On Strip Malls and Straight Rows

Commercial development in Malawi is spotty, but neatness is universal.

On the way from the airport to the commercial part of town, I noticed a huge billboard by the side of the road. The face of an African man in a blue suit towered over me. "President Muluzi warns you about the AIDS virus! Let Us Save Our Country!" the sign screamed. This puzzled me. I thought AIDS was spreading so rapidly because of a lack of education, or a refusal to confront the problem; but this billboard seemed to contradict all those Economist articles I'd read. I was later to understand that the AIDS situation in Malawi was much more complicated than I had thought from my Western perch.

There is one strip mall in Malawi, and it happened to be my first local sight. We had pizza and beer for lunch at Ali Baba's Pizzeria, and then we went grocery shopping at the adjacent Shop-Rite, Malawi's only grocery chain. The grocery store was cool, organized, and offered impressive variety. The cans on the shelves were stacked impeccably straight. When I took one down, a man ran up behind me to reshuffle the rest back into a perfectly smooth facade. Next lesson: Malawians like things to be neat.

Thus far, Malawi didn't seem so unfamiliar. In fact, if I had left that day, I would have returned home thinking that Blantyre was a lot like a Western suburb. As it turns out, Blantyre is unique. Malawi has other cities, of course, like Lilongwe and Mzuzu; but no other area in the country is as commercially developed. Most grocery shopping is done at roadside markets; most food is cooked over open fires; pizza is altogether absent from the local diet. My first impression of Malawi was, looking back, highly abnormal. But it did give me enough confidence to be hopeful. A lot is possible there, even though much of the country struggles to get by.