Friends and kindred spirits
Since I left Malawi I made it through 1800 km, four border crossings, 2 big buses, 7 mini buses, one truck, one bridge and one hippo swamp.
Highlights
include: meeting a prayer group (highly professional with their daily ‘briefings’,
‘debriefings’ and ‘feedback sessions’), a group of missionaries on holidays, slo-mo
talking, picturesque beardy Swedes (impersonators of
coolness in the travellers' world); eating fermented bush fruits (favourite
snack of elephants), as well as being abnormally ecstatic about buying
ingredients for the Greek Salad in the supermarket (ok, I also bought myself a
red nail polish. It made me feel great).
I needed
to fast forward events and places and plough through farmlands of
memory seeds planted by the kindred spirits that I dearly miss.
Joanna and Conaill
Joanna
and Conaill got engaged just before they left Scotland. Kudos to Conaill for
his supermarket proposal. You do not choose the right moment – the right moment
chooses you.
They arranged the wedding formalities within two weeks and
decided to go on a cycling trip to Malawi. Unfortunate event and Jo-Jo’s
twisted ankle made us cross paths in the Mushroom Farm. We’d met again in
Nkhata Bay and decide to merge our Polish-Irish-Scottish travelling routes until
we’d all leave Malawi.
Joanna is
a PhD grad in math and she works in the bicycle store. This dynamite Lady sees
angles when she plays pool and has a wonderful ability to crack muti-digits equations within nanoseconds. She’s also one of the creatures that
turns out to be pretty damn good in everything she does.
Conaill is also a math
pro (surprise, surprise). He works as an engineer in renewable energy sector in
Glasgow. After hours he turns into a jamming cat, giving it all up to guitar
strings and drums.
These
guys have magnificent ability to break your ice and cross the bridges of interpersonal
distances. They are a vivid combo – try loosing sight of them and you’ll find
this crazy couple carrying boxes, docking the boat, working on a farm,
explaining the dark sides of the excel or making a cv for a friend. Most likely
you’ll see them jamming. Beware – they live the music and they will use
everything within their reach – bottles, flip flops, leaves and you.
Listen in
to one of our late night (correction, Malawian late night) jamming session on
the lake shore. The jam starts rather clumsy (and yes, we are sober-ish!),
but it does not matter really - in the end
we all sing the same song.
Now – in this
divine and rough recording you’ll hear a conversation about moving in together
to a blanket house. This is how you get to meet some new cats.
Chifundo
While I
was having breakfast at Buttefly Space I heard this angelic voice coming from
the hell's kitchen. Later on I’d meet the agent of heavens and see him performing
with his friend Nancy. During one of the jam sessions he’d play us some of his
songs. We’d be enchanted by the groove and melancholic sadness of this one. Hey, white person, you’ll cry one day, you’ll
know why you cry - because of things you do not have.
Here’s the
sweet love song and some more on words lost in translation
from the artist himself:
Here’s
the video that Jo-Jo and Conaill recorded for Chifundo in Nkhata Bay. Check it
out.
Adrian
You know
a rock star when you see one.
Adrian is a winner of one of the Malawian Idol
editions. We’d hang out in Nkhata Bay and then meet up again in Lilongwe – his home
town. Adrian is uncontrolled, wild and blissfully
chaotic creature. He loves his people, he loves himself, he loves the music, he loves the world of
dreams and he is grabbing it hard.
Check out
his recordings on youtube and get ahold of his album
Give him a short while and just wait until he invades your spotify and takes over your local venues. He’s coming for you!
Hope to
meet you again in the rock’n’roll heaven cat!
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