6th July: Malawi Independence Day

Malawi won independence from the UK on this date in 1964. Here are 10 things you might not know about Malawi.

1. The name Malawi comes from the Maravi, an old name of the Nyanja people who live there. They are a Bantu people who emigrated from the southern Congo around 1400 AD.
2. The country is also nicknamed "The Warm Heart of Africa" because the people are friendly.
3. The earliest human settlements in Malawi date back 60,000 years. There are rock paintings - the Chongoni Rock Art Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, consists of 127 sites that feature the richest collection of rock art in Central Africa.
4. Malawi is landlocked. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast and Mozambique to the south, southwest and southeast.
5. Its capital is Lilongwe, which is also Malawi's largest city; Blantyre, the second city, is the commercial capital.
6. About a third of the country is taken up by a lake. Lake Malawi, also known as Lake Nyasa in Tanzania and Lago Niassa in Mozambique, It is the ninth largest lake in the world and the third largest and second deepest lake in Africa. It is home to more species of fish than any other lake. When the explorer David Livingstone found it, he called it "The Lake of Stars" when he saw the lanterns of the fishermen's boats and thought they resembled stars in the sky. It's also known as the Lake of Storms because the weather there can be violent.
7. Malawi is home to the only Carlsberg factory outside of Denmark.
8. The most common Malawian last names are Chirwa, Banda, Piri and Manda. 30% of the people inhabitants have one of these surnames, including David Banda Mwale, who was famously and controversially adopted by Madonna in 2006. She adopted him without fulfilling the legal requirement that prospective adopted parents must live in Malawi for a year.
9. The Flag of Malawi is made up of three equal horizontal stripes of Black, red and Green with a red rising Sun in the middle of the black stripe. The black stripe represents the African people, the red represents the blood of martyrs for African freedom, green represented nature and the rising sun represented the dawn of freedom and hope for Africa. In 2010, the flag was changed, removing the red rising sun and adding a full white sun in the middle as a symbol of Malawi's economic progress; but it was changed back in 2012.
10. The Malawian currency is the Kwacha, made up of 100 Malawian Tambala. The meaning of the word Tambala is "sun."