Malawi - Part 3

There was a knock at the door, opening it, I found a nervous looking Liam. Though he’d just walked out of the house, I pretended to be surprised.

He cleared his throat, “Um, I, um, am here to pick you up for our date...if that’s ok.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m ready now, so ok, so we can go.” I told him while looking bashfully at the ground. I stepped outside and he grabbed me and dipped me low for a silly, overacted kiss. Laughing, we walked to a French restaurant that happened to be right across the street from where we were staying. At 7pm, we were seated by a waiter who told us outright that we ought to order as quickly as possible so he could go home sooner. Ah, African customer service. Much to our waiter's dismay, the restaurant soon filled up, and he would be obliged to actually do work.

(this pic is from the website because we were too busy eating to bother with a camera)

The meal was indeed the long awaited feast we were after. Fresh bread, a delicious salad, goose liver pate, tasty soup, stuffed chicken a la Blou, and Malawi’s famous ‘pommes frites’ (French fries). It is always amazing while travelling how quickly a person can recover from being a total mess. Though I pined for a slinky, black cocktail dress and a pair of sexy red stilettos, a simple hot shower, shaved legs, a new coat of polish on the toes, a dusting of makeup, and luscious French food fixed me up as good as I ever am while on the road.

Since the meal was officially a date, Liam wanted to pay, and since I am notoriously frugal and stress out easily about prices, Liam didn’t want me to even look at the menu and ordered in secret. As our romantic night drew to a close, the check was brought out and Liam placed a wad of kwacha beneath it. Despite explaining to the waiter several times earlier in the evening as to why he was being so secretive, the waiter loudly and meticulously counted the payment from his hands onto the table. One bill at a time. Initially, Liam tried to shush him and get him to go away to do the counting, but this distraction only increased the volume of his voice and his determination to get the job done. Nothing this Muzungu was blabbing about was going to get him to break his concentration! Besides, for heaven’s sake, he was trying to do this right so he could get home!

Defeated, the man across from me placed his elbows on the table and rested a bearded chin on his fists. Our eyes locked and I stifled giggles. A century after the counting began, it ended. Liam gave me his jacket as we walked across the street, tipped invisible hats to the guard, and slowly meandered up the drive. I thanked my handsome suitor for the date, jokingly repeating the cost of the meal several times as I praised the food and the service. With affected ostentation, he boasted of the vast wealth he must obviously possess in order to pay for a dinner of that caliber until we both dissolved into laughs and kisses beneath a cloudy night sky.

At home (as always, I use that term loosely), Liam and I stood in the bathroom as he gently washed and re-bandaged my wounded eyebrow. Since the skin had already closed, I deemed it too late for stitches and decided that Liam’s expert care had been, and was, good enough.

That night, we squeezed onto a soft, twin bed in a warm, cozy room down the hallway of an upper-class home that lay in the well guarded suburbs of Malawi’s southern, and second largest, city. Beyond the borders of the city, a crazy, colorful, immense continent stretched out, teaming with countless peoples, languages, cultures, religions, landscapes and wild animals. Of course there were more dangers to be escaped, thrills to be found, and adventures to be survived, but a soft rain began pitter-pattering onto the roof, and I fell asleep with my face nestled into Liam’s side and nothing but the strange feeling of complete comfort and safety.

Malawi - Part 2

Despite a good deal of early morning running around, Liam, Gavin and I were out of our room at a sluggish 7:40am, ten full minutes after the hotel’s 7:30am (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) checkout time. The receptionist kindly didn’t mention our tardiness and instead pointed us toward the restaurant for our free breakfast.

Shortly after sitting down in the dingy dining room, an overly, awkwardly, submissive waitress brought us our fare. Kneeling on the floor and bowing her head, she clasped my hand and asked if I needed anything else. Tempted as I was to ask for a normal breakfast, I held my tongue and dismissed the woman. Hot water, a tea bag, sugar, a piece of toast, and a big plate of French fries. Disgusting! After drinking my tea plain and eating the toast with my sugar sprinkled on it, I picked at the deep fried potato strips, trying to will the greasy mess into a fruit salad smothered in vanilla yogurt. French fries, we would learn, are the staple Malawian breakfast food…gross!

