I was told to go take a hike...: First Days in Malawi

My first days in Africa have come and gone. It began with a 3 hour drive to San Francisco and then a 33 hour flight to Lilongwe, Malawi via three layovers (LA; Dublin; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). I thought that this flight would be utterly horrible because I have trouble sleeping sitting up and would be cooped up in one place for up to 9 hours at a time, but the flights went well. Between some cat naps, movies, books, and podcasts, the flights went by not terribly slow. I did meet a Chinese guy about my age in the Addis Ababa airport who was going to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to buy one million square acres of forest so his Chinese owned company could log it. I found this really disappointing but not surprising. The more surprising thing to me was that he was going to drive through DRC and three other African countries during his 3 week trip there. With the violence and poverty of the DRC (it is the second poorest country in the world...with #1 being the Central African Republic and #3 being Malawi), I would be super nervous to go there and let alone drive.

After going through immigration, getting my checked bag, and going through customs (they didn’t care about what I brought at all), I waited for my friends to pick me up. All I was told before I left was that they would meet me at the airport, so while I waited for them, I thought about what I was doing to do if they didn’t show for some reason. Thankfully, I only waited about 15 minutes but I did have a moment of panic because I had no idea of where they lived in Lilongwe or how to use the public transport to get there. Thankfully, I didn’t need to figure that out yet and we headed to their home.

My friend and her husband (Christina and Greg) live within the compound that houses the clinic/hospital she is a doctor at and the university he teaches at. Their house is large (think 3 bedrooms, a huge living room, large kitchen) and they are staying there until the normal tenants come back from their US sabbatical. Except for having to filter the water and sleep under mosquito nets, most of the comforts of the US are here

The rest of this first week I went to the open air market (very overwhelming and I stand out a lot), toured what we thought was the botanical gardens but what turned out to be an upscale nursery, made homemade ice cream, and met lots of Christina and Greg’s friends. The market was fun as usual and I learned that as an obvious foreigner that they will never charge you local prices. Because they vendors at the market know I am from the developed world, they charge higher prices because they “know” I can afford them.

I’ll talk about the holiday weekend in Malawi and our trip to the the Zomba Plateau in my next post but here are some pictures of my trip so far.