Lilongwe, Malawi

Lilongwe, Malawi is the country's capital city.  For those of you who don't recognize Malawi, pull out your world map.  Find Africa, look to the South Eastern part and you'll find a small country that runs north to south with a large lake in the country's boundaries.  It is surrounded by Tanzania to the north, Zambia to the east, and Mozambique to the Southwest.

It is quite a large bustling city.  The city is broken up into what they call "areas".  The areas are numbered based on when they were created.  for example, the interns that are living in Lilongwe are living in "Area 44", which is a very new development, but it is located beside "Area 12".  The Mzuzu interns (which is what i am), were staying at a backpacker's hostel that was called the "Mufasa's Backpackers".  I was really quite nice compared to some of the other places I have stayed in in South East Asia.  All of the interns stayed in one of the dorm rooms, which had bunk beds.  The bathroom and the showers were located just outside the room across the way.  The showers had hot water, and good water pressure.  The breakfast was delicious, I opted for some French toast for the morning we ate there.

While we were in Lilongwe, we visited the "palace" that the other interns were staying in.  There is 11 of them for 3 months, before the AUCC (3 month) interns leave.  It is a beautiful house that's walled in, and they have a guard that protects the door at night.  The floors were made of marble and they had 7 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. Some of them were even en suites.  Their accomodations are quite different from ours, but truthfully, I feel more comfortable in ours, considering where we are.  The reason they are living in those quarters is because it is located close to Kauma village where a bunch of them are working.

We had the opportunity to walk to the village and meet some of the interns supervisors at the Youth Development Centre which is also a school.  They have some students that pay, and those who do, the money is used to go directly back into the school for improvements.  It was quite nice to get out of the bustling city and meet people that were living the village lifestyle.

Some of the interns brought boxes of supplies that went to local village clinic which would help the people in the community directly.

We were only in Lilongwe for two days, and we were there mostly to do logistical things like get our phones, go to the market to by some things that we may not get in Mzuzu, and have a chance to hang out with the Lilongwe interns a bit before we took off to Mzuzu, which is about 6 hours north in the mountains, close to Lake Malawi.