Summer in the city

The last few days have been spent in Lilongwe, Malawi’s busy, dusty, chaotic capital city.  And it’s hot! 37 degrees at 11am today.

I’ve had a series of meetings with other charities, some Government departments and some potential funders of our work – telling them the story of what we are doing in the North of the country. And they like it!  The more we talk, the more sense our approach makes to me and, thankfully, others seem to agree.

One of my more mundane tasks was to visit the supermarkets and note the retail prices of fruit and vegetables to help us with our business plan.  It was pleasing to see Kwithu Kitchen’s products on the shelves – our women farmers are growing tomatoes for them in the polytunnels.

We’re further south here so it’s already mango season – in the North they are still green on the trees.  This picture captures one of the great challenges the people face: the women have mangoes to sell but  no-one is buying because they are everywhere.  Mangoes command good prices out of season but right now you can’t give them away (they are delicious by the way!)

There’s quite a lot of road building going on which is a good thing because roads are the very basic infrastructure which helps an economy to develop. Old habits die hard though, and the vehicle is using the old dirt road while a boy drives his small cattle herd along the brand new tarmac.