This is Malawi

A few things that we've noticed as newcomers and we're getting used to:

1. To turn on a light, flick the switch down. If there are two switches beside the bathroom door, for example, and you want to turn on the light in the bathroom, the one furthest from the door is probably the one you need. When there’s two switches, one is up and one is down, and you want to turn the light off, no matter how conscious you are of the fact that up is off, we still get it wrong 90% of the time – weird.
2. When they turned the single lane paved road from Blantyre to Zomba into a double-lane highway a few years ago, instead of adding a lane on one side or the other, they added half a lane on both sides, but because of poor construction and settling, the sides of the road are very bumpy. That may account for people driving down the centre of the road – that and the fact that there’s usually a solid line of foot traffic and bicycles carrying loads of firewood or other oversized loads.
3. When you stop your truck anywhere in town, you will have people at your window almost immediately, either trying to sell you some product, ranging from strawberries to newspapers, or just asking for money. People come to our door asking for jobs, selling wood carvings or paintings, asking for financial help; walking to or from the office someone might try to sell me something or tells me they’re hungry. We want to help people but it’s hard because you can’t help everyone. And there are only so many wood carvings you can buy too.
4. Whereas in Canada the most common form of currency is the $20 bill, the most common form of currency here is the MK500 bill, which is worth about C$3.75. When you’re exchanging USD, you become rich very quickly, or at least it looks that way when you look at the figures and the stack of bills in your hands.
5. Interestingly, one of the grocery stores here in Zomba actually uses a western marketing technique and will sell stuff for 499.99 kwacha. Considering that even 1 kwacha is only ¾ of a cent, it’s ridiculous to think in fractions of kwachas.
6. As expatriates we are expected to employ local people as guards, gardeners, and house help. Unemployment rates are very high so people are fortunate if they have a job. For us as missionaries it’s kind of a social welfare project, providing people with an income and hopefully being the light of Jesus to them. The going wage is MK200-250/day, or about $1.50/day
7. Gardeners will endlessly sweep the driveway, the lawn, and the dirt with their brooms, which consist of a bundle of branches. They wear out many a broom over the course of a month. Luckily they only cost about $0.25, plus it actually gives them something to do on the job. The lawn is cut with a machete/sickle, which is why we do need help with the upkeep of our home because without the machines we have in the developed world, we would be spending half our time moving the lawn and doing laundry.
8. All household appliances have to be imported from South Africa. The majority of Malawian households do not have the luxury of a stove, fridge, or washing machine. We are fortunate to have the first two, but we do our laundry by hand (with help). We have the option of buying a washing machine or hiring someone to help with such labour-intensive household duties (laundry isn’t the only thing, most everything here requires more work here).
9. Because we do not have house help yet, we’ve been fortunate to have our day guard/gardener wash our laundry. But let me introduce you to the mango fly: it likes to lay its eggs in the beautifully moist garments hanging from the line in the backyard; then when you put these garments on and you hatch the eggs with your body heat, the larvae like to burrow under your skin. For some reason I don’t think my body was meant to be a mango fly nursery, so because we don’t kindly take to such an invasion, we attack the mango fly in its most helpless state and all our clothes meet the iron. Yes, everything needs to be ironed, especially your underwear and socks (wait a second, we don’t wear socks here). And because we don’t have house help yet, we (Alex) have been doing lots of ironing.
10. The local driving school likes to use our street for all its lessons so we have lots of new drivers under instruction on our road. What’s really frustrating is that they drive really really slow and are constantly waving their arm out the window, even in corners or with oncoming traffic. Why are these new drivers always waving for us to pass? Turns out they’re not. They’re just practicing their hand signals with a lot of enthusiasm. Apparently the hand signal for slowing down is moving your arm up and down and the signal for turning left is turning the arm in a reverse circular motion, but from behind you can’t tell the difference. Someone should really invent a different system, maybe some lights on the back of the truck that turn red when you brake?
11. Ever stop to think where you would get crushed gravel without machinery? Just down the road from us there’s a “gravel pit.” Actually it’s a piece of rocky property along a dry streambed. Every day there are two guys there pounding rocks with a hammer. One guy takes very large rocks and pounds on them with a sledge hammer to break it up into large chunks of rock to sell. There’s another guy with a hammer that sits with a pile of gravel between his legs and makes gravel, one rock at a time. I walk by them every day and these guys are a highlight. They always stop their work to wave and say, “Hello, how are you?” With such backbreaking monotonous work for long hours, it’s amazing how happy and high-spirited they are. I will definitely have to get a picture someday.

Okay, there's lots more, but that gives you a little taste...