Hello from Blantyre

 As Zach mentioned, last week I was in Blantyre for most of the week for work. That's me eating breakfast at our hotel, enjoying the view.

Blantyre is the commercial center of Malawi and is very different from Lilongwe's sprawl and open spaces. Blantyre feels like a proper small town and has a much longer history than Lilongwe - in fact, it's the oldest urban area in southern Africa, if you believe Lonely Planet.

Colonialists have been building houses and farms and governing Malawians in this area for almost 150 years. We took an afternoon to stop by Mandala House, the oldest building in Malawi, which was once a home for the managers of some tea business or something. It's now a restaurant and shop, with meeting space and a library on the top floor.

We had a lemonade on the verandah and poked around in the library a bit before heading off to do something a little more modern - see a movie. Blantyre is home to the only movie theater in Malawi. The movie we saw was terrible (Hit and Run) but sitting in a dark theater eating popcorn felt a little bit like home.