Susan Dalgety and her husband have given up their jobs, let their heavily mortgaged house and headed off to travel the world in a camper van. SW is following her experiences and you can also read her blog, The Road To Dot, online at www.theroadtodot.blogspot.comWE WERE halfway up the mountain track, balancing on the tenth hairpin bend, when I realised what we were doing was madness.
It had all seemed so simple when we were planning our trip to Livingstonia, the mission established by an Aberdeen doctor, Dr Robert Laws, in 1894.
I was desperate to see the place that is the foundation of the enduring friendship between Scotland and Malawi; the guide book’s description of the access road as “one of the most exciting drives in Africa” only whetted my appetite for adventure.
After all, as I told my husband, if Dr Laws and his wife Margaret could make the trip in an ox cart, then surely we could do it in a Land Rover.
We were to stay the night at a backpacker’s camp on the northern shores of Lake Malawi and after breakfast would travel the 15km to Livingstonia in the camp’s trusty 4x4.
“We don’t do the trip any more,” shrugged Alex, the barman-cum-receptionist, as we checked in.
“I like your band, can I have it?” he said, pointing to my grubby Make Poverty History wristband, which has survived three years, two job changes and a few broken promises by the G8 countries.
“No!” I shouted above the Robbie Williams soundtrack.
We were consoling ourselves with a glass of South African red when we were befriended by two young Malawians, Hardson and John. After charming us into buying seven keyrings, “the money is for our school fees, madame”, they overheard us discussing our aborted trip. “We will get you a car and a good driver madame,” they promised.
Which is how we found ourselves half-way up the rocky track, not in a Land Rover, but in our hired Japanese saloon car, driven by Peter, the local mechanic and Livingstonia’s relief ambulance driver.
Hardson and John lolled in the back seat with me. They passed the slow, treacherous ascent by trying out all the ring tones on my phone, while I sat white-faced, clutching my seat belt. “It isn’t ours, we can’t afford to get it fixed, this is madness, oh my god, look at the view,” I squealed every time a rock hit the underside of the car. Peter just smiled and kept driving.
And then we were there. In a little bit of Scotland, 3,000 feet above sea level, on a beautiful plateau in the Rift Valley escarpment.
There is a church that wouldn’t be out of place in Morningside; a teacher-training college, a technical college, one of the best secondary schools in the country, a 100-bed hospital and the Stone House – Dr Law’s genteel home, which is now a museum and hostel for the many volunteers who still follow in his giant footsteps.
As we scrambled down the track on our way back – common sense had prevailed and I had persuaded Peter the descent would be much safer without my fat backside in the car – I stopped for breath.
When we decided to throw up our jobs, rent out our flat and blow our modest legacy on this adventure, we thought we were being very daring. We were not.
We travel in comfort most of the time, stay connected to home by e-mail and text and have a plethora of guide books, websites and friends to help us find our way.
Dr Robert Laws had none of those things. He was guided not by Lonely Planet, but by the inspiration of Dr David Livingstone, his faith and a very Scottish belief in the power of education to transform lives.
As I squatted on the precarious sandstone rocks, looking down on Lake Malawi, I was very proud to be Scottish, and very, very happy to have survived the drive of a lifetime.
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www.theroadtodot.blogspot.com
The full article contains 715 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
