Childhood Days Part 4

Malawi has a lake. Funnily enough it is called Lake Malawi! It is 365 miles long and 52 miles wide. A mile for every day of the year long, and a mile for every week wide. It is extremely beautiful, and apparently even now, a lot of it is very unspoilt by tourism.

We used to go up to the lake quite often. We had some friends who worked for a tea estate in the south of Malawi, and the company they worked for owned a cottage on the lake shore. It was a beautiful cottage, but unfortunately I don’t have a photo of it because all of our pictures were on slides. One of these days we are going to get a slide scanner so we can have all of these wonderful memories on disc and easily accessible.

Anyway, we had a boat of our own, which was an inflatable boat with an outboard engine. However, at this cottage there was a solid yellow boat, which we used to use when we were there. The outboard engine fitted on the back, and instead of a mast we had a Carlsberg beer parasol! We have some fantastic photos of me and my cousins trying to push the boat into the lake all with different silly hats on! My younger cousin had a bucket instead of a hat though! One time we were there with some friends – my friend RP (who was one of the friends who lived next door to us) and her mum who was my mum’s best friend. My mum and dad took me and RP out on the boat one day. Quite often we would jump over the side for a swim, and we asked this day if we could skinny dip. My mum said yes of course, so we stripped off our swimming costumes, and we were about to climb over the side when all of a sudden my mum said in a firm but not too loud voice “STOP!” We stopped. At the lake we all knew that if we were told to do something we had to do it.
About 100 yards away from us were some hippos in the water. Hippos are extremely aggressive animals, and will attack humans or boats. We hurriedly got our legs back into the boat and my mum tried to start the engine. As always happens when you are panicking, it wouldn’t start, and wouldn’t start. Eventually it did, and we sped (I say sped, I think it was only a 7 horse power engine!) off back to our cottage. That was quite a scary experience!

Another place we used to visit at the lake was called Cape Maclear. I’m not sure where the name came from, but the water there was beautifully clear so maybe it was because of that. There was a lovely white beach (although there was a it of a problem with red stinging ants there) and a place called Otter Point.Obviously it was a place well known for its otters – I never knew there were otters in Africa – didn’t twig with the name until now! D’oh!

Anyway, we used to snorkel around Otter Point looking at the beautiful tropical fish there. They would have mainly been cichlids I think, but I’m sure there were other species there too. They were beautiful and the colours were lovely.
One day we were up there with some friends and their kids who were on holiday from boarding school. I can only have been about 4 I think. Anyway, my mum and dad went off for a swim and decided it was quiet enough to have a little skinny dip. My mum slung her bikini top and bottom over her arm and carried on swimming. When they decided it was time to come out of the water my mum went behind a rock to put her bikini back on. The bottoms were easy enough, but the top had gone walkabout (or swimabout!).
She peeked out from over the rock to shout to our friend who was sitting on the beach to swim out to her with her other swimming costume – there must have been other people on the beach. The friend shook her head, and wouldn’t bring the costume out to her! She kept her waiting for a good few minutes just to wind her up, but eventually took it out to her!

I’m sure there are other stories of the lake – as I think of more, I will be sure to post them!
NB. Photographs Not My Own Work