Welcome to Malawi, Ladies and Gentlemen!

"Welcome to Lilongwe, Ladies and Gentlemen!"

With these words, I found myself in the south eastern African town of Lilongwe, which I will call home for the next two months. I’m typing this while sitting on the bed in my bedroom, which is located on a secured compound near the CRWRC office. Larry and Linda, the RCA missionaries, on loan to the CRWRC, frequently open their home to volunteers, like myself, who have travelled from the west on various missions. Larry works in economic development and Linda is a teacher.

Here's a picture of the outside of the compound:

Early impressions: the heat hits me as soon as I step from the airplane in Nairobi – a dry heat, as although this is the rainy season, there hasn’t been a lot of rain yet. But I don’t get the full impact of the heat until I disembark in Lilongwe. We are shuttle-bused from where we landed to the airport. Miraculously I pass through customs without incident. This is surprising as I have travelled with a gigantic water filter and two laptops. Linda has furnished me with some “talking points” to explain about the filter and laptops. But when the customs officer, a woman, asks me if I have anything to declare, I respond, “What kinds of things should I declare?” She restates: “What did you bring with you?” I begin a rambling recitation, and she gestures me onward. Thinking she wants me to open up my suitcase for further inspection, I move to the side and begin to make opening suitcase gestures – instead, she just waves me through. Later I am told that the people in the Nnkoma Relief have prayed that the water filter parts would make it through.

Linda is waiting outside with a sign “Roseanne” but I recognized her from the newsletters which she and Larry write on a quarterly basis. She takes me to her vehicle and we drive from the airport, on the outskirts of town, to the heart of Lilongwe. All along the way we see people along the side of the road, women carrying large clumps of branches on their heads, children in small groups, wandering around, one man, holding a small clump of greenery, presumably for sale. Linda tells me, as a van full of people drives by, that people are known to reach into a vehicle and grab stuff, so you have to keep an eye on your possessions. It’s tropical so we pass a lot of palm-type trees, red dirt and green grass (thanks to a recent shower).

Over the last few years, the number of people in Malawi with motor vehicles has increased exponentially, so most of the drivers on the road are inexperienced, and pedestrians seem almost unaware of the danger posed by these often careless drivers. I sense that a lot of my time here will be spent dodging incoming traffic. I can’t imagine having to drive here - to round out that decision, I note that the driver’s side door is on the right-side, England style. As we braked at one point, a small, sad-looking boy came up to the vehicle and said, “Mama, I am hungry.” Linda didn’t respond to him – later she told me that begging is an organized thing – adults will have a group of kids who go out and beg for them – like Oliver Twist’s Fagan.  Being marked by my skin as a Westerner, I expect this will be ongoing. Actually, I would observe that the majority of the people I meet have been sad looking and poor. There are two classes here – the poor and unemployed and the privileged class. When most people are barely surviving, even those we consider middle-class are privileged. There’s a deep divide between those with money and those without.

We went shopping and spent about $200 US, which becomes 300,000 kwatchas here. It’s weird to see products like Brownie mix going for $12,000. The more processed and instant the product, the higher the price tag. All of what we would consider convenience food, and pretty much anything packaged, originates from South Africa. Very little is produced in Malawi – with the exception of maize, which is grown here then exported elsewhere, then, reshipped here! So people end up purchasing their own product at inflated prices. Fundamentally, this is wrong, and explains part of the poverty that I see.

In the evening, we met up with a small group of people who belong to Partner’s Worldwide and Africa Works. Partner’s Worldwide was started by a man from the CRC. They are in Lilongwe to see if they can drum up support.