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Published: August 31st 2009
the view from the office
its this awesome every day. while you're reading this, i'll be in the lake!Hey Hey Hey!!
Hope you guys are all well! It’s been a little while since I last checked in!
I left you in Lilongwe, newlywed! I’ll pick up from there!
Married life was great fun, We spent our ‘honeymoon’ eating pizza and ice cream at Mama Mia’s, an absolute gem of an Italian restaurant nestled away behind poinsettia trees in the sleepier districts of Lilongwe’s old town, so well hidden it took us two days to find it.
At some point between pizza, powers spirit, hangovers and lazy days in the sun I spotted a poster looking for volunteers. Now, way back in October 2007 when I decided I wanted to travel and gave up a great big chunk of my life to do so, it was researching volunteer projects in Africa that really put the fire in my soul and got me of my arse and doing something about it. However, the opportunities that presented themselves while I was home all seemed to be the sort of opportunities that cost about £4000 per month. This was not only out of my budget but quite clearly a scheme in which rich white private school kids fund the ridiculous lifestyle of someone who probably couldn’t point to Africa on a map. If I thought it then, I know it now. I have come to live in fear of these groups of volunteers. They are almost exclusively arrogant arseholes, to put it politely, and as far removed from the travelling community I’ve loved meeting as you can get.
Anyway, I called the number on the poster to see what the project was all about and if my services would be of any use. The reply from the German lady on the other end of the phone was simply “come!”
So, on the 1st of June (which seems such a long time ago) I grabbed as many of my belongings as I could be bothered to carry, abandoning my surfboard, tent and mattress in the storage cupboard where they still sit (I hope) and headed south to Monkey Bay to find out what the Back to School Foundation had in store for me over the next two months. Clair had one last attempt to talk me into a trip to Zanzibar or, perhaps a little more temptingly, the Congo, I declined a little sorrowfully, said my goodbyes and managed to sneak myself into the last available half seat on the bus before it became standing room only.
I’d only just made it because the US$ had bombed that day and I had spent the morning looking for a forex bureau armed with a ridiculous wad of Kwatcha, with no luck!
8 hours later, I arrived in Monkey Bay and was picked up by Birgit, the BTSF’s founder. We drove into the village and arrived at my new home in the middle of a powercut, where I’d meet my fellow volunteers, Anja and Lena. Anja and Lena were German , and spoke exclusively in German. All this travelling has made me a pretty sociable guy but these girls seemed to have a unique ability to kill any conversation stone cold dead. They spoke only to confirm their names, like serial killers in court facing unrefutable evidence and just as willing. Birgit was also German and so I sat there in the darkness while the 3 silhouettes glowing in the candle light conversed around me. I began to regret turning down the Congo. Being kidnapped by machete wielding madmen seemed no less attractive than my current predicament. Early night, before the second thoughts became third and fourth thoughts...
The next day I was looking forward to getting to the project and getting stuck into my new role.
The BTSF was founded seven years ago by Birgit to support orphans through secondary school with sponsorships, primarily from Germany and Australia. Birgit moved to Tazmania 22 years ago and now considers it home. Two years ago the foundation secured a patch of land between two villages where Birgit has built a community hall and is slowly building a little village of her own. As a volunteer my primary role would be as a teacher, offering tuition to anyone who turned up to learn.
Birgit has put together a team of groundsmen, gardeners and teachers that keep the project afloat. These guys would become my family over the next two months. They were an amazing bunch of people, non more so Jack, one of the most amazing guys I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. A tiny little powerhouse, so full of energy and enthusiasm it was inspiring working alongside him and exhausting trying to keep up. When I wasn’t teaching in those first few weeks I’d go find jack and his ever-present sidekick Johannes, who was just as hard working. We’d drive out into the bush with a panga knife each and hack down trees, load up the truck with our booty and drive back to the project, using the logs to make anything and everything, including a perimeter fence that must have been two kilometres long and very nearly killed me, the Malawian sun showing no mercy from the moment it floated out of the lake until the moment it returned. I’d not realised it until typing it just now but the way Monkey Bay sits on the northern tip of a peninsula at the southern end of the lake means the sun both rises from and sets into the lake, from a high enough vantage point. From my house and the project I would see the sunrise behind a rocky mountain that so resembled pride rock from the lion king movies that I smiled as I walked to work every morning.
Back to those first few weeks, as much as I loved working with Jack and the guys outside, it was a pretty rare occurrence, I was primarily a teacher. The German girls lack of English made them a little useless as teachers, so I was teaching alongside Robert and Oscar. Both were graduates of secondary school having been supported by Birgit and were helping out at the project as Birgit had agreed to continue supporting them through College too. During my stay, Robert - a mathematical wizard- would leave the project to start his Accountancy course in Blantyre.
