Malawi was the third stop on my study tour around Southeastern Africa. With beautiful scenery and friendly locals, it is easy to understand why Malawi is said to be the "heart of Africa". I was fortunate enough to travel extensively by car during the week I spent there. That gave me the opportunity to see – and photograph – landscapes, people, and culture more closely than a regular tourist would. In the first part of the trip, I traveled from the capital, Lilongwe, to the southern edge of the country on the border with Mozambique. On the second part, I traveled east towards Lake Malawi, which stretches some 500 Km along Malawi's eastern border separating it from Mozambique and Tanzania. As you will see in the pictures, Malawi has stunning landscapes, the roads are used mostly by bikes and pedestrians, bikes are used to transport almost everything, trucks are the only form of public transport in rural areas, and the population is very poor. In fact, Malawi is among the world's least developed and most densely populated countries. The number of women on the roads carrying babies strapped to their backs was so striking that I decided to sample the population myself. In average, 4 out of 10 women on the roads were either pregnant, carrying a baby or both. Even more disturbing was the number of teenage mothers who looked like children themselves. This high birth rate is particularly worrisome since 12% of the population is infected with HIV and adherence to anti-retroviral treatment (ART) is very low. That means newborns are infected by their mothers during pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding. If the government does not take a more aggressive approach to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV, the number of HIV positive people will continue to increase and socio-economic development will be severely compromised.
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