RobinsonAdventures2024

      Our second hotel where a tour of a fishing village was offered as an activity provided a paid tour with a guide from the local community who received the entire cost of the tour. I was surprised and impressed that our hotel which arranged for the tour did not want a percentage of the cost.  They were happy for me to pay the guide the entire amount directly.  It turns out the guide was an artist who does guiding to supplement his income. This time, we set off about 7am and walked to the village past houses which could have been in Waterloo.  I was told they were owned mostly by folks from Europe who come for a few weeks each year personally or by wealthy Malawians or by people building units to rent to more wealthy people in Malawi or elsewhere. Rental houses House owned by a better off Malawian Unlike the first village which was near the south end of Lake Malawi and not far from a very prosperous town, this village was much further north alo...

  At two hotels in Malawi where Donna and I stayed, along with water sports etc., activities offered included  a walking tour of a fishing village.   As a bit of background, Malawi  is predominantly agricultural, and  has a lot of poor people: it is the country with the 4th highest percentage of people living in extreme poverty in the world; 70% of people in Malawi live on less than 3 Canadian dollars per day. Living in a fishing village gives better access to protein for many of the people  living there, compared to people living in drier areas, where flooding and drought are causes of famine.  At our hotel in Mangochi, where the walking tour was offered free of charge by a staff person, at 6:30am (my choice of time, hoping to see more fishermen returning from overnight fishing).Paul, an employee of the hotel, and I set off on a tour of a local fishing village, where Paul lives. In the village, we looked at fishing practices, house building, water sup...