We arrived in Blantyre today and transferred to the hotel Victoria. This was the first indication of the kind of accomodation that we would be getting used to over the next 2 weeks. A very comfortable hotel... basically this was a Malawian business hotel, and perhaps not totally in keeping with the expectations of a charity fundraising group travelling through Africa. Let's be honest... we werent going to be having a "backpackers" experience of Malawi. Of course relative to English prices these kind of places werent exactly going to be blowing any budgets, but it was a little unexpected. The justification we had for this was that due to widespread poverty, people are either poor or wealthy and so there isnt an infrastructure to fit the gap between very basic budget and the top of the range. Therefore as a group of 34, the only places that can accomodate us logistically and securely are the top end hotels. In some places that felt like a dilemma, as it would be nice to feel that every part of our presence was directly helping to support the livelihoods of everyday Malawians rather than possibly being diminshed by large, corporate chains.

The Old Family Home
The intial plan for today was to visit an ActionAid project. But because of initial uncertainties about flight delays back at Heathrow, this had been rescheduled for tomorrow. So we had some free time in the afternoon, which I used to hunt out and visit the house that I lived in with my family way back in 1969 through 1971. My dad had a posting to Malawi to help set up the adult education department at Chancellor's College in Limbe, and so the whole family upped sticks and moved out there when I was six months old. I had a map hand-drawn by my dad which showed roughly where the house was, and some old family photos from that time which showed the front fence and some distinctive metalwork in the windows. Many, many thanks to Davo and Jonnie who came with me. Without their help I dont think I would have found the place, as we walked up and down the road, peering through undergrowth and eventually found the house.

Fortunately the current owner was in and once she recognised the house from the old photos that I had, very kindly let us in to look around. See the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pluckmeister/sets/72057594111181456/

I dont remember those years living in Limbe, but I did have a moment travelling back in the taxi from this visit to the hotel, thinking "I lived in Africa!"