May 20, 2008
This will be my description of the adventures we experienced in traveling to visit Dr. Trywell Nyirongo yesterday in Nchenachena, the town which is about 20 miles from Livingstonia, and then continuing on for anotherr 80 miles or so to Mzuzu.
As we were getting ready to leave Livingstonia yesterday, it began to rain lightly, and I had no idea the excitement that was going to cause. David Mhango came to the house around 8:15 so after having dropped his luggage on the way to the hospital around 6am to see his wife and new baby one last time before going back for 2 weeks to complete his training. We told him we’d feed him breakfast before the local transport we hired came to pick us up at 9am for the trip to Nchenachena. We asked them to come at 9am and they actually arrived even earlier than that, but unfortunately it was raining by then, and it was the same tiny pick up truck we had used a few weeks ago for the trip to our cook, Smelton’s house.
That meant a quick search for plastic bags to put our travel bags/luggage into, and something for David to wear since we would be riding in the back. I had brought a rain poncho thank goodness, and I was feeling very guilty and privileged to be in the cab, even though I had to sit sideways the whole way as it is not really meant for 3 people. John was in the middle this time, so he was the one that had to lift up his behind every time the driver needed to shift which was often. Just now when he came out of the shower I saw a perfect circle bruise on the back of his thigh about 3 inches across. I told John I was feeling the preferential treatment routinely given to whites/mzungus here, and he reminded me that we would have been ridden in the cab just by virtue of our age – which made me feel a little better.
I could tell it was going to be an interesting ride when we started going down the back road off the plateau to Vunguvungu and began almost immediately sliding uncontrollably sideways on the mud. Somehow during the time we’ve been here, we have never really driven on the slick mud before (one time on another stretch of road off the plateau, but the rain had stopped and it only lasted for a few hundred meters, but was pretty terrifying), and it is just like driving on hard packed snow with a little water on top, or on ice. No traction or control. The difference was the road we were traveling on which was very different from the roads back home – a very bumpy, sometimes deeply rutted, or thickly mudded, mountain road with steep hills, hairpin turns and no guardrail. There were several times when I wondered whether I should plan to open the door and jump from the vehicle if it went over the side, or stay with it. We went into the ditch a couple of times, I think on purpose a couple of times as at least there he could get some traction and stop sliding sideways down a hill – and the 4 wheel drive didn’t help except to get out of ditches or thick mud. The roads have quite a pronounced “crown” in the middle and big drainage ditches to deal with all the water during the rainy season, and when we were going into the ditches I kept thinking the truck was just going to flop over on it’s side. In addition to David, we picked up quite a few passengers (and one live chicken in a bag), and I was worried for them also.
There were a few places where there was some gravel or rocks that hadn’t been packed deeply into the road so we could occasionally get traction, but most of the road was like driving on ice, and on a very dangerous road. It is normally about a 1 hour trip to Nchenachena from Livingstonia and it took us about 3 hours, and we were pretty wrung out by the time we got there. Dr. Nyirongo had been expecting us for nearly 2 hours and he and his wife Marilyn greeted us warmly and let us settle down a bit. Dr. Nyirongo attended Richfield high school in 1961, and went to finish College in the US, going on to Medical School in Iran and Belgium – all sponsored by the Unity Unitarian Church that we have attended in St. Paul. His son Thomas just graduated Cum Laude from Lawrence University in Appleton, also sponsored by Unity. Thomas hopes to attend medical school and follow in his father’s footsteps here in Malawi.
It was a reminder of what a small world it is when we learned about this just before leaving Minnesota back in December. The only “disaster” was when I opened my travel bag last night and discovered that it wasn’t completely wrapped in plastic and wasn’t waterproof. It had gotten wet and muddy, and my already skimpy wardrobe for this 2-week trip was wet, and one of the t-shirts was covered in red mud. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that as I tried washing it out in the hotel just now and it I can’t get that mud out of a white t-shirt - so my wardrobe might be even skimpier than I had planned. I am amazed at how many times I can wear something here in comparison with at home.
We really enjoyed spending time with him and learning more about all the things he has done to help the community, including the building of a rural hospital in Nchenachena. We went to a celebration in the village and met a young couple who are Peace Corps volunteers teaching in the local secondary school. We also were introduced to the Traditional Authority or Paramount Chief of the whole area, including Livingstonia – I mentioned meeting a local chief in one of my earlier blogs, and I still don’t entirely understand the structure of the traditional governance that operates parallel to the elected government, but hope to get John’s friend Justin to sort it out for me. Trywell is considering a run for parliament, as he has not seen that the current M.P. has done anything for his entire term and is frustrated at the number of things that need to be done.
