A quick decision is made and I get a shared taxi to Nkhata Bay. The pot holed M5 road is being widened and resurfaced as we get near an election year. I help a lady with some big bags at the taxi rank and again to get to the ferry dock. The Ilala leaves at 5 am and she is sleeping on the boat. I am getting a room at the nearest place to the harbour so when I hear the horn in the morning I will be there in time. I eat fish at Mrs Kaunda’s place with a thousand mosquitoes for company and then a beer at The Angel One Bar. The place I’m staying has no electricity which is fine because I am going to bed but after a few beers I need the toilet. I usually fill the bucket/bin in the room and empty it in the morning. The lodge owner here had been very devious as holes had been punched in the bin so as I peed my feet got soaked. I then stumbled in the dark to the toilet, smashed my head on the door and almost dropped my key down the long drop.

The horn sounded and I just got the last boat to the Ilala moored in the bay. The boat was cold but the sunrise over Lake Malawi was beautiful and warmed me. The three hours to Usisya were beautiful. The Ilala is still going strong since being first built in 1954 and recommissioned in 1972 by Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda. It has had three new engines and countless refits since. It is iconic and I love it. The shoreline is where the hills meet the lake. Fishing villages dot the shore and boats or walking are the only forms of transport. I always enjoy spotting the gap in the hills where I first glimpsed the lake when I walked from Chikwina to Usisya back in 2000. Usisya comes into view and we are soon in the bay waiting for the boats to drop us ashore. Getting off and ashore is always fun. A big jump is required to get to the sandy beach or you can just get over the side early with your suitcase on your head. It is only just past 8 am so I take a Sunday morning stroll through the village, find a room and have a chat with Paul Kamanga. He is a preacher and part time fish salesman. I chatted to him in his vest and shorts but failed to recognise him later as he walked past in his dog collar.

A very tall man on a bicycle rides past. He asks me where I am going. He is also going to Nthembo FP School. I tell him my story and he shouts out ‘Bottoman’. In 2000 when I did the FA sponsored course here he was a twelve year old boy playing for the Nthembo team. His name is Abraham Kaunda. He remembers me well and told me all about my four days in Usisya. He said he was inspired to become a sports teacher after my visit and now teaches at the school that he once attended. I promise to print the course manual and send him a copy. I get another surprise as I find out that the lady I have been helping since Mzuzu is the Head’s wife Mrs Nyrienda. Usisya is such a photogenic place and I wasn’t disappointed. Huge baobab trees line the village paths. Houses seem well built with bamboo window bars with small gaps for air to circulate. Lots of cassava is out drying on the fish dryers. The traditional canoes are lined up on the beach ready for the nights fishing expeditions. As the fish comes in women with big pots on their heads run to meet the boats to get the best ones I guess. Children play football with tightly wrapped plastic bags or rags tied with string. It all looks very idyllic but life is tough here for sure. Usisya has its fair share of drunks who spend most of the day outside the small shops and beach bars. Food is at a premium. You can usually get some nsima and fish around lunch time. The colour blue dominates.

The next morning instead of the 5 am ‘call to prayer’ we get the 5 am ‘reggae and soul’ wakeup call from the all night bar. By 6 am the beach is coming alive. Children are playing football and doing somersaults before they go to school. Women are washing pots with the sand and carrying big bundles of fire wood on their heads. Naked heavily muscled fishermen are back from last night on the lake washing themselves and their clothes. I get some buns, milky tea and watch the world go by. Before I left I had time to go to the TEMWA offices and meet Wongani the office manager. He tells me about TEMWA and their work. Two English girls had visited Usisya once as backpackers and had made friends with a man who subsequently had died of Aids. He had left a huge family with no support for the future. The girls set up this NGO to support communities here and now help with education, health, micro-finance and agro-forestry projects. TEMWA means ‘Love’. Maybe we could do something together next time I visit. The Ilala arrives by 10.30 am and we are back in Nkhata Bay soon and an hour later back in Mzuzu at the Zingilirani.