The dissatisfying meal ingested (and quickly beginning to block our arteries), we jumped in the back seat of the Presbyterian pickup truck we’d travelled with the evening before. The city of Blantyre finally seemed to be within our sights.

On the way there, we learned that Malawi was less than a week away from its controversial presidential elections. Election time can be tense anywhere, but when a nation has only had 2 previous elections, peaceful democracy has the potential to break down into chaotic violence, so it’s not necessarily the most auspicious time to visit a place.

Before we could say ‘scandal and political infighting’, it was time for a quick lunch. Our ride pulled over and 50 kids ran to the windows hawking bananas and fried, shish-kebabed parakeets. Well, maybe not parakeets, but tiny birds that you were in theory supposed to pop into your mouth whole, bones and all, but in reality, I had to take in 2 crunchy parts, each speedily chased down by an entire mini-banana. Gavin had just found out in Beira that his childhood pet parakeet had died of (very) old age and I think he felt as sad about lunch as I had felt about breakfast.

Seventy-five hours after deciding I wanted to get there, our group managed to the cover the implausibly long 150 miles and finally (FINALLY!!!) arrive in the city of Blantyre. It was everything I’d wished for and envisioned it would be. The crumbling dilapidation and neglect so afflicting both Mozambique and Zimbabwe was behind us. Ahead, lay spotless avenues lined with flowering trees and streetlights, crisscrossing through a city of dazzling, modern buildings. Internet cafes, supermarkets, bakeries, banks, and restaurants bustled and beckoned. We had at last reached civilization.

Saying goodbye to our Godsent lift, we set off looking for accommodation. Wanting to recover from the accident and journey, Liam and I were eager to splash out a little more than usual at the Henderson Street Guest House, but after walking through its idyllic gardens, we discovered at reception that we weren’t the only ones with that idea; the beautiful place was completely booked. Unsure where else to go, we popped into a café advertizing itself only as “PIZZA AND ICECREAM!” for an early dinner.

“Hello! We were wondering what kind of pizzas you guys had here.” Liam said to the waitress.

A blank look was followed by, “We don’t…serve pizzas here…But this menu.”

Liam took it and chuckled, “Well, do you have any ice cream?”

“Umm…I have to check first…” replied the slow (to the point of handicapped) woman, “But I don’t…think we do.” I have found on this trip and my previous one, that Africans, in general, are intelligent and often witty, if not particularly entrepreneurial, but despite the huge percentages of English speakers in most countries, waiters and waitresses are possibly the most useless, unintelligent people on the continent. All street children speak far better English and are usually a good deal sharper.

We ordered scrumptious and, surprisingly inexpensive, chicken and rice dishes. While the three of us ate, the manager, an energetic, (intelligent) racially mixed girl named Taz came over to chat. After recalling our luckless hotel search, we asked if she had any recommendations. Running off first to call her roommates, she offered to let us stay in the guest bedroom of her home. Without more ado, we accepted the proposal, lady luck smiling on us once again. (Taz, we found out later, was not shockingly, Zimbabwean. She probably moved to Malawi just to help tourists out with free accommodation.)

After successfully making our way by minibus to her home in the suburbs, Liam told the guard at the gate that, “The madam sent us.” He let us in and we walked above 5 impeccably manicured acres to Taz’s 4-bedroom home and met our new housemates. First there was Chris, a white, very laid back, out of work, pot smoking Zimbabwean who was either playing X-Box or watching movies during the entire duration of our stay, then there was Thomas, an immense, Schwarzenegger-esque German guy who loved travelling and hiking and was stuck working in Malawi, frequently doing the latter until he’d saved enough money to do more of the former (in light of where and how he lived, he wasn’t trying too awfully hard to save his paychecks), and, the most recent addition, besides us, was Jules, a pretty German girl, and Thomas’ girlfriend of slightly less than 2 whole weeks (there was a surprisingly, and weirdly, high number of lovey-dovey couple collages taped around the house for the two of them having been together such a short time).

