Planet Earth: Lake Malawi

If you like camping on the beach, crystal blue water, hanging out with crazy people and three days of amazing worldwide music then Mangochi, Malawi is the place to be in late September every year for Lake of Stars music festival.  It’s truly as awesome as it sounds.  BUT if you want to track monkeys, hear stories about black mambas, and watch a nine year old kid swim 5 kilometers then go to the village just north of Mangochi any time of the year and ask for the coolest kid in the world named Hossua.  He’s never ever left his village so he should be there waiting for you.

On Saturday afternoon, while the music was on hold for a few hours, we decided to trek north of the site of the festival to where we heard there was a swimming area with even clearer blue water and a big hill with tons of monkeys.  Jackpot.  When we got to the swimming hole we were lucky enough to have some entertainment as 4 young local kids in their whitey tighties were launching themselves off a nearby rock into the water.

After a good hour of cooling off in the water and watching the kids still jumping and screaming, we decided to see what these monkeys were up to.

When we walked past the kids they were in awe of white people who would venture outside the walls of the festival into their village.  When their wide-eyed stare didn’t fade, I invited one of the kids to come on a hike with us to find monkeys, not expecting them to understand anything I said.  They quickly answered in very good English, “Yes,” and came charging up the hill with us in nothing but their underwear and whatever they could quickly grab before following us.

Right from the get-go the second oldest brother took nature’s center stage, Bear Grylls-style.  He quickly introduced us to his older brother and two younger sisters before stopping dead in his tracks and jutting his arm out in front of me (Mr. Costanza’s move) to stop me from stepping on something with my flip flops.  He picks up what looks like a coconut but with thousands of micro needles on it and says “these ruins sandals.”  Then threw it aside and proceeded to step on a couple of the “sandal ruiners” with his bare feet with no reaction.  The thickness of the calluses on the bottom of his feet, showing he clearly had never worn shoes, made me wonder how he even knew what sandals were.

We continued up the trail to where the monkeys were and became sidetracked by a huge bald eagle in the distance. 

As we moved off the trail into some green bushes to get a better picture of the eagle, Hossua comes running towards us yelling for us to get out of the bushes.  Apparently a week ago he saw a green mamba (read: one of the deadliest snakes in the world) slither into those bushes and he said it would be impossible to see them in those bushes until it was too late.  We quickly hopped out of the bushes into salvation on the dirt path and continued our search for the monkeys.  A few minutes later Hossua, whose excitement constantly took him at least 20 yards ahead of us, stopped and waved us towards him.  

He pointed down at the ground to a “fresh monkey foot,” and just as we got closer he ran 10 feet away to show us a half eaten string-bean-looking-thing that monkeys love. He handed it to me and I had it about 3 inches away from my mouth to taste it as he casually slaps it out of my hand and tells me its poisonous to humans.  Without Hoss I’d be dead times 2. 

After thirty seconds of walking in the direction of the tracks we look up and see the coolest looking little monkey just staring down at us as he eats his monkey dessert, human poison bean.  

I noticed that Hoss gave the monkey what seemed like a really heartfelt snarl so I asked him if he liked monkeys.  He hates them.  Apparently they steal the corn meal (the base for every traditional meal in this region of Africa) from homes in the village so the locals hate them.  While we were dreaming of catching the monkeys to make them our pet and play with them, he was dreaming of bringing it back to the village so his family could get their revenge.

He said that the only way people ever catch monkeys is if they have a dog.  When we asked him if he had a dog he laughed and said they couldn’t afford it but they had a cat that would catch birds.  He tried to explain the type of birds that his cat (named “cat”) catches but we couldn’t understand what he was saying.  One of them flew over our heads and landed on a branch about 100 feet away but only Hoss saw it.  He tried to point it out to us in the branches but the bird blended in too well for any of us to see.  He picked up a rock and gave it a hefty sidearm throw into this tree.  As the rock curved right on target he casually says, “its right there” as the rock hits the bird dead on and it flew away.  He just as casually moves onto the next topic of conversation, disregarding the amazing fact that he has the arm of a right fielder and the precision of a brain surgeon.  That mixed with the fact that this kid has the mind of a scientist, I’m pretty sure if he ever gets out of his village he’s going to take over the world.

As he was telling us about his 5 km swims that he normally does in the crocodile and hippopotamus infested lake, he told us the story of getting out of the water and finding himself in between a black mamba (read: the deadliest snake in the world) and the fish it was catching.  With a rock in his hand as a last resort, he hopefully threw it the snakes way and swiftly avoided it, leaving the encounter a large scrape from an underwater rock.  It had just happened a few days earlier so he proudly showed off his cuts as a trophy of his triumph over the deadly snake.

Feeling sufficiently inferior as we trekked back to the water, I quickly tried to think of something to bring to the table and teach these kids who had at least 13 years less experience on earth than me.  Should be easy right?  So I picked up a flat rock on the shoreline and whizzed it off into the horizon, getting about 3 skips on the water before it sank underwater.  Hoss exclames, “WOAH” and comes closer to see how to hold the rock to skip it.  I show him and he grabs a rock off the ground and rears back and unloads.  He got a minimum of 25 skips before the rock settled underwater.  This kids a freak.

When we accepted our inferiority we sat on the beach and watched as the kids performed nothing short of a high priced circus act.  From balancing on each others arms to playing the butt bongos on each other to having a fashion show with our clothes to making slingshots that shot bamboo sticks with deadly accuracy.

Finally when we had to get back to our campsite we said our goodbyes and started to walk away before Hoss invited us to his house to see his father’s workshop where he makes different crafts out of ebony wood.  We gladly accepted the invitation and were not surprised when Hoss’s father showed us some of the coolest crafts I have ever seen.  We all put in an order for what we wanted and came back the next day to purchase so very cool African artwork. We then said our goodbyes to Hoss and the family and left Mangochi the next day with the coolest story of anyone in attendance at Lake of Stars.