the internet is so shoddy, but i'm figuring it out as i go, and hopefully will be able to keep on top of this thing.... this post will mostly just be breaking down my travel to the centre and how i got here.
i left calgary at 3pm on april 7th, and flew to amsterdam which i had a 13 hour layover at, so i decided to hop onto a train and head into the city and get out of the airport... i didn't sleep at all on my flight, which made things a bit interesting, as it was 8am in amsterdam when i arrived.
the first thing i noticed was that there were bikes everywhere. apparently, amsterdam is the bike capital of the world, and as soon as i started walking away from the train station... i walked by a giant parking area for bikes and it was more bikes than i've ever seen in my life, all in one spot.
i decided to rent a bike and rip around the city and see what i could see... the entire city is designed for bikers, which was a bit of a change of pace coming from calgary, where the entire city is up in arms about a bike lane going up, and bikers are more just moving targets on the roads.... so, it was amazing. bike lanes on every street, bikers have their own light system that is different than both the cars and the pedestrians, and it was such a small city that i was honestly able to see it all... even if i didn't know where i was 99 percent of the time.
as i was cruising, i saw the heineken brewery... so i obviously decided to stop in, and it was one of the coolest buildings i have ever been inside. the tour itself was super gimmicky, and besides the actual brewing process and getting to learn how to pour a beer european style (with way too much head), it was a bit of a let-down. but, i got a few complimentary beers and headed on my way.
after that i just started cruising the canal system.. with my bike up and down streets, watching boats go by... eventually decided to check out the canal cruise companies that were on every corner, decided it was to expensive, but found a place that rented paddle boats for 1/4 the price. this was awesome, except i didn't take into account how funny it looks for one mid-twenties guy to be ripping around in a paddle boat on his own.... so i got a lot of funny looks and people standing and pointing on top of the bridges as i went by. but, after i just learned to embrace that i looked like a tool... i had a blast and spent hours in the paddle boat seeing the canal system and almost getting run over by giant boats.
by this point i was basically over amsterdam, and decided to make my way back to the train station... however, i was so lost that i didn't get back to the airport a lot closer to the time when i needed to be on the plane than i was comfortable with.from there i took an 8 hour flight to nairobi, kenya (which again, i was unable to sleep on). i had a 4 hour layover in nairobi before i got to fly to lilongwe (the capital city of malawi). nairobi's airport was super ghetto, and had chickens and goats walking through the airport and so many people you couldn't even sit and sleep in one of their outrageously uncomfortable chairs.... so i ended up finding a back hallway and passed out for a few hours with my backpack as my pillow.
i then took a 2.5 hour flight into lilongwe, had a 4 hour layover in lilongwe before my flight to blantyre (the closest airport to the village that i'm staying at)... lilongwe's airport was even more ghetto, so i ended up just taking off and going outside to sleep. it was so hot that i got no sleep, but i was able to stretch my legs and read (in between being asked every 5 minutes or so if i needed a taxi) under a tree out front of the airport.
all the flags were hanging at half-mast as bingu wu mutharika, president of malawi had died one day before i left canada. i was able to talk with a few of the guys in lilongwe and down at the centre, and best i can gather is that everyone is pretty stoked that mutharika is no longer president. they just named joyce banda president, and she is the first female east-african president in history. people are really excited about banda being president, as she was the one who fought mutharika on a lot of his policies and really poor diplomacy with nations that offered aid to malawi. as of right now, malawi is under a lot of heat from the UN, and most countries have pulled out aid and money transfers to and from malawi... this is due to the late president's choice to call the army on a bunch of protesters who were protesting his choice to kick the UK ambassador out of the country over a few comments in a newspaper.due to the sticky global-relation situation that malawi has found itself in, they are without aid and trade.. so fuel prices are at an outrageous price (2.50+ a litre), and most stations don't even have it.. so people (at the centre included) are forced to buy it from the black market at more than double the already inflated rate.
so, after my layover i took a 45 minute flight into blantyre and was met by brad and lela and a few of the others who are working at the centre. they had timed the trip to grab me from the airport with a bunch of pick-ups that needed to be done for the centre, so we spent the night in blantyre at these old missionary dorms. this was a relief to me, as i was definitely not complaining about not having to tack another 3 hours of travel onto my trip right away. if you were counting, i figure i got about 4 or 5 hours sleep over the entirety of the trip to this point.
so we passed out at the missionary dorms and in the morning did a bunch of pick-ups. we stopped in at an n.g.o. in town called 'project peanut butter' and picked up a bunch of nutritionally enhanced peanut butter that will be used with a lot of the infants at the centre to fight some pretty serious cases of malnutrition.
at this point, one of the guys working at the centre who is from australia was fighting a pretty serious toothache, so he stopped in at a dentist in blantyre to get it looked at. i don't know what is more sketchy than getting a root canal in the middle of nowhere in africa... but he did it, and with consultation, x-rays, teeth cleaning and a full root canal, it put him out about 100 US dollars. so if you are looking at some expensive dental work in the future... let me know, because i can refer you to a great little place, haha.
we then left blantyre on our way to the centre, but ended up stopping in at a little place called 'fisherman's rest' on the way for the night. it was one of the most beautiful places i'd ever seen.... blantyre is in the mountains of malawi, and this was just on the outskirts of blantyre, so it made for some amazing views.
after looking at this view out the window of the room we stayed in, it was really hard for me to get into the mentality of where we were headed to in the morning... which was down the mountain and into the shire valley where the centre was located.
as we drove... the landscape got progressively less picturesque and the villages got exponentially poorer.
after three hours we arrived at the centre, and we were greeted by 150 screaming kids, who were so stoked to see a car full of mzungu's (white people).
so, that brings it up to date... this is where i will be spending the next 80 or so days. doesn't seem like much when you break it down like that; but i have been woken up by the heat at 6am, in a puddle of my own sweat for the first 2 mornings here... so 80 days of that is gonna get old, haha.
i'll end this, though... there's lots more to share, but this has gotten outrageously long. i'll try and get some pictures of the centre that i'm at up in the next week or so.
peace.
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