The next day I wake up before the rooster can wake me and experience a moment of clarity that I hadn't felt in years. I lay there in Gong's bed, listening to him breath and plan the day ahead of me. After some time I fall back to sleep for another hour, when I wake the clarity is gone. I get up anyway trying to extract the list of errands that I had written in my mind an hour before.
While the fuel injector problem is being fixed we run into Black Mo at the bank with an immediate problem of his own. His card is in the ATM machine and he can't get it or any money out. Moses was the engineer who helped on the initial phases of the Khutamaji Primary School project. I don't sympathize too much cause I know what he wants to buy. I see in his yellowed eyes the look of an addict. He must have been drunk the night before and looking for a cure to his hangover. Eight hours later I'd find him at Villa Kagwenta already drunk on gin or whatever else his tab allowed him to consume. As we chat he tells me of his sick mother and asks me to pay her a visit. High on my own sugar and caffeine I agree and make a mental note to stop by the house.
At the same bar I used to frequent I see the same faces, some thinner and others fuller, the former being those who haven't yet started, the latter being those who are now taking ARV treatments. The prostitutes look like the newest harvest of disenchanted schoolgirls. The money of Mzuzu concentrates here, in a small pool of professionals whose crooked ways help them drink and dance away the largest of immediate problems, HIV. If the countrywide infection rate is 20% I wonder what the rate among the bar crowd might be. Before I left the States I promised myself that I would keep my head clear of the beer that could lead me to a fatal mistake. I knew some of these guys pretty well. When I lived here I enjoyed their jokes and camaraderie as opposed to the more formal social exchanges in the village. These guys got more of myself.
The HIV/AIDS crisis is like a war but worse. The real battle is with one’s own will, which happens before the physical war can commence. Essentially, at the core it is a battle of the balance between one's desire and making the right decision. Once you're wounded then the blood trickles out slowly over two or three years, long enough to leave one suffering with one's own mistake. Some ignore it and pretend like its not there and let nature take its course. Others are fatalistic and become consumed with the alcohol and sex that may have delivered the diagnosis in the first place. Others panic, dig deep into their souls and do whatever they can to stay alive.
We go to the outdoor market to shop for food for my village stay. I find my friend Nyondo there sleeping at his chicken outlet. When they wake him his swollen eyes and shrunken face declare his status before we can exchange hellos. He holds a handkerchief in his left hand to occasionally wipe the sides of his mouth and to clean his eyes. My heart drops but I’m not surprised. He went from village to village for weeks at a time buying and selling chickens while his two wives went from South Africa to Tanzania buying and selling goods, perhaps having to sell themselves in times of need. I sympathize for them but more for the 4 kids they'll leave in the hands of grandparents whose days will naturally soon expire. I wonder where they and the other million orphans like them will find their daily bread when that day comes. Fortunately, the family structure in Malawi runs wide and deep enough to support these tragedies. But eventually something has to give. Like a levee that withstands storm after storm and slowly begins to leak. I wonder when Malawi's will break. When it does will the ensuing floods bring the violence, crime and chaos that other societies have seen, that seem so inevitable?
I sell a Blackberry phone to a friend I knew would buy it before I left the States. The profit will help me help Tuff Gong fix his truck. I give him 40 bucks and he's off and running to the mechanic. In the meantime I go to Obrigado and see the solemn face of its owner. Obrigado is another bar I used to frequent during my 3 years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It's a great daytime spot, a good place to plan the trouble we would get into at night. The owner, Mr. Moyo, is a retired meteorologist who suffered a stroke before I left. He later left for Botswana and came back looking worse. I sat there with my friend Edson, a local Mzuzu citizen who works at the Tobacco Auction Floors. His previous gig had been selling cell phones on the street to feed the child he had made with his high school girlfriend. Despite some of his sneaky ways, I respect him most for his decision to stick around and take on the responsibility of a child, which some men here in Northern Malawi often fail to do. I'm also proud of his initiative to find stable work at the auction as opposed to the inconsistent rewards of pushing phones. We sit and drink Cokes and discuss agriculture in Malawi. He mentions that a bag of fertilizer now costs 15,000 Malawi Kwacha (MKW) or roughly $100 USD. With a government subsidized coupon the price falls to 800 MKW per bag or $5.50 USD. Each family is allocated two coupons that are distributed through the Traditional Authority. (A system ripe for corruption) Here's the kicker, in order to receive the coupon one must show a government issued identity card. Edson then shows me his 'Malawi Electoral Commission' card that he uses to receive his coupons. I take photographs of the card ironically wondering what the Electoral Commission has to do with fertilizer distribution. Consequently, there is a general election slated for next May with the incumbent, Bingu wa Muthalika being challenged by his former supporter and former President Bakili Muluzi. Wa Muthalika had defected from the ruling UDF Party a year after taking office in 2005. Thank God Malawians are peaceful people!
