"You know you're in Malawi when...
an old man on the road is wearing a fur-trimmed woman's pink housecoat from the 1950's;
the rear rack if a bike is stacked with ten uncured cow hides;
a roadblock is a bamboo pole across two barrels and the official manning it is wearing a T-shirt lettered Winnipeg Blue Bombers;
the lovely smooth tarred road becomes a rutted muddy track that is barely passable;
people start sentences with, 'But we are suffering, sir;'
on the day the Minister of Finance announces his National Austerity Plan, it is revealed that thirty-eight Mercedes-Benzes have just been ordered from Germany."
"...the strong human reek on African buses was a smell of mortality that seemed to me like a whiff of death."
"The lake was beautiful, there were golden mountains on the [Tanzanian] side, and on ours the escarpment leading to Nyika Plateau, glittering water and great heights and the natural beauty of Africa."
"School teaching was perfect for understanding how people lived and what they wanted for themselves. And my work justified my existence in Africa. I had never wanted to be a tourist. I wished to be far away, as remote as possible, among people I could talk to. I achieved that in Malawi."
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