Yesterday I got a text from Atusaye: “Sorry I may be late this morning, we have been blessed with a baby daughter.”

Some readers may have met Atusaye, our Team Leader in Malawi, when he was in Scotland in May and it’s great news that he and Wezzie have welcomed a baby daughter into their family. To free Atusaye to spend time with his family, and because Mzuzu was cold and wet, I said that I would go to Nkhata Bay for the weekend and work from here. It’s less than one hour’s drive, but the lakeshore is about 10 degrees warmer than Mzuzu because of the height difference. There’s still plenty work to do, but it’s a nice place to work from.

Last week at this time I was further south on the lake, running some training workshops. On a break, I took a kayak out on the lake and was quickly joined by two boys in dug out canoes, eager to see if the old man was going to capsize! It soon changed into a race, but I had a much lighter plastic boat, so it wasn’t really a fair contest.

Then everything changed.

We were joined by half a dozen canoes with fishermen who also wanted to challenge the white guy. There wasn’t much English being spoken, but we worked out the details. It was agreed that there would be a prize of 10,000 kwacha for the winner (about £5) and off we went. I finished second which I was pleased enough with, given that they were professionals but I had by far the lighter boat. They all reckoned Malawi had thrashed Scotland, “Just like the Queens did yesterday!” Scotland had lost to Malawi at the Netball World Cup the day before and netball is a huge sport here.

It turned out I had to give the prize money of course. I asked what would have happened if I won and I was told I could give the prize to myself. I think that’s pretty much how the Malawi economy works!

There was a lot of joy and loads of smiles in that encounter on the lake. Simple fun, and no barriers. I’ve been reflecting on that, because so often I’m talking about how hard life is in Malawi (it is), and how poor many people are (and they are), yet Malawians are some of the warmest, friendliest and most content people you could ever meet.