Once on board the shaky plane, I had the usual crap airline food, and bad landing in Malawi (Blantyre to be exact, if anyone cares). So upon landing I met the new baggage carousel, namely the ground next to the terminal building (glad I didn't pack anything breakable) and the most pointless forms ever (two forms, one for customs and one for immigration, both ask the same question but you have to fill in both. PHOTOCOPIERS PEOPLE!!!).
Anyway from the airport it was off to the local ex-pat/backpackers pub for drinks, food, watching SA beat New Zealand in the cricket etc... all and all a nice evening. The fact all dogs wear a muzzle (it's law here) is a little scary the first time you see it (Silence of the Hounds?).
The humidity is another issue all together, I doubt I have sweatted this much in years. My hotel room (in the nice Mount Sosche Hotel) thankfully comes with aircon. It didn't come with water last night, due to an ongoing supply issue, but by this morning there was at least cold water. The area is really beautiful, very tropical in nature (reminds me of the north coast in Natal) and we are surrounded by mountains on all sides.
The biggest fear people seem to have when coming here is the malaria, however I have a new one. I am working for a telco here and there is the transmission station 100m from my desk. It's so powerful it kills the electronics of cars if the park too near it and here Mulder thought only UFO's could do that. The scary part is that I hope my third arm grows out the front and not the back, like a weird tail.
Oh and the bandwidth here is killer, it's like how fast would you like to go. Telkom, you bunch of clowns, come to a real third world country to get some lessons.