The first time I visited Lilongwe, Malawi was In January of 2020. I enjoyed my visit and had a great experience. This time when I visited Lilongwe, my experience wasn’t so great. It was not the people or the activities I had that made it less enjoyable. It was really aspects of the weather.
In January I arrived during the rainy season, and it did rain. However, I am used to rain living in the Seattle area so it didn’t really bother me. It does rain much harder in Lilongwe than in Seattle, but I enjoy watching the rain and hearing it pound on the roof. The only complaint I had was the mud. At times it was a little challenging to walk places because of the mud.
Coming in October was a totally different experience. For the most part it was hot and dry. When I say hot, I mean temperatures in the upper 80s and mid 90s. Fortunately it never reached into the 100s. The good thing is it is a fairly dry heat. The humidity usually doesn’t get above 50% so while I felt sweaty most of the time, it wasn’t that muggy feeling one can have in places with high humidity.
Often times in the mornings there would be a nice strong breeze, and that would help to keep things cool. However the wind would die down in the afternoons, and I could begin to feel the heat. My bedroom was hot the first night I arrived so one of the first things I did was go down and buy a small box fan to put by my bed. While the living room and dining room where I was staying had overhead fans, the bedroom did not.
I found, however, that since the fan was small I could move it around the house so it would be blowing on me wherever I was. Taking my daily afternoon nap on the couch was much more comfortable with a fan blowing on me.
While the heat itself was not a horrible thing, what accompanied it was, smoke. In the northwest we have begun to have smoke issues in the summer due to forest fires. The smell of smoke is not pleasant as well as unhealthy so we shut our windows to keep it out. In Lilongwe we don’t shut windows tight, and the smoke in the air seeps in so that the smell is pretty pervasive.
It seems that everyone is burning something in Lilongwe. At Bern’s house below mine, they keep a fire going most of the day using it to heat water for laundry or for cooking. In the meantime they are burning piles of fallen leaves. Technically this should be spring time here if there were four seasons, but they are just getting around to raking up and burning the leaves that fell from the trees last fall. People seem to burn their garbage as well so this haze and smoke lingers over the city.
We were out one evening, and the sun was a literal orange, almost a red ball in the sky. The haze and smoke was so thick that it created a beautiful sunset, but I would have preferred clean air to breathe.
We did have one day of reprieve. During my last week we had a rain storm come through, and it was a wonderful day. The rain cleared the air, and I enjoyed the smell of wet earth instead of smoke. Sadly it cleared up, and the next day the burning began again as did the smell of smoke.
The other challenge I faced in Malawi in October was bugs. Perhaps my memory is not very good, but I don’t really remember having too many problems with bugs in January. Such was not the case in October. First there were the mosquitos. In my mind I would have expected more mosquitos in January when there was a lot of water around. I would think in the dry season there would not be mosquitos. I was wrong. While the house I am staying in has screens on the windows, there are still mosquitoes inside. Every day I was bitten by mosquitos. At least I think it was mosquitoes.
The truth is I only saw a few actual mosquitos so I don’t know if it was them biting me or something else. I brought bug spray with me thinking I would need it for outside. Instead I needed it every evening inside the house. I was also taking drugs to prevent malaria, but I often wondered if all the bites I was getting would overwhelm the malaria medication, and I would still get it.
Besides whatever was biting me, there were the cockroaches. Again I don’t remember seeing any cockroaches when I was here in January, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Maybe I just got lucky. When I lived in the Dominican Republic, I had cockroaches in my house form time to time so they are not something I am unfamiliar with. However, this time around it became a bit much.
I had seen one or two already in the house as I went to bed one night. I threw the covers back to get ready to crawl into bed, and a cockroach ran out from the sheets and down the headboard side of the bed. That kind of freaked me out. I was worried it would try to crawl back into the bed so that night I slept on the couch. The next day I saw a cockroach near the bedroom door. After killing it I felt better thinking it was the one I had seen so it was no longer a threat.
A few days later I was sitting in a chair in the living room. When I stood up, I felt something on my thigh. I put my hand there and realized there was a cockroach in my pants. I started dancing around trying to get the creature to fall out of my pants. When that didn’t work, I ran back to the bedroom to yank off my pants. When the beast fell out, I was able to kill it. That night I saw two more cockroaches in the place. One didn’t survive. That was a little too much contact for me. Fortunately that was the last I saw of the cockroaches for the rest of my stay.
Of course my time in Malawi wasn’t all bad. As I suggested earlier, it was the spring season there, and some of the trees around had beautiful flowers and were getting new leaves so they added a wonderful touch to the landscape. One of the tree’s flowers reminds me of the flowers used in Hawaiian leis. The flowers drop on the ground around the tree and really are pretty.
Of course the reason I came to Lilongwe was to teach at the Great Commission Bible School, and that has been a very positive experience. I have enjoyed working with the students, Three of them were at the school when I was there back in 2020. This time around we had 14 students all together.
On our final night together we had a dinner and then a graduation for one of the students who had finished all the requirements. It was a fun event filled with music, speeches, and good fellowship. To be a part of that makes the challenges worth it.
Nevertheless I’m not sure I will return to Lilongwe in October again. Modules are held in January and June as well. I definitely prefer January at this point. I may have to check out June in the future. Bern says the weather is nicer then.
I do look forward to returning to Malawi in the future to teach. In the meantime I am excited to share with you more about my time in Lilongwe in the next few weeks.
As this week is Thanksgiving, I do want to thank all of my readers for your support and encouragement. My hope is that as I share my experiences, it will be a source of information and an encouragement for you to explore our world. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!