Malawi

It’s been too long.

I normally go back twice a year, but this year my commitments haven’t allowed a mid-year trip. It’s been 10 months, and I’m feeling it.

The sky - it’s so much bigger there. And the lake – swimming in it, sitting by it, looking at it, counting the fishing boat lights at night, which make a horizon. It’s the rain, real hard rain, relieving the heat and leaving freshness and flying ants. It’s the dust and the red sunsets.

It’s the people and their openness and warmth. Life can be so hard, and yet I’ve never seen so much smiling. Always time to talk and laugh. Really beautiful people.

It’s putting down my suitcases, taking off my shoes and walking out into the garden. It’s tea-time with the cats and dogs. Banana bread.

It’s the baobab named Julia, which we pass on the way to the lake. She’s the first one you notice – after her, you realise that you are surrounded by them, having descended 500m since Lilongwe. Then you stop to buy some mangos. And the tomatoes are so full of flavour – as are the avocados.

Why do I feel so free there?

All the parts of London that I normally love seem to have dulled. I don’t care about the anonymity of London, which I usually indulge in. As I cycle over Vauxhall Bridge in the morning, I don’t get excited by the view of Battersea power station, or St Paul’s when I cross Waterloo Bridge. I don’t want to discover another amazing little theatre doing Shakespeare. I don’t feel like socialising and meeting all the interesting people that you do in London. I know I will appreciate these again, but for now they seem so meaningless to me.

And maybe it’s other things that are making me blue. The lengthening hours of darkness as winter approaches. The pressures of a work-and-study lifestyle and the worries about my dissertation. Or being just too far from my family.

But I long for Malawi and I’m counting the days.