"hello Malawi, nice to meet you."

the picture is of my two bags in front of the door in my house just before I left on Friday

I'm in Africa. This place doesn't sound, smell, feel or look like anywhere else I've ever been (though Malawi does taste like some places I've been, more on that later). I've only been here for about 24 hours, I don't yet know what it's like, but I can tell you what's happened so far:

I arrived yesterday at 12:40 in the afternoon at Chileka International Airport, Malawi's second largest airport. The important thing to know is that I, and all my gear, arrived. I just hope I never again have to spend 10 hours in the middle seat between two huge people and a plane with the heat turned all the way up. After landing in Blantyre we taxied from one end of the runway to the other and stopped I kept expecting us to move again and arrive eventually to the main part of the airport at any moment. In fact we'd already been there for a few minutes and were just waiting for the stairs to be put in place. The airport consists of nothing more than a runway and a large room for customs checks.

Ben was waiting for me outside the airport. I was a little worried that I'd not recognize him, since he didn't know what I look like and I hadn't given him my flight number, but he was right to not worry. There was no way I wasn't going to see the 6'7" white boy amongst all the malawians.

We left the airport and took a mini-bus into Blantyre where Ben and I stopped to get a bite to eat. I got beef with rice and he got chicken with "nsina". Nsina is Malawi's national dish and a dietary staple. As soon as they brought it to him I thought to myself how much it reminded me of something I'd already eaten but I just figured I was tired and confused. Then I tasted some of it and, I kid you not, it tasted exactly like polenta. The only difference is that it's white instead of yellow and they server it with beans and vegetables instead of cheese and meat. I guess if you have a lot of mais, and not much else, no matter where you are you'll end up with polenta.

After lunch we got on another mini-bus and headed towards the school. Mini-buses are a curious mix between a taxi and a regular bus service. You'll find mini-buses sitting in certain spots like you would taxis, each mini-bus will have a specific destination and if you want to go there, or somewhere along the way, you just get on. The mini-buses can hold anywhere between 9 and 18 people depending on how big the bus (which is really more like a van) and the likely-hood of running into a police stop. If the drivers think they'll run into a checkpoint they'll load up as many people as they can legally, if they don't except to see any cops they'll load up as many people (and animals and luggage) as they can.

On the way to Mulanje we passed through a large trading center (open air market surrounded by small shops), which was full of people selling all kind of things, and had been driving down the highway for another 10 or 20 minutes. There weren't any houses or other markets around since we'd left and yet the shoulder of the road was packed 2 or 3 people deep with men, women and children carrying stuff on their backs, their heads, wherever they could fit it. I have no idea how far they'd come, nor how far they still had to walk, but it was much farther than I'd ever bother. surviving here, just getting food, working, cleaning, moving around, etc. is extremely labor intensive.

this is going to be different.

this picture was published on saturday, april 11 2009. there is a full size version available. this picture was taken with a on a dmc-lz8. the settings when this was taken were: focal length: 6.5 mm; shutter speed: 1/30; iso: 100. this image has the following tags: malawi.