Living in Lilongwe

Arriving

My first impressions of Lilongwe driving in from the airport were how green the city was and how many trees there were! Arriving in late March meant that I had come at the end of the rainy season, which starts around November, so that explained the vibrant colour of the landscape. I experienced a couple of decent thunderstorms with heavy rain during my first weekend here, but it has hardly rained since then and it is not likely to rain again much until November. But the days now are warm and sunny, so it is a very good time of year to be here.

It is also now harvest time for maize, the staple crop here. When I arrived the maize was vivid green, adding to the impression of rampant, lush growth. Maize is grown everywhere there is a spare spot right throughout the city – in back yards and empty lots, along the river banks and on the corner at the intersection of major roads. And if it’s not maize growing on the side of a busy city road, then it’s sugarcane!

Avenue of trees along the road at work, all foreign species

Many of the trees that so impressed me in those first few days are imported from other tropical climes, some from other parts of Africa and some from further afield, particularly Indonesia and other countries in south-east Asia. I am embarrassed to admit this, but it had not penetrated my tiny wee brain that Malawi was a tropical country (sometimes my brain puts up a “Stop” sign to really useful information and refuses to accept it, like why a carburetor is important in an engine or Malawi is a tropical country, which can cause me grief at times!). Although I had taken on board the concept of the “wet season” and “dry season” here, I just didn’t associate tropical with southern Africa. Anyway, enough of my failings, back to Lilongwe…

The lush front garden at our house

It is an interesting town – more overgrown village in character than capital city. I think partly that’s because it feels a bit like a big farm with all the crops growing everywhere, and so many dirt roads, and open green spaces, and the smell of cooking smoke each evening as people cook their dinners over charcoal or an open fire. It also doesn’t help that there are two “centres” – the Old Town and City Centre. Neither is very compact and they are separated by at least 3 km of green space (including the Wildlife Sanctuary) and suburbia, so walking between them is quite a mission. My explorations of City Centre have left me mostly unimpressed, it seems rather sterile and disconnected somehow. The Old Town is more vibrant and bustling (read: chaotic!) with a large Mosque, streets of low rise concrete buildings housing a variety of shops, the crazy minibus terminus, street vendors selling anything and everything, and a sprawling market selling clothes and trinkets and some food. It’s not unlike the Queen Victoria market in Melbourne, except I don’t think they sell large wicker baskets containing live chickens in the Queen Vic market do they??? At the northern end of Old Town there are a couple of good sized supermarkets selling almost everything one could want, and other, mostly “Western”, shops (some of which are South African in origin), plus a raucous fruit and vegie market. I sometimes brave the market to buy fresh produce at cheap prices, but the combination of being hassled as a foreigner and being seriously ripped off last time I was there (my own fault for not being careful enough!) means I don’t always venture there.

Commuting

One of the (few) advantages of not having my own wheels here is that I get to commute to work each day via the Staff Bus. A lot of agencies provide such transport options for staff, which drive around the city picking up staff from their homes, or nearby at least. Our bus is an old mini-van which has seen better days, but it does the job. Although it does often mean it takes an hour or so for me to commute the 18 km because I live near the driver, making me one of the first on and last off, the bonus is that I get driven around the city as we pick up and drop off the other folks. It has been really interesting to be driven places I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and it has really helped me to get my bearings.

The suburb in which I live in is fairly well-to-do with a lot of houses similar in size and style to Australia or NZ, with reasonable sized gardens behind high walls. For a substantial portion of the population, home is a smallish concrete or brick house, generally with a tin roof and maybe with a small garden area. Some are semi-detached and some are stand alone. There are plenty of new sub-divisions too, on the fringes of the city, to cater for the expanding population. There are also areas of town where the housing is less substantial and more densely packed, and often the houses have thatched rooves which don’t always look particularly weather-proof, or where the concrete or bricks (both fired and mud brick) are in disrepair.

Typical suburban or village shops, the red Airtel is advertising a phone company

There also seem to be a lot of half-finished houses and buildings, where people have started to build but run out of money. The floor and brick walls are up but the roof never quite gets completed, or the roof is on but windows and doors aren’t ever installed, or in other cases there is a very impressive brick wall surrounding a building site, which is occupied not by bricks and mortar, but by a crop of maize!  

