How to travel Malawi like a local!

3 min readOct 23, 2017

You can only get to know a country, it´s culture and traditions by meeting it´s locals. My 3 weeks Malawi road trip was the most amazing trip I have ever been on. “The Warm Heart of Africa” and it´s people have given me so much. With this post I am speaking out of experience and I want to encourage you to travel Malawi the way I did it.

I am sharing my top 10 list of how to travel Malawi to get as much local experience as possible:

1. Take local busses to get to your destination

2. Try the following street food:

fried cassava chips (like fries)
fried banana
Mandazi (fried balls made from flour and water)
Bonya (dried fish)

3. Eat out in local restaurants and try:

Nsima and Chicken (Nsima= porridge made from maize or cassava meal and water)
Nsima and Kampango (fish)
Nsima and Chambo (fish)

4. Let a local show you how to play the Malawians favourite game “Bawo”

5. Keep your dirty laundry and wash it in Lake Malawi like the locals do

6. Chat to as many locals as possible and make friends with them

The Malawians are one of the most heartwarming and hospitable people I have ever met. We made friends with locals everywhere. We got invited for breakfast, lunch and dinner to their houses. We were even spending the night at their homes. Especially in Kande Beach, which is a small village in the north of Malawi, staying with our friends was such an authentic African experience. They still use water pumps, have to carry the water for bathing and cooking to their homes and also cook on fire. The bathroom doesn’t have taps, nor do they have a shower or flushing toilets.