Last Excursions - Refugee Camp, Mua Mission Lilongwe Wildlife Centre

The soap room where they both make and package the soaps

I met my friend Florisa Mugambi (the one who was knighted) at a monthly farmer's market where she was selling some lovely items made out of Chitenje - which is the beautiful fabric that you see in many places in Africa. When I spoke to her, I found out that the items were made at Kibébé a social enterprise outside of a refugee camp connectd to a training centre. Flo's husband grew up as a refugee and I found their story intriguing. 

When Flo told me that they run experiences at the There is Hope training centre and Dzaeleka refugee camp I thought it would be a great thing to do with John's brother and sister in law who were planning to visit us. Flo was kind enough to plan a whole trip on the day that worked the best for our schedule so all four of us were able to attend. It was a fascinating experience - the camp is really a well established city. We had lunch at a restaurant inside the camp and our eyes were opened to a totally new perspective of what a refugee camp is all about. 

Kids with Dzaleka in the background

Another excursion that we saved up for Dan and Ruth's visit was to Mua Mission which is famous for its word carvers and the Kungoni Centre of Culture and Art that is there. It was fun to see the carvers at work, to shop for some wood carvings and fascinating to see the history of three main cultures of Malawi (Chewa, Ngoni and Yao). The centre is the life work of the priest Father Boucher whom we spoke to when we were there. 

We had planned to go to Mua Mission on July 4th, but cancelled due to the demonstrations that were occurring that day. For our visitors last weekend with us we were trying to plan a trip up north to stay on Lake Malawi, but once again plans were foiled by more demonstrations. So, instead, we combined a morning at Mua Mission with a lunch at the Red Zebra on the lake. A bit of a book end since that was were we went my very first weekend in Malawi. 

Since we didn't go away for the whole weekend, we had time to visit the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre on a Sunday afternoon. It was great to see their work - they try to release animals into the wild if possible so there wasn't a huge amount to see. But the animals we did see were in quite natural environments and walking on the fallen leaves through the paths was lovely. The monkey above was not in the secure part of the centre - there were LOTS of these guys running around free and we enjoyed their antics and getting right up close to them.