Chizumulu Island

Near the Mozambican side of Lake Malawi, though still counted as within Malawi, are two islands - Chizumulu and Likoma. One ferry takes passengers there and away and passes through once a week as it goes up and down the lake. Chizumulu, the smaller of the two islands, is the island you come to first when traveling south on the ferry and from here you can get a dhow (a small sailing boat) across to Likoma. The first picture is a view back across to Chizumulu from Likoma.

Chizumulu is a tiny island without any cars but there is one tractor! There is a market at one end of the island, though as you can see despite lots of space for things to be sold there was very little on offer - just a few piles of tomatoes and a bucket of kind of doughnuts (of course not sweet though) called Mandazis. One day there were some lovely bread roles too. Although admittedly this was a particularly poorly stocked market, my experience of markets so far in Malawi is that often there really isn't very much at all on offer and no matter how much there is, generally it'll only consist of tomatoes and onions and if you're lucky then bananas too. Whilst this would make preparing a meal full of a variety of vegetables and fruit impossible to make, it does mean that I am filled with anticipation and excitement every time I find a market. For every now and then you find something different - perhaps a papaya or some limes or even green peppers, and you can never be sure what if anything you may find.

Being vegetarian here means that most days I eat either vegetables (some kind of leaves cooked if you're lucky with tomatoes) or beans with either rice or nsima. I then will often make myself a tomato and onion salad to eat with bread and Mandazis and what ever else I happen to come across. Sometimes boiled eggs or nuts or potato chips or cassava. The nsima is made either from maize flower and water or from cassava flour and water. The cassava type I really like but generally it'll be the maize one that people make and I find that sadly it's the maize type that doesn't keep me full for long. If you eat meat then you're choice of food is the same just with added animals! In touristic places if you pay a lot more then you can find other foods but for the people who live here that's not an option or a preference, as they're more than happy to eat nsima with meat or the green leaf vegetables or beans for most meals every day. It makes me see more and more how spoilt we are in the western world to have so much choice and variety all of the time.

Anyway, being a very tiny island, Chizumulu doesn't take long to explore. There is one hill, some little sandy paths and many many huge Baobab trees. At the moment none of them have any leaves on and they look like they're upside down with their roots in the air. I'm not sure at which time of year but they grow fruits which are really high in vitamin C. They have a hard fury shell and inside there is dry white stuff that surrounds the seeds which you can eat. The trunks can be used to make rope as are really fibrous and I guess if you hollowed out the trunk then you could make it into a home as they are so very huge.



Along with the many Baobab trees are many children, often excitedly after a gift or money or a picture taken of themselves. Whilst waiting for one of the dhows to Likoma, a lady I'd met on the ferry coming over and I taught some of the children some songs. At first the children were a little suspicious and hesitant to join in but in the end so many children joined us to sing and dance to Ring a Ring of Roses and The Hokey Pokey.