By Marlo Sarmiento, (C) 2000
Hi folks. I'm trying to put together a short story of my travels to Malawi, but here's a very condensed version. I'll send you the full version when(if?) I get done with it.
Returning to Malawi after ten years was like returning
to the house where I had grown up. From the outside
the shapes and sillouettes looked the same, but a
few steps forward and I saw dad's paint job peeling,
a few shingles missing and a garden that had gone to weed.
For over thirty years Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda was
lord of his House of Malawi. In the crucible of post-
colonial Africa he forged his own brand of paternalism,
fed intravenously by international donors that
favored his taste for things Western. He moved the
country's capital from Zomba to Lilongwe, a small outpost
on what was then a sparsely populated plateau. Now he
was closer to the village he called home. He built an
airport as a portal to the world, named fittingly
enough Kamuzu International Airport. Atop a small
hill outside of Lilongwe, Banda commissioned the
building of a palace which his mistress, Celia "Mama"
Kadzamira, decorated with swatches of pastels and schemes
of soft colors that contrasted with the crimson, black
and green of the Malawian flag and countryside.
In 1994 the donors, tired of Banda's iron rule and human
Rights abuses, began cutting off aid and demanded that
Banda follow the course of Western Democracy. In a show
of arrogance that also revealed his naivete, Banda called
for multi-party elections. From his convertible Rolls
Royce he campaigned against the would-be leaders of
the House of Malawi, flicking his fly-whisk at the women
who danced for him in chitenjes and blouses that bore
his likeness. When Bakili Muluzi was declared the new
president, Banda's supporters in the Malawi Congress
Party and Malawi Young Pioneers cried over the symbolic
death of their conqueror, but in both public and private
circles Malawians welcomed the change with optimism
tempered by the caution of a child taking its first
steps.
Banda now lies in a grave at the base of Capitol Hill
in Lilongwe. His death in 1996, at the age of 99 as some
estimates go, was notable for the lack of ceremony that
he had been accustomed to. I visited his final resting
site at the end of my two-week journey to Malawi. My guide,
Joseph Lukhele, a geophysicist by training but a taxi
company owner by necessity, led me up a dirt track to a
clearing in the brachystegia woodland. An army tent that
I recognized from countless roadblocks stood guard across
from Banda's memorial. I imagined a goose-stepping soldier
there but saw no one. Where was everyone? After all, it
was Martyr's Day, a Malawian public holiday and I expected
to see at least some visitors. Sensing my bewilderment,
Joseph explained that Malawians do not have a tradition of
visiting graves. From the looks of the memorial he seemed
right. A few plastic bouquets and wilted garlands fringed
the terraces of what appeared to be a wide, three foot tall
pyramid protected from the elements by a sheet-metal roof
propped up by a few posts. I had doubts that the Egyptian
motif was intended. A small stone cross bearing no name
topped the pyramid. Banda's memorial resembled a two-car
garage, minus the cars, with its smooth concrete floors,
discarded knick-knacks and a feeling that this is where
people stored items for occasional use but forgot them with
the passage of time. It seemed an anonymous end for the
leader of a country.
* * *
I began planning my return to Malawi in December 1999 after
I met someone who had just visited there. I again heard
the names of places � Nkhata Bay, Cape Maclear, Zomba,
Lilongwe -- and in each of these places I pictured faces of
people I had met during my stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer
in the late 1980s.
I searched my belongings to find my old address book. In
Its dog-eared pages I leafed through the scribblings in
pencil and three colors of ink that reflected promises I
had made to keep in touch: promises accompanied by handshakes
and farewells made before boarding a bus or plane, at a
friend's doorway or seated before the desk of a coworker.
I found Rusty Klinger's address in the section for "J" as
I had crossed out her old addresses in Mzuzu and Transkei
and had run out of room in the "K" section. The last time
I had written her was in 1996 and she gave me an address in
Lilongwe of a German charity she worked for, SOS Children's
Village. I sent her a letter by international express mail
informing her of my flight and contact information, but I
had nagging fear that my letter was a few years too late to
reach her. I do not remember when or how we met but I know
that Rusty was among the circle of friends I had in Mzuzu.
