Malawian Hospitality

Posted by: Laura

Travel dates:8.16.08- 8.18.08

When we got off the minibus in the village of Ekwendeni, a boy walked over to greet me. I was used to the typical conversation, “Where are you from? Where are you going? How do you like Malawi?” But his first question was, “Are you in the Peace Corps?” This question made me pause and wonder where I was.

“No,” I replied, “I’m here to visit a friend.”

“Oh, you’re here to see Donovan?” my new friend asked. Actually that was exactly why we had stopped here. Either Donovan has a lot of visitors or he is the only white person living in the village. I assumed it was the second option.

About twenty minutes later Donovan, tan and smiling, rode up on his bicycle. He gave us huge hugs. As we started walking toward his house, we shared news about Priory, where we had both taught, and gave him a short summary of our travels. It should take about fifteen minutes to walk from the “trade” (the market) to Donovan’s house, but after almost two years of living in a small village, Donovan seems to know everyone. And everyone seemed to know we were in town. Donovan enthusiastically greeted each person with the Malawian formalities. He asked how they were, where they were coming from, where they were going, and inquired about the health of their family. Instead of the typical western answer of “I’m fine. How are you?” We learned the daily routines of each person and the specific ailments of each family member. Just when I thought my pack was getting heavy, a group of smiling kids walked over and started tugging at our bags. They were the children who lived near Donovan’s house. They wanted to welcome us and carry our bags. One kid wanted to carry my big pack, which was about the size of him. I gave him my day bag instead. Chris had his extrememly heavy camera in his day bag and I saw a five year old girl straniing to carry it, so I tried to discreetly lift it to lighten her load. Another boy was trying to figure out how to balance Chris’ guitar. Our procession arrived at Donovan’s mud hut where we met the mother and the grandmother of the family.

Donovan lives in a traditional African mud hut. Each hut is built with a frame of wooden sticks. Next, rocks are packed in the frame to give more stability. Then the whole structure is covered in clay. They are topped with rooves made either of straw or corrugated metal. Corrugated metal doesn’t leak during the rain season, but the sound of sitting under one of these rooves in the rain is deafening. As you travel through Southern Africa, you see these huts in various states of construction or disrepair. Each cluster of mud huts is called a compound and normally houses an extended family. Donovan has his own hut with a small room, a small sitting room with a straw mat on the floor, and a storage area where he keeps his clothes. We rolled out an extra foam mattress and a sleeping bag.

While we were getting our stuff settled, the children who had carried our bags went over to a bookshelf and started distributing books amoung themselves. Donovan keeps about 10 Dr. Suess books on the top shelf. Even though none of the children speak English, they love to flip through the books and look at the pictures. And, like all children, they really love to be read to. I immediately went into teacher mode and arranged a few of the kids in a semi circle on the porch and started reading The Cat in the Hat. Around the page where the Cat in the Hat leaves a pink ring in the tub while mother is out, I wondered if these kids have ever seen a bathtub. We had been showering with a bucket of water and a cup (which is actually preferable to most of the bathrooms I’ve been in lately). They sat captivated while I read.

I happened to glance over at Chris. I figured he was taking pictures. But I saw him sitting with one of the kids and reading to him. Now this might not seem like a big deal, but in Chris-world this is equivalent to a super nova. The only child I have ever seen Chris hold is Lucy (Don’t worry Lucy, I know you’re almost grown up now). I would have taken a picture, but I had two kids sitting in my lap and didn’t want to spoil the moment.

A few minutes later Chris did bring out his camera and the books were forgotten. Chris has fixed focal lenth lenes (or whatever you call them). This lens required him to stand farther away. The kids, giddy with excitement, kept scooting closer to him while he was backing up to try get them all in the shot. Finally, they stampeded him and used him as a human jungle gym.

The kids decided to show us traditional African dancing, so one of the boys grabbed a plastic bucket and began drumming away while the girls ran around the corner of the house to dance toward us. Chris and I sat on Donovan’s porch and watched the performance. When it started getting dark, the children went to their houses and we ate dinner with Donovan. We had nsima (see previous post for description of nsima), greens, and soya (something that provides protein, but I didn’t ask for specifics.)

The next day, we were invited to lunch at the house of one of the women in the village. Lida is a widow who was able to buy a house after her husband died. She lives with her four children, and maybe six grandchildren, maybe more. She had insisted that we eat nsima in her house, so I was expecting nsima and greens. She served us nsima and greens, but also an egg and eggplant casserole, carrots, beans, chicken, beef. I had not seen beef on a menu in a week and I have no idea what lengths she went to so we could eat that dish. Lida speaks English, so we sat and talked for a few hours. She explained to us how she gets up at 2am every day to start making dough for her scone business. She also cooks for her family. Lida is considered well off by Malawian standards. Her house has furniture. She owns a TV, but is still working on getting electricity to the house. As we were eating she offered us coke to drink. This is a routine request at home. But when you are sitting in a house built of sticks, and mud, it’s quite humbling. At the end of the meal, she had made an African cake for us to take with us. As we walked home, Chris and I were amazed at the hospitality we had recieved.

Donovan works in the education section of Peace Corps. So he teaches at the local high school, and at the local college (in his spare time). One of the main goals of most volunteer work is the idea of sustainability. In his other spare time, Donovan saw a need in the community for small business owners, like Lida. So he started a loan service where people apply for loans to start selling goods such as baked goods, soap, or brooms for example. Then he also started a community store where the people could sell their products in town (seriously I don’t know when he sleeps). The goal of the store is to break even, so they sell goods at cost to give people in town a chance to buy discounted products. I was amazed at how well it worked. The morning we left, Donovan took us to his community store to drink tea. We bought some scones and donuts for the road.

