Fun fact Friday: Checkpoint 5 - Malawi

Malawi will be the penultimate country that we’ll be travelling through on the Put Foot rally. No doubt there are many great (and better) reasons to visit Malawi but mostly we’re super-excited because:

1.  Who wouldn’t want to visit the place known as the ‘Warm heart of Africa’?

2.  It looks like the kind of place where one might suntan on the beach whilst being served cocktails

Not bad Malawi.

and  3. The Checkpoint party is full-moon themed and is going to be epic

Full moon and full set of toes.

The country was established in 1891 as the British protectorate of Nyasaland and in 1964 became the independent nation of Malawi. The capital is Lilongwe which has an estimated population of 821000.

Much of the country is plateau - the Great Rift Valley runs from north to south and in the mountainous sections surrounding the valley, plateaus rise from 900 to 1 300m above sea level.

Now for fun facts!

• Lake Malawi is sometimes known as the Calendar Lake as it is around 365 miles (587 km) long and 52 miles (84 km) wide. It is the third largest lake in Africa and the eighth largest lake in the world.
• The only Carlsberg factory found outside Denmark is found in Blantyre, and they do free tours on a Wednesday afternoon. Alas we will miss this, but now you know - should you ever find yourself in Blantyre on a Wednesday afternoon.
• Who does the lake belong too? Tanzania claims that the border runs through the middle of the lake, based on the border set out between the German and British territories prior to 1914. Meanwhile Malawi claims the whole of the surface of the lake (excluding the Mozambican part). The dispute stems from when the British captured Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and placed all of the water under the jurisdiction of Nyasaland (now Malawi).
• The lake is of big interest to scientists as it is the site of some 'exciting' evolutionary happenings amongst some fish. These fish (Cichlids) evolved rapidly into a large number of closely related but diverse species. Lake Malawi is home to several hundred endemic species of Cichlids - and they are fairly good-looking as fish go.

Not for eating

As ever thanks to wiki and CIA factbook (here).

Fun Fact Friday – Malawi's Flag

Malawi is definitely the country I’m most looking forward to visiting whilst we are putting foot – I’ve always wanted to go and it looks simply amazing. And just when you think things can’t get any more awesome now we also get to have an (almost) full moon party whilst we are there!! Lumo on!

I always thought that this was the Malawian flag:

But it turns out that in 2010 it changed to this one (amidst much public outcry):

Not a huge change, but apparently at independence in 1964 when the flag was introduced the rising sun represented the dawn of freedom and hope for Africa – then in 2010 they decided to remove the red rising sun and replace it with a full white sun in the centre to symbolise Malawi's economic progress. What would we do without Wikipedia.