Back in Lilongwe

I've finally returned to Lilongwe (and regular internet access) from the far north of the country. The three weeks I spent exploring the north were fantastic and I've met with many, many interesting people who are trying to make their agro-dealership business work - often under quite difficult conditions. The picture on the left is of a shop in the most northern district of Malawi (the district that borders with Zambia and Tanzania). The shop is run by a women who sells agricultural inputs and groceries. It was nicely kept inside, but it didn't have too much stock. The women who runs the shop has to get all of her stock from a larger trading area by minibus. I can't think of a nice place to go shopping. Her shop was bordered by small hills on one side and a little drop off to a beautiful valley on the other.

I promise to share more about my visits with agrodealers over the next few days, but first I thought that I'd share my journey back to Lilongwe. The exercise that I was working on wrapped up in Chitipa on Friday. Chitipa is a thriving town on the border with Tanzania. Access to Chitipa is a little difficult because the roads into and out of Chitipa are pretty terrible - there are no paved roads for at least 150 kilometers. This gives the town a kind of outback feel. So, the exercise wrapped up in Chitipa Friday and I needed to be in Blantyre (in the south) to see my host family's son get married on Saturday morning.

We left bright and early on Friday morning from Chitipa, and visited agrodealers throughout the day on our way back to Mzuzu. The dirt roads makes for a lot of fun driving, but not for fast driving. We made it back to Mzuzu around 4:30 in the afternoon. Then began my hunt for an overnight bus that would take me to Blantyre. I managed to find myself a seat on the last bus making the journey. I was pretty happy to get the bus and the seat. Several people opted to stand for the 12 hour overnight trip. I slept most of the way waking up only when we all had to get of the bus at the police road stops. By 5:30 am we were in Blantyre, which is good because I had just enough time to get myself cleaned up and to the church for the 7:30 am ceremony.

Doesn't the beautiful couple look happy.