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Posted by: Benji Madzvire | on February 17, 2017
What you should know about Malawi
Malawi is a country in the Eastern coastal section of Africa, and it is considered a developing country. Most of its money comes from agriculture, especially cotton. Cotton is a big part of the African fashion industry that has become so much more developed in the past two decades. This should make the country more prosperous and it is certainly more developed than when I last lived there. 
The country began as a confederation of tribes in Malawi and the neighboring countries, and it was very powerful from the 1400s until the 1700s, when the Europeans began to colonize and spread Christianity in the Maravi Confederacy. The British ruled the colony for 200 years and did many horrible things as they did in all their African colonies, and eventually this led to a rebellion by the natives, led by a Reverend who killed some prominent white landowners and staked the head of one of them outside his church as a warning. After he was killed, the rebellion quieted down for a number of years, until Britain consolidated some of its colonies and forced Malawi and the Maravi Confederacy area into a much larger colony, because they did not care about the separate ethnic groups in Africa. This escalated the tensions in the area a lot over the next 10 years until in the 1960s, Malawi declared independence and a prominent doctor known as the “black messiah” came to power. He promised democratic rule, but he did not set a term limit for himself and did not allow any other political parties. So, things were very controlled until he finally died after 30 years, when the first elections were held in 1994. It was at this time that things became much more stable and developed. Since then, we have gained a strong democracy and it had been doing very well until the past 5 years or so. 
But there are two big problems in the country right now, which are affecting most of the people who live there. First there is a very big problem with HIV and AIDS, which are at some of the worst rates in the world. Over 1 million children are orphans because of the disease and many tens of thousands die from AIDS every year. Things were improving for a while but because of the government problems in the past 5 years, aid money from Western countries has been cut off which means that many more people are not getting access to treatment and prevention training. It is one of the big tragedies of the world right now and it makes me very sad that HIV and AIDS have not been getting attention now when so many people are dying. 
The second problem is with the government and the economy. Since I left Malawi, things have not been so good. I am careful to only visit my family when things are more stable, even though I still blend in as a local. In 2011, there were many protests against the government because of corruption and the economic situation. Many thousands of people took to the streets to