Korea was calling and we had to go!

Well hello folks!

It has been a very long time since we last posted anything on here and that has been due to a number of various reasons that I will quickly skirt over so we're all on the same page! lol!

Since I last posted we have celebrated Danielle's 25th birthday while in Malawi.  This was preceded by a number of bouts of what appeared to be an emotional breakdown (nothing to do with her age) due to the medication that we were taking for Malaria - Lariam.  It seems that the drug was causing her to be extremely overly emotional resulting in tears flowing at any point - even in the middle of laughing she would break down into floods of tears!

There was an up side to the tablets in that they temporarily rid Danielle of any intolerances to the food types that normally plagued her - but the final straw was when she started having nightmares about the snakes and scorpions crawling over her during her sleep.  So it was clear a change was needed.

So we made a big thing of celebrating her birthday as a bit of a pick-her-up!  I was a bit crap to be honest - we were in the middle of nowhere and the option of even getting her a present was a far fetched one! A card.... well, they don't even seem to have postcards here nevermind Birthday cards!

We went out to the next lodge, Chintheche Inn where two of our friends Nick and Zana are in charge, for a lovely meal and a change of scene.  It was great food which we were so glad it lived up to our expectations. 

On Danielle's actual birthday we all got together to have a brie (BBQ) with Richard, Lauren, Zana and Nick.

During the course of the evening of the party it was sort of decided that Danielle and I needed to escape from Makuzi for a bit and it was agreed that if we could sort out the logistics of it all then we would take the following weekend off.  We decided to head south ( a 7 hour drive) to a music festival called Lake of Stars - an event that was also to be Danielle's first experience of CAMPING!!! (Something she swore she would never do!)

So, we went for broke and did it - borrowed a tent, some mats to sleep on, the ute and hit the road!

The drive down was great - it felt like we'd had our wings released and it was such a relief to see Danielle suddenly come back to life as we enjoyed the scenery, trees and people.

Even though we had already done our sums and knew it was going to be an expensive 5 days away - we knew we both needed it and even if it left us broke it would be worth it!

Lake of Stars is quite a good idea as far as festivals go.  It is organised by an organisation in London and really tries to attract UK based artists along with a number of African based ones to perform at a weekend festival.  It is also promoted via STA which means that a lot of young people take the opportunity to visit Malawi for Lake of Stars and then also either have a safari or travel around the country which helps feed into the economy of the locals - not necessarily the government (which is possibly the bane of the country's problems).

Anyway... it was great to get away and I really enjoyed the driving too - could have been a longer trip but work called!

The next thing we knew emails expressing concern over our skype connection and telephone line began to come through to let us know that if the connection wasn't improved then we would not be able to conduct the interviews for Korea... and therefore would not gain a placement for travelling there.

This stumped us... there was no way we could possibly do anything about the quality of phone or internet connection in the whole of Malawi... so we were pushed into making the extremely difficult decision to leave Malawi and return home... devastating for both us, our friends, the school and the children.



Danielle's class.

Colm's class.

The following week, after numerous phonecalls and emails, we were flying back to London.

What happened next I will blog later this week! Promise!