Most people visit tiny Malawi on their way to somewhere else.
Squeezed between South and East Africa, this poor, densely populated little country
makes a convenient stopover for those en route from, say, Botswana to Tanzania,
and those who do make the stop may be surprised.
For such a thin sliver of a country, Malawi offers a generous variety of attractions:
lakes, rivers, mountains, wlidlife parks and villages.
Long inhabited by Bantu-speaking peoples (who probably arrived in two waves,
the first around the 1st century and the second around the 14th century),
Malawi enjoyed relative calm and isolation from the outside world until the early 1800s,
when Arab slave traders swooped in and carried away many of its residents.
Europeans, except for some wandering Portuguese merchants, didn’t pay much
attention to Malawi until 1859. That was the year Dr. David Livingstone
(of Dr. Livingstone, I presume? fame) visited and reported that the residents called
the country Nyasaland, or Land of the Lake.
Nyasaland was colonized by Great Britain in 1883 and remained under British control
until 1964, when it gained its independence.
The country’s name was changed to Malawi, which means reflected light of bright haze.
For the first three decades of its existence, Malawi was ruled by the aged despot
Dr. Hastings Banda, best known for intransigent and idiosyncratic policies such as
banning short skirts on women and hair below the collar on men, and recognizing
the apartheid regime in South Africa.
A referendum in 1993 ended one-party rule, and in elections the following year
Dr. Banda was voted out of office.
His death in 1997 (at age 99) marked the the end of an era.
He left behind a poor and crowded country, relishing political freedom but struggling
to recover from economic mismanagement, rising crime and severe droughts.
Geographically landlocked, Malawi is dominated by Lake Malawi and the Great
Rift Valley,
which cuts through the country north to south (on either side of the valley are plateaux
reaching 3,000-4,000 ft/900-1,200 m).
In the north, the Nyika Uplands reach 8,500 ft/2,600 m, and in the south,
mountains climb to just under 10,000 ft/3,050 m.
For a more detailed map click here
These maps are big, so be patient.
Parts of this text were borrowed from other sources.
