Camaraderie in Malawi

There were eleven of us in the transformational journey group that traveled to Malawi. We ranged in age from 22to the mid-60s with eight women and three men. Seven were from the Pasadena/Los Angeles area, of these seven; five are members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Stephanie who joined us from South Africa grew up in Pasadena. I believe that her parents are good friends of Don and Mary. I am from New Jersey, while Adam and Rachel were most recently living in Tennessee (I think).

I had never met any of these wonderful people in person prior to traveling to Malawi. The one exception was Don Thomas, whom I had corresponded with over e-mail for about one year. Don had mentioned in an e-mail about how those of us traveling to Malawi together would become “life-long friends.” I had no idea how true his words would become.

To say that I was pleasantly surprised by how safe I felt with the other ten people in our Malawi transformational journey group is an understatement. From the get go, it was as if I had known the other nine people in our group for a long time (Jean joined us on our fifth full day in Malawi). The “normal” walls and barriers that Isometimes put up between others and myself were not there. Sometimes it takes a little while before I feel “safe enough” in a new situation to “knock down the barriers that I erect that may prevent people from getting to know me. Not this time, there were no barriers. In fact, on our first plane ride together from Johannesburg to Lilongwe, a couple of us remarked to the other about how safe we felt with each other.

A couple of days after we arrived, we were commenting on how it felt like we had known each other for “a long time.” While all of us were careful to respect each other’s boundaries, I felt a sense of safety, a sense of community. We were on this journey together and we took care of each other. A couple of us felt “sick”, mostly stomach problems, but nothing major. We never got stuck on a poorly maintained, badly rutted dirt road in a remote section of Malawi. If any of things were to happen, we would have taken care of each other.

I have not seen anybody since I got back. I miss everyone. Many are on the west coast. Don and Mary are embarking on a new adventure in New York City for the remainder of the year. I hope to see them before they go back to the west coast. Adam and Rachael are leaving Malawi on September 20th for Europe and the Middle East. I think that Stephanie is back in South Africa. Tim and Jane have family not far from me, I hope to see them when they visit.

I am assured that we will be friends forever. And even if it has been years since we last saw each other, it will be as if it was yesterday.

Tires

On our second full day in Malawi Luzu had to get the spare tire on the van fixed. This was the day we drove from Lilongwe to Senga Bay with two visits in the Salima area. As we approached Salima I recall noticing a group of young men at the side of road repairing bicycle and automobile tires. A tire repair shop without walls, so to speak. Our first stop was in the town center of Salima for the ATM and a grocery store.. When we had finished our errands in town, Luzu announced that he needed to get the spare tire on the van fixed, that it would only take an hour. Luzu dropped us off at our first stop of the day, the Salima Aids Support Orginazation (SAS0) before driving off to get the tire taken care.

Well before we ready to leave SASO, Luzu reappeared with the van. When we were done, those of us who were riding in the van piled in. Don and his wife and his two passengers got into the car and we were off. Luzu stopped at the same “tire repair shop without walls that I had noticed on our approach to Salima, paid the young men, got the spare and reattached the spare to the back of the van,

I did not think about getting the spare tire fixed at the time. After all, no matter where you live keeping your spare in good repair is a common sense. After all, no one wants to be caught by the side of the road with a flat tire and an unusable spare.

It took a visit to my mechanic the other day to have him repair a flat tire to get me thinking about what it might be like to be caught in remote Malawi on an unpaved road with out a good spare. Not fun. Even with a good spare, it might be difficult to jack up the car on a badly rutted dirt road. Nothing like that happened.

To be honest, it was Ed’s – my mechanic – interest in Malawi that gave me the idea to write about getting the spare tire on the van fixed. Ed, if you are reading this, this is for you.

Riding in pickup trucks

I experienced another first while I was traveling in Malawi, seeing 20 people or more crammed in the open back cargo area of a pickup truck. Yes, you are reading this correctly. As we drove around central and southern Malawi such trucks crammed with passengers in the exposed cargo area were common sights.

Here in America, riding in the open cargo area of a pickup truck is illegal in many States. As a result I see fewer pickup trucks carrying passengers in the open cargo area than I did when I was younger. But, I have never ever seen more than a few people riding in an open cargo area. Perhaps four at the most, and they were always – if memory serves – sitting down in the bed of the cargo area,. I don’t think that I ever saw anyone sitting on the “rim” of the cargo area.

Another common form of transportation in Malawi involves people the owner or daily renter of pickup truck cramming as many paying passengers as they can in the cargo area of the truck and dropping them off along a route. People will be sitting in the bed of the cargo area as well as all around the rim. I’m not making this stuff up.

The Malawians have a name for this, but I deleted the e-mail from Stephanie where she reported on her experience riding as a passenger in the back of a pickup truck along with the translation to the local language.

I wondered what keeps people who are sitting on the rim of the cargo areas from falling off, especially on a rutted dirt road. But what do I know?

Minibuses in Malawi

Common forms of transportation in Malawi are minibuses. The van that our group rented, driven by Luzu, was about the size of what I would call a cargo van, but our van had about four rows of usable seats. The last row was taken up by our luggage, so lets say the van could fit 10 to 12 passengers and luggage comfortably. If memory serves, minibuses are larger, perhaps a little the small buses (about one-half the size of school buses) often used in America for senior citizens and disabled persons transportation programs, Churches, Children’s programs and the like.

While we were reasonably comfortable in our van, even with our luggage and an extra two passengers, every minibus I saw was literally packed full of people with children riding on the laps of their caretakers, other passengers holding bags in their laps, etc. In addition to being crowded with passengers, minibus drivers always traveled at a high rate of speed. Luzu always let them go past him and was quite good at dodging minibuses when they pulled over to disgorge passengers.

I asked Luzu about the minibuses when I was riding shotgun on day. There seem to be fixed minibus routes both within cities such as Lilongwe and between towns and cities, e.g. Lilongwe to Zomba or Lilongwe to Selma. He went on to explain that the drivers rent the vehicle for the day from the owner for a fixed rate. The more trips that the driver can complete, the more money they can take home. I recall that the daily rental fee is not “cheap” giving the drivers even more motivation to make more trips. And they compete with other minibuses on the same route. So if a driver can get to the destination first, they can beat out their competition.

I received an email from Stephanie a few days after I returned to America. She reported on a trip she took to go scuba diving in Lake Malawi where she traveled part of the way by minibus. I can no longer find her email, having deleted it by accident. I do remember that her account of this portion of her trip was in line with the crowded minibuses that I observed. I recall that she enjoyed this crowded ride, in part because she was sitting next to an adult with a baby on their lap. She spent part of the ride allowing the baby to hold onto her finger.