Lilongwe

We stopped in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, to grab some snacks and use the restroom (and the ATM, if needed). There were a lot of westerners here who looked as if they had been here a while, clearly volunteers and people working on behalf of the Malawian government or Malawian businesses.

When we arrived at the grocery store in town (Shoprite, I believe), Kaitlin went on a journey to find the bathroom, while I made a journey to the meat section to get a meat pie for lunch. Kaitlin came up to me 5 minutes later having had no luck finding it. I kindly asked the man behind the counter where the nearest toilet was. His English wasn’t the greatest, but surely toilet (being as though all bathrooms are labeled “TOILET”) would translate well.

He said “Oh, let me show!” and promptly had us follow him through the store. He asked “Big or small?” to which we replied, however cautiously optimistic, “Big”, for who wants to use a small bathroom over a big one? He brought us to the front of the store, and with the biggest smile on his face, handed us a shopping cart, said “Have a great day” and was on his way. Lovely. Not wanting to dirty up their shopping cart, we headed to the nearest security guard to ask, who prompted us to take the path to the private offices of the grocery store. Upon entry, another security guard had us sign in, submit a photo ID, and had an officer pat us down, looking for suspicious objects (or weapons, I suppose. I guess grocery stores are targets for hijacking these days). Up the stairs and to the left was a lovely little flush toilet with very little toilet paper, no soap, and no hand towels.

At least we found the toilet.