Leaving Petauke

July 25th, Day 44:

Today we woke up early once again because we had an interview with Radio Explorer in Petauke scheduled for 830am. It was a pretty fun interview because we were able to discuss a number of issues and go into detail about our journey and what we are hoping to accomplish. That is one of the good things about radio interviews, unlike newspaper articles that are hit or miss, we can basically talk about what we want to talk about on the air, with some direction from the interviewer. The person who interviewed us, Patrick, was a very nice guy who we really enjoyed talking to and he was very much in support of our trip. We were told radio is one of the main means of communicating news in Zambia, so we are hoping for some support from Zambians as we ride through their country.

After the interview, we went back to the motel to pack up our bicycles. Aaron had to go find a new tire because his back tire had given out the day before and he would be unable to ride without a replacement. Luckily he was able to find a new tire and I met him at the town center where he was fixing his bike. It was pretty easy to find him, since I could spot from a far distance a large group of people in a circle staring at something. This of course was Aaron, sitting on the ground putting his bike back together with at least fifty onlookers. It was nothing we weren't accustomed to so we just went on with our usual routine and soon we were back on the road, only a few hundred miles from Lilongwe, Malawi.

Our destination for the day was unknown, but we wanted to get at least 60 miles in so that we would be able to get into Malawi the following day. The wind was once again coming directly at us on this cool Saturday morning, but that did not deter us. We had a plan, and were going to stick to it. We had a pretty interesting twenty mile break, when we stopped on the side of the road in this small village. The children were once again giddy with excitement for spotting two "Azungus", yet when we tried to approach them and interact, they would immediately dart in the other direction as if we were trying to hurt them or something.

Instead of just sitting down and resting, we decided to test out our legs on this day, and essentially a large game of Hide and Seek took place after that with the whole village taking part. The parents of the children and elders were all in laughter as we chased after the kids and tried to catch them. What was different about this game of Hide and Seek then ones we played when we were kids was that these children really feared being caught, not realizing that we were just trying to have fun. The kids eventually realized, maybe with the help of their parents, that we were just trying to enjoy playing with them, and that we were not very scary. I definitely had not played Hide and Seek in a while so it brought back some old childhood memories from years ago, when I was a young chap.

Anyway, we ended the game after a little while because we needed to get back on the road, waving goodbye to the children who were still somewhat afraid to approach us. It was a pretty uneventful bicycle ride from our twenty mile break to when we stopped in a remote village after it had gotten too dark outside and we had gone 65 miles on the day. We decided to find a place to set up our tent for the night, and we were escorted by a local teenager to the chief's house. He said we were more than welcome to set up our tent in front of his house, and even enlisted a family nearby to help us with our things, and let us use their fire to cook dinner.

Our dinner would consist of N'shima once again, with a little relish on the side. We were all gathered around the fire, and Aaron started to cook the N'shima. It wasn't long until the mother of the family that had been helping us had intervened and decided it was her job to cook us dinner. We were grateful, because we are pretty big amateurs with N'shima, and the mother whipped it together in a couple of minutes. It was a pretty neat experience, because Aaron showed them how to make sugared nuts, by simply mixing sugar and water on the stove and tossing in the nuts. The kids of the family were especially thrilled the sugared and we had enough to spread around the whole family.

Stuffed from the N'shima and nuts, we set up our tent in front of the chief's house; it was very windy outside so we had to use the stakes to secure our tent from not blowing away. The winds would get worse as the night went on, possibly putting our next day's ride in jeopardy but that is for another post...