Entertainment

---

Sorry if this jumps around I just kind of wrote under headings so one section doesn’t really link to the next, I missed last week so wanted to get one out quickly.

Since I’ve been here I’ve been buying a lot of DVD’s and watching them on my laptop. They’re usually less than K500 each (but can be as low as K300 depending where you go) with 10 or 15 films on each disk (though no special features), or an entire series of a TV show. The cover they come in sometimes isn’t entirely accurate as to the films within, and their very pirated (people standing up, talking, etc.). When I first got here I tried to play them on DVDPlay (the standard program on my computer) but they all played at 1.5x speed so everyone sounded like chipmunks and you needed a quick eye to follow what was going on, thankfully I’ve managed to sort that out now.

As with shopping much of the TV comes from South Africa. SABC 1,2 and 3 seem to be the main channels, though there is BTV (Botswana) and AfricaMagic. There is a Malawian station run from Chichiri but I haven’t really seen any of it, as its not on the satellite package. DSTV is the Satellite provider and give a good range of channels, including 4 BBC channels (I’m in Africa and I can watch Eastenders!), sports, films, action, fashion, and series channels. Though all these are on the full package, with the standard bundle there is range of 20 or so channels. You can also get specific bundles depending on your interests, for example when I was staying with the Kumdana’s they had a Religion Bundle with lots of Christian, Evalgelical channels. There are some good shows on at the moment; with the start of 2010 new shows have started including FlashForward, the Mentalist, and others so I’m not as cut off as I may have thought before coming out here. AfricaMagic shows (mostly Nigerian) African Films, the Chatata’s like them so I’ve been watching them.

Most of the time when I use the internet I’m in internet cafes, there are plenty of them about and for not a bad price (less than K500 for hour and a half) although they can be somewhat slow (it’s taken me half an hour to get one email before now and no I didn’t use that cafe again). Zain offers a very cheap internet service for mobiles but as of yet I’m having trouble getting it activated on my phone, it would make it a lot easier to stay in contact with everyone (not to mention for entertainment during blackouts) as it’s become more difficult to get to the cafe 2 or 3 times a week as I have been doing so far.

I’ve recently joined a gym and I’m trying to go several times a week (after realising quite how pathetically weak I really am). In Blantyre there are several gyms and sport complexes about, of varying quality, facilities and price, these include the Blantyre Sport Club, the Medical School Sports Complex and the Indian Sports Club in Limbe, though the larger hotels tend to have a swimming pool and/or a small gym. I go to the Wanderers Club in Chichiri by Shoprite. It’s small, simple and old fashioned, with mostly cast iron weights and a few machines, and the best description I’ve heard of it is ‘a spit and sawdust place’. I decided to go there because it’s cheap (K 400 a time or K 4,500 a month) and a few people I’ve met out here go there (including Bruce Chatata, who I’m staying with) so I have people to work out with when I go. Hopefully in a few months I can get into some semblance of fitness.

There isn’t much in the way of nightlife in Malawi, there’s only a few clubs that I know of (Doogles, Twiga, Mustang Sally’s, though I’m not sure you could really call them clubs). There are however loads of bars and bottlestores, these get packed as you can image when there’s football on, the premiership is huge over here (though the teams people support are kind of limited Liverpool, Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea) and recently because of the Africa Cup of Nations.

tionana

---