Sunday, November 15th - Lilongwe to Mchinji, Malawi

This morning I was once again awake at 5 a.m. as the sun came up and in my window.  I tried to get back to sleep but finally gave up, did some stretching, had my shower and went over for breakfast.  It was already another hot day but at least there was a strong breeze blowing to cool things off.  

After breakfast we all checked our internet before leaving the hotel as we weren't sure how much internet we would get in our next location.  Then about 8:30 we left for our quick driving tour of Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi.  Our first drive by was the Parliament Buildings.  This complex has a fancy entrance at the roadside and then another one quite a bit further back.  The area in between is an open area for events when needed.  The parliament buildings themselves are much further back.  From the front view they look quite low - almost one story with a copper dome shape at one point.  From the back though they look like they are 3 or 4 storeys high and the dome is quite impressive.  Apparently it is in the shape and colour of a traditional lid for a cooking pot and the logic is that anything that comes out of parliament should involve time and hard work (be well cooked) and be good for the people when it comes out.  

This parliament complex is quite new and was built by the Chinese.  I don't remember the exact date but it was in the 21st century.  The capital city used to be Zomba but the first president of Malawi after independence decided the capital should be more central in the country and he chose Lilongwe and decided to move everything to that city.  It was quite a move and he did not see it all finished.  Parliament during his time still met in Zomba but he identified and bought the land where it currently sits and where State House currently is located.  We drove past State House, the home of the President, but could not go in for obvious reasons.  This place is huge and there was enough room for the second President to live and to hold parliament until the new building was completed.

Between State House and parliament is an entire complex of large homes that were built simply for visiting dignitaries.  It looks very nice but sits empty most of the time, which seems like a bit of a waste but the government doesn't seem to care about that. I'm sure Justin and his family and his entourage will all be very comfortable there when and if he comes to visit.

Dr. H Kamuzu Banda was the president from 1974 to 1994, if I remember correctly.  He was in power for 30 years I know for sure, and he died in 1997 just shortly after losing and election by less than 1% (50.? to 49.?).  He was an American educated professor with a 40-year career in the states and the UK before returning to Malawi when it got independence.  The current president also has the same background so they are very well educated individuals with lots of world experience.  Anyway, Banda who died in 1997, was elected President.  The people were so impressed with him and the economy was doing so well that they then made him President for life.  Although he did great things for the country like building a great road system and schools and other infrastructure, he did become a bit of a dictator in his later years.  The people then decided they needed to have elections and because he was so old and such a dictator he narrowly lost the election and was forced out of office.

The new president was definitely not as well educated but he was good.  However he died in office.  A woman was then appointed president but she was apparently not well liked and didn't do so well.  On the next election, the current president was elected and he is the brother of the second president but very well educated.  It's all a very interesting story and I'm definitely not doing it justice.   Aaron, the Malawian volunteer who is with us on our trip, is an assistant deputy minister with the Museums branch and he has all the information we might need.

A few years after the first president died, the people realized that, although he might have turned into a dictator in later years, he did do a lot for the country.  Beside the Parliament Building there is a monument and mausoleum in his honour.  It is a very nice structure with the monument above and the mausoleum below.  There are four pillars around the structure as he called the four pillars for Malawians to live by: Loyalty, Obedience, Unity and Discipline.  Because of his approach to country unity Malawi never experienced problems between the various ethnic communities, which is amazing in Africa, and people have all intermarried and all is well.

From there we went to Capital Hill and drove around all the government buildings.  There are dozens of large multi-storey buildings on the complex and they are all identical.  More are being built and still in the same design.  Eventually all government employees will be working in the same area.  Most are up there now but some are in rented facilities in Lilongwe.  The "Hill" really is a hill and it looks over the Parliament Building and the rest of the city.

