Episode 9

Lake Malawi

One thing that is forever cracking me up is how people wil run up to you and greet you. Normally I get a lot of "hi-yaaaa!" from kids running around in the streets. When I was up at the lake, a boy yelled at "konichiwa!" so I yelled back "konichiwa!" And then, he yelled out "godzilla!" I think he ran out of Japanese words to say. Either way, it had me barreled over laughing, and I nearly fell into the water.

On another note, people always think I am younger than 22. When I went to a club at the beach, my friend would have grown men yelling out "hey mama, I want to marry you! Let me buy you a beer!" Whereas I would get 12-14 year old boys yelling "my brother owns this bar. Let me buy you a coke!" It was pretty funny, but at the same time, not.

Mulanje Massif

Chapter 2

Because of the heavy rains the Friday I climbed up Mulanje, all my clothes, sleeping bag, shoes were soaked. So we spent pretty much the rest of the evening drying our clothes. We tried to put them as close to the fire as possible. Not a very good idea. While I was making oatmeal, my friend had put our shoes close to the flames to dry them for the next day, and I guess a spark flew out and caught my shoe, because when I turned around, my shoes were on fire! A real, honest to God, big fire. I grabbed them and started banging them on the cement floor. That was a little scary. What was more scary was the state my shoes were in. Still wearable, but the rubber had burned off and when I put them on, they stuck to my socks. Good thing I brought duct tape, so once I had taped those bad boys up, they were all good to go.

Another thing that burned was the tea kettle handle. It was made of plastic, and we were watching the water boil, when all of a sudden we see the handle turn white, and it just disintegrates right before our eyes. It was not a good day.

Mulanje Massif

Chapter 1

If there is one thing more exciting than climbing Mulanje, it might actually be the journey to the base of the mountain. The mini buses from Zomba to Mulanje town were not bad, but the dried fish in the back of the vans stank up the car. And the 28 people crammed into a bus that could probably hold 15 was a little frightening. But nothing could compare to the truck ride up to Likhubula Lodge at the base. Not only were we standing in the truck bed, pressed against the back window, there were about 15 people in the bed, along with suitcases, a bicycle, and 400kg of fertiliser! I read an article in the NYT once about personal space, and they mentioned that anything around 15 cm from you is considered personal space. If that's the case, I was being very intimate with at least 8 different people, in some very intimate places. One thing that used to irritate me when I lived in Shanghai was how the American women would complain about the conditions of the private buses they would take on tours because the conditions wouldn't be up to the same standards as the Greyhound. Well, if I ever see their annoying faces again, I'd tell them to come to Africa and jump on a truck bed where they can get man handled by 8 different people, and the truck!

Episode 8: Mulanje Massif

Introduction

I'll admit that I'm not much of a climber/hiker. I don't usually enjoy the climb up mountains, and I'm normally the weakest link in my party. But the thing that keeps bringing me back is the view. I will do anything for a spectacular view. One of the top things to do while in Malawi is climb Mulanje Massif. It's not very tall at just over 3,000 metres, but the pictures and people's reports on climbing it convinced me it was something I had to do. So I was all pumped up to climb, and then the rains come! I think I actually prayed that God would delay the rains for one more week, because once the rains come, the mountain is virtually impossible to climb (I actually felt bad because Malawians rely on the rains for their farms). But the rains kept coming. And people kept telling me scary stories about Mulanje. About how this Danish girl ran off from her group and was never found again. About a group of hikers who got lost and were never found.

So I got to Mulanje base Friday afternoon, and there was no rain. And I was so happy, thinking "Yes God! Today will be good!" And then as if to spite us, the rains started coming, slowly at first. And I thought to myself "This is actually better, because I'm not as hot climbing up." And then the rain gods seemed to smite us with a hail of rain, thunder and lightening. It was a little frightening, and sort of reminded me of LOTR, when they are seemingly climbing forever to get to Mordor.

