Map of Kumudzi Kuwale's projects in Malawi

I've compiled a map to show the projects that we have been working on so far with solar energy and efficient cookstoves in the Nkhotakota region in Malawi. It's not a bad track record for a one-year old company! However, I beleive that the map will fill up even more within the coming year.

The lake flies of Lake Malawi

One of the craziest things of this crazy country is the lake flies. The first time you see them, you think it is the smoke coming from the chimney of a big ferry. Then you realise there are no big ferries in the lake. It must be smoke from some big fires in Mozambique? No, the black clouds rising from the lake are actually flies. Millions of millions of flies, rising to the sky in a celebration of life and reproduction. They have lived as larvae deep in the lake their whole life, which is about to culminate in a day or two of swarming before they drop dead to the ground. The phenomenon can be seen from June and a few months time every year, almost every day.

Fascinating from a distance, but some times the swarms will drift in over land. The flies will be everywhere, they fill your eyes, mouth, nose, ears... And they smell. Strong smell of fish, I've never even thought insects could have an odour.

Fortunately, Malawians have found a use for the flies. People will run around with plastic bags, mosquito nets or whatever can be used to accumulate the flies, or even sweeping them up as they are found dead on the ground. The flies are then used to make a sort of buns, I'm not quite sure how they are prepared, but after a fly invasion the black fly buns will be seen on the market.

The immigration office

In the last post I mentioned that there are some difficulties in obtaining a drivers licence for an expat in Malawi because it is more or less impossible to obtain a valid residence permit, which is a requisite to apply for the former.

Malawi issues a 30 day tourist visa when you cross the border for the first time. This can be extended by going to one of the immigration offices - a relatively simple process where you get a new stamp in the passport the same day. The extention of the visa can be of one or two months, and after that you have to apply for a "temporary residence permit" (TRP).

The application for the TRP can be done in the immigration office of any of the big cities in Malawi. You go to the office, fill out some forms and pay some fees. Then you get a receipt and you get to know that your TRP will be sent to you in the mail within a months time. That, of course, never happens, so the receipt of the payment is the effective residence permit. For how long that is valid I have no idea, it probably depends on you abilities to argue in a amicable way with the border control.

Today I went to get my visa extention in the immigration office of Mzuzu. It turned out to be a long process, so I was happy to be "on vacation" and have the whole day available for this:

12:00 - I get to the immigration office. There is a huge crowd in the corridor leading towards a certain office. I choose a more or less random different office of which the door is open. I am lucky - I get a form to fill out. When the form is filled I am told that the cashier is closed for lunch so I can come back after 13:30 with two passport photos and a copy of my passport. I go out of the office. A random guy approaches me and greets me. I tell him that I need to take a passport photo and ask where I can do that. He says he can take the photo. He pulls a blue cloth out of his pocket and tells another random guy to climb on top of a fence and hold it up behind me as a neutral background. He fishes a camera out of a different pocket, snaps a shot and takes me to a photo-shop where he can print the picture.

13:40 - I'm coming back to the immigration office with my freshly printed photo and a photocopy of my passport. There is a huge crowd accumulated in the stairs and there is an angry guy in front of the door that seems to try to scare people away. I choose to ignore the whole thing and clear my way through the crowd. After visiting a few public offices in Malawi I know better than just joining a queue when there is one - generally it is for something else or maybe even the people there don't know what the queue is for.

13:50 - I'm back in the same office where I started before lunch. There are two officials there: One guy sitting behind a desk talking to people that seem to be sitting around in the lack of anything better to do and a woman playing a computer game on what is probably the only working computer in the immigration office. The talkative guy takes a look at my form and the letter that I brought from my organisation in Nkhotakota, and brusquely observes that my boss has written that he suggests that i get a "Work Permit" instead of a "temporary residence permit". That puts a complete stop to the whole thing and I understand that some action is needed on my part.

14:00 - I go out to the car and take out my computer to modify the letter from my organisation. I go to a nearby copy shop to print it out.

14:10 - The crowd from the stairs has now moved to the corridor, making it almost impossible to navigate to the office I have identified in the end of the hallway.

