COVER N. 564 - MALAWI

Postmark: Lilongwe Malawi 19.02.2025 

Posted on the 19th February; Received on the 11th March 2025

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Another country joins the list thanks to the help of  the Phantom and Emannuel. My warm thanks go to both of them.

Malawi. A former British protectorate in Africa, which until its independence in 1964 was known as Nyassaland and which in conjunction of what is now Zimbabwe and Zambia, integrated the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Further to this two states Malawi shares a border with Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, which would also become independent more than a decade later, in 1975.

Plenty of stamps on this airmail cover:

Starting with the butterflies:

The original definitive set illustrated with butterflies was issued in 2007, comprising eleven stamps.

Over the years, as inflation rose, surcharged reissues of some of these stamps saw the light of day. 

The 5 Kwacha stamp, illustrated with an image of a sub-species of the  Common fig-tree blue (Myrina silenus ficedula) is part of the original set issued in 2007.

The Common fig-tree blue is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family found in sub-Saharan Africa, southern Arabia and northern Oman.

The surcharged 440  Kwacha stamp, bears the image of a Forest Queen (Euxanthe wakefieldi), a member of the Nymphalidae family found in the coastal forests of Southeast Africa. The 440 K surcharged version was issued in 2024.

The surcharged 900 Kwacha stamp features a Fiery Acraea (Acraea acrita), another member of the Nymphalidae family, distributed across large regions of Africa. The 900 K surcharged version was issued in 2022.

The other stamps on the cover were issued as part of a 10 stamp mini-sheet dedicated to Lake Malawi, issued on 25Apr2014.

The 500 Kwacha stamp depicts a satellite picture of the lake, while the 840 Kwacha stamp is illustrated with Peacock cichlids (Aulonocara sp.), the genus  being endemic to Lake Malawi.

The rather hard to read  postmark was applied at  the country's capital Lilongwe, a city of around 1 million inhabitants.