Monday, November 1, 1993

7:30 PM

Had a busy day today, but first a little about the weekend. Gary, J+J [Jason and Janine] and I got on a bus at 5:30 Saturday morning to visit Wendy [another volunteer] in Chiradzulu. The bus was packed! It being the end of the month, everybody got paid so everybody was about town buying things. There must have been at least 120 people in that bus, with Jason splattered against the windshield and me sitting on the engine most of the way – damn it was hot!

We met Wendy at the bus stop an hour and a quarter later and painfully walked 45 minutes to get to her place. Once there we set off to Limbe and Blantyre with Nat, Joe and Jacqueline [all volunteers] on a double-decker bus. Fun! In Blantyre we visited Wendy M and then it was ice cream at Nico’s and again at DaFabio’s. Ah, it was just incredible. When we got back to Chiradzulu, we stopped by a Chibuku bar and Wendy bought me one. I just had to try it once. We got to her place, I opened up the carton, and felt like puking. And if I had puked it probably would have looked like Chibuku. Shake-shake! I guzzled the whole litre (painfully).

We then went back to where the bottle store was and lo and behold, there was Hanik [a teacher at my school], drinking a Brown [Carlsberg beer]. So I drank with him and his friends Charles and Maurice even after the other volunteers left. I had a great time, but I refrained from eating the flying ants that other patrons were chomping on as they flew by.

I stumbled back to Wendy’s and played cards the rest of the night. Sunday rolled around and I didn’t do much except sleep, eat, play cards, and draw. By 2:30 we were on our way back and we got a ride from two British Malawians who were very nice.

I went to my first class today, and since there were only four students, didn’t do anything. So I went to town to go to the bank. On the way I was stopped by Hanik again, this time at the Hot Spot bottle store at 10:30 AM. He offered me a Brown.

Well of course I took it.

I trotted to the bank, waited in line for a f-king hour, then went to the PTC [People’s Trading Centre, a grocery store] for food, where I was accosted by Joanne [a volunteer, not her real name] who wouldn’t stop bitching to me telling me what a bad day she’d been having. Two hours after meeting Hanik I met him again at the Hot Spot and we drank some more.

Postscript 2010: While alcohol figures prominently in this entry, one should bear in mind that I was 23 years old at the time, not teaching much, had essentially few responsibilities in life, and was pleased that I was living in a country where a cold beer cost less than a soft drink back home. In this entry I detail a bus ride where I was cramped; that is an understatement. I simply could not move, such was the sheer density of human flesh pressed against me. Most people who earned money did indeed get paid at the end of the month, and that time was undeniably the busiest on the roads, bus stations, and marketplaces. When the bus arrived at the station, it was everyone for him or herself, and all form of Malawian decency and courtesy was forgotten as the throngs of timid folks turned into aggressive lunatics pushing for a space on the bus. The photo you see in this posting is of a relatively empty bus.

Chibuku is something which deserves a post of its own, so unique, gross and culturally endearing is the disgusting mixture of sorghum and maize. One website aptly describes it as follows: “This thick brown millet beer costs less than a dollar and it is shaken vigorously before drinking it because of its thick layer of sediment of sand collected on the bottom of the carton. It has a powerful yeast flavor that is offset by a lemony tang, surprising given the color. When the liquid has been consumed and you reach the bottom of the carton, standard practice is to slurp up the pile of sludge that remains.” Volunteers for the most part found Chibuku revolting, although my friend Joe was one of the more intrepid consumers of the nasty beverage.

Carlsberg beer was the safer, tastier way to consume alcohol in Malawi, and as you can tell from this post, having a cold one mid-morning on a school day was not an issue for me. Fortunately, such a practice was not repeated (I doubt the nuns at the school would have looked at such behaviour favourably). But it was easy to get caught up in the strangeness of this new country and to feel free to try whatever came my way. Although I could easily have done without the tedious waiting in line at the bank. I probably wasted a week’s worth of my life over two years waiting to cash my monthly cheque.

Finally, a note on how unprepared I was as a teacher. Faced with only four students for my first class, I wrongly opted to do nothing with them. In retrospect, I probably did this because I didn’t know what to do with only four students (like ask them their names and actually talk to them, perhaps?). I was so concerned about teaching that I didn’t stop to think what I should do if I did not have a “normal” class to begin with. But as is the case with so many life experiences, you only realize in retrospect what you should have done differently.