A Gift of Fruit

Our days on the rim of the great East African Rift Valley are numbered. The views and temperatures are very different up here. The mountains baking in the midday heat might as well be in Texas and we relish the cool nights and shivery mornings. For a couple of days we flirt with the Mozambican border before turning back east.

Our soon-to-be Warmshowers host Ilia has recommended a local pottery to stop at before we come down to see her and we happily oblige. Since we (and Ben in particular) are rapidly approaching middle age we can enjoy a good handmade mug and coasters. Especially so when they only cost 2.50€ apiece thanks to the black exchange rate magic.

Shipping to Germany (to add to the pile in Lina’s dad’s house) costs twice as much as the mementos. But it’s still worth it since we can also send back some unused items that are clogging up the panniers. Conveniently the pottery shed also offers camping and a menu full of things we haven’t had in ages like veggie lasagne and cheesecake with jam.

The next day we whiz back down to the valley floor and into the heat. For a few kilometers we cruise along effortlessly thanks to some very strong tailwind. It’s rare that we actually feel it. The wind blows us up the last couple of hills before Cape Maclear and then we roll down into the village and to Chipatso – our home for the next week or so.

Chipatso means “a gift of fruit” in Chichewa. Ilia (from the US) and Kim (from the village here) founded the project in 2023. They built homes for single mothers and their kids and provide breakfast and lunch everyday for about 70 children. All the money comes from TikTok, private sponsors and Ilia’s life savings. You can learn more at www.chipatso.com.

We set up camp in the guava lodge and jump right into volunteering. We’re getting out of our comfort zone by tutoring the kids in English. It brings back memories of when we were teenagers and didn’t want to talk to boring old teachers about our hobbies or the weather. Vocabulary revision is the most fun since we get to make funny faces and gestures to elicit words like “hopping” and “slapping”.

We are staying here at an exciting time. Ilia and Kim just bought some land in front of the current property and we are documenting the signing over of the deeds. Soon the current inhabitants (free range goats and children) will have to move elsewhere. The land will be used to build a market, a recycling center and a vocational training school. The goal is always to provide jobs for the local community.

Ilia is an excellent art teacher and fruit enthusiast. So she convinces Ben to paint a guava on the wall in our room with acrylic paints. Both the medium and the size of the painting are a first for him and he is quite anxious. But Ilia’s gentle encouragement helps and he ends up painting a bunch of grapes on the wall in another room as well.

All these things need to be posted on social media and we quickly learn that this is a full time job. Lina gets to be an influencer – something she’s secretly wanted all her life. She fiddles with the video editing app and creates stickers. Once she even goes live on TikTok (with some weird makeup filter that can’t be removed). That lasts for about 20 minutes. After that she has had enough of social media for the rest of her life.

The days seem very short. When we’re not crushing it at teaching, painting or influencing we go for walks with Ilia, her hiking crew and her two dogs Lion and Tiger. We watch the sunset on the lake every night and chat about life way past our Malawian bedtime of 7:30. One night we have some very fatty fish at a local “restraurant”. A quick search on google reveals that it is a critically endangered species; good to know that we’re doing our bit.

As we rapidly approach the end of our time here we go for a walk in the national park to see a huge 800 year old baobab tree and Otter Point – a collection of rocky outcroppings on the lakeshore. We spot fish eagles, king fishers and a couple of rock hyraxes, but sadly no otters or Chinese tourist boats. Maybe we get lucky tomorrow as we’re planning to kayak out to an island just off the coast to camp for a night.