1/15/08
We arrived in Livingstonia, Malawi 3 days ago, but it will be some time before I am able to send this so I’ll keep a running story going by date until I am able to get to the Internet. When we left Mzuzu, the northern regional capital of Malawi on the 12th, we were rushing around to be ready to leave at 9am, which was the appointed hour we were given for our departure. In the meantime, our next door neighbor in Livingstonia, Titus, found that he was not able to get other transportation so we suggested he ride with us, as transport to the Livingstonia is always a problem. Titus teaches Biology at the college and has some administrative duties there as well, and we later learned he was preaching at church Sunday, so a true jack-of-all-trades.
There is no formal system of “public transportation” in Malawi although there are a couple of bus companies that run large, and in some cases quite nice, buses between the few major cities. To get to most places you pile into a private mini-bus(no schedule, they just leave when they are full), but those don’t run to Livingstonia because the road up is too difficult for them. Livingstonia University has 2 four-wheel drive vehicles(if both are running) with drivers that can be used for “official business”, and we were lucky enough to be able to be drive up to the Livingstonia plateau in one of those. We decided to take bets on how long it would take for us all be ready to actually leave, as we needed to stop at the bank, the supermarket for frozen meat, and the vegetable market for those things we could not get in Livingstonia where the open air market has little to choose from; and Titus also had several places where he needed to stop before we left. We must be getting used to “African time” so when we actually left around 10:30 (which was John’s and my earlier guess at when we would get underway) we were just smiling. We were agreed later that this was a good sign that we were adjusting, as we would have been impatient and upset if it had happened in the U.S.
The weather for the 3-hour drive was great with no rain and clear spectacular views. Joseph, who was one of the drivers we remembered from our trip in September, did a great job dealing with all the people, bicycles, cows and goats on the main tarred road and we were relieved not to have to be driving ourselves anymore. It takes about 2 hours on the tarred road which is in pretty good shape and follows a river valley and then over a low mountain pass for 140 kilometers or so to get to the base of the Livingstonia escarpment and nearly an hour to go the 15 kilometers( 9 miles) up the Gorodi Road, which climbs about 2,300 feet in a series of 20 tortuous switchbacks. The road is mostly single lane dirt/rocks, with one very small and very steep part paved in deteriorating concrete, which was done a few years back because that part would always wash out during the rains. The curves are all numbered, and I laughed when we got to about curve number 5, which isn’t even the steepest part, thinking that John and I had actually considered buying a 4 wheel drive car here and donating it to the University so we would not be at the mercy of the lack of transportation. There is no way either of us could drive up that road.
Gorodi at one time was on the main road through the northern part of Malawi and on to Tanzania, which is hard to imagine. It was laid out by Dr. Robert Laws, the Scottish missionary who founded Livingstonia, along with the water system, which is still in operation, and was one of the first in all of Africa. Around 10 or more years ago engineers built a new road to the lake shore and north to Tanzania, and Gorodi now connects to it, but is really only used by the residents or tourists who want to visit Livingstonia, hence the lack of mini-bus transport. Gorodi connects to the Rumphi, road that also goes to Mzuzu and the upgrade of that road to tarmac was one of the things promised by the President of Malawi at last year’s graduation ceremony, to improve the difficult access to the plateau. That road is currently dirt, although some improvement has been made and gravel has been put down, but it is still not a viable option in the rainy season. The view on the way up Gorodi is spectacular, and for those of you like me who don’t particularly like heights, there is no guard rail but many parts have quite a few trees growing right at the edge to give some illusion of safety, so I only had to close my eyes and lean as far away from the downhill window as I could to keep from whimpering a couple of times.
When we arrived at our house on the plateau Smelton, who was the housekeeper/cook when were here in September and will be our helper (they call them “house boys” here, but I just cannot do that), was at the door to greet us. He has no phone and had been waiting for us since the 9th thinking we were coming then, and had made pancakes for us the morning of the12th thinking we might be hungry, but it was around 2:30 when we finally arrived. The cold pancakes still tasted great. Saturday was not normally a day he even works, but he stayed until nearly 4pm helping us to unpack and get settled.
The next day was Sunday, and we knew we’d be expected to attend church in this Presbyterian Mission Station community. Unfortunately, we didn’t remember the correct starting time of 8am and showed up at 9am only to find our neighbor Titus, in the pulpit. After he finished his sermon we were asked to come forward to be introduced and John was asked to make a speech, where in addition to saying how happy we were to be back he apologized for our lateness. Although they were very gracious and said nothing about our lateness, we said later that we both felt like being “late to class” when we were kids.
