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| Basket Stalls in the Market |
This weekend I decided I had to finally sort out what I'm going to be taking home for people, so I wandered out of the house in the morning, prepared to put in a great deal of foot-slogging around Blantyre.
I first went for a mooch about Blantyre Market, which is quite big, and contains all manner of stalls selling everything from 1970s English school textbooks through to second-hand clothes and shoes, to furniture and food.
It's bustling, quite dirty in some areas, but great fun at the same time.
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| The "Photographer"! |
I didn't buy anything, but the highlight for me was one young guy who let me take his picture, and then offered to use my camera to take a picture of me. Thankfully I saw that one coming, and politely declined (otherwise I had a totally unjustified vision that he'd have been off with it faster than Linford Christie).
Then on to Mandala House where there's a crafts and gifts shop called La Galleria. I picked up a few little items here, before pausing for a coffee at La Caverna, a lovely cafe with seating on the verandah of the house overlooking the gardens.
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| La Galleria, Mandala Houe |
Refreshed, I headed back into town, and roamed about, popping into various shops. There's another little Africana shop opposite the Metro supermarket, and I went in there to buy a few bangles. I asked the owner, a very nice young Malawi lady, if she knew where I could buy some Malawi music CDs, and she gave me the email address of a friend who is a musician (I've emailed him and am now waiting to hear back from him when and where I can meet him. She also pointed me towards an electronics shop across the road from the Mount Soche Hotel, and I next went there and bought 4 CDs for 3050 Kwacha (that's about £10) - and they're all good stuff.
By this time, it was the middle of the afternoon, and I'd been on my feet all day, and had developed a large blister on my right foot, so I hobbled back towards the house, and to pause at the Alem Ethiopian restaurant on Victoria Avenue for a quick bite to eat. I had Zigin Wot (a very spicy beef dish served with injera - a yeast-risen flat bread made of teff flour, with a slightly spongy texture that is the staple bread of Ethiopia).
Then back to the house for a bit of work and a lie down.
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