Malawi!

"Smile and the world smiles with you" - Stanley Gordon West

Hello again! 

I‘m writing to you after my 5 day adventure in Blantyre, Malawi! As I mentioned I went to go and visit my friend Twisi who is a fellow Heller student. He had previously visited me in Dar and he’s leaving for the United States in a few weeks so I had this great once in a lifetime chance to spend some time getting to see his town and country—once in a lifetime!

OMG Malawi is beautiful!  Malawi is inland compared to Dar and that brings a wide array of different types of vegetation and climate-much cooler yet still very tropical. From the contrast of copper red dirt and the lush green mountains with clouds rolling in to the tropical trees, exotic fruits and monkeys a plenty I couldn’t get enough of what a beautiful place I had just been transported to!

Beautiful Malawi!

I arrived early in the morning on Saturday without much sleep—also carrying everything from the apartment as I was checking out of the lovely Delina apartment where I had been staying for good to prepare for my stay in South Africa. 

On the two hour flight from Dar to Blantyre an amazing thing happened! Who gets on the plane but a fellow Americorps buddy from my time in Washington and his fiancé! They had just finished doing the Peace Corps in Rwanda and were traveling around Africa. I don’t know if it was destiny or just a random coincidence that we all ran into each other there but it was pretty fantastic! We chatted about our Africa experiences and our time together in Washington. Basically the whole event affirmed that those that travel and seek adventure have a strong connection!

Strange coincidence seeing this guy in Africa after our Americorps service together!

Twisi and his son Warren picked me up from the airport and we went back to his home. His wife Judi was a fantastic cook and prepared delicious food for me the entire time I was there.  The house they had was lovely and had a big mango tree outside the front where you could climb up and grab a few mangos.

Imagine having this outside your front yard!

Twisi’s son Warren and I became fast friends-on the first day he took me to the top of a small hill to take in the view. Mountains and mini farms on all sides! It was incredible!

Warren and I on the first day of our adventure

Beautiful view around Twisi's house

Warren showing me whats around 

As I have come to know since arriving in Africa, I get stared at quite a lot by locals and even more so by children. As we were walking up the mountain a bunch of local village kids spotted me and came running! They were shy and curious and I waved hello as they gathered together in a group to watch Warren and I. Many of them had tattered clothes and didn’t have shoes. They spoke Chichewa while Warren spoke English and they were mainly in the business of looking after themselves most of the day. I said hi to them and Warren and I continued about our business. They followed us at a safe distance all the way back home giggling and laughing. This would usually be the space in the blog to insert a picture of these kids with me and all their smiling faces so you could see what it looks like. But I think there are plenty of pictures on the internet of white people and lots of village African kids so I refrained from the African kid selfie as I think in a lot of ways it can be exploitative, misleading and self serving in a lot of ways. Ok, mini rant over!

Twisi and his family took me into Blantyre for a nice view and to see the sights.  Malawi was originally a British “protectorate” that was settled by the Brit’s and the Scottish and you can really tell that by the architecture and general feel of things. Everything was in English and English was one of the primary languages of communication compared to in Tanzania where it is Swahili.

Twisi had also been explaining to me about some of the social structures in the country he was a sociology student just like me so we had lots to talk about along the lines of social class and structure. He lived in a nice and large house near the airport with lots small farm plots around it. He was explaining to me how the middle class of Malawi is getting larger and they are rapidly building homes in the “suburbs” outside of Blantyre because the land is so cheap. Unfortunately the reason the land is so cheap and the reason that the middle class is growing in Blantyre is because they are able to buy land for  very little money from poor farmers who have inherited the land from years of their families living on it. Twisi mentioned he bought his land for a few hundred dollars from a farmer who was desperate to sell at whatever price he could get. In fact he and his sister were selling the land but because of the usual gender inequality the brother got all the money and squandered it pretty quickly, another common occurrence. The poor that sell their land usually just move farther into rural areas where they can occupy and farm land but they’ve lost their land asset and security so that implies a lot of hardships down the road...So it’s just interesting to learn how this type of urban“development” works in Malawi. And how the middle class is growing at the expense of the poor—but that’s the reality of it all, I’m glad I know a bit about it now, it’s still just hard to process and understand!

This informal type of farming was seen everywhere in and around Blantyre

Day 2 of my Malawian adventure was Sunday and Twisi and his family took me to a place called Zomba Plateau such a beautiful place. We drove up the mountain and had a picnic near this waterfall and mountain dam. We met some baboons there!!

