Malawi Gold

In Malawi, if you feel like a quick and easy snack, things are easy. You can have chips. Don't like chips? Then you can't have anything. The chips, however, are pretty good, if not the sort of thng you want to eat for lunch every day, although I nearly did. They are made in a very simple way. A piece of sheet metal is laid over a fire, with a kind of bowl hammered into the middle. This bowl is filled with oil (not always the freshest), and a fire is lit underneath. Simple, and what it lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in deep-fried flavour. The potatoes-small, golden waxy things, with a dark brown skin, are peeled, chopped up and fried. If you feel adventurous, you can watch in horror as they deep fry an egg in a plastic bag for you. This is all put in a cheap plastic bag and topped with some shredded cabbage and sliced tomato. If this sounds like a strange combination, it's because it is, but it's also because potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes and red onion is about the entire range of vegetables you can buy in Malawi.

So you take your cabbage and chips. You eat with gusto, having just spent god knows how many hours on a matola, the cheapest form of transport- a flatbed truck, with as many as 55 people, some chickens, some goats and some fish on the back, the roof, hanging from the windscreen wiper blades, towed behind on skateboards, stuffed in the engine, whatever. When you have finished your cabbage and chips (which starts to seem more and more like a good combination), you think "Where is the nearest bin?" How western! You imperialist! How very booj-wah! You dont put it in the bin, you fool! You throw it on the ground!
This took me a little while to get used to. Not littering is something that was hammered into my skull from a very early age, and its something I Care About. But in Malawi, you'd be a fool to carry around an oily plastic bag for hours, until you find a bin. And then, when someone comes to empty the bin, they most likely jsut turn it over on the ground anyway. Littering in Malawi is nothing like the social crime commited by deviants and rapists like it is in South Africa. Its normal! You get used to it. I felt like a pro in a week.