We said goodbye to Donovan and the hospitality of Malawi as we began our journey north to Tanzania.

Click Here to see our pictures of Ekwendeni, Malawi.

Lake Malawi

Posted by: Laura

Travel dates: 8.08.08- 8.15.08

Before we arrived in Africa, Chris’ dad insisted that transportation did not exist on the continent. After two days of traveling from Nampula, Mozambique to Cape Maclear, Malawi, I almost agree with him.

Our first day, we took a ten hour train to the small town of Cuamba, Mozambique. While trains are not as crowded as minibuses, they still leave at 4am, go very slowly, and are uncomfortably hot. We met a local Malawian woman on our train. Normally locals can help you with directions and make sure you’re not getting ripped off. While our new friend was incredibly nice, we soon realized that she didn’t travel much. When we went to get a hostel for the night and a minibus for the next day, we were getting better prices than she was. She had so much luggage that she couldn’t carry it all, and Chris ended up carrying her incredibly heavy suitcase a half mile from the train station to the hostel, while SHE kept asking, “How much farther? It’s so far.”

The next day, we took a three hour minibus ride, to the border where we discovered there is no public transportation for the 17 kilometers (about 10 miles) of no-man’s-land between the borders of Mozambique and Malawi. Please note that this is a major border crossing between the two countries. We had to hire guys with bicylces to pedal us down the dirt road. Fortunately, unlike middle school days where you sit on your friend’s handle bars, these guys have seats on the back. But you have to hire one guy to transport you and another guy for your bags. Half way through the ride, the guys stopped and demanded more money or they would leave us in the middle of nowhere. Since we had no other option, we agreed to pay, then stuck to the original price once we got to the next town. We had four and a half more hours riding in the back of trucks. Once we arrived at our destination, we had a two kilometer (a mile and a quarter) walk to our hostel.

On our third day of travel we smashed into the back of another pick up truck to get to our final destination, Cape Maclear, a small backpacker town at the southern tip of Lake Malawi. The driver was flying down a pot hole filled road with no regard for the fact that he had passengers in the back. It’s normally better to look down when you’re riding in a truck because if you look at the road you inhale clouds of dust. But when the driver slammed on the brakes, I looked up just in time to see us barely avoid hitting a group of baboons running across the road. A few minutes later, we pulled into the main dirt road into town and saw another baboon munching fruit and sitting next to a goat who was eating grass. While the baboons never came into town, I saw them every time I went running.

Our truck arrived without losing any passengers and we found a hostel on the lake. Lake Malawi is the third largest lake in Africa and the ninth largest lake in the world. It’s a great place to hang out after a few days of rough travel. However, the price of hostels is much more expensive than the rest of Malawi and the “beach” we had heard so much about is small strip of rocky sand. But the water is completely clear and has great freshwater snorkeling. The town has no paved roads, just sandy streets lined with small huts, tourist shops, and a few bars. The local Malawians are incredibly friendly. More of them simply want to know where you are from and welcome you to Malawi, but a few still want to sell you dhow trips or snorkle tours. We spent two days on the beach watching the women wash their clothes in the lake every morning and the men row their dug out canoes up and down the lake.

When we walked around town, a string of children would gather around us. I often felt like the Pied Piper. Some would come up and hold your hand, while others asked to have their pictures taken. They love seeing themselves on the camera. These kids live in houses with no electricity and no running water, but they know exactly how a digital camera works. They would sit patiently and smile, but as soon as you take a picture, they race over and push each other out of the way to see themselves on the screen.

Even after two relaxing days at the lake, I refused to ride in the back of another truck, so we took a bus from Cape Maclear to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. We needed to restock our food bag so we went to the grocery store to buy the traveling essentials: peanut butter, pasta, and Snicker’s Bars. We quickly learned why the Europeans recently held a Summit to discuss the soaring food prices in Africa. A bag of pasta which normally costs .99 in the US was selling for almost $5. Pasta sauce costs another $6. A three pound bag of frozen brussel sprouts was almost $8. We purchased two bottles of water and a bar of soap, and decided we’d eat out for dinner.

Nsima (pronounced See-muh) is basically the national dish of Malawi. It is made from processed corn, contains very little nutritional value, and is eaten by every Malawian at every meal. It looks like white mush and tastes like nothing. Nsima and greens (similar to collard greens) makes up most local meals. If you eat in a local restaurant your options are nsima and greens, nsima and beans, and if your lucky nsima and fish. After a few days of this diet, a $5 bag of pasta does not sound so bad.

We left Lilongwe and passed through Mzuzu, the largest town in northern Malawi on our way to Nkhata Bay, another lake town. Our consistently innacurate Lonely Planet guidebook had praised the beach at Kupenja Hotel. When we arrived we found that the hostel is built on a steep hill with no beach to speak of. The room that they showed us had some random guy sleeping in it, but they assured us they would clean the room. While we waited, one of the hotel workers taught us how to play Bao, a local game played by dropping pebbles in holes on a wooden board. We spent the rest of the afternoon in fierce competition. I would like to add that I am currently the Bao champion.

Our second day in Nkhata Bay, we were able to get in touch with Donovan, a teacher who worked with me at Priory and is currently in Malawi working through Peace Corps. He invited us to come stay at his village, so we hopped on the next minibus and headed to Ekwendini.

Click here to see our pictures of Cape Maclear and Nkhata Bay