The high cost of living in Malawi

There was an article recently about the high cost of poverty in the US. While I thought the author for that article could have come up with better examples, it was interesting and reframed some random thoughts I’ve been having about Malawi. It’s really expensive to have anything here. For one thing, Malawi (the country itself, not the people) hates technology. Some of that is because of lack of knowledge—like failure to use virus scans and the like—but some of it is beyond the control of the end user.
We start with the fact that technology is very expensive here. On average, new tech, whether that be computers or cars, costs about two times what it costs in America. And yet the average annual salary in Malawi is about $200 per year. One of the new Toyotas, the Prado, costs $40,000. Country directors of NGOs drive them, but that’s about it. If technology doesn’t decide to randomly implode just because it knows there’s nowhere around to get it repaired, the heat and dust and moisture will get to it eventually.
The cars that the middle class can afford have gone through numerous hands, and tend to be worse for the wear. Roads here are amazingly bumpy—even the tarmacked roads are too bumpy to be able to text easily. Even in the cities, some of the roads, like mine, are dirt. It costs more to live on tarmacked roads. Cars parts get worn out by heat and humidity and rough roads and sudden stops and drained tanks . . .and . . . and . . . . I have only rarely seen a minibus with a sliding door that did not need to be wrestled into place, with exposed metal bits that peek through the padding and fractured vinyl. Parts are difficult to get and expensive when you can get them, so things don’t get repaired, they get worked around or tied together with twine or muscled back on track.
It even extends to houses. I am beginning to believe that while land (if you can get permanent rights from your chief) is a good value, houses are not. The bones of the house I live in have existed for a while. In September of last year, my landlord finished a remodel that stripped the house down to almost nothing, and replaced almost all of the wood because of termite damage. He even had someone kill the damn termite mound along with the queen or super-giganto-termite in charge or whatever.
Apparently the super-giganto-termite in charge didn’t realize it had been killed and also evicted, because a few months later the little brown appendages were growing out of my door jambs. Mr. Makato, my landlord, was on those mini horizontal termite projections like Malawian children on a new white person walking by. Whatever poison he used worked, because those termites ran and hid.
Holes for killing termitesInto my walls. A few months later they decided to come out and play again. And again. Every time, the time between poisoning the voracious eaters and them coming back for another meal got shorter and shorter. Mr. Makato has spent the last couple months saving up to treat the termites properly.
Last week, Mr. Makato spent a whole lot of money on a brand new poison. Then he paid some other guy to borrow his drill to make holes into the foundation outside and inside around all the doorways, dug up all the flowers that were fertilized by the termite refuse.
At the same time, I’ve replaced the lightplates on 5 switches, some of them twice, and learned to live with broken switches when I can’t be bothered replacing them again. The rubber on my cold water tap in the kitchen needs to be replaced for the third time in the last so that I can actually turn it off. The wiring on my geyser was just repaired because something happened to it after the heating element was replaced for the third or fourth time 2 months ago. I’ve had to have people climb up into my crawlspace and strip out wiring shorted by faulty electrical devices.
One of the bases in my hotplate has rusted through, and while it still works, everything has to be cooked slantwise on that side. To be fair, the hotplate belonged to two other volunteers before it belonged to me, but one of them never used it, and it still isn’t more than 4 years old.

Oh, and clothes. Handwashing is labour intensive and hard on clothes. Scrubbing to remove the dirt eventually puts holes in the clothes; the soap needed to really get those clothes clean takes away all the dirt and half the dye, too. So clothes fade and look old, fast. Also, the powder detergent we can use doesn’t always completely dissolve in water–and then it bleaches little spots into the nice trousers or blouses.
I could keep going, but it’s getting boring. One thing though, is that I don’t believe in saving money in the short-term and I don’t buy the cheapest option. Neither does Mr. Makato. But we are limited by our possible budgets.
Everything breaks all the time. After two years here. I practically need to start over.