Day 44 – Beware of Hippos

Lilongwe to Liwonde, Hippo View Lodge

After a slight panic when our taxi didn’t show up on time, we arrived at the Lilongwe bus station for our trip to Liwonde around 6:45am – plenty of time we thought for the 7am bus. Of course, 7am didn’t really mean 7am - so after waiting for the bus to fill completely (that takes in all standing room as well), we finally hit the road around 8:30am!

The bus was one of those “stopping all stations” ones – which was pretty interesting, as it left the main road a few times to stop off in smaller towns, and also gave us a chance to examine the various wares people were trying to sell when the bus stopped. However why buses have to have the music turned up to full blast is something we will never get used to.

There was a mother with a very very young child (a couple of weeks old maybe?) sitting across the aisle from M. The baby had vomited as some stage, so there was bright yellow vomit on Mum’s skirt. However when she leaned over to buy a couple of lollipops through the window, her skirt rubbed up against M – leaving lovely yellow stains on his shirt and shorts. So mum took off the baby’s outer towel nappy, and wiped up as much of the vomit off M as she could - luckily the nappy was still clean!

We finally disembarked on the side of the road at the junction to Hippo View Lodge, a couple of kms out of Liwonde township. There were no taxis, but there was an old guy with a bike – so we piled our cases onto his bike rack, and he wheeled our cases to the lodge, while we walked alongside.

After settling in at the lodge (which had lots of "Beware of Hippos" signs), we tried to contact the local World Vision office to confirm the details of our visit to our sponsor child on Thursday but there was no answer, so we walked into town to try and find the office. After numerous wrong turns and 90 minutes of walking (caused mainly by wrong or misunderstood directions from the locals we asked), we finally found the office just as a vehicle was leaving. We flagged down the car, who very helpfully took our contact details and gave us a lift back to the lodge.

Later that evening we met up with the local WV manager, a very friendly fellow named Dan, and we had a very pleasant dinner with him at the lodge, where we discussed the plans for our visit on Thursday.