The next morning I say goodbye to Mzuzu and head north to Karonga. I want to meet PCB Mkandawire and make a plan for next year. He agrees to do a budget along the same lines as the Chitipa course. I find out that the ‘P’ stands for Pauper after years of being friends. I chat to the man in the Karonga Museum who discovered the dinosaur here a few years ago. Karonga has grown a lot more than Chitipa over recent years with a lot of Indian and Chinese shops which Chitipa doesn’t have as yet. The government let them set up business and take 25 % in tax. There have been a lot of stories lately of Indian businessman trying to take huge amounts of foreign exchange out of Malawi illegally. I spend a day enjoying Karonga, meeting people and talking. I start with breakfast of tea and chapatti’s at Mama Gene’s. I meet Lydia Tambala, the Karonga District Sport Officer sitting at her desk. Her office is identical to Rowland’s. A broken motorbike is wedged in behind a big desk. Ten UNICEF donated boxes of equipment are piled high and Professor Arthur Peter Mutarika is overlooking the inactivity. She explains the UNICEF donation which I hadn’t really got from Rowland. In August 2016 they gave ten boxes of equipment to each of the twenty six district sports offices. They were supposed to be used for holding primary sports festivals in the zones. In Karonga Lydia has held two so far with only a few schools attending because of transport issues. She told me her office has no funds to pay for allowances for her and school teachers to attend such events. The winning school got the equipment. I thought there was surely a better way to make use of it all. The equipment was slowly being depleted not for the intended purpose. She showed me one complete box. Her office sign is the same one as I remember with no attempt to change it in seventeen years. It was all a bit sad. She didn’t have the enthusiasm of Rowland as she sat back down behind her desk as I left. In Chitipa Rowland had been given an extra five boxes to target two zones with a project called ‘Action for Adolescences’ which Rowland had told me about. The funds had been used to hold a FAM ‘C’ License coaching course for twenty teachers which John Kaputa the FAM Head of Coaching had come and delivered.

In old Karonga I sit and talk to a group of men drinking Chibuku in a small bar. They are getting pretty drunk and quite vocal arguing with each other. There were two older men who had the chance to leave Malawi in the 1950’s and make money in the Zambian copper mines. Life for them had been alright. Then there were some younger men who talked negatively about Malawi today. ‘People are on their own in Malawi as the governments completely fail us with the high levels of corruption, nepotism and incompetence’. Things are surely worse now than back in 1999/2000. I have a bed tonight at the aptly named ‘Fuka Fuka’ Lodge near the roundabout. I hear the trucks arrive, lots of laughing and greeting as the girls manoeuvre. Then doors close. It gets noisy in the early hours as the girls want paying but the men want sleeping. The most used words I hear are ‘Uncle’ and ‘Dalama’ meaning money. I am up early and soon at Songwe the border. My last five hundred kwacha is spent on tea and chapatti. It is very easy getting out and back into Tanzania. A further $30 transit visa will be enough. Back in Mbeya I change lodges and check into the Weme Bar and Rest House. You get a lot more for your money in Tanzania for sure with a nice bed, shower, toilet and chair for £2.50. The road from the border to Mbeya is beautiful through tea estates and pine forests. Tanzania is surely doing better than its southerly neighbour. One reason is the campaign against corruption that new President John Magafuli is taking. He has a zero tolerance it seems and is making huge progress. It is all very different to Arthur Peter Mutarika and his corrupt friends in Malawi.

I am ready to leave now. It has been a great trip and plans are in place for next time. I try and find Kinnah Phiri, Malawi’s greatest ever football player from the 1970’s and now head coach of Mbeya City. I find the team training but Kinnah is in Malawi they told me. My parting gesture is to give my famous old blue shorts and the broken trainers to Mr Nyinza, the Mbeya ‘Shoe Doctor’. I get a coming home shave and haircut as things were looking very grey up top. I just manage to remember to reset my watch to Tanzania time. I returned an hour later to see Mr Nyinza very busy at work. The trainers had been washed and the new heels were being crafted from old car tires. My Salvation Army donated trainers would be reborn in Mbeya. I am financial planning down to the very last shilling as I leave. I have 1000 shillings to get to the airport. The shared taxi costs 10,000 if you can find one. I know another way. The end of the minibus route through Mbeya is Mbalisi. Here Tunduma and even Songwe buses leave. I drop outside the airport and watch the other passengers arrive and have their bags carried to departures by drivers. We are slightly delayed but that is fine as my flight doesn’t leave Dar es Salaam until 3 am tomorrow.