The longest way round is the shortest way home.: First days 'in country'... Malawi

I think that, no matter how the landscape had looked when I landed in Malawi, I would have been surprised. But perhaps I was even more surprised to see how lush it is. Grass, trees, crops (tabacco and corn mostly) aren't things you need to find - they're everywhere. The evidence that this is a dry area (at least, now during dry season) exists only on the dirt roads where the pale yellow sand gets blown up by passing buses.

There isn't a huge amonut to say about Lilongwe, the capital,l except that it's possible that Peace Corps Volunteers outnumber locals. It's a busy city with very little going on.

Malawi is often described as 'The warm little heart of Africa' and that is evident the most in the people. They are, by far, the friendliest people I've ever met. Everybody wants to chat, laugh, learn something about you. I think I've exchanged phone numbers with 4 different Malawians, even though I'd talked for a whole 30 seconds with them! Everybody wants to help with your bus, your hostel, your food - and nobody has looked for a kickback. They don't want you to use their bus, and they don't talk to the driver/owner, implying to me that their not receiving a commission for bringing me.

Especially regarding public transport... thank God they're nice, because the system sure ain't efficient. My first experience with the buses was trying to catch a minibus (which seat 15,. but fit 390) to another side of town. The guy told me they were just about to leave, so I hop into the almost empty bus thinking 'Thank heavens this isn't as crowded as some of the ones I've seen'... we waited, right in that spot, for 25 minutes till it filled up. Three other buses headed in the same direction passed us. Ahhh, if you don't have patience on those buses, you don't have anything at all.

Via Couchsurf, I met someone who kindly offered to let me stay with them in their teeny tiny village in which they were working (they are Peace Corps). 7 hours of transport later (close to two of those hours sitting stationary on buses!) I arrive in Bwanje. There were quite a few people living in Bwanje, but you wouldn't know it from the main road, and you wouldn't know it at night - no electricity. And no running water. And no cars. And one dirt road. I knew this was going to be fun.

A couple of the most interesting things I learned/encountered over the two days I stayed with Mary:

- The showers... are not showers. There's a little area, surrounded by bricks for privacy, where you bring a bucket of water and use a cup to wash the water onto your body. The water is that which you collect from the nearby well. In hot and dry season, many wells dry up, though at the moment it was fine. The water is, surprise surprise, cold! But when it's a hot day ('hot' and 'cold' season should be renamed 'hot' and 'my goodness it's hot' season) a cold cup of water feels great. Mary's developed a way of getting warm water - leave the plastic tub of water out in the sun all day! It's almost too hot when it's time to shower!

- The toilet... are a hole in a ground. At night there are maybe ten thousand spiders and mini scorpions.

- You live from surise to sunset. Mary does have a small solar generator, so she can charge things, and hang up a light or two (which she's planning on doing), but otherwise, if you stay up, it's candle light.

- There are more stars in the Malawi night sky than there are in space.

- Two oxes pull the cart full of stuff. This is the real Toyota Tundra.

- People here are basically subsistence living, though not necessarily growing all their crops for themselves. Meaning that the activities of the day aren't a (to us) typical clock-in clock-out of a job - you work on the things you need to live. You work the crop to sell that day or week so you have money to buy food. You build things for your house. It's fascinating, and I only brushed the surface.

- There is phone signal. Five bars. I can't get five fucking bars on the Red Line in Chicago!

- Nobody cares about whether the Cubs win or lose. In fact, most people barely (if at all) realize that they exist. It's a mini-paradise.

- Once again, the people are extremely friendly. I walked around for about an hour one day and had one very long conversation along with two shorter ones. All of them fascinating, friendly, full of smiles, jokes and fist bumps.

- The houses are made of mud brick and the roofs are either made of straw or corrugated iron. Iron is more expensive, and the richer have it, because it doesn't need to be fixt/repaced every two years, and (in theory) it doesn't leak water. What they don't tell you in the fine print is that it bakes you compared to the straw roof.

After two lovely days with Mary, I rocked on down to Blantyre where I'll be staying for the next month. Experiencing the small, rural village Bwanje was more fascinating than I could ever describe on a blog. Here are a couple of pictures that don't do it justice.