50 Things I Love about Malawi

Fifty years ago today, Malawi gained independence from Britain.  Fifty years! That's something to celebrate. So here are fifty things I love about Malawi.

1. Scenery--mountains, lakes, plateaus, valleys, Malawi has it all, and it's beautiful
2. Greenery--with a rainy season from November to April, the country is usually bursting with green
3. Baobabs
4. Blue gum trees--they grow fast and tall, harvested just 7 years after planting.
5. Mt. Mulanje--3000 metres (10,000 feet).  It's a Miller favorite pastime to climb Mulanje over a weekend. Just isolated enough so you can feel alone and sometimes get a cabin to yourself, but civilized enough to have discernible paths and rustic cabins.
6. Lake Malawi--I didn't always appreciate it because we lived so close, it's the number one tourist destination and home to the delicious chambo fish.
7. Friendliness of the people--there's a reason Malawi is nicknamed "The Warm Heart of Africa"
8. Bike taxis. If the town is flat enough, just hop on the rack over a bike's rear wheel, and your taxi rider will maneuver through the sand and around potholes to get you safely, quickly, and cheaply to your destination.
9. Roadside chip stands--where you can pick up a bag of delicious greasy chips with chip-oil-drizzled cabbage on the side and fried chicken pieces, too (even the chicken head if you want!)
10. Nsima--the thick, tasteless, porridge-like-but-solid mass that is a staple food to Malawians. Best eaten with salty Chinese cabbage and beef stew.
11. Malawian tea and the beautiful tea estates its grown on. Of course, it should be served in enormous yellow tin mugs with several tablespoons of Illovo sugar and milk.
12. Avocadoes cut in long, banana-length slices with salt on top.
13. Fresh milk straight from the farm--it came with bits of grass still floating around on the top, and we had to pasteurise it, but it was cheaper than the cheapest bag milk, whose freshness was always questionable
14. Long-life milk--which was also great, because you could buy a couple litres of milk at a time in the city and always have it on hand
15. Perfect climate--cool/cold winters and reasonably warm/hot summers
16. Sugarcane--yummy.
17. Monitor lizards--and that distinctive rustle of dirt and leaves that tells you there's one in the garden
18. Hippos and hippo snorts--which we could hear because we lived along the Shire River
19. Elephants--African elephants, with their huge ears.
20. English signs--how could you resist the "Everybody Complains Hardware Shop"?
21. Watching tourists--and guessing where they come from. Our favorites were probably the Afrikaans men in their short shorts, safari shirts, and socks with sandals.
22. Vegetable markets--where you were never really sure if you were being ripped off and where you were thoroughly ashamed you never learned more Yawo or Chewa.
23. Chitenje shops--walls of colorful 2-metre-long material to wrap around a woman's waist on top of a skirt or dress.
24. The Nation and The Daily Times and their long-worded, flowery writing.
25. The Flames, Malawi's national football team. We once tied Cote D'voire.
26. Eating fresh guavas with the yellow skin.
27. Traffic police--the highways have many police checks, sometimes every 20 miles or so. Chatty or serious, it was usually a pleasure. Except when they fined you for going 52 in a 50 kpm zone, or when they stopped me in town after I stalled to make sure I had a license and ask "What's wrong with you?"
28. The flag, and the fact everyone hated when Bingu changed it on a whim, and how Joyce almost immediately reversed it to the original after Bingu died. Now that Peter, Bingu's brother, is in, we'll have to see if he'll leave it.
29. Peace.  I'm so proud that Malawi has never had a war; it just goes against the culture.  Instead, Malawi has received immigrants and refugees from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Rwanda, Congo, etc., escaping their countries' conflicts.
30. Free 30-day visitor visas--when you have to pay $100 to enter Zambia, and $75 for Zimbabwe and Mozambique, Malawi seems so welcoming
31. The Independence Arch on the highway leading into Blantyre.
32. Carlsberg advertisments, "Probably the Best Beer in the World." Such a classic.
33. British colonial influence on English, which has mixed me up so that I use half metric, half English and mix British and American spellings
34. SOBO squash, watered down until it's orange-flavored water
35. SOBO ginger ale--even though they stopped making it years ago, it's a consolation that Malawi once had the world's best ginger ale
36. The small size of the country.
37. Joyce Banda--regardless of her politics, she was the second female president in Africa. That's just too cool.
38. Third-world problems, like poor electricity and water or having no fuel in town for weeks. (I realise that it's terrible for the economy, but I do appreciate that I learned to live with it.) It makes life more interesting and exotic, especially if it's not your responsibility to keep the car topped up. And then it's cool when your dad is already friends with the petrol station attendants, who sometimes send texts to alert him when a tanker is coming to town.
39. Being in the racial minority. Maybe it's wrong, but I grew up where being different was the norm, where my skin was a statement of my history, and it was strange to finally look like a native when I moved back to the US.
40. Expats and the instant bond we form. Whether they're from Chile, Nigeria, Japan, Australia, or the Netherlands, we're all in the same boat as foreigners.
41. Minibuses--your comparatively cheap, exciting, and quick transport option. 
42. Astor peanut butter, never tasted its equal
43. British colonial architecture
44. Blantyre--my best friends, the hills, the smog, the Mudi river, the market, city centre, everything.
45. Mangochi--Mom and Dad, the home church we were involved in, the several Muslim calls to prayer we could hear from our house (nobody could sing it like our favorite meuzzin), the shaded main street, the bicycles crowding out the cars, etc., etc.
46. The new bridge over the Shire River and the old clock tower at its base, along with memories of the old single-lane bridge, where you'd have to back-up if you reached the middle of the bridge and found another car coming towards you.
47. Concrete floors--nothing quite like solid floors and brick houses after creaking around in American houses that feel like they're made of plastic.
48. Freedom, where politics aren't violent and people generally have freedom of speech and religion.
49. The mix of Chewa and English people use, which can only happen when a fair portion of the population is bilingual. Most Americans wouldn't have another language to mix English with and most Sudanese weren't comfortable enough with English to mix it with Arabic.
50. The people, of course.  Our neighbor who admonished me to drive defensively and sent me tea when I was in Sudan.  The vegetable-man who brought vegetables each week because Mom can't get to the market.  The driving instructors at my driving school.  Our gardener of nearly 13 years and nightwatchman of nearly 11 years.  And many many others.

Lake Malawi

Tea estates below Mt Mulanje

Mangochi, as seen from a nearby hill. You can see the Japanese bridge on the left.