Hanging out in Mzuzu

After leaving The Mushroom Farm for the last time, Claire and I were at Joy’s Place in Mzuzu, where we’d stay for a few days before heading to the lake. Joy, the owner, is from Korea and her husband Justin is from the states. We spent a few nights chilling with them and some of the other guests eating the delicious Korean food on offer and drinking beers. Justin told us all about the houseboat that he was building down on the lake. It was still in the early stages but sounded like an exciting project.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Mzuzu has a fantastic clothes market. It’s large and full to the brim of second hand, donated clothes, and if you’re willing to get stuck in and have a proper look then you can find some real bargains. We strolled around until we found what we were after. I managed to bag myself a cool shirt for the equivalent of £3, and Claire then got her hands on a cool skirt for the same price. But then, moments later, Claire made possibly the best purchase of our trip so far. An electric purple Reebok zip up top with lime green piping. She bought it and wore it that night when we went out for drinks. She looked like she’d stepped right out of the late 80s. I was, I must admit, rather jealous. It was a cracking find.

After a few days chilling in Mzuzu Cameron turned up. Cam, the owner of The Mushroom Farm, had arranged to meet us to take us on a night out and show us what the town had to offer. It was great to hook up once again. We were then also joined by Precious, Cam’s girlfriend. (Cam and Precious are the couple in the picture at the top of this page) Precious is Malawian, but she was born in Zimbabwe and spent plenty of time in England. She was also great fun, and her, Cam, Claire and me spent the next few days hanging out in Mzuzu. Precious also knows Rowan, one of our very good friends from Brighton. Rowan is a nurse and spent a fair bit of time in Mzuzu working at the hospital and during her time here she got to know a lot of people. It’s always fun speaking to people who know her as it shows how small the world is when you can come to a small country in Africa and have mutual friends to talk about.

Precious, Cam, Claire and I went to eat at some fantastic restaurants eating home made pasta cooked by real Italians before going to a brilliant burger place the next night.

We spent a fair bit of time in Mzuzu just chilling out, chatting more nonsense with Cam and Precious. This doesn’t really make for interesting reading, therefore, I won’t go into any detail. However, despite it not making the best update, the four or five days spent chilling in Mzuzu was one of the nicest parts of our trip so far. We got to know a few people and got to have normal conversations. And, we got to have a couple of cool nights out seeing what the nightlife of Mzuzu had to offer.

Cam and Precious wanted to go to Nkhata Bay for dinner on the day we were leaving. This was lucky for us for two reasons. The first was that we were having so much fun with these guys that we didn’t want to say goodbye, and the fact that we’d then get to spend the evening with the down by the lake was a real bonus. The second benefit was that Cam could then drive us straight to Mayoka Village, the lodge where we’d be spending the next few days before meeting up with Manu and Dom at Butterfly.