Episode 7

The Potato Path

One thing I've realised is that African woman are strong. They will walk miles on end to get places, and they will do it with the most enormous piles of anything on their head. During a trip into the village, a coworker and I had to walk what seemed to be miles to get to this lady's house to interview her because she was benefitting from the WFP aid. After 15 minutes of walking in the heat, I just about died. That was before I was told that the woman lived on the other side of the mountain! That nearly did me in. As we were walking up the mountain, I felt like we were in LOTR, on that endless journey to Mordor. Anyway, it's pretty humbling when you are about to die climbing a mountain while carrying nothing, and these women do it every day with gallons of water on their head!

There is a path in Zomba called the potato path, and it leads up to the Zomba plateau. My friend and I decided to climb the potato path, but our third friend dropped us off at some random site that he claimed was the start of the potato path. So not true, because soon, we were faced with hills that were about 30-40 degrees steep and near impossible to climb up without sliding down. The way we ended getting up was we scaled the tree trunks that had been cut down. We honestly looked like monkeys scampering up fallen tree trunks. When we got back to Zomba, we looked up the map and discovered we had not climbed the potato path, but had climbed some non existent path. We decided to name this new mzungu path "chadleen."

Episode 6

Darkness

The Malawian sun has not been kind to me lately. I've been getting burned real quickly, and the ensuing tan lines have been all over the place. My upper body is pretty unsightly, but I think my legs could rival it. I've been bitten more than 30 times on my legs, and I would die from embarrassment, if not for the fact that I wear chitenjes everyday, so I pretty much spare everyone the sight of my legs. The upper body isn't as easy to hide, especially when it is 120 degrees outside. My friends have taken to calling me Darkness. At first I thought it was funny...haha...like the Charlie Murphy True Hollywood Story skit on the Chappelle Show! But yesterday, I went into the market, and this one vendor said to me in all seriousness, "I am thinking that you are Pakastani?" Oy Vey!

Episode 5

I'll give you 30 cows!

If you want to marry a girl out here in Malawi, you'll have to woo her with more than a diamond ring. In fact, you'll have to woo her whole family with cows! The more precious the girl is, the more cows she'll be offered. I heard a story about a father who was talking to some of his daughter's girlfriends in Canada. He turned to one girl and said, "you're worth about 30 cows!" Then he turned to her other friend and said, "you're about 15!" I know I would have been a bit peeved and mortified if I had been the girl worth 15 cows. Anyway, my friends were saying that if there are only daughters in a family, the father will normally ask for more cows to help take care of the family when the daughter goes away. Also, if she's educated and/or pretty, she'll get a higher offer of cows. My friends said that because I come from a family of three daughters, my dad would ask for a minimum of 15 cows. And because I have a college degree, I'd get another 10 cows (for those of you who doubt the worth of your college degree, it really is worth something - 10 cows!) And then he said because I'm a mazungu (foreigner) and pretty (gosh! flattery will get you everywhere!), I get another 10 cows each! Holy smokes, that's a whole 45 cows! My dad would be set for at least a couple decades with that kind of deal!

Episode 4

Free Falling

One thing that doesn't surprise me anymore is how trucks are often packed with people. And I don't mean the inside of trucks. I mean the truck beds. Packed with 8, 9, 10, even more. I was driving from Mangochi to Liwonde last weekend and I had to sit in the truck bed. At first, I thought it was some mistake, because I was told that expats always get shotgun. But apparently not, because when they came to pick me up, the truck was packed, and they just shoved me in the bed. So I pretty much spent the better part of the 2 hour ride petrified that the door latch would come undone and we would all go flying out. And when we almost hit a herd of cows crossing the road, I almost had a heart attack. There's a very good reason why this is illegal in most of the West.

Anyway, to end the story, riding in the back of a pickup truck is not exciting or glamourous. I was driving down a winding road when I saw a truck in a ditch on the side of the road and injured passengers lying on the ground. It's definitely not exciting, nor is it glamourous, especially when you end up part of a horrific accident that would leave you with only a scratch if you had been sitting inside the truck with a seatbealt.