fortunately, our guide MacCloud had a well worn bird book. After the 5 hour drive to the MVUU camp in the nature preserve (driving past nkhoma mountain and lots of other hills and mountains, it was the most scenic thing I have seen here, Lilongwe the town and the surrounding villages are singularly unattractive. After lunch at the resort safari place, we went driving around in a jeep looking for animals.   It is quite dry, even though we are on a river.  We saw some antelope, hippos, crocodiles, warthog, a cool colored stork, then we sat by the river and I drew for 15 minutes then it was dark, and we drove around some more shining a big flashlight on hippos.  I saw a hare, though and a cool cat like creature with a long tail with rings on it. 
Three of us took the early morning walk the next day (instead of the drive around in the jeep). It was great to walk on the dry earth and hear the sounds of the birds. We had to take the guide and another fellow with a very big gun.  Then we floated around on the boats looking for elephants. 

The best part of mvuu camp were the elaborate mosquito nets, over the large bed, with screens for windows.   these were the glamping cabins with stone masonry in the bathrooms buffet dinners.  At night I could hear the frogs and the in the morning the hippos made loud wheezy grunting noises, very deep. 

some mountains on the way back to Lilonwe that I wanted to climb, but the only time we got out of the bus was to cross the border into Mozambique so everyone could say they had set foot there.