"Blantyre by night."

Kamuzu stadium, a part of the M1 (a major north/south thoroughfare), and a mall, as seen at 3:30 am (notice the lack of people and vehicles). Blantyre, Malawi.

It's been a very long, and very interesting week (and it's a good thing I took as many notes as I did).

Last weekend I was in Mangochi visiting another student, Polina. Her school, St. Michael's, is built at the base of a cliff in the middle of a thick forest but only about 100 meters from the lake, I wish I could have spent more time there because it was absolutely beautful and Polina seems like a very interesting person. I was only at the school for two short afternoons, the rest of the time I was having a wonderfully relaxing and homely weekend with some Peace Corp Response employees. Two days later I was at Agatha's house in the residential district of Lilongwe playing soccer with her two children and Leonard, the guy she's adopted/hired to help around the house. While the children speak great English, Leonard's English is worse than my Chichewa, it was an interesting game. After two days of Malawian domestic life i went up to Nkhata Bay and hung out with back packers and travelers and volunteers in a lodge on lake Malawi. Saturday night we ended up celebrating Norway's independence with the Norwegian bar tenders (and lots of Malawian gin). That evening felt, looked and tasted (and cost) just like any random Saturday in Berlin. At some point over the weekend I went to another political rally and, unlike my previous attempts, this time is was not only allowed to stay but brought into the middle of the celebrations and allowed to do whatever I wanted. Finally, on the long, slow, and hypnotically beautiful and monotonous trip back to southern Malawi, I got to see empty cities. I'd never seen streets and markets without people, it was odd.

I have a lot of things I'd to say about this week. Mainly I just need talk about all these new parts of Malawi that I didn't know existed-, but there's also something else that's bouncing around in my head. It's hard to explain, probably because I don't fully understand it, but it was unsettling to jump between such radically different worlds, in such a short amount of time, and have each situation be completely normal to the people you're with.

Unfortunately it's 7 o'clock in the morning and I need to go to bed. I couldn't find a seat on the night bus so I spent the entire ride (from 4pm yesterday to 5am this morning) standing up. I did get to spend those hours with my face pressed up against the windshield and watch the trees and the road and the water and the stars all night long, and that's not a bad way to spend your time. However I haven't slept in a day, I'm tired, borderline incoherent, and I'm going to bed. good night.

this picture was published on monday, may 18 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: 24.0 mm; shutter speed: 2; iso: 800. this image has the following tags: malawi.