The Long Trip Home: An Arrival in Malawi

Over Sleeping Policemen into Sleeping Volcanoes new!
by Lee Patton

Goodbye to Saigon
by Robery Macey

Diving in the Desert
by Wade Hughes

The Sweet Taste of Adventure
by Alastair Bland

The Last Baja Sunset
by Alastair Bland

Live Drunk or Die
by Nicholas Mistretta

The Highway Into Ladakh
by Seán Harnett

Alan Siegle's Alaska
by Alan Siegle

return to main
The Road Less Traveled

An Arrival in Malawi

by Jessica Martell

Once the developing world gets in your blood, I'm told, it is likely to remain.

Before landing on the Blantyre Jetport tarmac in Malawi, my travel belt displayed only first world notches: England, Italy, Germany, New Zealand. I barely remembered the bustle of the Bahamas and the waterfalls of Puerto Rico from childhood trips. In short, I was a greenhorn; or as some people might say: spoiled. Great anxiety accompanied my decision to visit a friend halfway around the world in southern Africa, but I needed to be stretched.

Arranging and Rearranging
I planned my trip with an irrational amount of care. I learned continental weather patterns. I stocked up on batteries. I printed out map after map. I bought my ticket 10 months in advance. I packed for a month long trip in one little black rolling suitcase that I could pick up and carry if I had to, and a small backpack. Hours were spent rearranging. Items were tossed aside when priorities changed, often due to burgeoning knowledge of weather patterns: my flashlight was replaced by a bottle of sunscreen. A sweater took the place of three T-shirts. Socks were mostly abandoned. Film became a priority, and thus the Tylenol supply was reduced. I was vaccinated completely, and when a power outage compromised my refrigerated oral typhoid vaccine, I repeated the entire course just in case. My medicine chest was a triumph: prophylactics, antibiotics, pain killers, sleep aids, large tubes of steroid creams, gauze, medical tape, the works.

The friend whom I was visiting, a Peace Corps volunteer stationed at a mission in southern Malawi, emailed me the day before I left. I paused between re-rolling pairs of underwear to read the short message: BRING CHOCOLATE AND A BOTTLE OF NICE SCOTCH. I ran to the drug store, bought three boxes of Hershey bars and a box of Ziploc freezer bags to pack them in. At the closest liquor store, I discovered that their bottles of nice scotch only came in large portions. No problem. I'd just have to make room. Back home, two skirts, three notebooks, a fistful of pens, a small photo album, my jar of Aveda pomade, and a swimsuit were all removed to make room for the new booty. It was zipper-pop tight, so I reduced the size of the towel I was told to bring from bath to dish. Finally everything fit comfortably, and I could carry it all at once without groaning.

My flight left JFK at a comfortable 10:00 AM. I was at the airport by 7:30, so I checked in, got a window seat, had both bags swabbed for plastic explosives, and still had 2 hours to kill. I called my mother, my brother, a cousin, and three friends to say goodbye. I was starting to get nervous and also slightly weepy. What if this were the final time I set foot on my home soil? What would I remember? Who would remember me? I watched airport CNN and stared at my fellow passengers. Who were they? Why were they going to Africa? One man was dressed as though his safari vehicle would be meeting the plane: khaki cargo shorts, khaki vest with numerous pockets, belt with some kind of teeth on it, Crocodile Dundee hat, accent. I was intrigued. Do all white people dress like that in Africa? How did the British ever manage down there? More silly thoughts, then the first boarding call.

I wish I could tell you more about what it feels like to fly 20 hours straight, but I don't remember much of it. I had great hopes of beginning my first novel. Instead, I read the fifth Harry Potter book for several hours and then slept the rest of the time, thanks to my superior planning and advanced medicine supply. It was better that way. If I had had more time to form preconceived notions about what the world would look like when I finally deplaned, I might have turned around in Johannesburg and flown right back home.

Touching Down
Blantyre was a three-hour flight from Joburg, and the entire trip was very sunny. I think it was a morning flight, but I can't be sure. After 28 hours of traveling, I had no idea what day it was, much less an accurate sense of time. When the flight attendant told us to prepare for landing, I glued myself to the window for my first glimpses of Malawian soil. I had an image in my mind from online photos: tall, golden grasses, elephants moving in herds, rivers filled with hippos, huts.

There were ten thousand bags everywhere, of every color, shape, size, and brand. We had to climb over and pick our way around them.

It's not that I didn't see any of that. I did, after a week or two. But my first impression of Blantyre was that it looked just like the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. Red clay as far as the eye could see, scrubby brush, paved roads, stores.

