Malawi News, Malawi Weather and Links ( Nyasaland News and Nyasaland Weather )

quickfound.net 


  Load above: US radar
 
The New York Times, August 1, 1860 p.5:

Dr. Livingstone's African Explorations.

   In the Geographical Section of the British Association, recently, a very interesting paper, by Dr. Livingstone, was read. We subjoin a few extracts:

    "In the upper part of the Lower Shire, in the highlands, and in the valley of the Upper Shire, there is a somewhat numerous population. The people generally live in villages and in hamlets near them. Each village has its own chief, and the chiefs in a given territory have a head chief, to whom they owe some sort of allegiance. The paramount chief of one portion of the Upper Shire is a woman.

    "The sites of their villages are selected, for the most part, with judgement and good taste. A stream or spring is near, and pleasant shade-trees grow in and around the place.

    "Nearly every village is surrounded by a thick hedge of poisonous euphorbis. During the greater part of the year the inhabitants could see an enemy through the hedge, while he would find it a difficult matter to see them. By shooting their already poisoned arrows through the tender branches, they get smeared with the poisonous milky juice, and inflict most painful if not fatal wounds. The constant dripping of the juice from the bruised branches prevents the enemy from attempting to force his way through the hedge, as it destroys the eyesight.
    "The huts are larger, stronger built, with higher and more graceful roofs than any we have seen on the Zambesi.

    "Many of the men are very intelligent looking, with high foreheads and well-shaped heads. They show singular taste in the astonishingly varied styles in which their hair is arranged. Their bead necklaces are really pretty specimens of work.
    "Many have the upper and middle as well as the lower part of the ear bored, and have from three to five rings in each ear. The hole in the lobe of the ear is large enough to admit one's finger, and some wear a piece of bamboo about an inch long in it. Brass and iron bracelets, elaborately figured, are seen; and some of the men sport from two to eight brass rings on each finger, and even the thumbs are not spared. They wear copper, brass and iron rings on their legs and arms; many have their front teeth notched, and some file them till they resemble the teeth of a saw.
    "The upper-lip ring of the women gives them a revolting appearance. It is universally worn in the highlands. A puncture is made high up in the lip, and it is gradually enlarged until the pelele can be inserted. Some are very large. One we measured caused the lip to project two inches beyond the tip of the nose. When the lady smiled, the contraction of the muscles elevated it over the eyes.
    "'Why do the women wear these things?' the venerable chief, Chinsurdi, was asked. Evidently surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, 'For beauty! The are the only beautiful things women have; men have beards, women have none. What kind of a person would she be without the pelele? She would not be a woman at all with a mouth like a man but no beard.'

    "They seem to be an industrious race. Iron is dug out of the hills, and every village has one or two smelting houses; and from their own native iron they make excellent hoes, axes, spears, knives, arrow heads, &c. They make also round baskets of various sizes, and earthen pots, which they ornament with plumbago, said to be found in the Hill Country, though we could not learn exactly where, nor in what quantities; the only specimen we obtained was not pure.

    "At every fishing village on the banks of the river Shire men were busy spinning bauze and making large fishing nets from it; and from Chinisas to the Lake, in every village almost, we saw men cleaning and spinning cotton, while others were weaving it into strong cloth in looms of the simplest construction, all the processes being excessively slow.

    "This is a great cotton growing country. The cotton is of two kinds. 'Tonjl manga,' or foreign cotton, and 'Tonjl cadjl,' or native cotton. The former is of good quality, with a staple from three-quarters to an inch in length. It is perennial, requiring to be replanted only once in three years. The native cotton is planted every year in the highlands, is of short staple, and feels more like wool than cotton.

    "Every family appears to own a cotton patch, which is kept clean of weeds and grass. We saw the foreign growing at the Lake and in various places for thirty miles south of it, and about an equal number of miles below the cataracts on the Lower Shire. Although the native cotton requires to be planted annually in the highlands, the people prefer it, because, they say, 'it makes the stronger cloth.'

    "It was remarked to a number of intelligent natives near the Shire lakelet, 'you should plant plenty of cotton, and perhaps the English will come soon and buy it.'

    "'Surely the country is full of cotton,' said an elderly man, who was a trader and traveled much. Our own observation convinced us of the truth of this statement. Everywhere we saw it. Cotton patches of from two to three acres were seen abreast of the cataracts during the first trip, when Lake Tamanoua was discovered, though in this journey, on a different route, none were observed of more than half an acre. They usually contained about a quarter of an acre each. There are extensive tracts on the level plains of both the Lower and Upper Shire, where salt exudes from the soil. Sea Island cotton might grow well there, as on these the foreign cotton becomes longer in the staple.

    "The cotton growers here never have their crops cut off by the frosts. There are none. Both kinds of cotton require but little labor, none of that severe and killing toil requisite in the United States. The people are great cultivators of the soil, and it repays them well. They grow laisaver in large quantities, preparing ridges for it from three to four feet wide and about a foot high. They also raise maize, rice, two kinds of millet, beans, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, yams, ground-nuts, pumkins, tobacco, and Indian hemp. Near Lake Nyassa we saw indigo seven feet high.

    "Large quantities of beer are made. We found whole villages on the spree, and saw the stupid type of drunkeness, the silly sort, the boisterous talkative sort, and on one occasion the almost-up-to-the-fighting point variety, when a petty chief, with some of the people near, placed himself in front, exclaiming: 'I stop this path; you must go back.' Had he not got out of the way with greater speed than dignity, an incensed Makoloko would have cured him of all desire to try a similar exploit in the future. It was remarked by the oldest traveler in the party that he had not seen so much drunkenness during all the years he had spent in Africa.

