From Malawi

THE SEA It can be such a miraculous number of colors! There are lots of shades of blue: light light blue, just like the sky, so that the h...

BACK IN THE USA I had a rough trip back to the US: we got robbed our last night in Mozambique, and then the airline lost my suitcases on th...

MOZAMBIQUE Not everything went well with our litle one-week vacation in Mozambique. We were surprised by the high prices, higher than in s...

ZOMBA Northerners think of the tropics stereotypically as "paradise" just because you don't have to wear jackets and coats an...

LEAVING MALAWI I didn't get my contract extended here, so I'm going to leave sooner than I thought, and I'm a bit sad about it....

THE BIG DAY LOOMS AHEAD On May 18, Malawians will go to the polls. Who will win? Nobody knows, and that's good in a way, at least. I...

ENCOUNTER WITH A SPIDER I was startled a few days back when, walking across the floor, I seemed to catch a bit of motion from the corner of...

MARKET-DOMINANT MINORITIES There is a phenomenon all over the world that certain ethnic groups perform very well and dominate the economy. ...

STEVIE AND CHERRY TOMATOES A snatch of everyday life that might help you to imagine Malawi: Five minutes from my office is a parking lot...

TEA FIELDS AND THE SOUTH One of the things that makes the views of Mount Mulanje so beautiful are the tea fields. Unlike the shaggy and of...

MULANJE Mount Mulanje is the highest mountain in Malawi at 3001 meters (about 10,000 feet.) That won't impress Coloradans (ours go ove...

CHIROMBO THE DOMESTIC HYENA One of the chief attractions of the lodge where we stayed is the "domestic hyena." Semi-domestic, I ...

HIPPOS IN LIWONDE In Liwonde, we saw impalas, waterbucks, baboons, mongooses, a hyena and a wide variety of birds, but the biggest attracti...

BEAUTIFUL MALAWI We had a few days off for Easter Break, so we left Lilongwe and went down south to Liwonde National Park and Mount Mulanje...

UNDER AN AFRICAN MOON The most spell-binding experience of the weekend was a walk I took along the highway just as evening was falling. It...

QUIET WEEKEND IN LILONGWE I had a fever Friday night and on Saturday I had a bit of a fever, so we dropped the idea of an out-of-town trip ...