We had a very “laid low” day on Sunday as we started to make the adjustment to life in Africa, and to try to catch our breath from all the activity up to that date. There was a big thunderstorm on Saturday night so we didn’t have power when we woke up, and only had power for a few hours during the day then lost it again until nearly 7:30, at which time we were very hungry as our stove is electric and we didn’t want to open the refrigerator and lose the cold. That meant we were subsisting on peanuts, and peanut butter on bread for the day waiting until the power came back. We had been playing cribbage by candlelight when the power came on and both jumped up and ran to the kitchen to cook our dinner, as we were both really hungry. Of course we then overate and were too stuffed to sleep. We decided we need to have some foods on hand that don’t require opening the frig or using the stove, as we are told that power outages are very common during the rainy season.
We were both exhausted and weren’t sure what the “protocol” would be, should we be going to visit people or would they come visit us? Everyone keeps their side door open (which I think is a sign that you are “open for business”) but Smelton had the only key for that door, so ours was closed all day and we had no visitors so napped a bit, read a bit, I walked a bit as we tried to adjust ourselves to this pace and place.
Our other surprise was that the hot water heater wasn’t working, so we were trying to take cold showers without actually standing under the cold stream of water, as there is only a shower and no tub. We knew there would be no one to come work on a Sunday and maybe not after that for some time either, but we were reminding ourselves how many people have no running water here at all and how lucky we were in comparison. We have an outdoor faucet, and there is a steady stream of women and children coming to that faucet to get water to carry back to their houses. John and I were speculating on how far they might have come from, and how far they needed to go for water before this house was built.
Monday everything changed. Smelton arrived at 8am and shortly after people started coming - 17 in all before noon, including our new “garden boy”, Smelton’s nephew. I knew I wanted to do some planting and landscaping of this newly constructed home, and the Azungu(the plural form of Mzungu which means “whites/Europeans”) are hoped to be able to create jobs for people who really need them. I was thinking I’d do the gardening since I love it, but it is sure nice to have someone to help break up this hard clay earth for planting.
Our other visitors were: our neighbor, 2 of the University people we’ll be working with, a local carver/batik artist looking to sell us some things, a carpenter wondering if we needed any work done (we did!), Robert and Richard (the housemen at 2 of the houses we visited on our last visit), an electrician(sent by Richard when we told him our hot water didn’t work), Smelton’s grandchildren, and a Technical College student(who I later learned is an orphan) desperately looking for helping in raising his $140 tuition for the next semester which was due that day. It was to have been paid by an American but the school hadn’t received it, so I used my cell phone and helped him track it down.
John wasn’t feeling well today, so was napping part of the day and helping receive visitors and field the various requests when he felt well enough to be up. We had been planning on doing some visiting around, but since he didn’t feel good and everyone came to us that wasn’t necessary. In addition, we had hot water by the end of the day (although the switch itself is broken and will need to be replaced, the electrician was able to jury rig a work around until he can get a switch from town – people get creative when they have nothing) and our carpenter had made a shelf for the bathroom and had our mosquito net frame underway. Both of those were things that we didn’t think would be done for a long time, and that hot shower was an amazing treat to be savored – like a hot shower after a camping trip.
We are more easily pleased here I think, and when we lost power again on Sunday night and got it back before noon on Monday, were quite happy with our good fortune. We are told we need to lay in some charcoal for the burner our night watchman uses, since the power goes out quite frequently during the rainy season. At least we would have a back up for heating water and cooking that way.
1/15/08
Today is feeling very quiet in comparison to yesterday. It’s nearly noon and only one visitor today so far, a local butcherman who is going to slaughter a cow this week and wondered if we would need any meat. We stocked up pretty well before leaving Mzuzu(mostly chicken and some beef sausage that has turned out to be pretty good), unsure what we could get here so I told him to call on us again the next time.
We did have quite a bit of rain last night, but no thunder and lightning, and it started raining again this morning as soon as Smeton hung out our undried laundry from yesterday - a little extra rinsing. I also had to ask him for advise about a spider this morning. Thank goodness my phobia of spiders has abated from my younger years as I have seen several fairly large ones. My friend Ann at home had told me about the “plate spiders” that are totally flat and live in little narrow spaces, as we have one that lives in the cross braces of our front door. He came out once and was few inches across, but I knew was harmless and helps to eat the mosquitoes or other littler bugs, so I’m watching him but deciding to coexist peacefully so far. There was another large one I saw this morning though, so I went to ask Smelton “is this a good spider or a bad one?” and he got a broom and dustpan saying “no, this one bites”, killed it and that was that. All in all, so far anyway, bugs are not too big a problem, although we’ll be happy when we get our frame built for the mosquito net, as it is Malaria season and each night we seem to have at least one in the bedroom. No signs of any snakes so far.