The Kids were amazing. Their enthusiasm for learning a far cry from how I remember my own attitude towards secondary school. Birgit supports about 150 kids, there was a group of about 20 who used the project for extra tuition, most of them coming every day. I was thrown straight in at the deep end the very first day I arrived. I was arrogant enough to think I knew enough about English, maths and science to be able to wander into a class room and teach to a GCSE level. It very quickly became very apparent to me that I was going to need to do some homework of my own. Not only learning the material, but also finding a teaching style and adapting it to each individual. I’d never taught before, I was a self conscious, mumbling idiot the first morning, embarrassed by the authority that guys my age had given me. It was a new challenge that I immediately loved, the steeper the learning curve, the harder I climbed it. I was learning with the kids most of the time and I’d tell them. We’d help each other out until we had both mastered whatever it was. (unless it was Logarithms, which I never ever mastered - surely the most over-complex and pointless topic ever.)
In one of those first days one of my students, a 19 year old girl called Beauty, gave me a letter she had written to her sponsor and asked me to proof read it. I sat and read as this girl the same age as my sister explained how both her mother, then father had died and left her in her grandparents care. Her grandmother had died and her grandfather was too sick to farm. It would now be up to her to care and provide for the family and somehow continue her studies. This wasn’t written for pity, this was just the day to day happenings of life for a 19 year old Malawian orphan. I’d read lots of these letters over the next two months, each one with a similar story and humble thanks to a sponsor for their support. Each one affected me the same, its a strange mixture of sorrow and guilt and admiration that makes it incredibly difficult to want to fix grammatical errors in the letters having just read them.
In the evenings me and Birgit would go to little village bars and play pool with locals and share a few beers. Pool is huge here, the whole bar is built around one pool table, usually with one pool cue that hadn’t seen chalk since independance. The spectacle of a white guy on a winning streak instigates the same mayhem as a world cup final. It was always great fun and I met heaps of Monkey Bay residents who would become my friends over the next two months. I’d often play with the guys from the one stop craft and curio stalls and they, along with a tour guide called Duncan, became my closest friends in Monkey Bay.¬
On the evenings that we stayed in, we would sit on the porch watching shooting stars and tell stories. The German girls would join us on the porch, though would only ever contribute to the conversations in German, making it pretty difficult to have a clue what was going on. It wasn’t that they didn’t speak English, as it was obvious they understood what Birgit and I were talking about, just that they were too shy to speak it. It took me 6 weeks to develop any sort of relationship with them. Every now and then Birgit would turn from them to me and not flick the mental switch back to English. After carefully listening to what she had to say without understanding a word of it, I would appear to consider it for a second, then always reply “ja!” which was all I could do to make them laugh, so I began always saying “ja” whether I was spoken to in German or not. It became a daft joke that would make us all laugh and would finally break the ice.
After the first week of only understanding about 5% of what was said (which was beginning to suck...) along came Annie, a new volunteer. We’d met before, she was working at one of the posh holiday resorts along the lake and was a relative of Birgits who was to split her time between working and volunteering. Annie was almost too good to be true, she just seemed to have so many amazing qualities. If she were a character in a film you’d say girls like that don’t exist in real life. She was the only person I’ve ever met who could pick up my iPod and be pleased to see people like Jeff Lang and Blue King Brown. If that wasn’t special enough, she would casually thrown into conversation lines like “the first time I saw the waifs play live...” or “when Xavier Rudd used to busk at my College...” Now I understand all of this may mean nothing to you, my nearest and dearest who have never heard of a single one of these bands I love, but I’m sure you can understand my excitement at finding someone who has heard of them!
If it seems a little like I’m in love with Annie, I’m not. I’ve just never met someone I have so much in common with straight away. She played guitar, she had travelled South Africa and we’d hung out with the same people at different times. She spent new years with Saskia, the girl I’d met in Cape Town. She loved photography and was never found without her necklace of a retro Pentax film SLR. Film! FILM! She was the most laid back person I have ever met, so calming she would slow everyones speech to a whisper, as if calm were contagious. Essentially, if I were a girl, I’d be Annie.
She certainly made the evenings pass a lot quicker than they had done in the first week. I was a little sorry to see her go back to work and often ended up hopping on a bike taxi (still a fantastic experience) and making the journey to the cottages where she ran the bar to play pool and drink Spiced Gold with Ginger Ale.
The next volunteer to rock up was Jason, 3 weeks into my stay. A Canadian guy who had travelled pretty much the same route i had, albeit 1000miles an hour faster! What had taken me 5 months had taken him 6 weeks! I’m not sure I could zoom around the continent quite that intensely! He would continue his journey three weeks later, tackling 6 more countries in 2 weeks. Jason was an awesome guy and it was great to have some more English speaking company in the house. He was a bit of a juice head and we got into the habit of walking through the village to Venice beach to swim either every lunch time or sunset. I’d swim out and meet the fishermen taking their boats out for a nights fishing and usually hop on board to say “muli bwanji” before swimming back to shore. My Chichewa isn’t great at all but Malawians faces will always light up when I make the effort and they hide their disappointment fantastically politely when I switch back to English after the formalities of ‘how are you’ and ‘I’m fine thanks, and you?’ It’s incredible that every Malawian you meet, ever, will ask how you are. They really are the friendliest people in the world. Another gem of a trait is how a Malawian apologises for any misfortune that comes your way. If you fall over in the street, a complete stranger will run over and apologise. I’ve caught the bug and find myself apologising for allsorts!
