Old Town Lilongwe

Our home in area 47 of Lilongwe, Malawi.

Professor George set off very early this morning for his tobacco auction in a nearby city. Our plans are to head into the city with a driver to complete some of our shopping needs and orient ourselves with the landmarks in downtown Lilongwe. We won’t always have a driver, so we will need to become familiar with the layout of the city.

We went around the city with Mike this morning and visited both the outdoor markets in the old city, the mini bus and big bus depots, the pharmacy, photo studio, and supermarkets. There are no walmarts here, only shoprite, Peoples, and Chipiku. We spent our entire day in old town purchasing the few things that we needed to get settled as well as exploring the areas in the old city.

Our shopping replenish list after three months of backpacking included a new toothbrush for Kylie, conditioner to get rid of Kylie’s dreadlocks, more insect repellent, Washing detergent because we had no clean clothes left, Milo (our version of tea so we can drink tea with the locals), and an English to Chichewa dictionary (we are going to learn Chichewa in three months. Our other purchases included fruit and gumbo puffs (a delicious popcorn like snack in Malawi.)

After our shopping Mike took us to one of his favorite market restaurants where we got to eat nsima, nkhuku, ndwino, and supu tomato with our hands. It was delicious!

We spent the rest of the evening at the CBF office updating our email inbox and finishing assignments for the upcoming week.

(Below: Andrew’s Post)

With our feet finally beneath us, Kylie and I got ready for our first official day in Malawi. We were fortunate to have Mike to drivers around today and that helped us to speedily learn the city streets and zones.

As we wandered the markets (both local and street) it became apparent why people here are nutrient deficient. Many fruits and vegetables that are cheap/common elsewhere in Africa were much more expensive. Even oranges (a common local fruit) cost more than the U.S.! It helps explain why it is so hard to change people’s diets, you’d have to double their costs in order to increase the daily nutrient intake for a person.

While most of the day was spent working at the office, getting things organized, and generally settling in, it was a good productive day.

One special thing that happened today was the chance to share the gospel (or at least our beliefs) with our host family. The family we are staying with are strong Christians. They pray before each meal and George, the father, goes to pray everydayat 6am at their church building. They really are kind hearted, good Christian people and it is such a wonderful experience to live with them for these 3 months. Shortly after breakfast this morning their daughter was chatting with us about her visa situation for South Africa. Her comment to us was ‘I’ve been praying that everything will work out, but I’m still worried about things. If I’m truly having faith shouldn’t I not be worrying?’ A pretty profound question. Kylie and I had the chance to share about the nature of faith and trusting God despite the natural man tendencies to fear and doubt. While a small missionary moment it was special to bear testimony of true principles.