Off to Blantyre

We are now in Blantyre. It was a long four hour drive from where we were in Lilongwe. Malawi has some beautiful mountain ranges as well as flat plains. The countryside itself is breathtaking. There are many things that intrigue me about the Malawian culture. One is that there are houses or actually huts all over the place. When you think you are in the middle of nowhere you see a little cluster of brick huts with a thatch straw like roof. Another thing is it does not matter how remote an area you are in, there are always and I mean always people walking along the road. The roads are not very wide either. There is barely room for two cars to pass each other. The cars drive fast too. If one person walking along the road slips or trips then they are a goner. The only thing the drivers do to warn the pedestrians are honk their horn repeatedly. There have been a couple of times where I had to close my eyes. Another thing is how many fields of corn there are. I know corn is the main source of food for Malawi, but I honestly think half of Malawi is fields of corn. There really are that many. There are also many piles of shucked corn laid out everywhere. They lay the corn out in the sun on huge tarps to dry it out. Once it is dry they pop every little kernel of corn off of the cob. After that they grind the kernels into a very fine powder called maize which they use for cooking different things such as nsima. The closest thing I compare nsima to is mashed potatoes. It has the same type of consistency but tastes more bland. Nsima is a staple here because it fills you up and is relatively cheap to make. I’m sure as I go along I will have more interesting things to add to the list.