One particularly memorable swim, Me and Jason set off and said our goodbyes to Birgit. It was full moon and the wind had picked up, as it always seems to when the moon is full. Birgit warned us there would be waves. As soon as she had said waves a dream I had had the previous night suddenly leapt from unconsciousness. I’d been on a beach somewhere, body surfing in the waves, trying to convince pops to come and give it a go. As if remembering a dream wasn’t amazing enough, We got down to the beach to find 3ft rollers breaking along the shore. I dived into the déjà-vu and glided through mother natures’ clear water tubes. All that was missing was pops on the beach! It’s worth reiterating, I was in a lake. Waves - in a lake!
I mentioned the village we walked through to get to the beach. It’s almost impossible to describe the sights as we passed through.
The whole community lives in small, square, thatched huts, made with mud bricks and in various states of structural integrity. Each hut has two rooms, one just big enough for a single bed, the other served to accommodate everything else. Families sat in the dirt outside, cooking fish and nsima over an open fire. Women are wrapped in beautiful chitenji’s, babies strapped to their back as they mix maize flour and water to create their staple diet. Men wear T-shirts obviously donated by charities from all over the world. Jason spotted a few shirts from his states hockey teams and even his own university. They were invariably more holes than tshirt. Swollen bellied, runny nosed children play in the dirt. Whole families sing as they pump water from the only borehole in the village. Children would coyly stand in doorways and shout hello and wave. The braver ones would run up beside us and hold our hands to wherever we we headed. Jason would always make me laugh by snatching his had away as if he had just been bitten and poverty was contagious. The atmosphere of equality and community was incredibly humbling. I know I bang on about how these folks have so little but it just so, so far removed from what I’ve grown up with. There are days I miss my DVD’s so much or my iPod battery has died and I’m actually a little sad and here these guys are, happy as I’ve ever been with nothing, blissfully unaware of what they are missing. I’ve certainly shifted mentalities a little since I’ve been here, but it seems a little greed in sewn into my muzungu DNA.
A friend of mine, Johannes was building his own house in the same style as every other and I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t give himself a bit more room.
Even those lucky enough to be employed by a white person earn £2 per day. I’d spend that on a bar of chocolate before walking through the village paths lined with little stacks of tomatoes that provide an unimaginable and unreliable income for those who grow them.
The project continued to grow around us while we were there. When I arrived there were 2 round houses along with the main hall. By now there were 4 round houses and rumors of accommodation buildings for students springing from the dirt, as well as our newly and back-breakingly constructed perimeter fence.
The German girls, as they were always referred to as they were always together and no-one was quite sure which was which, time at the project came to an end in early July and we threw a party in their honour, for which we bought a goat for a braii. A baaaaaring, living, stinking goat. You know how vegetarians always quip; ‘you’ll eat an animal but would you actually kill one?’ well, this was my chance to give them the finger, or at least a fresh goat burger.
I didn’t do the honours myself, mainly because I didn’t want to balls it up and make the goat suffer any more than it was about to. Non-the-less, I partook as we held it down, stood on its head and slit its throat. I’d love to say it was over quickly and the goat didn’t know a thing about it, but there was a good minute of squealing and huffing and kicking as the goat gasped and fought for its last taste of sweet African air. It was a little bit horrific, but in a bizarre way, something I felt I couldn’t really miss.
Watching Jack and the boys expertly skin the goat as it lifelessly swung from a tree was amazing. I was glad to discover toilet humor is universal and chasing girls with goats testicles is a hilarious Malawian past time!
Not a single bit of the goat went to waste. Even the testicles were thrown in the pot, along with the skin, head and guts of the animal. I watched as Simon delicately ran a knife along the entire length of the goats digestive system to remove the various stages of faeces the goat never had the chance to pass before boiling and devouring the lot.
The party was pretty wild and a great chance to kick back with the workers, students and friends I’d made in the village. Malawians can drink! They drained the Chibuku maize beer by 9pm and I ended up doing a booze run in the pitch black after at least one too many home brewed Gin’s to legally drive! TIA!
I was a little sad to see the girls go, it had taken 6 weeks but we’d finally begun to develop a friendship over the language barrier and I kinda thought that with a few more weeks we’d have gotten to know each other a bit better. Anyhoo..
Anja and Lena’s departure made room for two new volunteers from the UK, Alan and Sian, fresh from touring Malawi for 5 weeks. A little like chalk and cheese, they made a great couple, though I’ll admit my first impressions of both were way off the mark.
Alan was 6’5” and about 400 tonnes of muscle. The sort of guy who could have broken my neck with his thumb and index finger. He spent his first few days telling stories of super charged, souped up cars with quadruple something-or-others, intertwined with stories of beating up various members of the British public. Not quite my cup of tea. But as the days passed and Alan found his feet at the project he transformed into one of the nicest people I know. Hopelessly in love with Sian, he was the very epitome of the phrase ‘gentle giant.’ A big soft git, in other words, but great company all day long. Unfortunatley, his time would be cut short by the combination of Larium (a notorious anti-malarial) and getting malaria. Alan had been with us about two weeks when he got malaria, despite taking his Larium. He was diabetic and his insulin seemed to be so erratic he never quite seemed to be able to manage his condition. The prospect of a guy twice my size having a fit on me terrified me for his entire stay! The malaria knocked Alan for six, he didn’t leave his room for 3 days. When he should have been recovering and wasn’t, Birgit’s nurse instincts kicked in (as they so often did) and she realised that the Larium was causing him some trouble. As soon as it was suggested that he may be depressed he burst into tears and by 6pm that evening he had moved his flights forwards, packed his bags and gone home to the UK. He appeared at the project in tears to explain that he couldn’t adjust to the Malawian way of live, hadn’t been happy since he arrived and needed to go home. Then he was gone.