When Tuff Gong returns the truck runs well for 15 minutes then falls right back into its 'pulling' problems. Maybe its not injectors after all. We return back to Gong's house where I accept the realization that I'm back in Africa. While problems seem immediate to me they are just everyday occurrences to anyone who lives here, bumps on an already rough road that people patiently deal with on a day-to-day basis. I knew this already. Consumed with questions of how I'll get my stuff to Hewe we consume small fish and Sima then watch some badly edited Nigerian T.V. After we get back in Gong's bed and turn off the lights I ask him if anybody in Malawi ever goes to sleep after having a good day. He giggles off to sleep and his subtle snores make my eyes heavy enough to drift into dreams of the life and village I'll revisit tomorrow.
I wake up feeling tired. I look in the back of a CD and the reflection makes me even more tired. The journey is catching up with me and the excitement is wearing off. But I do see the village ahead of me, I smell the smokey September dust being blown off the Nyika Plateau through the Hewe Valley. Although it was dubious whether we'd arrive, Tuff Gong agreed to see if his '97 Nissan Hardbody had enough pull to pull me and my stuff to Zolokere. Luckily, Chatwa and I had done the extent of our food shopping the day before. It was nice to be recognized by many of the merchants in Mzuzu's market who asked of home and Hewe and other things Malawian while Chatwa and I negotiated for rice, potatoes, onions and papayas. As we were picking up a few last minute items I was struck by the cost of the sunfower oil I so often bought in the past. A 5 liter container was being sold for 2,900 MKW or $21 USD or $4 USD per liter. I opted for the cheaper vegetable oil.
We loaded up the truck with goods then loaded it with $55 Dollars worth of gasoline. This bought us about 7 gallons of fuel. $1.82 per liter translates to $7.30 a gallon. I gave the clerk the stack of paper then paused in a brief mood of anxiety, a bit steep for someone funding his own projects, even steeper for a farmer who earns $1000 per year. I thought, transportation aside, what about when that same farmer wants to buy some sunflower oil? I guess he, like me, opts for the vegetable oil. Especially when he can buy it in 1 cent tablespoons at the village grocer. Man, I need to go into the sunflower business!
On our way out of Mzuzu we run into my friend Vilanje the owner of the bar we patronized the previous Saturday. He greets me then proceeds to tell Tuff Gong about a potential hire for his truck. It seems there is a certain church group coming in November from Great Britain. The two local members responsible for organizing the group's transport has told the Britons that it costs 100 Sterling Pounds per day to rent a truck. They’re willing to pay Gong 35 of those pounds then pocket the rest for themselves. These are conversations most white people don't get to hear so I refrain from asking which church it is. I just wonder whether guys who do stuff like this actually get into the heaven that their church talks so much about. We laugh then part ways with Vilanje speculating how he's involved with the deal. He's a Roman Catholic.
Before we can even get out of town we're stopped by police using a radar gun. I had never seen this before in Malawi. Police in Malawi don’t patrol by car. Instead they stand in the middle of the road and wave you to the side based on some ambiguous selection process. They claimed to clock us at 71 in a 50 kilometer per hour zone. Following some negotiations with the Officer-in-Charge Tuff Gong peeled the certificates of insurance, registration and fitness from the windshield and handed them to the Officer. He got in the truck and we sped off as fast as our pulling problem would allow. When I inquired how he would get the certificates back he told me to take a look at the summons. On the bottom of the piece of paper I spotted the Officer’s personal phone number. If he earns $200 a month in government salary this is how he makes his other $200.
With the police and the rest of the city scams behind us we continued on the M-1 to the district capital of Rumphi where we stopped for table salt that's not available in the village. Chatwa had made his own list of the things he thought I'd need, so when he entered the store I began to take notice of the dusty town around me. Everything looked more run down than when I left; less paint on the signs, less glass in the windows, less tar on the road and less trees on the mountains that cradle the town. Had my perspective changed or do things really break down at such a rapid pace? Why there is less is a result of what is more; more people, more cars, more shops and more consumption. Nonetheless, Rumphi had more of a buzz than the year before so I pondered what I'd find in the Hewe Valley. How much can life change in a place like Zolokere where traditional culture prevails and modern technology is few and far between? As Tuff Gong’s Nissan cut a line through the Nkhamanga plain and spit dust onto the passing villages my brain traced visions of history and the Balowoka who had settled in this valley after crossing Lake Malawi. Their beads, glass and tools put a spell on the original Tumbuka settlers who had their own origins in Central Africa. An ivory trade soon flourished. What is most noteworthy is that when the Balowoka arrived they discovered the Tumbuka with no established government or chieftainship. As a result they peacefully relinquished their land to the Balowoka who established a kingdom. I thought of myself as a modern day Mulowoka (singular) crossing the Atlantic with laptops, speakers and microphones to put a spell on the people seeking trade in one of the last of the Tumbuka's natural resources, music.