PANTS ON FIRE! The drive to Lilongwe took longer than we expected. We had spent a couple of hours choosing our chairs and had forgotten that we had a further 300kms to get to Malawi's capital. As the sun was setting, children played football and waved as we passed, and thunder roared in the distance. By 6.30pm the road had become pitch black, due to an early sunset and the storm clouds. As a rule we try not to drive in the dark as African roads are filled with people, animals, potholes and the few other cars on the roads often don't have lights. Driving late leaves little room for contingency, in the unlikely event that something will happen to the car. Sure enough, as we were approaching the outskirts of Lilongwe the 'unlikely event' happened. Camilla smelt burning, looked down to see smoke, quickly turning into flames coming from under her seat! We stopped in sheer panic by a stall selling pineapples. The pineapple seller reminded us we had a fire extinguisher and we squirted white powder all over the cab. This of course caused great amusement to the ever-growing gathering of locals who always seem to appear from nowhere when two muzungos have a spot of bother. After the momentary panic we were back on the road...with a burnt out battery and several pineapples. The reason for the fire was the terminal of our second battery that we installed in Kenya, (due to our first battery being blown up by well meaning but incompetent helpers in Khartoum), had made contact with the chassis. This in turn created a spark that caught the fireproofing under the passenger seat. Luckily very little damage was done but we realised we had had a close shave (Camilla just wishes Rich would have the same!)