There was also Stephanie Berthelet, a Canadian teacher and
Volker Weyel, a technical advisor for a German development
agency. We went often to Nkhata Bay for the weekend,
staying at the Heart Motel, where we ate banana pancakes
and traded stories with backpackers about pit latrines,
malaria and the black market.
I was surprised to get a message on my voicemail at work.
"You have one message, sent at 6:31 a.m." chimed the
automated operator.
At first I heard static, then a voice with an accent I
immediately recognized as Malawian, presumably an
international operator, "It's a machine."
"I'll leave a message," came another voice in an accent
of Southern African English. "Hullo, this call is for
Mah-lo Sahmiento. This is Rusty Klinga calling from
Malawi, Af-frica. Mah-lo, you can call me at 265
Country code, 742 087, Af-frica time during working
hours. I got your letter and I'll see you on the 18th or
whenever it is you're coming."
****
After a ten hour flight from San Francisco, Andrea and I
found that London was the perfect place to catch our
breath before the second leg of our trip. We had a quick
drive through the English countryside with Charlie Proddow,
a Brit whom I had met in Malawi ten years ago who,
ironically, had become an attorney just as I had. Then
we were off to Tooting (yes, a strange name for a
neighborhood)for a quick pint and a few chips with
Jim Garcia, one of Andrea's former coworkers. We took
another ten-hour flight, stopped shortly in Harare and
arrived in Lilongwe. There we met the midday heat of
Africa and 95% humidity -- perfect ingredients for pungent
sweat, tempers and coup d'etats. Luckily we did not encounter
the latter two as we breezed through immigration (THUMP on
ink-pad, THUMP on passport, THUMP THUMP THUMP on luggage
cart, SMILE and WAVE at baggage inspection).
I spotted Rusty right away, but I noticed a bit of hesitation
on her part which I took to mean that I no longer resembled
the skinny, bespectacled 24-year-old from her memory. Like
many people and things in Africa, she was a tapestry of seeming
contradictions and a rich source of stories. She was born in
South Africa of British parents who named her Janice
(pronounced Ja-NEES, which probably explains why she now
goes by Rusty), became an American citizen, served in the
Peace Corps in the Philippines and Malawi, and now works
tirelessly for S.O.S. Children's Village.
I noticed fewer trees on the drive from the airport, but
the women balancing baskets on their heads and young boys
tending their families' cows and goats told me that this
was still Malawi.
Depending on whom you spoke to, the new democracy has not
Necessarily changed things for the better. Crime and
corruption were on the rise and the country had become
poorer because of two devaluations of the Kwacha. On the
other hand, some people said they would rather be free and
poor than be owned by Banda. Women were now allowed to wear
pants and short skirts, and men could grow their hair beyond
their shoulders - a sign of new freedom to some, but a curse
to elders in this religious country.
After a few days, we were anxious to move on our next
adventure, Liwonde National Park. Rusty dropped us off at
the bus depot, where some teenage entrepeneurs accosted us
with offers to carry our luggage. As we approached the gate
to the station, the boys encircled us, and Andrea yelled as
a hooligan began unzipping my backpack. I instinctively
responded with a yell in Chichewa -
"WAKUBHA!" - thief.
Yelling Wakubha (and you better be right about the theft)
will immediately mobilize men, women and children to gang up
and beat the living daylight out of the culprits. An
effective self-policing that maybe we can learn from. On
that day, however, the teens scattered before the vigilantes
had a chance to practice their Bruce Lee kicks.
After the three hour bus tour south, and a one hour speedboat
ride up the Shire River, we arrived at Mvuu Lodge to begin
what the brochures billed as "a luxury safari with Hemingway
style tents". We went on three safaris a day - a bird
walk in the morning (although the company of a park ranger
with a machine gun belied the possibility that we might
encounter some pretty big birds), a riverboat tour midday,
and an evening game drive in an opentop Land Rover.
Our boat trips along the Shire River brought us close to
pods of hippos who announced their territories with a
flash of tusks and a snort of mist.
