Mt. Michiru is a good-sized mountain, and since it makes for a nice outing on the weekends, we decided to climb it again this Sunday (this time the top wasn't covered in a fog bank, but we still didn't make it up early enough to avoid the dust and haze, so it looks like we'll have to return at some point).  The only problem with this hike is the trails, which go straight up the hill.  When the sun is shining, this approach is not so much fun (I'm not sure I'll ever adjust to the fact that it can be over 90 degrees in the winter here), so when we made it back down we were in need of some sustenance.

Fortunately, the drive from Mt. Michiru to the guesthouse passes through a market area, so we stopped off to pick up some food.  Bananas, tomatoes, potatoes, and chickens (alive and dead, but in neither case plucked) were the most common items on offer, and since it is the sugarcane harvest season we also passed a few buckets of freshly harvested cane.  Being the adventurous sort, we decided to stop and pick up some bananas and two sticks of cane - all for less than $0.70.  Both were delicious and made for a great snack after coming down the mountain, although eating the sugarcane was much more labor-intensive than I had expected - first you have to strip the bark (using a knife is smart but the Malawians use their teeth), and then you can get to the fibers which are soaked with the sugary water.  Still, totally worth the $0.15 per stick. 

Working at a research institute is not always the most thrilling of pursuits (most of my internship involves staring at computers and working with databases) and it's always nice to escape the office for a while.  In Michigan there aren't too many hilly places to go (the worst thing about the Midwest) so I was glad to find mountains all around Blantyre when I arrived in Malawi.  Three mountains - Ndirande, Michiru, and Sochi - make a rough triangle around the city, and each one is self-contained nature preserve.  Mt. Michiru was our first target, for no other reason than it was the closest and had a mountain to climb (the hint that leopards still lived in the park didn't hurt either).  With our goal in mind, we sent off to Mt. Michiru over a less-than-perfectly-maintained road (yay for 4WD!), dodging monkeys and baboons along the way (I may have exaggerated slightly).  We went up later on Saturday than planned, and by the time we got there the temperature was a bit high to attempt to climb to the top and decided to take a shorter trail that led over some hyena caves (we didn't see them, but if you stand right on top of one you can smell them - they smelled like wet dog).  Other than this non-encounter with hyenas, monkeys were the most exciting wildlife on the hike (our guide was incredulous that we did not have monkeys in the US - in his words "No monkeys?  Not even in National Parks!?!").

We returned to Mt. Michiru on Sunday and made it to the top this time - unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating and all we could see was the middle of the cloud bank that covered the summit (the picture shows how wonderful the visibility was).  Although the mountain was only about 5,000 feet high, Malawi has not yet adopted the switchback - so the trails often go straight up the mountain.  The benefit to this approach is that the trails are much shorter, but the downside is that people who are not-so-in-shape (like myself) have a more difficult time of it.  Sadly we didn't have any encounters with Large African Mammals, but a group after us was running up the mountain away from a large viper.  Since the mountain is easy to get to and has some pretty quick hikes that get you out of the city and into the field I'm sure that I'll be heading back fairly often during my stay. 

After nearly 40 hours of continuous travel through three countries, including 3 flights, 2 (long) layovers, and a volcano scare, I've finally made it to Blantyre, Malawi, where I'll be working on my summer internship.  Jet-lagged and confused, I landed in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, where I met a staff member from the Malaria Alert Center who happened to be in Lilongwe for sample collection and drove me down to Blantyre.

The road from Lilongwe to Blantyre was technically a highway, but not what you or I think of as a highway.  Highways in Malawi are used by everyone - pedestrians and bicyclists often outnumbered the cars, and as it got darker I began to realize why traffic accidents are a leading cause in sub-Saharan Africa (hint: horns are not always effective at getting a cyclist or pedestrian to scoot over quickly).  Most stalls, selling everything from fruit to cell phones to birds on a stick (fun fact: you can buy 5 roasted birds for 100 Kwacha, less than a dollar) set up right along the roadside - there are no real exits or even places to pull over safely off the road.

The scenery was amazing.  What struck me first is how different everything is - the crows here have a whit torso, but otherwise look like the crows at home and the trees look different, although I can't quite put my finger on why that is.  The daily life in Malawi is, obviously, very much not like that in America, and it's easiest to see in how young the population is (most people look to be younger than 25) and by how much work the children have to do.  I saw at least 20 kids under the age of 8 herding goats and cattle on the side of the road - one 6-year old was able to herd 20 cattle with just a stick and lots of running.  So after the trip, I'm finally settled in to the guesthouse in Blantyre and ready to start my summer internship - I can't wait.  

It's hard to believe that I'm halfway done with my MPH - the first year went by too quickly, and the end of the year stress (finals, final projects, etc.) helped it to fly by even more quickly.  After finals ended, I noticed something strange - the snow was gone and the weather was gorgeous (lows in the 50's, highs in the mid-70's... while winter is brutal it is hard to dislike MI in the spring).  Given the nice new weather, I decided to explore MI a bit with another epidemiology student, and we found two nice hikes that were good escapes from Ann Arbor. 

One thing that I miss in MI are the hills - I could see mountains from my undergrad and hometown, and when I worked in Germany I was in one of the hillier regions, so MI is oddly flat to me.  Since I was used to this terrain, I just assumed that hiking = walking around in hills and mountains, and that hiking around a flat plain wouldn't be all that much fun.  Needless to say, I was wrong.  We found a bog near Kalamazoo (yes, that's a real place name) and decided that it would make for an interesting adventure, seeing as how I'd never seen a bog before.  It was a nice change from the hills and mountain streams that I was used to - all of the plants were different, there were more birds, and there were a few snakes and frogs to keep things interesting.

However, the trail was probably the most fun part of the hike.  It went right over the bog (I'm not sure how they did it, the plastic boards didn't seem to be anchored to the ground but they were very stable) and if you moved too quickly you could get a bit wet.  We didn't expect that the trail would fight back, so the first few steps were a bit wetter than we had anticipated, but after getting adjusting for the surprising squirts it was a nice way to cool off and it always made for a nice surprise.  On the way back from Bishop's Bog, we stopped at Bell's Brewery, which has some of Michigan's best local beer and should be a required stop if you find yourself in the area. 

I'll be heading off to Malawi for my summer internship soon (more on that later), but when I get back to MI I'm looking forward to exploring more of what the state has to offer - especially since I'll only have one more year to take advantage of it.