Beautiful photos of the drive to Zomba plateau

Climbing up the mountain!

We made it to the top of the mountain to the dam and waterfall

Picnic with a baboon guest!

He was a big guy!

Beautiful mountain dam!

After our picnic we drove up farther to the plateau and got to experience the breathtaking overlook of a fancy hotel. It was like a mountain paradise!

The hotel

The view :)

more hotel views!

Looking out from the hotel

All along the road on the way down the mountain there were local Malawians selling wild fruits. It was somewhat entertaining to have them see us driving and then to eagerly thrust their baskets at us and follow the car. I probably shouldn’t find it funny but it was at every switchback these guys were there with the same wide eyed look and eagerly following the car, ha. On the way back down we  stopped by a few of them and got passion fruit and a bunch of other wild fruits I’ve never seen before!

Each night we sipped on Malawi Gin a local favorite and chit chatted about this and that, it was nice to spend time with their family. Each night I read Warren a bed time story, we became quite close.

The Malawi Gin!

Twisi was teaching a sociology class at the local college so during day 3 of the adventure he dropped me off at this old British house called the Mandala House. It was really neat, a lot of history of how Malawi was colonized, settled, etc. and also has a nice cafe where I had some coffee and did some reading.

Mandala house

inside the Mandala house

Trying to get some work done but getting distracted by the pretty view

After Twisi was finished we went and stopped at the lovely Al Pacino club-just a fun and funky place. I wonder if Al knows he has a bar named after him in Malawi! 

The famous Al Pacino's!

Day 4 Twisi dripped Warren and I off at the local country club and we played around on the playground and played games. That night we went to a Mexican restaurant (ha!) to enjoy a last night out together. Twisi and his family taught me a lot about Malawi and what some of the daily things that are happening. I’ll never forget my trip there and the kindness they showed me!

Night out!

Another thing I’ll never forget is the last night staying at the house it had rained really hard! Shortly after the rains let up these crazy bugs started swooping into the house as they were attracted to the light (Twisi’s neighborhood is one of the only ones that had electricity at the time). I was the only one who was afraid of the bugs as it’s a common occurrence in Malawi to have these bugs enter your house in swarms. In fact once they enter in, many times Malawians pluck the wings off of the bugs, fry them up and eat them as they are a good source of protein. Twisi even tried eating on to show me. It was a new experience to say the least! Ha. This was one of the moments where I just tried to embrace the discomfort and just chill even as these bugs were swarming around the house and landing on me with their big wings and mealy bodies, it was wild—you could hear them tapping a the window trying to get in, it was like a blizzard of bugs and they were crawling in from every crevice they could find! Everyone just let them do their thing and swarm around the light, eventually they died and just fell to the floor. The next day a lot of local village kids came to collect them and take them back to eat. And if you are wondering—no I didn’t eat any, maybe next time ;). 

The bugs after being collected and "dewinged"!

This small peek at Malawi was amazing, I’d love to go back and learn more. One thing that is evident is that there is a lot of poverty and it’s not too difficult to grasp how pervasive it is and how it impacts people pretty badly. You can see it by viewing some of the large informal settlements of shanty houses and the day to day happenings on the road.  A common sighting was these dudes (a lot of which didn’t have shoes) pushing bicycles with these huge bundles of charcoal (made from chopped trees) balanced on them. Twisi said these guys come from rural villages a long way away, often leaving at 3 am to walk to town to sell the charcoal to townspeople. The practice is problematic because a lot of Malawi’s natural forests are being stripped away of these trees by people using them to sell as charcoal-and the demand is so high because there as frequent power outages that require an alternative form of energy for cooking, fuel, warmth etc. Many of the hills around Blantyre were very bald and it was evident that this was due to people going up there to cut them down and sell them over years and years and years. As nothing occurs in isolation the deforested hills often times create mud slides and other natural issues that then impact the poorest people who live directly in the path of the mudslides. A vicious cycle and something I had learned about in school but to witness it actually happening was life changing. 

The majority of my time in Malawi I didn’t have internet, it was really like I was in another world, made the experience all the more richer and all the more real. After returning from Blantyre to Dar and spending a lot of time in the airport on my way to Cape Town, I've arrived safely to my hostel and it is already a completely different experience—for sure any food you'd like, fancy paved streets , I’m looking forward to rest, relaxation and self care, it is absolutely essential when learning and traveling. 

That’s all for now y’all. I’m moving forward at full speed. Let’s see what happens next!