It was awful to see Alan leave, he’d always seemed so happy and upbeat, yet he’d been miserable the whole time. He blamed it on ‘culture shock’ but there is nothing not to love about this place and everyone knew it was the Larium that screwed him up.
Jason left shortly afterwards, off to continue his adventures on the Ilala ferry. Him and Birgit were both really strong minded and so often butted heads over the daftest little things, it was certainly going to be more peaceful with him gone, though I maintain he was awesome company. The evenings we didn’t go swimming we spent playing with the kids in the village. Weekends we’d hitchhike to Cape Maclear together and always go to fat monkeys for banana pancakes then go scuba diving in the lake. The lake is so, so beautiful. It’s an inland sea. 365 miles top-to-bottom and 52 miles wide, according to the British navy officer who was the first to survey the lake, (I served him in Currys) on a clear day you can see the Mozambique mountains in the blue hues of the horizon, floating on the surface of the lake of stars.
Under the surface, where the sun doesn’t reach, 500 species of fish occupy the warm waters. Cichlids make up the majority of these and 99% are endemic to the lake. Chambo is the most popular and is eaten everywhere in Malawi, but it is the colourful mbuna that are a treat when you dive here. The way the species has evolved into hunderds of co-existing breeds is fascinating and it seems everywhere you look under the water you discover a new variety for yourself. If you happen to be anywhere near a copy of a Planet Earth DVD, stick on the fresh water episode and skip about 20mins in to see the cool way cichlids breed and protect their young.
30m under the surface, which is a bloody long way down, the Usipa boat sits wrecked on the sand. Deep enough to need an advanced qualification to get to, (which I now have!) Swimming through a shipwreck is one of the most surreal things I have ever done. It’s more than a little spooky too, as you weightlessly swim through doorways that people once walked through. Trying to climb the ladders up to the top deck in flippers is funny though. It turned out that Nisa, a Malawian of Indian descent who ran the bar where Annie worked was the guy who sunk it.(or sank it?)
Anyway, Alan and Jason’s departure left Sian and myself at the project. As with Alan, I’d got her wrong on first impressions, I couldn’t put my finger on it then (and I still can’t) but she just somehow seemed out of place in Africa. Again, as I got to know her it became apparent that I was a million miles off the mark again. Sian was awesome. She’d cycled across Denmark, was a professional rower and had a pilots licence, little nuggests of information she casually let slip that made her a complete hero. I hadn’t really gotten to know Sian all that well before Alan had left and I was a little worried that there may be the odd awkward silence but it turned out we connected brilliantly and shared a very similar sense of humour so we laughed the days away.
Alan and Sian were sporty folks and had brought with them a whole heap of sports equipment, which was the catalyst for Fridays becoming sports days at the project. They also had the idea of building a sports pitch in the project grounds. When Alan got sick, I began to measure it out and hack down the hundreds of palms that at time made the pitch look more like a tropical rainforest.
Sian seemed pleased to have a project to get stuck into after Alans’ premature departure and for the next week the two of us beat the stone hard Malawian dirt (seriously stone hard - it hadn’t rained in 4 months at this point) with hoes until either the 6mm thick metal bent or the wooden handle snapped, hacking out every blade of grass. We also discovered a couple of tree stumps hidden in the dirt that had to be pulled out by hand. The biggest was nearly 3ft across and took four of us three days to dig out, severing the roots with a panga knife as we dug under the taproots. The pitch resembled the grand canyon when we had finished.
After the first week the pitch was racing along, we had about a third of it looking pretty respectable, (we hadn’t yet found the aforementioned bugger of a tree stump,) we managed to keep each other motivated, despite the ever growing enormity of the task. However, Sian was missing Alan and her plans to leave with me and travel to Mozambique suddenly became a plan to leave that weekend.
That left me with two thirds of the pitch to finish. Birgits enthusiasm for the pitch wavered from being all for it to calling it a complete waste of time - in front of me - that was about the closest I’ve come to punching a German. Her moods are notorious though!
I ploughed on regardless. By the time I had finished I looked the fittest I ever have. Three weeks of shirtless manual labour in the sun does wonders for a skinny white boy! My hands, however, were a different story. I had blisters on my blisters and gaping wounds where callus skin had been torn away by my ever changing array of tools. No amount of Nivea moisturiser was going to rescue them. I think I went without fingerprints for 3 weeks!
It was all worth it though, by the end we had 450m2 of flat, sandy playing pitch, complete with gumtree goal posts for the kids to enjoy and I’d had some rather exciting news since starting the project!
