Malawi is small, Malawi is poor, Malawi is friendly. Malawi is relaxed. It's not for nothing that it calls itself "The Warm Heart of Africa."

In this small country with just over 20 million inhabitants, 13 Bantu languages ​​(in addition to English), Christians, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses... seem to mingle very peacefully. The society is young, and the population growth is rapid.

After arriving in Malawi, we wonder how often we've actually written "...is one of the poorest countries in the world." We've seen so much abject poverty over the months. But we're glad we weren't traveling in regions where hunger leads to massive or even fatal malnutrition.

Poverty is repeatedly evident in farm work without tools, goats as a means of subsistence, bicycles and donkey carts instead of cars, and old trucks. Only the fuel trucks are always and everywhere quite new. We see a lot of them, because there was and still is a shortage of gasoline and diesel.

A sign of a dysfunctional government is the weak currency. On the black market, we get more than twice as many kwatchas for the dollar as we would normally. And European expatriates tell us that they can even get three times as much using a bank app – but no one can explain how this works. The rapid inflation goes hand in hand with the ban on taking money out of the country. For a supermarket like Shoprite, for example, this means that it is not allowed to accept dollars, but the kwatchas are not worth enough to buy additional goods.

Agriculture is dominated by cultivation for subsistence (corn, but also coffee) as well as tobacco, cotton, and especially tea for export. Tea cultivation has colonial roots (the British...) and boasts the oldest tradition on the African continent.

As is so often the case, deforestation for the production of charcoal for cooking and heating is problematic.

Here, too, we hear about the gap created by the discontinuation of USAID programs. However, there are also a striking number of small aid projects and foundations. But does all this make sense? We've heard, for example, that new volunteers are treated to a safari first. For this, they book into a good lodge, with several people, of course, and pay a quick $1,000 per person for two days of game drives. All on the Foundation's expense...

What surprises us is the international individual tourism. And so, there's also the appropriate infrastructure, which makes the stay pleasant.

Our highlights are the stunning landscapes, the Nyika Plateau, Lake Malawi (where swimming is unfortunately hampered by schistosomiasis pathogens), and the Mulanje Mountains.