Road from Blantyre to Lilongwe

On the last day of mission, we left Blantyre at 4:30 to reach Lilongwe by 9:00 for our flight to Nairobi (via Lusaka). It was a nice trip, though the weather was miserable, and I was able to take some pictures. In fact, I took nearly 100, expecting that they'd all be blurry, but a few turned out.

The approach to a village.
Malawi is richer, as I've said before, than other places. Here you can see a mud house and a brick house in a village. This is not something that you might have seen in Niger.
The road follows the border with Mozambique for a while. This ruin is all that's left of a casino that catered to Malawians back in the days of colonization in Mozambique (until 1975, I think).
More pictures of Mozambique:



Some of the mountains on the side of road were capped by the low-hanging clouds.

a lush hillside.

The road goes through various market towns. In one of these pictures, you can see ox carts that people use to ferry goods to the markets (in addition to bicycles).


at one point, it got sunny...
An ox cart in action on the side of the road.
The road, doing its' best American West impersonnation.
Approaching Lilongwe, rock formations galore.


Trees climbing up over the hillside.
The aircraft (only one at a time, apparently) is waiting for you, maybe.

Malawi from the air. Notice the closely packed villages with the fields around them.
Kenya from the air, notice that the layout of farms is radically different, with farms at the center of their individual plots (big rectangular boxes). Also, it's the dry season...

Last pictures from Blantyre

HIV and AIDS are very serious problems in Malawi, where a significant portion of the population is sick (and dying, mostly due to lack of access to ARVs). All state companies and para-statal institutions (such as the Blantyre Water Board) are legally mandated to participate in AIDS awareness and prevention campaigns. Among the many actions undertaken by the BWB (such as offering anonymous testing and counseling and distributing ARVs for free to its employees and for a subsidized fee to the public), is the distribution of free condoms. These are available in the toilets. If you zoom in, you'll see that the condoms are chocolate colored and flavored. No comments...
This woman had a funky hairdo, so she makes the blog.
A yellow flowered tree.
A mangy and enormous eucalyptus (probably close to 100 years old).

More pictures from Blantyre

Blantyre has some very nice trees everywhere, including this giant pine tree.This one looks like something that the dinosaurs might have eaten, and the sky looked cool too.

A random street, notice the modern looking buildings, not something that I've been accustomed to in Western Africa recently.
As I said before, there is some really nice scenery around.
A mountaintop at sunset.
The local Hindu temple.
Pretty yellow flowers in the tree.
A double carriage way, as they call them here, again greenery everywhere at this major intersection.

Pictures from Malawi

Blantyre is a very low density city. Here is a picture of a street scape, with one of the nice hills in the background. These pictures are taken from a moving car, and don't do justice to the vibrant colors.
A more urban part of town.
What is striking here is how clean the city is, and how good the roads are, especially considering the political past of this country. You might also notice that the cars are recent models, which is very unlike the western African countries that I have recently been to.
A reservoir in the middle of the city. Despite the lack of urban development immediately behind the reservoir, we are inside the city limits.
Mini buses are a popular transport method, but they can't park here. Notice the corn the background (we're smack in the middle of town).
The view from the hotel on a rainy day.
More inner-city cornfields.
A chicken joint with a hopeful name. The red buckets on the left hand side are for hand washing before and after eating the fried chicken (with your hands, of course).

First impressions from Malawi

When you leave the very low-density city of Lilongwe behind to head southwards to Blantyre, you pass through some of the most beautiful, if densely populated, countryside I have ever seen.

At this time of the year (rainy season), the land is lush and green, with fields of maize everywhere. Steep hills dot the plains in a haphazard manner, and settlements are tightly packed, not unlike in western Europe. Land is communally owned, and allocated to members of the community on an as-needed basis. Fields surround villages.

The road climbs over hills and overlooks the plains as you travel along the Mozambique border, where the shells of Portuguese casinos can still be seen in Dedza.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to take any pictures so far.