Friday, January 7, 1994

5 PM

The matola (pickup truck) heading for the border.
Jason and I got stuck with the open air seats.

This marks my first entry of the new year - the reason why I'm rather late in writing is that I just came back from an absolutely wonderful time in Harare. Granted, transportation to and from there was a hassle, from not being able to get a bus in Blantyre, getting stuck in a minibus with 22 other people from Blantyre to Mwanza, getting stuck in Mwanza, back to Chiradzulu and then having the matola break down on the way to the bus the next day, and taking a 12 1/2 hour bus ride from hell. And all this before the trip really began. But it was worth it in the end. I'll write about it in more detail later but here are some of the highlights:

1. Jason burns part of my tent.
2. About a dozen chocolate milkshakes.
3. Angela Bassett in What's Love Got to Do with It?
4. Greek food.
5. Ouzo.
6. Eating crocodile tail on New Year's Eve.
7. Arnold in Terminator II.
8. 7.5% Guinness Goodness.
9. Cold Zambezi.

Tuesday, January 11, 9 PM

I have 4 beautiful women staying with me tonight, so I'm not going to write much. Their names are, before I forget, Jean Marie, Mary Elizabeth, Elizabeth, and Jennifer. They are coming from Namibia to see Eva [my neighbour], but she's, uh, occupied at the moment, so I'm stuck with all 4 of them.

Postscript 2010: Back in the mid-nineties, even though Mugabe had been leading the country for a dozen years, Zimbabwe was an undeniable paradise in comparison to Malawi. After having lived in Zomba for three months and eaten a bland diet of bread, Tambala peanut butter, rubbery chicken, and lots of nsima and beans, my stomach was desperate for a change. Walking down the supermarket aisles in Harare was a surreal experience: an endless selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh milk, meat, and an assortment of cereals from South Africa that rivaled the finest Super Duper in upstate New York. I gorged myself of Wimpyburgers and milkshakes at the Wimpy's downtown, saw movies in the theatre (Malawi at the time had one theatre in the entire country, the Apollo, with a miniature Saturn rocket on its roof), and went into near-shock upon entering an actual department store that had clothes my size. 

It was even more of a shock when my friends and I went to our first restaurant upon our arrival. We looked at the menu and asked the waiter out of habit which items were available. He looked somewhat offended that we ask such a question. In Malawi, the existence of a menu did not mean the restaurant had the food. A conversation with a waiter would go like this:

Me: I'd like the chicken and rice please.

Waiter: So Sorry, we don't have rice.

Me: OK then. I'll have the chicken and chips.

Waiter: Yes, sir. Sorry. No chips.

Me: How about just the chicken.

Waiter: Ah no. No chicken, sir.

Me: Then what do you have?

You see it was easier to start by asking what was available. 

In the years since then, Mugabe has demonstrated that he is one of the worst despots imaginable who is still in power. The economy has been ruined, farmers' lands have been desecrated from violent land distribution schemes, the health care system is ravaged, independent free press is stifled by Mugabe's goons, human rights defenders are constantly threatened and attacked - the list is endless. To give you an idea of the downfall of the country's economy: back in 1994, the highest bill at the time was no more than 100 or 200 Zim dollars. Two years ago a Zimbabwean human rights defender gave me a 50 billion Zim dollar bill, and told me I'd need a few of those to take a bus from Harare to one of its suburbs. The state of the country now is absolutely deplorable. 

It seems wildly uneven to write about an evil African dictator and the arrival at my doorstep of four beautiful American women looking for a place to stay late one evening. How true, so I'll leave that story for another postscript.

Christmas Eve, 1993, 2:30 PM

Janine with one half of our dinner, not looking
very happy, thinking of what's ahead

John went to the market with Bennett and bought two chickens - live. So I know the food's fresh. J and J are over now, and Gary'll be showing up later so we can bake custard pie, chocolate chip cookies, and apple pie, among other things. I'm sitting in my usual spot, in my shorts, beer in hand. It's a cool, sunny day, about 23 degrees. The perfect winter's day for Christmas Eve.