The plane parked parallel to the terminal. I didn't get a clear view of the airport until I stepped outside and climbed down the wobbly stairs to solid ground. The building was white stucco, paint peeling. Grass in the cracks on the runway. On the roof of the airport, hundreds of people (Africans!) were waving to us. A row of little girls in front all had on pink dresses. I did a quick calculation. Maybe...fifty people on the plane? And they were mostly white people, which in my struggling, weary mind made family connections seem illogical. What were all those people doing up there? OK, I was definitely not in Georgia.

I went through customs, which turned out to be a doorway with a sign saying "Customs" hanging over it, and went to the baggage claim area. There were ten thousand bags everywhere, of every color, shape, size, and brand. We had to climb over and pick our way around them. I will never know why they were all there, because immediately a man was directing us to another doorway. "Go get your bags," he said, pointing out to the doorway. We crossed through and found ourselves back on the runway beside the plane. We trudged over to its open belly and waited for the men unloading it to drop our bags out onto the concrete below.
Good thing I bubble-wrapped that scotch.

A Practical Joke
My friend met me in the front hall after I had dusted off my bags and found my way outside. After a cheerful greeting, exclamations of "that's all you brought!?" (I swelled with pride), and general movement toward the parking lot, I asked her what the people were doing on the roof. "Oh, people like to come watch the planes land. They dress up and everything." The first thing I learned about Malawi is that technology is something to be celebrated.

Father O--, one of the mission's priests, was waiting for us in a faded red Toyota pick-up truck. A Scotsman with bright blue eyes, he had a wicked sense of humor. The first thing he did after we piled into the truck was prank me.

"Ya see all those women by the side of the road in yellow shirts?"

Indeed, I saw many women in yellow shirts lining the airport exit ramp.

"Your friend 'n I arranged for them to come welcome you to Malawi."

"Really??" I gasped. "Wow, what a wonderful surprise! How thoughtful of you."

My friend poked me. "Not really. The yellow shirts show the women's support for the current political party. The presidential election's coming up next month."

Oh.

A Strip Mall and Straight Rows
There is one strip mall in Malawi, and it happened to be my first local sight. We had pizza and beer for lunch at Ali Baba's Pizzeria, and then we went grocery shopping at the adjacent Shop-Rite, Malawi's only grocery chain. The grocery store was cool, organized, and offered impressive variety. The cans on the shelves were stacked impeccably straight. When I took one down, a man ran up behind me to reshuffle the rest back into a perfectly smooth facade. Lesson two: Malawians like things to be neat.

Thus far, Malawi didn't seem so unfamiliar. In fact, if I had left that day, I would have returned home thinking that Blantyre was a lot like the Atlanta suburbs after all. As it turns out, Blantyre is unique. Malawi has other cities, of course, like Lilongwe and Mzuzu; but no other area in the country is as commercially developed. Most grocery shopping is done at roadside markets; most food is cooked over open fires; pizza is altogether absent from the local diet. My first impression of Malawi was, looking back, highly abnormal. But it did give me enough confidence to be hopeful. A lot is possible there, even though much of the country struggles to get by.

A visit to a local village redefines gratitude.
After I spent several days in the city, it was time for me to venture into Malawi's rural areas. I was invited to stay at my friend's site, a mission in the valley below the Zomba plateau. The mission reminded me of a tiny town. It consisted of a main house, a primary school, a secondary school, a maize mill, a youth center, a small vegetable market, a church, and scattered housing for the mission staff.

The schools were the heart of the mission. Seven villages within a 50 mile radius fed into them, so plenty of youth were always running about, doing mission chores, grinding their maize into uffa (flour), playing soccer, and hanging out waiting for the American visitor to show.

There were two boys in particular who were very curious about what America was like. The tall one, Alex, walked around with a cane although I noticed no limp. I believe it was for style, as he liked to read fashion magazines that mission guests left behind. The second boy said he had three names but mostly went by Arnold because he liked Terminator 2. They asked me lots of questions, most of them about American celebrities.

"Madame from America, do you know Arnold Schwarzenegger? We hear he is a political leader now."

"Yes, he was just elected to be California's governor. And no, I don't know him."

The boys exchanged an incredulous glance. They tried again.

"Well, then, Madame, do you know Jennifer Lopez?"

"No."

They looked at each other again, dismayed.

"Well, then, Madame from America, who do you know?"

I explained that there were lots of other people in America that I knew, like family and friends. They nodded politely, chatted with me some more, and eventually wandered off to find their friends, probably disappointed that I wasn't more socially connected.

Meeting the Relations
The next day was quite different. I was invited to a village 10 miles down the road to visit with the family of a secondary student whom my friend taught. I was told that village life was entirely different from city life, as well as life at the mission. Most villages consisted of several extended families, and most villagers were subsistence farmers, selling whatever crops they could at market. A bad yield was disastrous, droughts apocalyptic, as everyone's survival depended on the wages of the few who could work and sell.