The main roads around the city are sealed, with secondary roads also sealed, but they are often narrow and may have large pot-holes. Then there are the suburban streets which are frequently unsealed. The conditions of these streets range from reasonable to very rough and bumpy! There is one road we occasionally take in the staff bus that really requires a 4WD or at least decent suspension! At least all the roads have a decent shoulder for pedestrians and cyclists to use, which may be sealed but is more often unsealed. And next to that are the very deep gutters which are required to channel away the torrential downpours that characterise the rainy season. At this time of the year, the gutters only have a bit of stagnant water in them and a fair load of plastic and other rubbish, so they can get a bit smelly in places. There is a problem with litter and rubbish on the sides of roads, especially plastic bags, which is partly due to a chronic waste management problem and also to the issue of limited fuel being available for the city council rubbish trucks. Between the rubbish and the dusty roads, it is very difficult for people to keep things clean, but I do often see people diligently sweeping their road frontage to maintain a clean area, at least in their little part of the world.  

Our House

I may have commented in an earlier post about the lack of street names. My address here is Area 14-83, Lilongwe. Which is like saying that in Melbourne, I live at Ringwood North-39. Our street here does not have a name, you just have to tell folks to go to Area 18 roundabout, then down Presidential Way and turn right at the 7^th Day Adventist Clinic and that’s our street, the number is on the gate! Houses are numbered consecutively along the street, so our next-door neighbours are 82 and 84, while across the road they are another sequence altogether (I can’t remember what the numbers are!). So the limitation on street names does make interpreting maps somewhat more challenging!

Then there is the Area numbering system. Well, when I say “system”, I mean that in the loosest possible sense. So Area 15 is next to Area 14, but then we also border Areas 32 and 40. Area 20 is nowhere near Area 21, but Areas 10, 11 and 12 are all next to each other, squashed in between Areas 31 and 43 – go figure! Apparently, an Area is numbered in order of when it was developed, so I think the latest one is about Area 52 or so. Some Areas do have proper names, like Kawale or Biwi, and then some Areas are big enough to be subdivided into named sections, which does get a bit confusing. And yes, you may be surprised to know that I haven’t yet found a map with all the Areas marked on it, because why would anyone need anything useful like that???

My bedroom - the "green room"

Meanwhile, back in 14-83, our house is large and very comfortable. We have electricity (most of the time), hot and cold running water (most of the time), bottled gas for cooking and flush loos! There are 4 large bedrooms, each with their own bathroom (this is not typical!), plus there is the guest loo. There is a living room, dining room and kitchen that we all share. I have my own fridge/freezer allocated to me and a large shelf in the walk-in pantry. We each cook our own meals, but there is a certain amount of sharing of food and foodstuffs between the various inhabitants.

And the inhabitants are a very international bunch. Carmen and Francesco live here permanently with their (almost) 4 year old daughter Olivia and 5 month old son Ennio, and they are a lovely mixture of Malawian, Italian, Canadian and Thai heritage and culture. They rent out the remaining rooms to itinerants like me. When I first arrived there were two young Dutch women living here who have both moved on, and now we share with Dominik and Suki, German and English respectively. Everyone shares travel tips and hints about how to make the most of life here and where to get the stuff you really need.

Then there are the staff. We have two housekeepers, Mr. Rashid and Mr. Juma, plus a gardener and two nightwatchmen. The housekeepers clean the house each day (including all bathrooms and bedrooms), make our beds, do some child-minding if Carmen needs a hand sometimes, and do all the laundry and ironing. Everything that gets hung out on the line outside gets ironed, including sox and towels and sheets because of mpuzi flies – little flies that come with the mango trees that can get under your skin and cause problems. They are killed by the heat of ironing, so that is our defence against them. Apparently they are also less active at this time of year, so I needn’t worry too much about them.

The two housekeepers live in a small 2 bedroom house on the property, Mr. Juma having one bedroom and Mr. Rashid and his wife and two young daughters having the second. The daughters are great friends with Olivia and they play a lot together. The other staff travel here each day from their homes.

The only other members of the household are two large Rottweilers who are part of the security system (along with the locked gates, the wire on top of the high fences and the locks on internal doors within the house as well as external doors). To outsiders the dogs are quite fierce and scary, but they really are very gentle and lovely dogs, despite their bulk. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss my three cats, back in Melbourne though!

Some components of the security system

More front garden

We have a wonderful garden here, and I love being able to go out and pick fresh lettuces and vegetables for dinner. People seem to really enjoy their gardens here and take a lot of pride in tending both the edible and decorative plants in their gardens. I was amazed when I first arrived to find roses growing – that was completely unexpected! There are some beautiful roses in the garden at work, which are lovingly tended by a young man who takes a lot of pride in keeping the garden and lawns in good shape. Hmm, I think his commitment to the perfect lawn is somewhat greater than mine will ever be – he spent an entire day last week cutting one strip of lawn, about a metre wide and 50 m long, with a pair of hedge shears, squatting on his haunches. Once he had cut every blade with precision, he then swept the cuttings off the lawn and onto the path where he hosed them away – such dedication! It’s enough to make one want to take a nap, so bye for now…

Don't forget to take time to smell the roses