    "The people, notwithstanding, attain great age. One is struck with the large number of old, grey-headed persons in the highlands. This seems to indicate a healthy climate.
    "For their long lives they are not the least bit indebted to frequent ablutions. 'Why do you wash yourselves? Our men never do,' said some women at Chinsurdi to the Makololo. An old man told us he remembered having washed himself once when a boy, but never repeated it, and from his appearance one could hardly call the truth of his statement in question.

    "A fellow who volunteered some wild geographical information followed us about a dozen miles, and introduced us to the chief Moena Moezi by saying, 'They have wandered; they don't know where they are going.'
    "'Scold that man,' said a Makololo head to his factotum, who immediately commenced an extemporary scolding; yet this singular geographer would follow us, and we could not get rid of him till the Makololo threatened to take him to the river and wash him.
    "The castor oil with which they lubricate themselves and the dirt serve as an additional clothing, and to wash themselves is like throwing away the only upper garment they posess. They feel cold and uncomfortable after a wash.
    "We observed several persons marked by the small-pox. On asking the Chief Morgazi, who was a little tipsy, and disposed to be very gracious, if he knew its origin, or whether it had come to them from the sea, 'He did not know,' he said, 'but supposed it had come to them from the English.'
    "They have the idea of a Supreme Being, whom they name Prambe, and also of a future state. The Chief Chinsurdi said they all knew that they lived again after death. Sometimes the dead came back again, they appeared to them in dreams, but they never told them where they had gone to.

    "This is an inviting field for benevolent enterprise. There are thousands needing Christian instruction, and there are materials for lawful commerce, and a fine healthy country, with none of the noxious insects with which Captains Burton and Speke were tormented, and, with the exception of 30 miles, water communication all the way to England.

    "Let a market be opened for the purchase of their cotton, and they can raise almost any amount of it, and the Slave-trade will speedily be abolished."

see also: Congo News - Tanzania - Zambia - Mozambique

All of Malawi is
one time zone at GMT+2,
with no Daylight Savings time.

  Malawi News


    Malawi shares its name with the Chewa word for flames and is linked to the Maravi people from whom the Chewa language originated. The Maravi settled in what is now Malawi around 1400 during one of the later waves of Bantu migration across central and southern Africa. Several of Malawi’s ethnic groups trace their origins to different Maravi lineages. A powerful Maravi kingdom, established around 1500, reached its zenith around 1700, when it controlled what is now southern and central Malawi as well as portions of neighboring Mozambique and Zambia before beginning to decline because of destabilization from the escalating global trade in enslaved people.

    In the early 1800s, widespread conflict in southern Africa displaced various ethnic Ngoni groups, some of which moved into Malawi and further undermined the Maravi. Members of the Yao ethnic group - which had long traded with Malawi from Mozambique - introduced Islam and began to settle in Malawi in significant numbers in the mid-1800s; in the late 1800s, members of the Lomwe ethnic group also moved into southern Malawi from Mozambique. British missionary and trading activity increased in the area around Lake Nyasa in the mid-1800s, and Britain declared a protectorate, called British Central Africa, over what is now Malawi in 1891 and eliminated various political entities that sought to retain their autonomy over the subsequent decade.

    The British renamed the territory Nyasaland in 1907 and it was part of the colonial Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland - including present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe - from 1953 to 1963 before gaining independence as Malawi in 1964.

    Hastings Kamuzu BANDA served as prime minister at independence and, when the country became a republic in 1966, he became president. He later instituted one-party rule under his Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and was declared president for life. After three decades of one-party rule, the country held multiparty presidential and parliamentary elections in 1994 under a provisional constitution that came into full effect the following year. Bakili MULUZI of the United Democratic Front party became the first freely elected president of Malawi when he defeated BANDA at the polls in 1994; he won reelection in 1999. President Bingu wa MUTHARIKA was elected in 2004 and subsequently started his own party, the Democratic Progressive Party, in 2005. MUTHARIKA was reelected to a second term in 2009. He died abruptly in 2012 and was succeeded by Vice President Joyce BANDA, who had earlier started her own party, the People's Party. MUTHARIKA's brother, Peter MUTHARIKA, defeated BANDA in the election in 2014. Peter MUTHARIKA was reelected in a disputed election in 2019 that resulted in countrywide protests. The courts ordered a new the election, and in 2020 Lazarus CHAKWERA of the MCP was elected president after defeating MUTHARIKA as head of a coalition of opposition parties. Population growth, increasing pressure on agricultural lands, corruption, and the scourge of HIV/AIDS pose major problems for Malawi.

    CIA World Factbook: Malawi


Area of Malawi: 118,480 sq km slightly smaller than Pennsylvania

Population of Malawi: 21,279,597 (2023) | 13,603,181 (2007)

Languages of Malawi: English, Chichewa both official, others

Malawi Capital: Lilongwe


LILONGWE WEATHER

  Malawi Reference Articles and Links

Wikipedia: Malawi - History of Malawi
BBC Country Profile: Malawi
US State Department: Malawi Profile

Maps of Malawi
Historic Maps of Africa
1885 Map of Africa

WikiTravel: Malawi

  Malawi News Websites

Malawi 24
Zodiak Malawi

ABYZ: Malawi News Links

This page's URL is: http://news.quickfound.net/intl/malawi_news.html