As I mentioned before, Sian had spent a while travelling around Malawi with Alan and her mother. She had spent a couple of weeks in Cape Maclear, staying at Fat Monkeys, home of the best banana pancakes in the world. During that time she had gotten close with the owners, which led to Karon, one of the owners, calling her and offering her a job. Fortunatley for me, Sian had already decided to head home to be with Alan and by chance I had met Karon the weekend before and we’d gotten on pretty well over strawberry smoothies. Sian turned down the job and wandered into my room one evening and handed me the phone.
I had already lined up a job for August, working in the Bar where Annie worked, but ten minutes later I was dancing around the living room having just accepted Karons offer of running the reception and office at Fat Monkeys. Banana pancakes and smoothies sealed the deal. Sian couldn’t stop laughing at my childish excitement as I ran around the house literally jumping for joy. The job was mine as soon as I could get there!
During the 3 weeks of building the sports pitch another volunteer turned up, Rabia, a funky 19 year old from Germany with a hilarious phobia of spiders, an ipod full of hip-hop and a fantastic energy that pumped some life back into the evenings.
Not long after her arrival the three of us travelled to Blantyre for a night. Birgit needed to take the bukkie to a mechanic and invited the two of us along for the ride. I’d never headed that far south in Malawi and figured I might be able to pick up a guitar for my Fat Monkeys residency. We arrived and spent the night hanging out in Doogles, the best backpackers in town. It must have been somewhere between one and two in the morning when I fell into my top bunk.
I was woken up by banging on the dorm door and loud voices. I was in no fit state to comprehend what was being bellowed at the wood. I looked at my watch at it was 3am. I’ve come across some pretty inconsiderate folks in dorms, but these guys took the biscuit when they kicked the door in and turned the lights on. “THIS IS THE POLICE. GET UP NOW” I wasn’t really in the mood. “WHERE IS YOUR PASSPORT!?” My stomach turned over as I knew full well my passport was sat on my shelf at home in Monkey Bay. Why would I bring it to Blantyre for one night? I kept my mouth shut and hoped the fuzz would eventually tire of Birgits loud and impolite objections to being woken up and disappear. Birgit was also under the impression that she had left her passport in Monkey Bay. Rabia had, just by chance brought hers along.
No such look though. “PASSPORT!”
“it’s in Monkey Bay”
“WHY!”
“I live there”
“YOU ARE AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT IN MALAWI UNTIL YOU CAN PROVIDE YOUR PASSPORT”
“fancy a trip to monkey bay?”
“NO!”
“no worries then, enjoy your night”
“COME WITH ME”
“where? It’s a long drive to Monkey Bay.”
“YOU ARE COMING TO THE POLICE STATION”
“alright, calm down and put your hat back on, can I put some trousers on or are you going to cuff me in my pants?”
At this point, still midly inebriated, I was more annoyed at being woken up than being arrested. Having being a well behaved guy all my life, my experience of ‘prison’ was what I had seen on ‘The Bill.’ I had visions of clean sheets and a cup of tea waiting for me. Even the murderers in ‘Prison Break’ had that luxury. At worst I might have to be bottom bunk.
I wasn’t alone in my Illegal activity. There were three scousers who had been found with cannabis in their room and, being scousers had been just bright enough to talk themselves into getting arrested rather than out of it. There was also Tom, who had overstayed his visa. Birgit had at the last minute realised her passport was in the car and escaped our undignified fate.
The 5 of us where battered into a police van and forced to try and sit on the floor, despite the ample room on the seats. We were all pretty merry and amused by the situation. The reality of central African prison hit us like a ten tonne truck as we were stripped of all of our possessions, forced to sign a hundred bits of paper - most of which, despite my protests, seemed to be admissions for illegal possession of cannabis - and thrown in a pitch black cell. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, let alone the serial killers under my feet. I couldn’t move without stepping on someone. The clean sheets were nowhere to be seen. Nor was that brew.
Just after our arrival another prisoner was brought in. To find his way through the darkness he lit a match. No sooner had the light hit the four walls and illuminated the 80 eyes in the room, a guard had grabbed the newcomer by his hair and dragged him back out of the cell to set about beating the shit out of him with a great big metal bat, with a little help from his colleagues. It was horrific and it silenced every one of us. Until that moment, being arrested had been a bit of a giggle. We had all been just merry enough to entertain ourselves at the polices expense. All of a sudden we were very, very sober as a heap of battered and bruised Malawian was dumped at our feet.
The day got no better. The sun peeked through the bars to reveal a 10ft by 10ft cell, concrete in all directions, standing room only. There were 38 of us doing our best to tessellate in the damp hellhole. In one corner sat a jerry can. Everyone was avoiding that particular corner, it became apparent why when one shifted their weight from one foot to the other to discover that they had been soaking up 37 other guys piss with their socks. That damp, stale funk that hung in the air and provoked the gag reflex was a combination of bodily excretions from my cell mates. Lovely. The hours crept by, it was impossible to tell where the sun was in the sky and any estimation of the time was hugely over optimistic.
