The day begins with a murmur and the smell of woodsmoke, the noise increasing as the sun rises. Soon it’s a low roar punctuated by a whining child, a bit of laughter and the clanging of a pan. The villagers are collecting water for the day.
Chembe Eagles Nest Lodge is at the end of the road, snugged tightly against the rocky, wooded hillside on Cape Maclear near the southern end of Lake Malawi. The beach, more gravel than sand, is raked as meticulously as a Japanese garden and we almost feel guilty for leaving our footprints. Our cabin would be perfect except for the inadequate lighting. But we do have electricity, plenty of hot water and sporadic internet.
Our young neighbors, Emai and Sarah, make me feel like a chronologic and technologic dinosaur. He lives in San Francisco and works for Facebook while she is from Seattle and works for Microsoft. They are both well-traveled and have been driving around Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi on their own – not without incident but still self-sufficient. The innocence of youth.
We passed on snorkeling Lake Malawi to see its myriad colorful cichlid fish. It felt good to spend a day at leisure and we weren’t willing to chance a bout of bilharzia, a serious parasitic infection whose cure is said to be as uncomfortable as its symptoms.
