Driving in Malawi is pretty different from driving in any other place in the world. In Malawi, you normally don't worry so much about the other cars - I've been driving for more than an hour on the main roads without meeting any other car. Here, there are other obstacles: Bicycles, people, goats, chicken, kids, dogs, roadblocks, police, potholes, and tarmac crumbling away from the edges of the road.
The few other cars on the road though normally choose between two different driving styles: Insanely slow or insanely insane. I think I have never driven before or behind any other car for a longer period of time, here everybody choose their own speed, so it's about overtaking or being overtaken. The most scary is to drive at night - africans are hard to see in the dark, roads are narrow and when a 100-ton truck comes towards you with blinding lights at 100 km/h - the road is 4 m wide and the shoulder of the road is a crumbled precipice of 0.5 m you wish you would have started off earlier. So we try to avoid driving at night as much as we can.
Below is a video I took last weekend while driving through Dwangwa, a town some 50 km north of Nkhotakota. That gives an impression of how it can be.
Another interesting thing about driving in Malawi is that, as I have understood, the international drivers licence is only valid for two months after your arrival to the country. However, to get a Malawian drivers licence you need to have a residence permit. A recidence permit can be applied to after three months, and the processing will take another three months. Or more. We applied for the residence permit in April, and now by mid July we have still not heard anything about that. So, you just have to talk your way out of it when being stopped by the traffic police when they ask about the drivers licence. And the traffic police will stop you...
The few other cars on the road though normally choose between two different driving styles: Insanely slow or insanely insane. I think I have never driven before or behind any other car for a longer period of time, here everybody choose their own speed, so it's about overtaking or being overtaken. The most scary is to drive at night - africans are hard to see in the dark, roads are narrow and when a 100-ton truck comes towards you with blinding lights at 100 km/h - the road is 4 m wide and the shoulder of the road is a crumbled precipice of 0.5 m you wish you would have started off earlier. So we try to avoid driving at night as much as we can.
Below is a video I took last weekend while driving through Dwangwa, a town some 50 km north of Nkhotakota. That gives an impression of how it can be.
Another interesting thing about driving in Malawi is that, as I have understood, the international drivers licence is only valid for two months after your arrival to the country. However, to get a Malawian drivers licence you need to have a residence permit. A recidence permit can be applied to after three months, and the processing will take another three months. Or more. We applied for the residence permit in April, and now by mid July we have still not heard anything about that. So, you just have to talk your way out of it when being stopped by the traffic police when they ask about the drivers licence. And the traffic police will stop you...
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