Farewell

I am back home, but thought I had better write the final chapter before I forget (even though there is a lot more that I keep remembering and don't want to forget either - I do miss such a lot about Malawi even though I am so very happy to be home.) So I thought I would write about our farewell and departure from the happy shores of the lake.
The party got off to a very stilted start in true Malawian fashion: all the staff arrived and sat arranged around the dive deck in a long row. Everyone was very dignified and quiet as they drank their first beers and fantas. Then Bush and I each made a little speech saying thank you for the wonderful year we spent there, and Frankyln made a little speech saying thank you to us for the year and everyone clapped and we all looked at each other bashfully. Then we sat about drinking our next beer and then Mabvuto (Mr Trouble) tottered up the stairs with his drum - and I mean tottered - he nearly fell over three times and had to be helped along by laughing staff members. The atmosphere started to loosen up. Mabvuto was extremely loose already, having stopped off at the Chibuku (local beer) bar on his way for much fortification. He began to drum - very VERY haphazardly. No-one could keep up with him because his rhythm had been lost in the swill of beer. But many tried hard. A few began to dance. Liinu (fortified with four rums before her arrival) also began dancing, with Mr Sophia (a very dignified gentleman who is head of our mechanical workshop - but a keen dancer, from appearances that day.) She danced so wildly and enthusiastically, to thunderous applause, that she fell over and showed her nethers to the staff on the left. (She referred to them later, when telling the tale, by a fantastic Finnicism which sadly I forget as I was prostrate with laughter and trying to bob about a bit myself. She is Finnish and her english is very fantastic.)
Mabvuto kept pointing his gnarled finger at me and winking and chortling (in his glee) and drumming ever more erratically. By now the party was loose, baby!
But soon thereafter the limit of three beers (set by my furrowed browed husband in his anxiety about meeting all the financial obligations of the last month - wages, another staff party, bonuses and whatnot) was reached and we ground to a halt. Then there was a formal line of well wishers who all filed past us and wished us a safe journey. Oh, I do love our staff.
The next morning we set off early, Zoda came along to see us off, and to see Lilongwe for the first time, and of course the tears did flow as we drove out of that shady reed walled compound and out of that lovely little village and through the beautiful National Park, past the mielies which were knee-high now and freshly watered by a storm which raged on our last night, and along the newly tarred Golomoti road which has fever trees and rice paddies and sometimes even elephants along it, and through the hills on the way to the city which are all green and lush and covered with beautifully tended mielie fields all the way. Past the long stalls of bright red tomatoes and maroon onions and pink potatoes and orange mangoes and green avocados. Past full flowing rivers and flowering baobabs and magnificently beautiful trees of all shapes and sizes (I got so obsessed with trees this year that I have photos of my favourite ones now). Past villages having their market days, with racks and racks of gorgeously pattered chitenjes flapping and piles of colourful clothes and wandering ladies in their beautiful chitenjes which they wear over their clothes, with another slung over their backs holding their babies, and holding up umbrellas in even more rainbow floral patterns. Past crumbling mud-brick shops painted in the Malawi cell phone network's signature cerise pink and lime (love it!). It was a joyful feast for the eye and I shall so miss it all.
And that was that. A year over and I loved it.
And now we are back in civilisation and it is hectic. Am adjusting slowly. It will take time.