Taking out the nets.......

Today I was travelling part way to Blantyre for a workshop starting on Tuesday. Its an all day drive so I decided to stop along the lakeshore and spend the night at a lodge. The lodge was great, the weather was good and I watched a group of fishermen cast out their nets, or rather their green mosquito nets sewn together (these are given to them free to prevent malaria), and catch a few small fish called Usipa.

This is the brave man who took the nets - about 70 or 80 feet long at least and put them out far in the lake. This man stood up in his dug out canoe and put the nets carefully into the water. When he came back to shore he had to bail out the water - the canoe was almost half full.

Ropes are tied on each end of this massive length of nets and three met sit at one end on the shore and three men on the other end and gradually pull the net in. There were about 10 men in the operation all together. Each time they did it, it took about 45 minutes - 1 hour. At the end of two attempts, they only got a small dish of Usipa each. But as one man told me - 'its food for the family'!