We got up early this morning and Trywell planned on giving us a lift with one of his ambulance vehicles to Phwezi, which is only about 4 miles away on the tarred road, where we could catch a mini-bus to Mzuzu today. Trywell goes to Mzuzu most every week, and had planned on transporting us the whole way, but then was asked to attend an important meeting a few miles back up the road to Livingstonia, and I had told him before we came that we could take a mini-bus, but would need help getting to a pick up point.
I don’t think I’ve talked yet about the transport system here. There are a few nice buses that go on a schedule between the major cities (one or 2 a day in most cases), and we are taking one for the first time tomorrow to the capital city of Lilongwe. Most of the transport however, is an informal system of privately owned mini-buses that go between most all of the cities including some of the smaller villages – not including Livingstonia unfortunately, because of the horrible roads leading there. Mini-buses operate on a fill up and go basis and while there are regular places where they stop, you can flag one down and they may stop. There is no schedule and because they operate on a “fill up and go” basis, there are times when you can sit there for a long time waiting to leave. They are regulated (supposedly) by the government, in that they control the raising of fares, and the number of people that can be carried. They used to just pack people in like sardines literally, and after a few accidents where a lot of people were killed or injured, the government said they had to carry no more than 3 people per seat (supposedly). This prompted a near strike, as the price of petrol has recently gone up and the mini-bus drivers were being told they could not raise fares and had to carry fewer passengers.
So we finished our breakfast this morning, and were getting ready to ride over to Phwezi, except that the ambulance wouldn’t run. They tried fixing it, they tried to push start it, and finally after an hour Trywell came into the house and said he had flagged down one of the local Matola, which is another form of transport. These are also privately owned, but are unregulated and operate informally, although usually on certain days, and are pickup trucks you just pile into the back of. He said we should take that to Rumphi and then get a mini-bus to Mzuzu. So in we piled with the 10 or so people already there. We stopped in various places along the way and picked up an additional 10 people along with 4 large bags of corn, a passenger vehicle tire, and various luggages - with some people sitting on the sides of the truck, others like myself sitting on the bed, and a few standing and holding on to a “roll bar” like metal thing behind the cab. There was not a spare inch of space in the bed of that truck. We were crossing our fingers and hoping it wasn’t going to rain again as it was looking a bit threatening, and since it was fairly cool – probably 60’s – it would have been really miserable if it had, but under the circumstances the matola ride was was a bit of an adventure.
In Rumphi, we immediately hopped on to a mini bus to Mzuzu, and at the beginning of the journey, we had the “regulation” 3 per seat for a total of 15 passengers, but at one point we had 20 people it there too. I was in the back seat were the ceiling sloped and couldn’t sit up straight without hitting my head so rode kind of stooped over. This mini-bus would have junked years ago in the U.S. Total travel time for both vehicles – about 2 hours. I had been feeling like my time in Malawi wouldn’t be complete without a ride in a Matola and a Mini-bus, and after we left Nchenachena, we stopped in Mhuju which is where John attended the wedding of Pete and Pat Dalum, while he was in the Peace Corps – so without the matola ride, I’d have missed that too. Pete and Pat live in Wisconsin and we have seen them several times, so it was really fun to see the place where they were married and where the wedding I’ve heard about occurred – they had a catholic church wedding and then a village wedding complete with the exchange of cows. All in all, quite an adventure, this next to the last trip to Mzuzu – and I didn’t have to go down the Gorode road that I mentioned a few blogs ago was starting to really bug me. I guess you have to be careful what you ask for.
Quite the beginning for the next 2 weeks of travels for us. Tomorrow we go to Lilongwe to pick up a group of 5 architecture students, a graduate assistant and architecture professor who we will bring back up to Mzuzu via Lake Malawi for 2 days. After we hand that group over to the University to be shuttled up to the plateau to work for the next month on a campus master plan, we head back to Lilongwe. We hope to spend a few more days at a different place on Lake Malawi with John’s old friend Justin and his wife, see Justins home village which is nearby, then head back to Lilongwe again where we will pick up another friend, and go back up to Livingstonia for our last week. It’s going to be pretty crazy for the next few weeks, living out of a very small travel bag – hopefully I can get some laundry done when we are at the lake resorts, and maybe even restore the one t-shirt with the red clay stain. We’ll see, and I should have pretty frequent internet connections to keep you posted along with some photo’s I hope.
May 21, 2008
We just arrived in Lilongwe and I'll be doing more posts soon. The photos today are of me with Dr. Nyirongo and his wife, and a photo taken at the water tap near the hospital where people must come to carry water to their homes. In addition, there is a photo taken from the back of the Matolo when we were in Mhuju.
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