The station kicked into action sometime I guess was about 8am. One by one my cellmates were called and charged. My turn never came. The scousers were charged, forced into admitting their guilt, despite coming up with a reasonably convincing story. All it took was 3 yesses. “Did the police come into your room?” “Yes.” “Did they find cannabis in the room?” “Yes” “were you the only people in the room at the time?” “Yes, but....” too late. Fortunately for them though, they were shipped off to court, fined and released in time for lunch.
The police had taken my phone, so I couldn’t get hold of anyone to see if my passport was on its way from monkey bay. I stood and stood until my legs ached so much I just laid in the piss and put up with being stood on. There was no food, no water. In a spat of quick thinking I had given Birgit all of my cash before being dragged out of Doolgles, to avoid being robbed by the police, so I couldn’t even bribe a guard to go and get me food. The only nourishment we saw all day was the very occasional cigarette snuck in inside the sock of a new convict. You have never, ever seen a cigarette smoked so quickly. It was passed from guy to guy, each taking the smallest of drags, so quickly that not a single flake of ash dropped to the floor. The entire length of the cigarette glowed ember before it was put out. Nobody exhaled until the cigarette was extinguished so by the time the guard had smelt the smoke, the butt had disappeared into the jerry can. The penalty for smoking was inevitably as brutal as lighting a match, the one time we were caught, a scapegoat was dragged into the corridor and beaten.
The hours continued to crawl by, the novelty of prison wore off, Tom was suffering for his indulgence the night before and was very vocal about his annoyance. It earned him the luxury of a seat in the corridor, a haven compared to the cell. Any attempts I made to discover my fate were met with little more than a “shut up.” A man was carried out of our cell, too weak to stand and dumped in the corridor. No medical personnel ever arrived. I assume we were the last people to see him alive.
With no end to the dilemma in sight and apparently no chance of getting to my phone to find out the whereabouts of my passport I did what all the guilty until proven innocent do, I bit my fingernail into a point and carved my name in the cell wall. If you ever find yourself in prison in Blantyre, look out for it.
Eventually, at some point mid-afternoon, I managed to sweet talk a guard into letting me use my phone. I called Birgit and discovered Jack had found my passport and was on his was on public transport. He was in Zomba the last time Birgit had spoken to him, past half way. Thank every god, everywhere.
Determined to extend my respite as long as possible, I chatted to the guards about every Malawians favourite subject, Premier League football. It earned me an hour in the corridor. The occasion was damped a little by the sight of a dead man being carried out of the cell next to mine. He’d been neglected for who knows how long. What a way to go.
Eventually, after being thrown back in the cell, I heard Birgits’ raised voice carry down the corridor. Finally, my ordeal was over, or so I thought. Immigration had gone home. I was their prisoner and not the polices. I shouted and shouted and hammered on the door until I was let out. I grabbed my Passport and waved my visa in the face of any officer I could reach. I grabbed the register and pointed to where i had been signed in. ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT. I ran around with my passport so everyone there knew I was not an illegal immigrant. I explained that since they could all clearly see that fact they were in fact holding me illegally, all to no avail. One big fat guard grabbed me by my shirt and dragged me back towards the cell. I stood my ground and calmly explained to him that he couldn’t hold me because I had the proof that I was innocent of my charges. Not that I had been charged, or formally arrested, or interviewed, or spoken to at all. I was pissed off. I held my ground, arms raised as if looking at a gun, calmly explaining why I WAS leaving right now. Fatty pulled his metal rod from his belt and said “don’t you anger me!” He still had the top half of my shirt wrapped around his fist. “just listen to me...” THUD” I tried one last time to explain myself, not quite so calmly, only to be met with several more whacks from fatty before giving in and being thrown - literally - into the cell.
For the first time in my 18 hours in prison, I could have cried. I very nearly did. It seemed I was spending another night on my feet, in the freezing cold, piss filled, concrete nightmare.
Birgit had other ideas though. Not one to keep her thoughts to herself, she told the police officers exactly what I thought of them, then got on the phone to her Solicitor. Two hours later, as I struggled to find the room to sit on my feet, two lawyers, the Vice-Preident of Malawian Justice and a Representative from the British Consulate descended on Blantyre Police Station. Another hour later, I was out, and I even managed to rescue Tom, whose Credit and Debit cards had mysteriously disappeared.
Freedom!
I couldn’t apologise enough to Birgit for ruining her day. She didn’t seem to have minded too much, thankfully.
Back at Doogles, I wandered into the bar a little bit of a hero. I found Jack sat in a corner, knackered from his 9 hour bus ride and ran over and gave him one of the most affectionate hugs ever shared between two guys, as if he had just saved my life. In all honesty, he may as well have. If he hadn’t have brought my passport I would still be sat in that cell.
I was so pleased to see everyone, even if I was just meeting them for the first time, I ended up buying dinner and drinks for half the bar, including the ugliest prostitutes I have ever seen. Me and Tom met up and wallowed in our glory for a little while, but a shower and an early night was called for.
So, the next day, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Blantyre, I bought a guitar in one of the quickest transactions ever; 6 strings? Check. Cut-away? Check. Sold.