One by one, we abandoned conversation with our new friends for the blessedly running water of the in-house HOT SHOWER! Whether it was exhaustion, the glorious feeling of being clean, or the marijuana fumes emanating from the living room, Liam, Gavin and I all slept like the dead.

Day 11 Budget

$0.12 Bananas

$0.42 souvenirs for girls I nannied for

$5.12 lift to Blantyre

$2.73 dinner

$0.46 minibus to Taz’s house

$6.36 oatmeal and powdered milk

Total: $15.21

Malawi - Part 1

Up very early, out the door by 7:00am, and at the chappa stop by 7:30am, I began an extensive set of negotiations which, if went as planned, would transport Liam, Gavin, and I to the Malawian border crossing. A group of enterprising men gathered around me, and though we’d been solemnly cautioned by our concerned hoteliers not to fork over more than $2.86 for the 20 mile ride, prices ranged between $10.72 and $17.86. Eventually, a man offered a better deal, “Blah blah, ok, this truck here is going to blah blah you can go later for $3.57 each.”

Deal. I grabbed my rucksack and as the guys followed my lead, Liam asked me if we were leaving right then. I nearly spat out a surprised “Weren’t you listening?” but a split second later, I realized he hadn’t understood a word of my broken Spaniortuguese, and I explained. Generally, travelling with other people ensures that you will only be doing a fraction of the interminable organization required to do anything or get anywhere, but in Mozambique, my (mediocre) Spanish speaking ability had elected me as permanent Situation-Figurer-Outer. I’d certainly be happy to turn in my title in Malawi...if I could just make it there...

We sadly killed our morning hanging around and doing nothing with a few dozen locals who appeared to be doing even less. All of us occasionally bought snacks and soft drinks from 5 little children who were the only really productive humans in a half mile radius. Hard working children and do-nothing adults seemed to characterize Mozambique. It’s ‘easy street’ after you have kids here I guess. Besides, who says a two-year-old and his 5-year-old sister can’t look after their baby brother while manning a muffin bucket for 8 hours every single day?

After waiting for an hour, I began to inquire further and found out Liam wasn’t the only one who could be accused of not listening. Our ride would not be leaving until noon. Sigh… I just wanted to get to Blantyre…

At 11:55 we climbed into the back of a pickup that had been there all along, with all the other people who had also been there all along, and … drum roll please… with the driver who’d been there all along. Not a single soul had arrived or departed from the spot in 4 ½ hours. No one had anything to do but sit all day and wait for a truck that left at noon.

The ridiculous, slothful, inefficiency of it all made me want to scream, so as 15 people, 3 backpacks, several colossal sacks of Maize flour, a few chickens, and numerous small children bulged out from the truck bed, I clenched my jaw. Soon, a light rain began to fall and a few more people jumped on. The 4-year-old girl sitting next to me was set on my lap by her infant toting mother and though I’d smiled at the youngster earlier, she was having none of it. With a grave anger, she stared down the woman who had given her life. That woman betrayed her, handed her over to a monstrous freak. She didn't squirm or even move a muscle, but several silent tears rolled down her terrified, resentful cheeks. Several other passengers chuckled as they watched the drama, explaining to me it was the first time the girl had seen a Mazunga (white person). No kidding.

Halfway into the journey we approached a military checkpoint. When our truck stopped, a tall, good looking, young man casually wielding an AK greeted only the 3 of us and straight away (in great English) demanded to know what trauma had befallen my face. When I enlightened him, he shrugged and nonchalantly dismissed the event with a laid back, “This is Mozambique.” Ha! I mean what did I expect? An accident free trip? Nope! Not here. Silly me!

At the border we were BOMBARDED with aggressive bicycle taxis, one of them even going so far as to fiercely yank a small child out of the truck in order to try and grab the backpack under him and secure our business. Powering through their pushy attempts to obstruct our path, we hurled ourselves inside the haven of Mozambique’s rundown Immigration Office. Our trio exited the country and a half hour walk through a wide, populated (which is odd) No Man’s Land deposited us on Malawi’s southernmost doorstep.

As a fat, jolly immigration official named Bernard checked us into the country, we asked him how often people used this seemingly deserted border. “All the time!” he proudly defended. “I see someone through here every day! Yesterday, a man came from Mozambique on a motorbike!”

