Tobacco-Town

For those of you not entirely familiar with ins and outs of Malawi:

Malawi's biggest cash crop is tobacco. While much of the world is pulling back on its collective tobacco reins, the feeling in Malawi is to spur the tobacco industry into a gallop. It has only helped spur otherwise stagnant development to date, so why not? As people continue to craze cigarettes, cigars and chew, Malawi will meet that demand.

Wednesday, I had the pleasure of revisiting Malawi's tobacco centre: a series of massive complexes, silos, auction floors and processing plants thirty minutes outside of Lilongwe. Literally a city within itself, complete with grocery stores, offices, housing developments and banks and ATMs (A big deal here, since there are less than 200 ATMs in the whole country), it feels a bit like entering the Death Star. Not in a smoking-kills-way, more in an industrial, fortified powerhouse way. Additionally, the whole place smells like I imagine Vegas would in the 1950s. 

There are about seven tobacco companies operating out of Malawi and then hundreds of foreign traders who arrive weekly or daily to purchase bales of tobacco fresh off the floor for their own operations. The silos and processing facilities are all pretty lock and key, and if you weren't scared off by the ever-frowning guards, signs that say "Enter at Your Own Risk," "Scary Dogs" and "Visitors are Responsible for ALL Actions" or the piles of barbed wire that strings the place like your most intensely festive neighbor's house come Christmastime, there is a little warning on every single thing in the approximately 5 square miles that says "Combustible." I hope not. 

Anecdote 1: There are a lot of stray dogs in our neighborhood. A lot. So many, that if they all grouped together and marched on the presidential palace, there would actually be a firefight: I like to imagine scenarios when Joyce Banda (Google) is holding a machine gun, protecting herself and running to the song "Danger Zone" from Top Gun. 

Sometimes, to start trouble, I ride around the neighborhood barking to get them up in a fury, chasing my car, barking like crazy (for those of you familiar with me from college, you may remember this is a method I sometimes used when people would stay at a party too late). 

Anyways, I started barking the other night and got a particularly good crowd of them going, so good that the whole neighborhood was going off with barking. Cackling like a madman, I sped away from the scene of the crime, losing the pursuers of my bumper. However, when I returned to my house and was getting ready to open the gate to go in the front door, I heard an approaching horde of barks and to my surprise, they had communicated and found me. I spent an hour in my car waiting for fifty dogs to leave me be. I actually played dead. 

Hilary Clinton visited Sunday, we couldn't get a security clearance to see her. Either that or she just wanted to have a girls night out with Joyce Banda, no boys allowed.

Bill knows what I'm talking about,

Steven