Then we went by their new National Stadium which is almost complete but still under construction.  It will hold 35,000 people and it looks quite impressive.   From there we went to a shopping centre because Aaron needed to to to a Western Union store.  It turned out not to be open - as expected on a Sunday - but the tourist info beside it was open.  When we asked what we should see in Lilongwe he named all of the places we had just been to and then the Nature Sanctuary which we were planning to visit next Friday when we were back in town.  So we figured we'd had a pretty good tour.  We also asked about hotels and that began a long search.

We went to a couple of hotels that were in our price range and could hardly wait to get out of the rooms we were viewing.  Most of them were really old and small.  Many were disgustingly dirty and all of them were really hot.  Some of them don't even have toilet seats and that is a definite must for Lynn and me.  We were looking for something in the $40-45 range and we had options from $30 to well over $100.  We did see one with huge rooms that looked really great until you discovered that the bathroom was down the hall.  We narrowed it down to two - one slightly out of town but very cheap and by the same people we stayed with in Blantyre and one right downtown that was much more expensive but closer to things.  Then as we were about to head out to Mchinji we stopped at one more and it seemed even better - sort of between the other two for location and for price and cleaner, brighter and bigger than both of them so that's where we're planning to be.

We finally left Lilongwe and started our journey to Mchinji.  The drive took about 1.5 hours and the road was good all the way.  We are really impressed with the Malawi road system as it is so totally different than other African countries like Ethiopia and Kenya.  You can actually travel in comfort here and don't have to worry about the roads.  The countryside is very flat in this area but you can still see the mountains off in the distance.  There are trees around - not big ones but trees all the same.  There were some newly planted tobacco fields along the way but we didn't see much else.  The fields are plowed and waiting for the rainy season to start  before planting begins.  At one point we saw some water on the road and in surrounding fields.  It looked like at least one area had some recent rain.  We no longer see a lot of mangos along the side of the road but more potatoes, onions and tomatoes.

We went through many small towns and villages all with lots of people on the side of the road.  There weren't as many sellers out but rather more people in groups leisurely enjoying their Sunday afternoon.  As we got closer to Mchinji there were several towns in a row with big crowds around a soccer pitch (football to them).  Obviously Sunday is the big day for the community teams to be playing soccer.  It was fun to see how many people were out cheering the teams on.  The route still had some cows and goats along the way just to slow the motor vehicle traffic down a bit.  We even had one pig crossing.  

Eventually we made it to Mchingi and checked into our hotel.  It wasn't all that great but it's the best we could get.  Lynn got the one room with air conditioning and a fridge.  I may be joining her in the middle of the night if my room doesn't cool down.  I have a fan in my room but it doesn't do much good when the room is so hot to start with.  It should be an interesting night.

I spent most of the evening outside as there was a beautiful breeze blowing.  It was absolutely lovely and cool.  We had dinner at the restaurant.  By then the power was out but the generator was on so dinner could still be prepared, which was a good thing.  I shouldn't have been hungry though as one of our last stops in Lilongwe was for lunch at a local shopping mall and I had a whole pizza.  

After dinner I sat outside a bit longer blogging and enjoying the breeze.  There is no internet at the hotel and we couldn't get our hot spot to work so blogging was about all I could do.  At about 9:30 I decided to go to bed and call it a night - hoping that it wouldn't be too hot and I would get to sleep.  Well, the first thing I had to do was put down my mosquito net.  That part was easy until I discovered the rather large spider on my ceiling.  As everyone else I knew was in bed I figured I had to deal with it but I couldn't reach it about the bed with the mosquito net on it.  I went out into the hotel compound to see if I could see anything useful and found a broom.  With that I could get close enough to the spider to scare him a bit.  He stayed on the ceiling but I kept moving him toward the far wall away from the bed, then down the wall.  Once he was on the floor he wasn't that far from the door so he got swept outside.  He just moved so fast that I couldn't kill him so out into the centre courtyard he went.  Hopefully he won't be back.  After that I got ready for bed, crawled under my mosquito net and worked a bit longer before finally trying to get to sleep.  As just a note to the mosquito net topic, we really haven't seen any at all.  It is so hot and dry that there is literally no place for them to survive so they really haven't been a problem.