Malawi team, Saturday 4th

Finally we are in Malawi and what an adventure it’s already been!

The plane journey was surprisingly comfortable, apart from 3 of us throwing up and a few more feeling sick (every one is fine now by the way!). After surviving the 7 hour night flight, we all collapsed in an exhausted heap in Ethiopia airport with even a few falling asleep on the seats and floor! The next flight from Addis Ababa to Lilongwe was much shorter with zero vomiting which is always a plus. We arrived safely in Malawi with no luggage lost, tired but ecstatic to finally be here!

Immediately, the African culture showed through, surprising us all with a whole class of school children climbing onto the back of a truck and driving away. The friendly locals welcomed us and helped us with our large amount of luggage and everyone seemed very shocked by Immi’s bright blue hair!

 As we drove from the airport to Mabuya Camp, we still could not believe that we were actually driving through Africa! Our driver Lazarus was eager to teach us the basic Chichewa greetings and help us with any queries.  Along the side of the road were men, women and children carrying massive baskets of crops on their heads, most of them had bare feet! The complete contradiction in culture was a shock to us all but helped it to sink in that we were finally here!

The Mabuya Camp is very simple but a lot better than what some of us were imagining, and of course, the flushing toilet was a pleasant surprise. The girls are in the dorm rooms whilst the boys are camping outside. Tonight we will be sitting down for a lovely meal of spaghetti bolognaise and having an early night as it’s a very very early start tomorrow! Everyone is so excited to get to Butterfly Space and begin working with the children, but are already enjoying every moment of our trip so far. We will just have to see how happy everyone is in the morning when we are counting our mosquito bites – although as we have mosquito nets that will probably be minimal!

We will do our best to blog regularly, but sorry if the internet at Nkhata Bay lets us down. Be assured that no news is always good news and we’ll be having a blast, even if we don’t manage to tell you about it every day

We look forward to getting your comments to our blog, and send lots of love to you all

Charlie and Georgia on behalf of Team MalawiJ