For those of you with wanderlust, this Sunday’s New York Times travel section has a feature on Malawi, which it calls “an Africa in microcosm,” a concept I reject inasmuch as it essentializes and thus reduces Africa, as if it is possible to cull Africa down to one tourist-friendly microcosm. There is already too much of a tendency to fetishize the “one true Africa” for rich western tourists who want allof their primitive African dreams confirmed. That said, by all means, travel to Malawi.