John is feeling better, and when I opened the curtains this morning at 7:45 our gardener was already here. Smelton is operating more as the house manager now, assigning tasks to the gardener, like going to the market this morning for more tomatoes, eggs and a few miscellaneous things we needed. We set off to visit some of the people we knew we needed to see, through the muddy roads after last nights rains – the stuff sticks like glue and we see now why people say you need “gum boots” so you don’t ruin your shoes. Got to the Synod offices only to be told at the gift shop next door that today was a holiday – I had seen it on the calendar for Malawi in our guidebook but had forgotten, so we just went back home.
Both of us are starting to work on our project for the University today and that feels good too. We had power all night and today, and it is surprising to see how pleased we were to learn that when we woke up. We get to have hot tea and toast for breakfast this morning, how exciting!
1/17/08
We are settling in and trying to slow ourselves down, while at the same time gearing up and starting work on the Strategic Plan for the University and some other projects that need attending. One of our other neighbors, the Dean of Students/Professor has a wife (she also teaches at the University) in the hospital, and everyone has been very worried about her. Even though we haven’t met her yet, we feel the concern as a new part of this community. Apparently,, she had an ectopic pregnancy and had a first emergency surgery that wasn’t done quite properly, resulting in the need for a second surgery when she was in a weakened condition. There was also an infection that they were fighting, and as a visitor from the “First World”, I found myself wondering if this would have happened at a U.S. hospital, and feeling some anger that she might die from something like this. She appears to be doing better now though and her condition is now considered stable at least. It has been hard to concentrate on work with this happening, and that feels appropriate – to put the people first and the work second.
The view from our konde(porch/patio) is absolutely spectacular, and I’m going to try to attach a picture of it on the blog. It overlooks a valley, then continues down the escarpment to Lake Malawi and we are so high up we can see across the lake to the mountains in Tanzania on the other side, while other times, we are literally in the clouds. We work at our dining room table right next to the konde, and find ourselves stopping periodically to check it out what is happening – can we see the mountains on the other side right now? Is the sun shining on them? Are those rain clouds? Are the clouds coming and will we be in the fog for a while? Is that a boat out there on the lake?
Our garden helper has dug up lots of beds and has already started planting some things. He has gotten cuttings from lots of people and just sticks them in the ground and they grow. This clay soil really holds the water. The carpenter who came has finished 2 shelves for the bathroom, so we have place to put things like the toothpaste now, and we have a frame for mosquito netting for our bed too. I had brought some baskets and other things in the bags that are still lost, so it is great to have this fixed so quickly. And we still have hot water, and have not lost the power for 3 days – life is good.
We were working with one of the people at the University today and had him over for lunch as well. He was sharing his story of life under Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s first president after the fall of colonialism in 1964, who declared himself “President for Life” and ruled as a repressive dictator for nearly 40 years having just been peacefully removed from power in 1994. John remembers those times well, as Banda was in power when he was here in the Peace Corps, and one of his Malawian friends was detained for nearly 7 months by Banda’s forces for nothing more than having a book in the library he ran that had the word Communist in the title. Our guest was a newly graduated teacher, and was sent a letter by an acquaintance in Zambia and was picked up and kept in a cell in water up to his knees for nearly a day before his headmaster came and was able to convince them to let him go. His crime apparently was having been sent a letter from Zambia. Several years later, he received a phone call from someone wanting to help him to go to the U.K. for graduate study, only to find out that his phone had been tapped for all those years, and as a result of the phone call, his elderly mother had been picked up. He sadly said that he knew his hopes for a Ph.D. were gone when that happened. So many people have stories from those times that are similar, it is hard to even imagine.
1/19/08
It’s Saturday, hard to believe only one week since we arrived. We had a big rainstorm last night, and watched the light show from our dining room as we ate dinner, until the power went out again. It was back by lunch today so that was nice. So far, the rain has come at night, and sometimes with lightning and sometimes not. Lots of wind with this one too and when I went for a walk after lunch I saw a big pine tree uprooted and a large eucalyptus tree branch off too. The clay ground is usually dry by lunchtime so we can avoid the mud if we wait until then to go out.
John and I have been the only msungu on the plateau, except for the occasional tourist, until our neighbor’s Bruce and Karin came back from their holiday yesterday. They are here from Norway (but one or both of them is American, we’re still a little confused about that) teaching for 3 years and working on computers for the university as well. Lots of old donated equipment that they are keeping running. We met them briefly when we were here in September and went over for tea yesterday afternoon, staying for nearly 3 hours chatting. It’s interesting to see how fun it is to casually chat with other people who speak English well, and with whom you have common background and understanding - very fun and relaxing. Tomorrow Glen Nutter comes, another American here for 6 months, so we will no longer be the only white faces on the plateau. Agustine Msiska and Eleizer Kulumbi will also be here, and they are the two Malawian’s on the plateau who helped to start the University, so I think our work will begin more in earnest.
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