Malawi, Africa – We must be quite a sight to the locals in our big overland white truck, for every village we passed in Zambia and Malawi, the villagers would always stop and stare as we passed. Many even waved and shouted hello. Nambia and Botswana were sparsely populated, with long stretches of just desert or bushes. Not Zambia and Malawi. It’s a steady stream of small villages and people along the road and towns very kilometre or so.
Long bus journeys are passed in different ways by different individuals. Some sleep the whole 12 hours. Others read. For a change of pace, a deck of cards sometimes comes out. I, more often than not, just pass the time staring out the window, taking it all in. Botswana was tediously monotonous with its flat landscape and endless bush land. Zambia and Malawi have been a complete contrast, full of colour and life.
I love observing the villagers going about their daily life. The women with their endless array of bold, brightly coloured patterned materials that they use as skirts, twist around their waists like a man would a bath towel, or around them to strap babies on to their backs, or wrapped around goods and piled on their heads. We’ve passed market stalls selling red sweet potatoes piled high like an alternative Janga game and ten foot long stalks of sugarcane. There are rows of tarps covered with used shoes and clothing for sale. The houses in Malawi are constructed of homemade red bricks with a thatched roof. Rectangular in design. Zambian houses were often circular, constructed of sticks and also thatched. People walked everywhere, often barefoot. The lucky few road bikes. Women sat around braiding other women’s hair. Dilapidated one story concrete buildings with peeling paint and no doors served as beer taverns or general grocers. This is Africa. You certainly got the sense the people were did whatever they could to earn a bit of money to survive one more day.
You can buy the strangest assortment of things from your vehicle as you travel down the roads in Africa. We’ve often been offered bags of coal, roasted ears of corn, sugarcane in plastic bags, bunches of carrots, dead chickens with their feathers still on, bunches of bananas, paintings, bracelets and other souvenirs, carpets, buckets of potatoes, the list goes on. It’s like a perpetuous street market.
