Brushstrokes

I was up early for breakfast and walked down to the home with Caroline in time to start painting at 8 o’clock. My father would shudder at the thought of me painting window frames – my ‘steady’ hand is more akin to Drunken Master than Zen Master and there was no masking tape to compensate for the occasional (ha!) slip. Fortunately, function over form is the standard in Malawi and, having inspected Grey’s work (Grey is one of the team of grounds staff employed at the home. His English is excellent and he made pleasant company as we painted away.), I simply got on with the business of ‘slapping’ it on. Later, job done, I had the time to sit and play with the kids until Neville was free to discuss my travel plans. I wanted to visit Liwonde National Park, the Zomba Plateau and Mt. Mulanje over the next 10 days or so and, given that Patty and the girls were to be driven to Liwonde the following morning, I was considering trying to cadge a lift with them. Neville thought this would be a good plan and kindly offered to lend me a tent and his Trangea stove, as camping would be easy and considerably cheaper than the game park’s chalets. I spoke to Patty and she was amenable to my joining the party as long as there was room, so I hurried off in to town to buy some essentials for my camp kitchen and to get my bags packed before our evening at the Malia gig.
Malia is a French-based jazz/soul artiste who hails, originally, from Malawi (Malawian mother and English father). The gig in Blantyre was to be her first back in her home country and Neville, Caroline and the three Americans were all coming along for the fun. The music was not what I’d have put down as my first choice for entertainment (come on…it wasn’t trance!!) but Malia really did have a beautiful voice and I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. She was obviously a little nervous at how her home-crowd would react but by the third song she was getting into it along with everybody else in the room. Star attraction, though, was her excellent bass-player – a Cameroonian named Etienne, whose funky, slap-bass and amazing singing voice (when cajoled, bashfully, into performing a breathtaking solo) were of an entirely different class. Neville dropped Caroline and I back at Kebula by 9.30 and I went straight to bed with my big trip ahead of me the following morning.