That’s the unofficial byline for Malawi. The country is stunning with its rolling green mountains strewn with straw huts, kids playing with balls they made with blown up condoms wrapped with plastic bags and twine. Lake Malawi itself is a site; a massive ocean sized body of fresh water plagued with balharzia (a parasite that grows in snails and follows the trail of urine to their human hosts). Its sandy shores were perfect places to pitch our tents and camp a few lazy days away. It’s a very quiet, subdued country where the only hustle and bustle is at the souvenir shacks where they try to sell all kinds of wood carvings including the famous Malawi chairs and tables that they’ve polished with Kiwi Shoe Shine. One day as we were looking out over the water we saw what looked like smoke rising out of the water in the distance but there was no visible fire or island. It turns out that they have colossal fly storms with literally millions of lake flies swarming around blocking out the sky, so dense that it looked black from miles away. We also happened to be there at the beginning of rainy season and half way through got hit by a riotous storm. It was during spiked punch night so while many were wobbling around camp the lightning show was exploding over the water. First the thunder approached us with increasing volume, then we noticed the heightened lightning activity (which was phenomenal to watch). When the galing winds hit us and the first few drops fell we ran to get the tarp over our tent. We tried to warn the drunken crowd but their hearing was impaired. Just as we were about to finish staking in the tarp the downpour (and here I stress DOWN POUR) hit us like a wall enclosing us under Yosemite Falls. The lightning and thunder were on top of and each strike was deafening and not only shook our bones but sounded like the earth and sky had cracked open in unison. The seams in our tent started to leak but there so was nothing more we could do but sleep it out. In the morning everyone was trying to recover from the camp site turned swamp. Walking around meant sloshing in six inches of water and some tents fared better than others. There was a direct correlation between how much punch people drank and how soaked their stuff got.