"lilongwe, malawi"

beggar behind Metro supermarket in Lilongwe's "City Center" neighborhood.

Lilongwe. Malawi's capital. Home to almost a million people. Center of Malawi's government and politics. Base of operations for the larger NGOs and GOs. I found two very different cities within the area known as "Lilongwe", there's "Old Town" and then there's "City Center", and there's no way you'll get the two confused.

Old Town is, more or less, what I was expecting. Dense, noisy, cars, dust, the smell of exhaust fumes and the sounds of people talking over each other. Old Town, the central part of it at least, is a strictly commercial area, there's a large open air market, in the middle of which is an open air pool hall. I stopped for a second and thought about playing a game or two against the locals, then I saw how well they played and decided to go back to walking around and taking pictures. The open air market is exactly what you'd expect an open air market to be, small wooden stalls packed with all manor of goods, guys yelling out what they're selling and what their prices are, people walking over each other, old ladies trying out fancy dresses and blocking the 50 people in line behind them. Next to the open air market is a huge neighborhood full of all kinds of shops. I saw everything from clothing stores, to auto mechanics, to surgical supplies, to a John Deere dealership. The place was lively, noisy, dirty, not at smelly (except down by the river), with lots of things to look at and, when the prayer calls from the large mosques went out, there would even be some music (of a sort).

Aside: In the market I noticed a lot of Chinese and Indian people, so I asked a few people and it seems that Malawi trades a lot with China and India, not so much with the US/Europe. However all the aid/development programs I've seen or heard of are American, I need to find out if this is because AGE is US based so it's just that the people I know are American or if it's true that the aid and development do not at all go together with commercial/trading partnerships.

I spent the morning walking around, taking a few pictures, discovering that guys in dimly lit (though beautiful) interior courtyards really don't want you coming and taking pictures of them off loading whatever it is, or isn't, they're offloading. So in the early afternoon I decided to go see the new part of the city, "City Center" I got on a mini-bus and when I got off, 20 minutes later, I thought I'd ended up on mars.

City Center is quiet, spacious and clean. Reminded me a little of the Mall in DC, though without the museums, or even just the culture. A lot of foreigners there, and a lot of nice cars, no children, but if there were any they'd most certainly have shoes. I don't think it's a coincidence that there I'd see my first fat Malawian. The thing that shocked me about City Center was not how nice it was, objectively it probably isn't anything special, but how much nicer it was compared to the other half of the city a short ride away, how little it felt like the country I've been seeing these past 10 days, and how many foreigners I saw. I don't yet know what to make of this, so I'm just going to say what I saw and let it sit for a bit longer before coming to a conclusion: The boy pictured above, who was begging for money and/or food, was walking behind a very nice supermarket in the middle of City Center. About a block away from there is a very nice newly built building which houses the headquarters for the WHO, and a few blocks in the other direction is USAID's building, pick a direction and you'll find nicely furnished, air conditioned buildings with rooms for all the world's major aid organizations, and in the middle of this African Shangri-la is a kid with bad teeth and no shoes asking if he can have my empty bottle of Fanta Orange. I do not know exactly what the problem is, and I certainly don't have any solutions, but there is something deeply amiss there.

this picture was published on thursday, april 23 2009. there is a full size version available. this picture was taken with a 24-70mm f/2.8 on a nikon d700. the settings when this was taken were: focal length: 70.0 mm; shutter speed: 1/125; iso: 200. this image has the following tags: malawi.