I slept the whole way back to Mangochi, laid the back of the bukkie on a horrendous road. In Mangochi I took Birgit, Rabia and Jack out for dinner to apologise for spoiling a day of their lives. I bought Jack the first Ice cream he had ever had. The look on a 34 year olds face as he tries Ice cream for the first time ever is one of the greatest sights I have seen in Africa. I’ll never forget how he stopped when he got to the cone to wait and see whether it was ok to eat it or not. The man is a legend.
That first night in Blantrye, before the whole being arrested thing, I’d met Katie, a really cool girl form Middlesbrough, and managed to talk her into coming down to the project for a while. The next weekend we hooked up again in Cape Maclear at a huge party at the Gecko Lounge and she came back with us the Sunday. So I had a little more company for the last week. Katie was awesome. We’d throw on the drum and bass from Fabriclive sessions on her iPod and rave the days away before heading into monkey bay or up to Annie’s to play pool with the locals. She was a legend, always upbeat and so much fun to be around. I only wish she had arrived sooner.
My time at the project came to an end, I was both sad to say goodbye to the kids and the guys and so, so excited to get to Fat Monkeys. Life on the Cape is about the best thing I can think of. My last day, we christened the sports pitch with a ‘sports day’ circa 1990, three legged races included. It was a bit of a giggle watching Malawians fall all over themselves. I said my goodbyes to the guys, spent one last night at Annie’s with Birgit, Katie and Rabia, packed my back for the first and last time in a long while and had my last nights sleep in what had been my home for the last two months.
The next day, Birgit waved me off with an unceremonious ‘See ya’ (hugs from everyone else, she was an odd character) in Mangochi and I threw my belongings into a matola and headed for the lake.
Remeber minibus taxis? A matola works on the same principle, but is a flat bed truck so has no walls or roof, which creates endless room vertically. I have seen a Toyota Hi-Lux piled five times higher than the cab. Those ridiculous pictures you see of flat-bed trucks pilled with 500 people and all their baggage; that’s public transport in rural Malawi. I inevitably end up perched on the roll bar, feet hanging off the side, clinging on for dear life. That particular matola only got me as far as the Cape turn off, which gave me chance to catch up with Assan and the guys at One Stop before hitching a ride the rest of the way to a new adventure.
So, here I am, at Fat Monkeys. It’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I live with an amazing family. Karon and Geoff, and their two kids, Liam (7) and Jade (9) on the beach, a stones throw from the infinite blue hues of the lake.
I was so warmly welcomed by the family, they had sorted me my own room, they had even bought me my very own Tweety Pie mug, stocked the fridge with fresh home-made smoothies and put a vegetarian pizza in the oven for me. What a Welcome!
The guy running the reception was still to receive his DCM (don’t come Monday) when I arrived so I had my first three days playing with two of the coolest and cutest kids on the planet ,swimming in the lake and hanging out by the beach until the sunset and sitting up listening to Geoff’s stories of his life in Africa over a beer under the stars. He has some amazing tales to tell, of life in the Army in Zimbabwe, farming in Malawi and Mozambique and travelling all over South and East Africa.
I eventually started ‘work’ in the loosest possible meaning of the word. I get up at 6.30 for an ice cold shower, open the office for 7.00, do the previous days paper work by 7.30, tuck into banana pancakes (every day) and have the rest of the day to myself, with the odd interruption from a customer, ideally a damsel in distress in a bikini!
I’ve met some awesome guys staying here. I shut up shop about 7.00pm and either kick back with a mars bar and an episode of House on the TV or join the guests in the bar and share our stories. I earn 36p an hour, on top of my board and all the food I can eat and couldn’t be happier! Life is so, so sweet. My favourite hobby at the moment is swimming about a kilometre out into the lake and just floating around on the top of the great African rift, 1000m above sea level, the water cleansing my soul until any worry I have is carried away on the gentle waves, never to be seen again. If I’m not getting wet, I’ll sit in the shade of one of the hundred varieties of trees on the beach and work my way around the frets of my newly acquired guitar, dropping melodies in open C tunings, nature provides the percussion, the waves lapping on the shore, and the weavers birds sing and dance along. Life has never been better. The kids still run rings around me, keeping up with them works off the pizzas and steak dinners!
Not too long into my stay, I woke up feeling pretty grim. There was a horrendous burning pain in my stomach, slowly rising and concentrating just under my diaphragm. The only way to stop the pain was to vomit. I spent the morning curled around the bathroom floor. Malaria.
As soon as Geoff realised what was happening, which was a long time before malaria had crossed my mind, I was whisked off to the clinic. As Geoff’s ‘nephew’ I scored a Malawian health passport which meant a consultation cost £1 instead of £30. The nurses confirmed the malaria and prescribed Coartem, 8 tablets a day to kill the virus, on top of paracetamols and ibuprofen and some miracle pill to stop the relentless vomit. I was kept in for observation and rehydration, before heading to bed.
As the day wore on, my symptoms just seemed to pile up. The aches kicked in and crippled me. The tablets stopped the vomiting but my insides just headed south instead. I developed a fever that soaked my sheets with sweat as I shivered the day away. On top of all of that, the Coartem seemed to have wrapped a fist around my kidneys and rung them out, which was agonising. Completely debilitated, I was resigned to my bed for 2 days. Any sleep I managed to find was interrupted for another dose of tablets. The rumour was that by the third day I should have been over the worst of it, but I wasn’t. I was sick of being an invalid so I went back to work anyway and spent the day huddled around my knees in the office. The family were great to me (as they always were) while I was sick. My meals and drinks were brought to me, my bedding was washed every day and they insisted on my resting. I’d only just started work, I felt a little guilty.
