There is a frightening feeling upon the Chiweta road when travelers are going to Karonga, but the fiercest one is the one I got during a school trip from Mzuzu to Karonga. The cold built its fence around our coats in the frozen winds of Kaning’ina. Our eyes hardly gazed at the rising dawn of the fading sun, footsteps clicking towards the bus. In a moment, we were swimming in the bumpy road of Luwinga with a ghostly rising dust chasing the car.
One by one, we started lying on the chairs like sleeping logs after getting bored with how slow the bus was in the smooth tarred road. Three hours had gone, with no sign of approach, having passed Phwezi Secondary School, marking every inch of the ground with yawns of tiredness till the Rumphi end. “Slow down,” the sign post said, and soon whispers of shivering mouths shook the whole bus. “Can you let me know what’s going on?” I asked my friend who was right next to me, but was gasping in fear to produce a word with his voiceless mouth. “CHI-WE-TA,” I read on his jumping lips.
It was very quite in the bus. No sound could indicate human existence. The bus was slow but seemed to be flying in the Chiweta road of seventy two corners. A sudden excitement rushed into our minds when we saw monkeys but suddenly disappeared upon looking at a steep valley along a corner, where a big bus once crashed. The bus crowd zigzag till all seventy two corners vanished. Happiness was built over our languid faces.
About twelve noon we approached the crowded town of Karonga. Without wasting time, we found our feet over the Karonga Museum in a wink. The burning temperature showed no promise of enjoyment. We entered the Museum and saw many Malawian historical objects such as fossils and pictures of great people. We enjoyed looking at several things but the most enjoyable one was the dinosaur skeleton. It looked scary and huge but it was actually fake as it was manmade.
Within a few moments, fun has started fading out. Hunger was in control of our stomachs building its colony. We got out of the museum and saw a very long crack, from the ground to the roof of the museum. We wondered if it was one of the museum’s objects for it was caused by an earthquake. So repairing it would mean erasing history. We laughed with our dropping throats and had a fun time eating. A cold soft drink has perhaps cooled our boiling throats.
