A weekend back in Lilongwe

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On Thursday after noon we hopped on a coach line bus to get to Lilongwe. The seat rows on the bus were not separated enough to fit my knees completely in while sitting, which made for an extremely uncomfortable 7hour bus ride. The buses here do not leave on a particular time, they only leave when they are packed, and therefore we waited 2 hours on the bus just before actually departing. Our bus made a stop in nearly every village along the way to Lilongwe, picking up and dropping passengers. Half way through our trip the bus was pulled over by police high way patrol. A policeman walked in the bus with a grin on his face and started mumbling words in Chichewa that I couldn’t understand. He stared at a young man, exchanged a few words and chuckled. All of a sudden the policeman’s hand rose up and smacked the young man hard as he could on the head. All the bus passengers suddenly sat up still, staring the front in silence. The young man was handcuffed and taken out of the bus. Three more young men were smacked and arrested by the police. A person beside us explain that the four men arrested where thieves that work together on night time buses, They get on at one stop, steal from passengers and get off at the next stop. As the bus started moving again, the passengers looked out the window to the thieves kneeling on the ground at the police’s feet. The passenger cheered for the arrests, and yelled some last words of reflection to the young men on the ground. The journey to Lilongwe continued peacefully in the night without any more arrests.
The following morning I made a second visit to Kauma village were some of the other Canadian interns work. We started by taking a tour in and around the village, and then spent most of the morning visiting a government funded primary school. The head teacher (principal) gave us a tour of each class room and grade. Some classes held more than 200 students. Some grades had so many children that the class was held outside and the children sat on the ground. With each class that we visited, the students greeted us with song.
That night, the Lilongwe interns hosted a party at their house and invited a lot of ex pats and local coworkers. Despite of a kicking sound system that was brought in by our Malawian friend Moses, the Malawian party guest were disappointed that we did not supply free alcohol. Moses explained that in Malawi, people expect drinks are supplied , unless the ‘BYOB’ has been stated in the party invitation. After the fridge was raided and all the beer was gone, people started to leave… oops!

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Photos

students in Kauma village
here's a photo of students at the government primary school in kauma village