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Livingstonia, an odd little town tucked away in the mountains in the very North of Malawi. One of the earliest Scottish missions settled here after Malaria chased them away from the lakeshore. There’s lots to explore apart from breathtaking sceneries; for example the Livingstonia mission church with its window showing David Livingstone meeting the Ngoni chiefs (a wonderful showpiece for racism in colonial imagery) and a little museum oozing with colonial nostalgia.

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Manchewe Falls

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5.30 AM

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The Mushroom Farm, Livingstonia

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Roadside picnic 

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Football pitch in Chitimba

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The lake

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Found Soul Kitchen in Mzuzu. They served Nsima. And it was Marie’s first time.

Mzuzu, Malawi

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Zomba Plateau, Malawi

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87% of Malawians depend on firewood for cooking. This wood needs to be collected and carried over long distances, a task mostly performed by women and children.

The immense demand for firewood is the reason why Malawi has one of the highest deforestation rates in the world.

At RENAMA, we therefore promote energy-efficient cookstoves that require less firewood and alternative fuels such as briquettes made of organic waste.

Zomba Plateau, Malawi

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Zomba Plateau, Malawi

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Thyolo highlands

A few weekends ago, a long-laid plan was finally realised when two of my colleagues (plus family) and I took a Sunday and started off on a hiking trip to the highlands of Thyolo, the neighbouring district of my home district Blantyre.

Thyolo is famous for its luminous green tea estates stretching out over soft hills set against the majestic scenery of the Mulanje massif, that doesn’t carry its nickname “Island in the Sky” for nothing.

After stopping in the closest village that was reachable without 4-wheel drive and where my colleague Clement had relatives to leave my little baby car, we continued by minibus and motorcycle taxi up to another village at the foot of what we called Thyolo mountain (not sure if that is the official name and if what we were about to climb really deserved to be called mountain).

Fortunately we quickly found some locals who didn’t hesitate to show us the right path and actually stayed with us for the rest of the day. They turned out to be invaluable for making our way to the top (and back) and their stories and trivia about the places we passed made us overlook the terrible alcohol smell on their breaths.

Our destination: the funny looking rock on top of the hill

Next to the wonderful views, the highlight of the trip was clearly the company of Clement’s little son Kenneth, whom we carried all the way up to the peak – most of the time in Malawian fashion wrapped with a Chitenje cloth on somebody’s back.

(Far less comfortable for the carrier than it looks! Eternal respect to all the women who do this every day while doing hard physical labour. And to Clement, who is probably the only Malawian man I have ever seen carrying a baby like that.)

Another highlight was the Futali, a wonderfully simple and delicious dish made of sweet potatoes and groundnut flour (a recipe can be found here), that Clement’s wife had prepared. It was the best thing to have while enjoying the view after a 2-hour hike through rough terrain under the burning sun and has been my comfort food for lazy days ever since.

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Happy 52nd Independence (yester)Day, Malawi!

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Mulanje, Malawi

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Third Culture Problems?

I recently read this article written by a student about her life as a Third Culture Kid, that I could relate to a disconcertingly great deal, despite only holding one passport and only having made three (and not eight) major moves across countries before finishing high school.

Switching personalities depending on where I am and who I’m with, hiding part of my identity when I meet new people because it could easily come off as arrogant, best friends I haven’t lived close to in years? Been there, done that.

The text gives an honest picture of what being part of a travel culture comes with except glamour.

“We’re caught in a state of temporary. We are never fully here, and never fully there, always thinking of the people and places we leave behind, and imagining the places we could be and the people we will see next.”

Once I finish my master’s degree I will have spent five consecutive years in five different countries, one year in each.

However, like the author in the end of the article states she is going to build up “a real home” for the first time in her life moving back to a place she’s lived before, moving to Copenhagen next September (and Trondheim the year after) for me also has a taste of returning.

To a continent I strongly identify with and cultural frames I grew up in. To cold winters that bring back childhood memories. To dark bread and cheese, bicycle lanes and lots of people to share my cosy comfort bubble with. Maybe to stay this time?

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Ramadan Mubarak

Ramadan is here for the 25% of muslims in Malawi. Two of them are my sweet landlords who I’m sharing a compound with.

(I knew that islamophobia had reached a critical point when they asked me shortly after I moved in if I had told my parents that I was staying with muslims.)

At this time of the year my profound half knowledge on Islam gained in Istanbul comes into play to impress people with arabic religious terminology and Ramadan anecdotes from Turkey.

Yesterday evening I had Iftar (fast-breaking dinner) with my landlady. Funnily, she seemed much less hungry than me for whom it was already the third meal of the day, but I guess with a day length of just about 11h at the moment, muslims here can really consider themselves lucky. Next to standard Malawian dishes like rice, beans and fried cassava, we started the meal with dates and once again I found myself amazed how thousands of kilometres don’t do anything to religious culture.

That, of course, is not fully true. Though the dates might be an essential part of the Ramadan diet (they are actually subsidised imports mostly from Saudi Arabia since they are rarely found in Sub-Saharan Africa), because in the Qur’an Muhammad breaks his fasting with a date, Islamic culture as I perceive it here differs a lot from what I experienced in Turkey.

The most striking difference is definitely that Islam here is a minority religion and the actual percentage of muslims in the country is a matter of public debate. This means, while I get all nostalgic every time I’m close to a mosque when the prayer call kicks off, many Malawians are bothered by the noise and land values of real estates within hearing distance of a mosque are lower than elsewhere.

Apart from that, one of my dominant memories from the Ramadan month in Istanbul are the public Iftar events that anybody can attend for free. A good fraction of Taksim Square for example would be covered in tents for the whole month, where hundreds of people (among them many Syrian refugees) would start queuing hours before sunset to break their fasting together.

I also once attended such an event set on a cliff at the Black Sea coast in Şile – despite not fasting, obviously, which made me feel slightly bad about it. Although the best part of the meal was the canned ayran and the food was not very vegetarian-friendly, it was an overwhelming experience to sit there watching the sun sink into the sea and having my Turkish friend kick my leg under the table when the meal was interrupted for prayer and I didn’t notice.

Shared Iftar meetings exist in Malawi as well, but are held in mosques and not visibly on the streets like in Turkey. My landlady has promised to take me one evening.

Still, even though muslims are a minority in Malawi, in Blantyre they are a rather influential one, because the “coloured community” (I am very much aware that the term “coloured” is not politically correct elsewhere, however in Malawi it is the group’s self-designated name) formed of many upper-class Indians and other Asian Malawians is to a great share Islamic.

I have been told that is why during Ramadan, Blantyre nightlife calms down significantly. Will look into that this weekend.

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When I feel alive I try to imagine a careless life A scenic world, where the sunsets are all Breathtaking, breathtaking. (Photo by Minna)