After procuring free passport stamps, we were ushered into another room and asked to produce our immunization records. Although many, many countries are supposed to check your vaccinations upon arrival, I’d been to 46 countries and this was the very first border I’d encountered that actually carried out that threat. Nervously I handed over various scraps of paper.

I have purchased immunity to most diseases by now, but I knew it would take a sense of humor to get my paperwork okayed. My yellow fever shot was given to me in Bulgaria, and though I did convince the stern nurse to let me write my own name so it, at least, could match my passport, the rest of the words on the form are typed in Cyrillic, letters that do not resemble those in our alphabet. Happily, Bernard believed my explanation and then took a look at my typhoid and tetanus certificates. I received these shots in Thailand, which date-wise, marches to the beat of its own drummer. Thailand is 543 years ahead of the rest of the world, and so my birthday and the date my immunity is set to expire are both quite futuristic. Liam joked about how drastically he was robbing the cradle, dating a girl born in 2523. I passed inspection, though to be honest, I envied Liam and Gavin’s compact, organized vaccination booklets given out to would be travelers by the Australian health department.

Our next step was to change our Mozambiquen Metcash into Malawian Kwacha. Bernard notified us that not only was there no bank in the village of Marka, changing money on the black market was completely illegal in all of Malawi but, with barely a pause between sentences, he commanded us to “Wait here one minute and I will go find a man who will change it for you.” Running out of the door, he swiftly returned with a gentleman who duly changed our money. It’s so nice when the government goes out of its way to help you make illegal transactions. Welcome to Malawi.

Pockets full of Kwacha, we set about trying to organize a lift to Nsanje, a bigger town (with a hotel) 12 miles north. A wily man offered to take us for $24 each and when we laughed aloud at his shocking offer, he quickly dropped it to $7 a person. That wasn’t nearly low enough. During the entire (English! Yay!) conversation, he kept pointing out how he had to start the truck specifically for us, and starting any vehicle requires lots of expensive fuel.

Walking deeper into the village, with the hopes of finding some other type of transportation, we immediately were accosted by a hundred children, in our faces, screaming, “GIVE ME MONEY!!” at the top of their lungs. Totally different from the type of kids we’d come across thus far, this was both extremely annoying as well as being a serious distraction. Though shabbily dressed, neither the children nor the village was particularly poor and not a one of them needed food. At some point in Marka’s town history, some patronizing white idiot came through handing out money or other free things to kids and every tourist from that point on has been condemned to suffer the consequences.

Well, no longer, part of me wanted to smack their greedy, naughty, little hands, but the thing about children is, that no matter where you go on earth, they are all the same. Adults are so affected by culture, religion, and/or politics that it is virtually impossible to believe we are all part of one human race…were it not for the kids. At young ages, they are indistinguishable from children anywhere else on the globe. These kids were not ‘bad’, they simply needed retraining. Dusting off my nanny skills, within 5 minutes I had the entire giggling mass clapping and chanting “WEL-COME-TO-MA-LA-WI!” Just a little attention and retraining.

Finding not a vehicle in sight, Liam, Gavin, myself, and a hundred chanting children returned to the man in the truck to reopen the bartering process. To our surprise, the man was gone. To Nsanje. Without us. Gosh, it takes much less petrol to start an engine for us, if you happen to be STARTING IT ANYWAY!!! Whatever.

Just when we were thinking we might have to camp in someone’s yard for the night, a blue truck seemingly came out of heaven and our prayers were answered. Two ministers and an African hitchhiker were headed to Nsanje for the night, staying at a budget hotel, and then going on to Blantyre the next morning. Instead of trying to rip us off, they asked if we wouldn’t mind paying the typical bus fare for the entire trip. We did not mind.

Jubilantly climbing into the back, I finally felt like I was making progress toward the city of which I’d been dreaming. Blantyre, here I come…

Day 10 Budget

$0.54 muffins

$0.49 souvenirs for girls I nannied for

$0.36 soda

$0.46 water

$3.57 lift to border

$2.33 lift to Nsanje

$5.83 accommodation

$2.45 dinner

Total: $16.03