As is tradition, all new students come to our boarding for three days of orientation. These three days are filled with activities, academic and otherwise with the highlight being a trip to one of the many interesting locations up here in the north. This year, we chose to do two locations: Chitimba and Vwaza for the student’s day of travel on Saturday.
The roads to Chitimba and Vwaza start of the same on the M1 road until Rumphi turn off, then you have to take the left to through Rumphi trading centre to Vwaza or continue on the M1 if you want to get to Chitimba. If we were going to make it to both places, we needed to start of early. So, the plan was to start off at 7 am to the lake, then proceed to the national park shortly before lunch hour to catch the animals on their routine mid-day drink at lake Kazuni.
Unfortunately, some delays with food preparation pushed the starting off time to 9:00 am, which meant going to both places was now a tall order though not impossible. We finally started off down to the lake. The road to that side of lake Malawi is winding, with not much to see until you get to Chiweta where a breath-taking view of the lake seems to appear out of nowhere, complementing nicely with the lush greens and yellows of the mountainous landscape like a Bob Ross painting. All of which is topped off by overconfident baboons hoping you throw them bananas as you drive down.
We managed to get to the lake side by about 11:50 am. Chitimba has several public beaches, and locals are friendly. Our students full of excitement, could not wait to get into the water. After about an hour of swimming and boat rides with some fishermen, chicken with chips and samosas were served to gain back some of the energy lost from flapping about in the water.
By the time lunch was done, it was about 13:30 and time to head back the M1 to Vwaza. The trip back was a quicker one. The children and staff were either asleep or trying hard not to fall asleep. The only noise that could be heard was the sound of afro-beats from the Bluetooth speaker with us. Two and a half hours later, we arrived at Vwaza.
I was half asleep as we arrived at the national park, only to be jolted awake by the screams of young adolescents. I got up to see what the fuss was about; they had seen some elephants snacking on a nearby tree. This sighting was followed by long trail where we got to see some Impalas, birds I could not name, and hippos. We finally stopped at Lake Kazuni, where we listened to a few facts from our accompanying game ranger before starting off again back to Mzuzu. It was a fun and engaging trip. Next year, we will go again.
