Mabuya Camp

                We spent the day in Lilongwe today. In the morning we checked out of the Korea Garden Lodge and checked into Mabuya Camp. This place is much cheaper and not as nice but I think we all like it more because it has a younger feel to it. It’s a lot more laid back than Korea Garden. There is an outdoor swimming pool and a weight room! I haven’t got a picture of it yet but I know Whitney did. I’ve been a little apprehensive about taking pictures since I lost all of mine from Kasungu. There were also these really cool chairs by the pool. It’s hard to describe them so I’ll get a picture when I get a picture of the weight room. It’s also kind of fun because the girls were staying in a dorm which has two bunk beds and really squishes us in there. Emily was girl number five which meant she didn’t have a bed. So she would keep all of her things in our room and chat with us until like 10:30 when we were all exhausted and she would go sleep in the general dorm with a bunch of people we didn’t know.

We checked in in the morning so we had to wait a while before our rooms were ready. While we waited we walked around, talked about what would be fun to do this summer and played a little bit of mancala because we found a board that kind of looked like a mancala board and it had rocks in it. I think it might actually be ntchiuwa which is a local game that we actually saw some people playing later that day on the way to the market. It can be a pretty intense game. The people we were watching were very good and had a huge set up on the ground. They even had teams of two to about five people playing. I didn’t really understand how to play it but you move like you do in mancala and the goal is the eliminate all of the other teams rocks. We were told it was kind of like chess.

When we went to the market it was overwhelming. There are so many people and we stood out really bad so lots of people were yelling at us trying to get us to buy stuff. We are casually looking for some fabric to make dresses out of because Chimango told us it was better to buy fabric and take it to a tailor so it would actually fit us. We are also casually looking for cell phones so we can split up ever y once in a while without worrying about where to meet back up and getting lost. It’s just hard to go through the market in large groups.

The market is a very interesting place; a lot of the shops sell clothes, food etc. and cell phones. We didn’t get anything yet. Dr. Steele said it wasn’t a good idea to try to buy something your first time to the market and just to look around and get a feel for it. He also gave us some tips on bargaining. He said that you shouldn’t pay more than 20USD for pretty much everything. Most stuff you can probably get for 10.

After the market Dr. Steele took us to dinner at an Indian place. It was really good but all the food was red so it was hard to tell anything apart because we were eating family style. You just picked up a bowl and tried it out. It was good though. We haven’t been getting to many crazy flavors lately. The food at SAFI is good but it’s all usually the same flavor.

After dinner we came back to camp and hung out a little bit before taking shower (which were hot!) and crawling into our bunk beds to sleep.

Whitney found a soccer ball in the pool

ntchiuwa