Eventually, after the last dose of Coartem had released its grip on my kidneys, I began to feel better. The only good thing to come of malaria was the sympathy from those damsels in bikinis!
Not a week had passed, the aches had barely eased themselves out my back when they returned with a vengeance. Again, it was Geoff who spotted the malaria, I was blaming a bad nights sleep. As soon as I couldn’t manage the banana pancakes, I was whisked back off to the clinic and re-diagnosed with malaria. What a treat. To add to the fun, I was prescribed five days of Quinine. Even the nurse described it as a “fucking nightmare that will make you want to get on the next flight home.”
The very mention of Quinine back at Fat Monkeys got me send straight to bed. The family had made up one of the cottages for me so I had some space away from the customers, complete with a fully stocked fridge, a bottomless supply of tea and coffee and the hottest shower in the place! Under any other circumstances this would have been an amazing result. As it was they were just doing their best to prepare me for the 5 days of misery they all knew I was throwing down my neck with the first of my 30 tablets. The side effects of Quinine are, as the nurse so eloquently put it, “a fucking nightmare.” It took all the energy I had left not to vomit. I couldn’t eat a thing for the first two days. Everything I put in my mouth tasted like it had been dipped in molten metal just beforehand. I completely lost hearing for a day - I was totally deaf. From that day, my ears rang all day and all night in an unavoidable high pitched squeal. All of that on top of the symptoms of malaria were still kicking my arse. What a tag-team. My birthday came and went in those pretty miserable days. The family had planned to make a bit of an occasion out of it, there were rumours of birthday cake, ice-cream and jet-ski rides. I could barely make it to the bathroom for a bright orange wee, let alone operate a jet-ski and I wasn’t going to enjoy a cake that tasted like metal.
Thank you for your messages on the day though, my birthday was the day I was completely deaf so I couldn’t answer the phone... The guys had to write ‘Happy Birthday’ on a blackboard because I couldn’t hear them sing it!
Eventually, the malaria wore off and I eased myself back into the Malawian sunshine, where I’m sat writing this little epic.
Between the bouts of Malaria, my Malawi visa expired. This should have meant a trip to Mozambique. I’m so excited about getting to Mozambique, but having only just recovered from the first bout of malaria, really didn’t fancy it at the time. Fortunately, the immigration officers in Monkey Bay were friends of mine and had a bit of a reputation for being happy to bend the rules for a few kwatcha. I’d sewn the seeds the last time I had extended my visa, I’d been stamped out on my birthday and just to make small talk I told them I was sad I would have to leave on that particular day. Their reply was exactly as I had hoped it would be, they offered to help me out, “if you need to stay longer, come and see me, we can talk...” Perfect.
So, I stuck shoes on my feet for the first time in months, brushed the dust off my best trousers and divided my money between my pockets so that I could offer all I had in my wallet and then miraculously find a few more kwatcha if the occasion called for it.
As soon as I walked in, the guys remembered the comment about my birthday and knew why I was there. Their reputation for being willing to bend the rules came hand in hand with their reputation for driving a hard bargain. After handshakes and hellos we sat down to business. I offered Kw5,000, the usual price of extending a visa for 30 days. The guys looked at each other, shaking their heads and explained that because this was ‘a special agreement’ the price must be Kw10,000. I was sat on Kw5000 in each of my back pockets, but I reached into my wallet and pulled out the carefully planted wad of about Kw2000. “this is all I have...” after a bit of a discussion... “Cha Bwino!”
Bingo! Too easy!
I was stamped out of the country the week beforehand and miraculously stamped back in that day, the stamp earning me another 3 months. My passport offers no clue to where I was when I mysteriously left Malawi for a week. TIA!
So! Thats about it for my adventures!
I’ll be living where life’s a beach for another two months or so, then heading to Mozambique, Swaziland and back into SA. Until I kick my residency here, I’ll be living it up in the Cape, parties, scuba diving, jet-skiing and lots and lots of doing sweet FA in the sun - and hopefully, no more malaria!
My current dilemma is whether to head home for Christmas or stay for new years on Cape Town, or sell everything I own on eBay and just stay here forever! Eastern Africa will have to wait a little while I think, the original plan of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda is being postponed for a little while, but as soon as I land in the UK I’ll be saving for that flight out to Dar.
Hope you are all well,
sorry for the lack of photographs, having typed all this i really can't be bothered, the lake is calling me! I'll throw some up sometime soon!
until next time!
Lots of love.
xxx
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Sam
non-member comment
BITCH.
As the title descibes -- BITCH!!! as if your living with some nice family, i need to get outta this shit hole soon :D No more spotting any bikini babes, how rude!!! :P glad your having the time of your life, shame about malaria and being arrested and having hardly any money and the usual shit that happens but everything else AWESOME!! xxx