In the beginning...

Well, here it is, as promised. Welcome to one aspect of our attempt at staying in touch, whilst living almost exactly on the other side of the world from most of you lovely folk.


What will we share in this medium? Obviously, we'll provide scintillating and highly intelligent insight on life in southeastern Africa...well, I hope at least that we don't fall too far on the side of indulging our narcissism and wax on at length about our personal lives in this tropical paradise known as Malawi. 

I jest. We'll likely try to do a bit of both, and manage to fit in something of interest to a few of you. With the shared voice of both an old hand at the expat aid worker life here (yeah, I mean Devon), and myself, fresh off the boat. You can imagine him shaking his head in bemusement at all of my posts.

First things first. Since I arrived in Lilongwe (the capital, Devon's home of the past 10 months or so, and our current location of the moment) on Thursday, we've mostly been focussed on settling into our new humble abode. His previous house (a 5 bedroom rancher with the same number of roommates) was a tad too large for our needs, so we've shacked up in a much smaller version, a 'guesthouse' adjacent to the larger house of a local Malawian family. The downsides (less privacy, smaller yard, less access to gardening space) seem at first glance to be well offset by the benefits (very cheap rent, lots of security thanks to the staff and family on the premises pretty constantly, and a really quiet location on the outskirts of town). It's cute. And our inherited dog (puppy? age unknown) Rusty is pretty happy there, too. Or maybe it's just the upscale scraps we've been feeding him of late. I'm rather doting. It's a bit silly.

The house scene here is not that dissimilar to that in Canada, except that no one requires central heating, and most houses outside of the downtown core are one level. Oh, and most houses in the city have large brick walls surrounding the property, creating 'compounds' with a serious metal gate and a watchman who opens said gate. The ubiquitous red earth tracks in everywhere, giving the whitewash a certain...glow? Hmm.

As well, settling in to a new house in Malawi is just like doing so in Vancouver. Except...different. First off, while most everything is still definitely made in China, there is no central hub (ie. Ikea) in which to source the majority of one's household junk. More importantly, there is also no Craigslist, and a limited consignment market. This means we've driven all over town to various shops, throughout the Old Town (the more typical busy, polluted, intense core you might expect in a developing country, complete with noisy markets and a cacophony of shouts and car horns) and the more modern 'City Centre', the centre of all things political and business related, such as various embassies, shipping companies, and nearby rather big box-esque dry goods stores. So we've now somehow spent a fair amount of kwacha (the currency; and yes, not everything is cheap in Africa) on little things - I'm not really sure what but they must have been essential. Well, at least we have wine glasses (see subsequent visiting hint).

We did manage to fit some fun in all this domesticity, thankfully. A bonus to living on the outskirts of town is our proximity to a running route heading out into the hills beyond Lilongwe; I took Rusty out over the weekend, and I'm not sure who was more confused - the village children, seeing this blonde mzungu (running! in shorts!), or the dog, on a leash for the first time. It doesn't help that Malawians as a rule tend to be quite scared of dogs, so the combination draws some very strange looks. Or in the case of small children, it seems to send them running, either in pursuit or retreat, depending on the mood.

We also spent a few hours exploring south of town to do a bit of bouldering - Devon's been checking out the climbing options around town for awhile now, and the small town of Dedza near the Mozambique border seems to be the best option. While the options at the moment are mostly on the small side, there seems to be some bigger stuff in the distance - definitely fodder for future weekend missions.

Malawi Mangoes' farm. In this case, growing bananas.

So for now, I'm tying up loose ends with UBC and Devon's hard at work managing the irrigation division (and anything else he can get his hands on) of Malawi Mangoes Ltd. And of course we're both scheming future trip ideas fairly constantly. I'll take this opportunity to remind all of you reading this that, obviously, we would be thrilled for visitors to this far and distant land. The opportunity for nearby African Adventures is fairly unlimited (just ask for our extensive mental list), and if our schedules lack flexibility then we at least know how to put on a few good meals.

Cheers, all! Send us notes, and we'll work on updating this a bit regularly.