Crocodiles basked on the banks, a solitary bull elephant
Patiently trailed a matriarch and her entourage of thirty,
and three-foot long monitor lizards feasted on the calcium
and protein rich droppings of cormorants roosting in a
large baobob tree. Our guides were Jim Katengu ("Little
Grab") and Richard Chimwala ("Big Rock"), whose keen eyes
helped us to spot a baby chameleon, a green mamba, and a
bushbaby in the fading light of our evening drives. We had
no trouble, though, sighting the hippos who left the river
at night to graze between the sleeping impala and bushbuck.
Our safari tent was perched on a platform above a small
lagoon and each night we slept to the sounds of crickets,
cicadas (at least they sounded like cicadas) and fish
thrashing the water for food. In the morning we followed
the tracks of elephants, being careful to dodge their large
donations of fertilizer. On our last night there we shone
our flashlights on the water to see what the fish were
eating, only to discover that the splashes came from
crocodiles chasing fish in the shallows.
We travelled to Cape Maclear, located on a large tonsil
of land along the southern shore of Lake Malawi. The
twelfth largest lake in the world and one of the deepest,
Lake Malawi lies along the southern end of the African
Rift Valley, a 2000-mile long fissure that in a few
hundred million years will become a channel between
Africa and a new land mass that will rival Madagascar.
Pay a visit to your local aquarium store and you will
see dozens of species of cichlids from Lake Malawi.
Cash in some vacation time and you'll have the chance
to snorkel with them in 80 degree water, which is what we
did around the rocky shores of Domwe Island. Cobalt blue,
canary yellow, little ones, big ones, striped ones and
albinos, but none that liked Green Eggs and Ham. At least
this is what Andrea described to me, as I am slightly color
blind. Biologists have identified at least 300 different
species of Lake Malawi cichlids and estimate that over a
thousand species of fish remain unidentified.
After struggling with tent zippers--even luxury Hemingway
Tent zippers--for a week, we were ready for some first
world comforts of an actual hotel room with a hot shower.
We followed the Rift Valley south to Zomba, the former
capital of Malawi lying at the base an 8000' plateau.
On the lip of that plateau, nestled among a mix of
brachystegia, eucalyptus, and Mexican pine trees sits
Ku Chawe Inn, where we stayed for four days. The
moisture-rich air of the Rift Valley turns to mist at
these heights, driving away tsetse-flies and
malaria-carrying mosquitoes and providing ideal
conditions for ferns, streams brimming with trout, and
horses. Just when we thought we were hiking in the
coastal mountains of Northern California, we encountered
some Malawian women carrying, on their heads of course,
firewood to the Zomba market two hours below on a trail
worn smooth by countless other heavily-laden feet.
We took a taxi from the plateau and we learned that our
driver had earned a degree in geophysics. We had planned
to rent a car in Zomba, but by the time we got there Joseph
had persuaded us to hire him instead. As we drove past
plots of tobacco, coffee and tea, he described his own
tapestry of contradictions and rich stories. Joe, as he
wanted us to call him, could not find a job in his field
after graduation. He bought a used freezer and sold
popsicles every day for a year. He invested his profits
in a shipment of used clothes from the West (yes, folks,
this is where some of your donated clothes end up) and
parlayed those sales into buying a used car. Several
years later he had a small fleet of taxis and employees,
but he still enjoyed driving visitors around because it
gave him a chance to talk shop. On our way to Mount
Mulanje, he explained the various theories of how that
mountain came to be the highest point in Central Africa
at 10,000'. He ruled out plate tectonics because that
would have formed a range of mountains. Mulanje's
solitary massif spoke more of a column of rock from the
depths of the earth surrounded by softer rock that, over
the ages eroded away to leave what is visible today.
Perhaps this was the symbolic future for Malawi's new
democracy.
****
To view photographs of Malawi taken during this trip . . . -Click Here-
To continue onto Mike's Matterhorn Peak series. . . -Click Here-
To continue onto Mike's mountaineering series. . . -Click Here-
To continue onto Mike's rock climbing series. . . -Click Here-
To continue onto Mike's ice climbing series. . . -Click Here-
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