Nov 13. 2014. Malawi

After a long 9-hour driving from Lusaka, I arrived at Chipata, eastern province of Zambia. I spent one night in Kwa Manda lodge. It was interesting that everywhere I went, there was a lodge no matter what the place was a vast stretch of land. After a lot of turns and twists during the last 6 months, I just went forward as I planned. On the one side, I felt a load off my mind when I finished Zambia presentation, and I am now ready to move on to my 4^th African country this year, Malawi. Sun rose at 5am today. It was a 1-hour drive to get borderline between Zambia and Malawi. Before passing the border of Zambia by road, I said good-bye to Davison and Doreen. They came here with me to see me off from 9-hour driving Lusaka. Thank you so much. I will keep in touch.

Borderline between Zambia (leftside) and Malawi (righside)

As I concerned, there was an issue at the immigration checkpoint. Every time I tried to leave the country or pass the border, they did not allow me to go with different reasons. Going African countries here and there with foreign nationality was punctilious. In those cases, I had to be poor Charles who eagerly wanted to go. Luckily, it worked again! I took the World Vision Malawi vehicle and headed to Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi.

Malawi is a landlocked country that is located in Southeast of Africa continent, bordered by Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. The geography of the country looks thin and long, and there is Lake Malawi alongside of the eastside of the border. It has the highest human population density among African countries; the population size is 16 millions with 121 pop./km² and 313 pop./mi². Malawi’s land size is 1/7 of Zambia’s but its population size is the same as Zambia’s. In this most-densely populated country in Africa, 85% of population lives in rural areas. 90% of export revenues come from agriculture, and it highly relies on economic aid from International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and other countries. Malawi has a high HIV/AIDS, 11.9% of the population, and high risk for infectious diseases, malaria, plague, diarrhea, typhoid fever, rabies, hepatitis A and schistosomiasis.

I met staff in Malawi, and I would start working with Malawi WASH team from tomorrow. Fresh start is always good because I gain a new motivation to survive in the new environment. However, I am under the pressure from memorizing new staff's name and adjusting to the new place within short period of given time. It has been already half a year since I came to Africa, and the year 2014 is almost over. All’s well that ends well. I hope I will spend the rest of 2014 without any regret in Malawi!