Visiting Zomba

A couple of weeks ago we took our family and went to visit Zomba, which is about 4 hours from our house and is located within an hour from the big city of Blantyre.  There are a number of ABC students who live in Zomba and our friend, Chikondi (a senior at ABC) graciously offered to guide us to his home town.  We have been hearing for two years how beautiful Zomba is and we are very happy to discover that it is perhaps the most beautiful place that we have visited in Malawi so far. 

On Thursday morning we packed up our car and arrived in Zomba in the late afternoon.  In the evening, we had the privilege of sharing a meal with Chikondi’s family.  We met his father, mother and two sisters.  His mother cooked all day for us (see picture) and blessed us with a wonderful meal- of greens, nsima, rice, stewed pumpkin leaves, boiled pumpkin, fish (complete with heads), beef stew and more! The girls especially loved the rice, pumpkins and the guava juice.  We stayed in a hotel at the top of the Zomba mountain which had some breath taking views of the area. Unfortunately, on Friday it rained all day which forced us to stay in our hotel room and take naps, play games and watch movies with the girls. In hindsight it was forced relaxation and the family time was wonderful. On Saturday the rain and fog cleared up and we spent the morning exploring the mountain.  We drove through some dreadful roads to get to the top but it was worth it. The girls played at the bottom of a waterfall and we saw some beautiful views from the top, which made it all worth the trip.

 

In addition to our trip to Zomba, we are very excited to announce Beth’s most recent accomplishment at the age of 2.6 years…she is fully potty trained!  We are definitely more excited about it than Beth but either way we are proud that we leaving the diaper days behind us!