A unique aspect of village life is family organization. A group of elders, grandparents and parents, is usually in charge, while a group of everyone's children and grandchildren need minding. It is a collective system where everyone pulls weight in some way. The older children have more responsibilities when school or work starts and seem to take over when parents and grandparents were ill.

The first person I met was a drunken uncle with one leg. We parked near the bore hole (the village well where one can get water for cooking and washing) and began walking toward the village. He was splayed out on the porch of the closest hut, propped up against the legs of a small wooden chair, moaning and waving hello. "Nice to meet you!" he called to me. I smiled and waved back. A tiny old woman came out of the hut to see who he was talking to, saw us, and grinned. She picked him up under his arms and worked him back into the chair, fussing and straightening his t-shirt. We waved goodbye and kept walking.

After a trek a little ways up a hill, passing several huts with waving people in them, we reached H--, our host, and his mother. They were standing outside a large mud hut with a freshly thatched roof and a small pen of goats beside it. "Welcome, women!" he called to us and vigorously shook our hands. At the sound of his voice, all the village children - there must have been fifteen or twenty - started to creep out of hiding. Shyly, they flocked around behind him, staring at us. They wore ripped t-shirts that came down to their knees, all colors, striped, plaid. Most of their necklines were stretched ridiculously large, looping down to reveal a belly button, or falling down like a boatneck sweater so both dusty shoulders peeped out. One boy's shirt read 'University of Cincinnati.' Silently, I tried to trace its journey. Which UC student folded it and put it in a box to donate? Which organization flew it over here? Did that boy choose it because it was red, or because it had English writing on it? Did he choose it at all?

Did he like it?

One girl saw I had a camera. "Ohhh!" she pointed and laughed with delight. That was beginning of the afternoon's three roll photo session. All the kids scrambled into poses, yelling and laughing. After a few of these, my greatest challenge was getting candid shots. Every time one of them saw me lift the camera, he or she scrambled to get a group together for the shot. Finally, I just left the camera up near my face and walked around shooting randomly. It felt funny, taking pictures of a way of life. It was almost relief when, two hours later, I finished the last roll of film.

Animals and Vegetables
H--'s mother had prepared lunch for us. My nerves jangled as I approached the large hut. I was really worried that I'd make a mistake--insult my hosts accidentally or get sick later from eating something I should have passed up. I ducked under the cloth in the front doorway and was plunged from the bright sunshine into a room lit by a candle. A small table, quite low to the ground, was set for two. Two small wooden chairs, decorated with carved scenes of lions and giraffe, sat squat on either end.
"These chairs look hand-carved," I said to H--. "Did you make them?"

He grinned. "Yes, I spent many days making them for our guests today. Otherwise you would have had to sit on buckets. I did not know whether you liked giraffes or lions, so I made both."

"I like them both. Thank you."

After thanking him, I realized it was a drop in the gratitude bucket. It was the first time I had met H--, but he had already been carving my chair for a month.

Mama served lunch. I rejoiced as the platters were laid down: greens, eggs, tomatoes, squash. I recognized everything. There was no meat. I was introduced to nsima, a Malawian starch staple made from corn flour and water that resembles white play-doh. Nsima is a tasteless filler, meant to accompany meat and vegetable dishes. Proper etiquette dictates that you eat with your hands, balling up a small amount of nsima and using it to scoop up the other dishes served. I ate with delight, comfortable with anything vegetarian. I even remembered to leave a small amount of food on my plate at the end of the meal, which I was told is a polite way for a guest to show that she is satisfied and has been treated well.

Of Lice and Little Sisters
The climax of the visit was the post-lunch dance. A group of boys had planned a dance routine in our honor. Nine boys, dressed completely in banana leaves, performed a choreographed number around a drummer sitting in the center of their circle. The lyrics were translated as giving thanks for the rain, but not for the lice that came with the rain. At that point, each boy mimed picking pretend lice out of his clothes and giving them to the dancer on his right.

A much younger girl spontaneously joined the ceremony, despite the boys' protests. Everything they did, she mimicked perfectly - and with a huge smile on her face. Mama and several aunts laughed hysterically as the girl wiggled her way around the circle of dancers. The boys themselves were less amused and tried their best to ignore her.

The True Meaning of Peanuts
When it was time to leave, a funny thing happened. Each member of the household suddenly produced something to give us. I'm not talking about normal party favors. My friend and I received enough food to feed us for a week: a dozen tomatoes, bowls of peanuts, bags of onions, and lots of greens. H--'s family probably earned ten dollars a month, and they were feeding us. I began to protest. "Don't," my friend hissed. "Just take it." I knew better than to disobey, but I was mostly speechless on the drive home. I managed to ask why this incredibly hard working but very poor family felt they had to give me food.

"Because they don't want you to think they don't have enough."

"But do they have enough?" I asked, amazed.

"No."