Africa 101.6: Village Life in Malawi

Life for many of us in America is busy and complex. Most of us have a wealth of choices and opportunities at our feet, but the price of our abundance is often many hours spent working hard to get ahead.

Life in Malawi can be easily classified as simple and basic. Malawians work very hard, but it is not so they can “outdo” their neighbors. They work for the basic necessities of life and survival.


The day begins early in the villages of Malawi. With no electricity or modern conveniences like clocks, the morning starts when the sun comes up. The people rise from the thin straw mats on the dirt floors of their homes to begin the arduous tasks of starting cook fires for their daily meal of nsima, drawing water and carrying it back to their homes to use for cooking or washing clothes and working in the fields to either prepare the land, plant the seed, tend the crops or pick the harvest.

Some stay at their homes to weave mats or remove corn from the cobs or hang tobacco and set it in the sun to dry. During the dry season, many make bricks.

The school teachers head to their classes, the local tailor heads to his sewing machine, and those with wares to sell head to the roadsides or local markets hoping to fetch a price for their goods.

Children run around the village, largely untended and taking care of themselves. They are extremely resourceful and play games with rocks or build toys with scraps of wire and old spools.

Malawians walk to get wherever they need to go. Some of the more fortunate ones own bicycles. The chief is the only one in the village who owns a motorized vehicle.

At the end of the day, the village people come back to their homes. Although some are fortunate enough to have candles, the day is over when the sun goes down or the fire goes out. The people go back inside their largely unadorned homes and lay back down on the ground again until dawn.