Just as we stamped out our passports in Tanzania, the Malawi border was arbitrarily closed as a result of alleged demonstrations. As we waited to confirm our fate, it was looking like a long night on the bus with food scraps and no beer. The good news is that such puzzling events seem to go as easily as they come; the road block of logs was soon cleared and we were on our way. Malawi’s immigration procedure is intriguing. Each entry is handwritten into a notebook, one passport at a time. The single immigration official was quite leisurely considering the large, antsy crowd awaiting his attention.
A morning stroll the next day quickly gained momentum when I met a local primary school teacher in Chilumba. He seemed excited at the suggestion of my attending his class, so I eagerly did so. Nearly 60 children, ages ranging from 10 to 15 years, sat side-by-side on the floor of the classroom, which was conspicuously devoid of furniture and fixtures – just a chalkboard and daylight filtering through the cinderblock walls. It was bleak, but also practical – nothing to maintain, nothing to steal.
Further south on Lake Malawi, it was fun to discover a fishing community in Mbamba village. Between midnight and 2:00am, the fishermen embark on their nightly paddle into the choppy lake waters to cast gill nets, which they collect early the next morning, returning to shore about 10:00am.
