Likoma Island, PADI Diving and Dr Kumpulotta the Witch Doctor

5 days left and counting. We are just back from a Visa run to Likoma Island in Malawi; we took a few days and had a break.

I did a PADI Open water Scuba Diving course, wish I had done it 30 years ago! It is so cool, floating underwater. We did theory and shallow dives near the beach to familiarise and then 4 dives from a boat. Backward rolls off the edge, etc, James Bond style. The first one we went straight into a shoal of tiny silver nsipa fish. Amazing! Then later we were swimming along, you stop and look around and there were hundreds of the little black and purple cichlids following us. Curious little blighters!

One of the days we were there was too windy to dive so we hiked across the island to see Dr John William Kumpulotta. He is a famous witch doctor in Malawi and lives on Likoma Island. We went with Joe, a US med student we met at the Mango drift backpacker lodge.

Really interesting, he welcomed us in his “clinic”, a room where a lot of patients and relatives were sitting, done out a bit to look like a church, white cloth with red crosses, a sort of pulpit and a bible. He told us his story, (translated by an assistant) with lots of requests for donations, and the whole event took an hour and a half, pretty amazing, lots of Hallelujahs, and Amen’s. Some of the “audience” told their stories of how they had been cured by the doctor.

Afterwards we walked to Mbamba, the main township and looked around the Likoma “St Peters Cathedral” the largest cathedral in Sub Saharan Africa! Amazing, there was a prayer meeting going on and they nwere all prostrate on the floor chanting and praying , not like a good old Methodist prayer meeting!

All in all a relaxing and interesting break. Then yesterday back to Nkwichi, just like coming home.

This morning I saw a Nyasa Seedbill, very nice, a little bonus in the last week.

It will be strange to leave on Saturday!.................