Christmas, 7:30 AM


I had about 2 1/2 hours sleep; after Ken, Gary, Jason and I finished playing poker at 2:30 AM, I sat in bed unable to sleep. I was thinking of Christmases past, and began to feel more than a little tinge of loneliness. This marked the first time I was away from home on this day, and I knew my mother would be sad. When I called her on the phone I could tell she was holding back tears when she said, "I love you, dear." My friends back home also have managed to piss me off. When I asked my mother if any of them had bothered to show up at home for when I was supposed to call last week, she said no and that kinda hurt. The good news was that John [my brother] sent me a card, and JP's sending me a long letter. She also told me he's interested in overseas work. 


The sun and the heat make it feel like any other day, but I feel a small void. In a sense I'm glad the others are here around me, but at the same time I wish I were alone to let it out.


Postscript 2010: People who were strangers to me just a few months before had taken the place of my family at a time which was always celebrated with only my closest family members. It was a reflection of the isolation all of us felt, the removal from our livelihoods and homes back in Canada, the distance from our parents, brothers, and sisters made all the more painfully apparent with crappy telephone connections in which stunted conversations owing to a 3-second echo made an emotional connection impossible. Even more significantly, it was a true testament to the nature of genuine friendships, where a group of people who'd never met before found themselves in the same small country at the same point in time for personal reasons that could usually best be described as "just wanting to help people." I'd written in my post that I wished I were alone on the day, and in retrospect, I would not have wanted that. I'd been alone one Christmas day a few years later living in Accra, and it was one of the sadder days of my time in Africa. 


I didn't go to church that Christmas day, unlike previous years when I would make the yearly trek to the parish with my brother and mother. Instead, I lived the day in full pre-Internet pre-mobile phone pre-instant communications (and in Malawi, pre-television) mode by spending time with friends, enjoying each other's company by baking, feasting, drinking Carlsberg beer and cheap Portuguese wine, playing poker and listening to Simon and Garfunkel's greatest hits over and over again. I could not have asked for a better day.

Wednesday, December 22, 1993

7 PM


I had the kind of day I don't really want to have again. True, I did eat my share of delicious food at a Chinese restaurant, and managed to convince Bennett (Steph's worker) to cook Christmas supper for us, but I also had to spend two hours on a bus each way going to Blantyre, got to Immigration to renew my passport extension only to be told that I can't, never quite made it to Limbe to get my visa for Mozambique, found out that Janine has an infection in her stomach which may prevent us from going to Harare, and on my way back home in a yanu-yanu bus a kid by the side of the road insulted me in Chichewa much to the delight of the crowd and ended his malicious monologue towards me by screaming "F*ck you!" as the bus drove away. Oh yeah, and those goddam flying termites are buzzing around me again. I could really go for a Molson Dry.


Postscript 2010: In retrospect, it wasn't such a bad day after all. Having recently spent a total of 33 hours waiting in airports during my last trip, and just as many hours in the air in miraculously inadequate airplane seats meant for people half my size, wasting a day to fruitlessly renew my passport extension doesn't seem all that painful. Most of that day was long forgotten until I transcribed the contents of this journal entry (I had completely forgotten about the infectiously wonderful-sounding yanu-yanu buses). 


One image which has remained in my mind since that day was the young boy at the bus stop who told me to f-off. His eyes blazed with such a feral intensity as he repeated those words to me over and over again that I became visibly embarrassed and felt a growing sense of unease. It didn't help that the other passengers, all Malawians, were laughing at the boy's rant, and part of me felt they were laughing at me, with my inability to respond. I made a conscious decision not to engage the boy, and it's a decision I would probably repeat again if a similar situation presented itself, for I believe a response would further fuel the ranting. 


Regrettably, I had seen a number of foreigners, either living overseas or travelling, who have shown tremendous disrespect towards people from a local population. Children often suffer the most in these cases, because many of them have an innate curiosity to approach the strangeness of foreigners and to simply observe, sometimes sneak a smile or even say hello to them. Granted, plenty of them also ask for money as well, or they're scared silly. But most of the children I've seen in different lands are genuinely curious. If it gets to the point where a young child standing on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere tells me to f- off, perhaps somebody told him the same not so long before, and he's merely imitating a behaviour he's been subjected to.


Wherever that boy is now - a man in his late twenties - I hope he's been surrounded by enough people who show him love and affection so that his days of swearing at strangers, or anyone, are long gone.