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What could these giant red X painted with a shaky handy on many houses, schools, shops and sign posts be?
Second border crossing without any problem, at times a few hundreds of kilometers are enough to breath a completely different air, crossing the border was like entering a loud party animated by motorbikes, exchange agents, many small colorful shops well stocked, I even found internet in a cubby-hole which was selling Nigerian movies. Also the food is different, my breakfast was made of chapatti, chicken breast in broth and a very powerful round chilli. The motorbikes have the same function of bicycles in Malawi, they transport anything from people to mattresses.
Today the legs were not here at all it may have been the uphills, the adverse wind, the big stages of the previous days but I really was not able to get into gear, even psychologically seeing for the first 40 km motorbikes going down with the engine off was not encouraging, it was the sign that for me the road was still going up. And my bicycle and I are very heavy, maybe I should send some doubles back to the base. But mainly I need to be on the saddle before 8, which in the past 3 days I did not manage.
In the grip of a tremendous thirst and hunger crisis I did not miss the opportunity to savour once again a fenef, in Kiswahili if I understood correctly, the “heart of the ox” like it is called by the missionaries in Kenya. Seen from the outside it is a green fruit not really attractive full of small protrusions, inside it is snow white, sweet with a acidic aftertaste which makes it a perfect thirst-quencher, the consistency is similar of a mangia e bevi. From this description I must have been really in crisis!
Going slowly has its advantages, today I came across two grasshoppers crossing the road the mother with the baby on the back, I also managed to take some nice pictures, the passersby were laughing at the scene of myself bent towards the tar with my camera … Today somebody took my first picture … the musungu on the bamboo bicycle …
After the maize of Zambia, the cotton of Zambia and , plenty of Malawi, pine forests of Malawi, today I am surrounded in tea and banana plantation, I saw tea plants on slopes so steep to seem spiders on a wall. I immediately understood that here English is not as spread as in Zambia, in a shop the shopkeeper could not tell me the amount to pay in English so I had her to write it down.
I will pass the night in the house of the Principle of the Isongole Secondary School, Itika the wife has cooked Nsima and beans in industrial quantities which I finished with the three sons and the two relatives attached. Itika is the only one in the family to speak English failry, maybe because she was in Zambia in Luanshya in the Copperbelt until grade 7. We passed a pleasant family evening, watching the news and some channels of different churches where you see paralytics who walk. In Africa people pray a lot, maybe even too much, in many curriculum I receive it is written among the hobbies going to church. The say help yourself that God helps you is still not followed much …
Itika has also solved the mystery of the X. They are buildings which should be demolished because too close to the road! They must be hundreds and the land was assigned by the government.
One of the sons asked me: “What makes an Italian come to work in Africa?”.
Songwe border control Malawi-Tanzania S 9° 59149’ E 33°77585’ – Isongole Secondary School S 9° 03.971’ E 33° 59.619
78km