This article examines the interrelationship between smallholder strategies to obtain land and customary land tenure and inheritance rules in contemporary Malawi. Based on village surveys in diverse regions of Malawi, it highlights how most land transactions followed customary rules but also explores significant deviations. The reasons for transfers deviating from customary norms included unique personal relationships between landholders and heirs, wives returning to patrilineal villages, and intensifying land scarcity. Yet the effects of land scarcity were contradictory, as it not only induced individuals to obtain land by any means possible, but also encouraged the obstruction of flexible land transfers to prevent lineage land from being alienated to non-kin, suggesting a conflict between individual and lineage strategies. The article also examines vernacular land markets, which are limited in scale and provide different opportunities for poor and wealthy farmers. By highlighting both the adaptive and negotiable nature of customary land systems and a trend towards enhanced inequality, this study seeks to capture the complex reality of Malawian agrarian dynamics.

Using data from a survey carried out in six tobacco growing villages across Malawi in 2004-5, this paper summarizes some main differences found in subsistence production and income levels between male-and female-headed households and the disparities among female-headed households in the light of economic liberalization policies of the past two decades. The disadvantaged position of female-headed households in terms of land and labour endowment, together with the high cost of inputs since the structural adjustment programmes and removal of subsidies since the 1980s has prevented poorer female-headed households not only from attaining maize selfsufficiency, but also from engaging in high-return agriculture such as tobacco production. Although livelihood diversification is adopted by both male-and female-headed households, many female-headed households still depend on low-entry-barrier activities such as agricultural waged labour and are unable to break out of the poverty cycle. However, female-headed households are a heterogeneous category and factors such as the availability of nonfarm income opportunities, social networks to access labour and capital, land acquisition through flexible applications of patrilineal inheritance rules, and the existence of formal channels for credit and informal tobacco trading have enabled some to improve agricultural productivity and achieve high incomes.

Prior literature on rural livelihood diversification in Africa has suggested it has tended to increase inequality. Drawing on household data collected in nine Malawian villages over a decade, this paper examines the interrelationship between livelihood diversification and income inequality. Analysis of income portfolio and Gini coefficients shows that the interrelationship is highly varied and, in many cases, livelihood diversification decreases inequality. The varied situations stem from different contexts, such as proximity to a major town, entry barriers to off-farm activities, and variability of own-farm income. The highly variable situations found in rural Malawi call for a more context-specific policy intervention, rather than a nationwide single prescription.

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A case of surgical ciliated cyst after Le Fort I osteotomy is described. A 32-year-old man who had undergone Le Fort I osteotomy in 1992 was referred to our hospital because of swelling in the left cheek. Radiographic and computed tomographic examinations showed a unilocular cystic lesion in the left side of the maxilla. The lesion was diagnosed as a maxillary cyst. We treated the lesion surgically. The lesion and thin bony wall between the cystic cavity and maxillary sinus were removed, so that the bony cavity commuted with the inferior nasal meatus. The postoperative course was uneventful, and there was no evidence of recurrence 12 months after surgery. On the basis of the clinical course and histopathological findings of the surgical specimen (i.e., the cyst had a thick fibrous wall lined by stratified ciliated columnar or cuboidal epithelium) , the lesion was diagnosed as a surgical ciliated cyst.