A road trip, a wedding and a very big swing

After Celebrations had finished it was time to depart Zambia to head back home to South Africa, this time via a 4 day road trip through Zambia, Botswana and back into South Africa.  To make the most of daylight driving hours we hit the road at 5am on Thursday morning.  A lunchtime stop in Lusaka consisted of my first espresso coffee in 7 weeks (it was AMAZING!) and a final taste of the best gelato in Zambia (and possibly Africa entire) from Gigibonta’s (Big call I know but that is just how good the gelato was!!  I can only hope

Celebrations in Zambia

Let us love, because He first loved us 1 John 4:19 From Malawi we hit the road for a two day bus adventure to travel to Zambia with the Malawi Service Centre Team.  The two day journey was quite the adventure in itself combining taxi’s, mini buses, missing team members, negotiations at the border crossing, many a hectic bus terminal and a 3am start for a 4am departure on the second day, to arrive in Zambia after 14 hours in two buses on Sunday evening.  It was quite the journey!  I am appreciative of the experience and I definitely have some

Malawi Unpacked

Having spent the past week and a half in Zambia (attending the Hands at Work Annual Celebrations which have been incredible and will feature in the next blog post), I have found some timeout to reflect and process some more around my time in Malawi and just wanted to take the opportunity to share some final thoughts. For our last community stay in Malawi, we spent time in a community called Chinku.  This community is the furthest from town, approximately 60km, so the 2hr+ journey consisted of an hour in a taxi, followed by just over an hour on motorcycle

No Soap…

This past week we spent time out in another one of the four communities Hands at Work supports in Malawi – Mncheneka Community. It would have to be the largest community we have visited so far. So large that it is broken into 4 regions, of which 3 are running their own Care Centres which include a Nursery School and a daily feeding point (the fourth area are currently doing home visits, but have yet to start a care point with a feeding program or a nursery school). To give you an idea of the distance, the first day we

A few thoughts from Maonde Community Stay

As is our routine here in Malawi, Tuesday through Thursday each week we head out to stay in one of the Communities. This week Maonde, approx 22km from Dedza, was our destination. The journey to Maonde comprised a 40 min taxi ride to the junction, and then a 1.5hr bicycle taxi from the junction to Maonde. This was our first ride in an African taxi. That in itself was quite the experience! Think a mini van, that in Australian standards would likely not pass rego, that they then cram with people, probably 20+ people before we can begin the journey.