Early Saturday morning saw us heading to the bus depot to
find a bus to Dedza. The depot in itself
was a new one on me – I’ve never seen so many minibuses in one place, with all
the noise and chaos that goes with it.
The problem with getting on a bus, is that it then doesn’t go anywhere,
or not very far – until it’s full. We
were lucky, our conductor was a real hustler, I’ve no idea how he was
persuading people, but almost all those who said no ended up getting on, mainly
when there was clearly no more space.
At various points on the journey we had live chickens in
carrier bags, all poking their poor little heads out through the plastic to
breathe, huge sacks of maize that somehow got forced into the boot and under the
seats. “Sister, lift up your feet!”. Oh and the real highlight, which not only
happened on the way there, but on the way back too – a massive basket of
(relatively) recently caught fish – no ice, just the fish humming nicely in the
heat. Combine that with the massed body
odours of a dozen or so people who haven’t washed in a while, and you begin to
get the idea!
The journey took about 2 and a half hours, including all the
times the driver stopped for coke or chips and all the times we waited for our
conductor to hustle, which included him successfully tempting people off other buses going
to the same place!
Dedza mountain apparently has some rock paintings near the
summit, unfortunately I didn’t find this out until Sunday morning ….
After a long walk, almost to the top, we followed some very
helpful local boys who showed us the shortcut back to the Pottery – where the
toasted sandwich turned out to be fried, but by that time I was too hungry to
care. The cheesecake that Dedza pottery
is famous for proved well worth the wait
- the service very much on the relaxed side, apparently another thing
Dedza pottery is famous for, oh and pottery of course!
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