14:15 - I get back to the office. The woman on the desktop computer is now comparing different models of dresses on a photo on the computer screen with some other women that have accumulated in her vicinity. The brusque officer, now in an uniform, continues reviewing my papers and when he gets to the point "sufficient funds for subsistence in Malawi" he asks if I have brought a bank statement. I say "No", and appearantly that is sufficient information for him this time. Next he comes to the point of "return flight", and I again say "No" and elaborate that my return is in more than six months from now. The officer leaves the office.

14:25 - The officer comes back with some random TRP applications and shows me the printout of their flight itineraries. "You need this" he informs me. I go out again to my computer to find the itinerary of the flight that I am planning to take out of the country for a meeting in a months time. Ironically this flight out of the country will nullify this whole TRP application process as you are not allowed to leave the country while waiting for the TRP to come. Of course it never comes, so nothing really matters anyway.

14:35 - I have printed my itinerary and try to enter the office again. This time, a crowd has accumulated in front of the main entrance and an angry guy is trying to fight off the crowd and asks everyone to show their already filled in forms before entering the building. After waiting for two minutes at the back of the crowd, the man suddenly disappears into the building and of course the whole crowd follows after.

13:50 - I'm back in the same office where I started before lunch. There are two officials there: One guy sitting behind a desk talking to people that seem to be sitting around in the lack of anything better to do and a woman playing a computer game on what is probably the only working computer in the immigration office. The talkative guy takes a look at my form and the letter that I brought from my organisation in Nkhotakota, and brusquely observes that my boss has written that he suggests that i get a "Work Permit" instead of a "temporary residence permit". That puts a complete stop to the whole thing and I understand that some action is needed on my part.

14:00 - I go out to the car and take out my computer to modify the letter from my organisation. I go to a nearby copy shop to print it out.

14:10 - The crowd from the stairs has now moved to the corridor, making it almost impossible to navigate to the office I have identified in the end of the hallway.

14:15 - I get back to the office. The woman on the desktop computer is now comparing different models of dresses on a photo on the computer screen with some other women that have accumulated in her vicinity. The brusque officer, now in an uniform, continues reviewing my papers and when he gets to the point "sufficient funds for subsistence in Malawi" he asks if I have brought a bank statement. I say "No", and appearantly that is sufficient information for him this time. Next he comes to the point of "return flight", and I again say "No" and elaborate that my return is in more than six months from now. The officer leaves the office.

14:25 - The officer comes back with some random TRP applications and shows me the printout of their flight itineraries. "You need this" he informs me. I go out again to my computer to find the itinerary of the flight that I am planning to take out of the country for a meeting in a months time. Ironically this flight out of the country will nullify this whole TRP application process as you are not allowed to leave the country while waiting for the TRP to come. Of course it never comes, so nothing really matters anyway.

14:40 - I arrive to the same office again. The woman on the desktop computer is now bored with the computer and has started playing a game on her phone. The officer with the uniform can't manage to pinpoint any more mistakes in my paperwork so he staples the papers together and tells me to go to the office next door to pay the fees. Unfortunately that seems to be the office that the whole crowd always is crowding towards, but again I assume that the queue is not for me, so I just fight my way through the crowd and come into the office. Once inside, I observe indeed that the queue is splitting into different queues - one for a set of counters for which I don't know the purpose - that is the big queue - and a small queue for the cashier. There are only three people in front of me. The cashier woman is entertained by a friend of hers that has come to show some pictures of a party or wedding of some form that appears to have taken place recently. When she finishes that, she attends to the three people in the line and after that me. After a random guy with a tie sends me to an empty counter together with a Malawian man and we are more or less told to wait there until something happens. The small office is probably about 10 square meters, but there are about 100 people standing around making queue in different directions. Suddenly an angry man comes and chases about half of the people out of the office. Mostly smart-looking men with suits and ties remain in the room. All the time I am the only white person in the office. A big woman suddenly comes and takes my papers. She looks at me, smiles, and looking me in the eyes she bangs a stamp on the paper with such power that I can almost feel the building vibrate. That's it for me.

15:30 - I come back to the first office with my papers. I sit down on a chair with the papers in front of me on the desk of the uniformed man, who is not there. The woman with the desktop computer is looking into the air and appears to be recalling an important moment in her life. After five minutes the uniformed man comes and looks at me, then at the papers. He appears to be surprised. He gives me my receipts, stamped with the heavy stamp of the woman. He looks me in the eyes and says, brusquely, "We'll call you". Of course they will never call me.

15:35 - I leave the immigration office.