Thursday, May 13, 2004
THE SEA
It can be such a miraculous number of colors! There are lots of shades of blue: light light blue, just like the sky, so that the horizon is invisible; darker, shiny blue; lush turquoise blue with a twist of green; dark deep blue. Then sometimes it's not blue at all. Around sunset it is especially changeful, now pink, now purple, now green. Foam is white, and the underside of waves is brown; the flashing reflection of the sun is too bright to be classified by color, it's gold and white and silver and yellow but mostly just blinding; and the when the moon dances upon the water... aahhh... Later at night, the sea is black.
I'm still not doing justice to the variety. For it can be several colors at once. For example, it may be pink and blue at the same time; maybe pink and blue in different places, but it might also manage to be pink and blue at the same place. Impossible, you say? It would seem so, but light is more devious and dexterous than you think, and only a huge, glassy, chameleon creature like the sea can make you realize it.
I watched a wave, or waves, at a spot on the beach. I am confused between singular and plural because, on the sea, there are many waves, moving forward one after another, but at the edge of the water, there is just one, which surges, then dissipates in the sand and slides back, then pushes upwards again. Well, this wave was constantly switching between blue and brown! When it was moving in, I saw its underside, catching the sun and churning with sand, and it was brown. But then as it sunk, it all turned to sky blue, the retreating waters and the wet sand together. Every few seconds, brown, blue, brown, blue.
God is the greatest artist. A few days by the sea in Mozambique were a precious reminder of that.
Keep reading, I've got some stories left: I'll tell more about the robbery, and about the charm of Mozambique's Marxist street names, and even some very old stories from Malawi, including a bitter old colonialist I met in Liwonde...
It can be such a miraculous number of colors! There are lots of shades of blue: light light blue, just like the sky, so that the horizon is invisible; darker, shiny blue; lush turquoise blue with a twist of green; dark deep blue. Then sometimes it's not blue at all. Around sunset it is especially changeful, now pink, now purple, now green. Foam is white, and the underside of waves is brown; the flashing reflection of the sun is too bright to be classified by color, it's gold and white and silver and yellow but mostly just blinding; and the when the moon dances upon the water... aahhh... Later at night, the sea is black.
I'm still not doing justice to the variety. For it can be several colors at once. For example, it may be pink and blue at the same time; maybe pink and blue in different places, but it might also manage to be pink and blue at the same place. Impossible, you say? It would seem so, but light is more devious and dexterous than you think, and only a huge, glassy, chameleon creature like the sea can make you realize it.
I watched a wave, or waves, at a spot on the beach. I am confused between singular and plural because, on the sea, there are many waves, moving forward one after another, but at the edge of the water, there is just one, which surges, then dissipates in the sand and slides back, then pushes upwards again. Well, this wave was constantly switching between blue and brown! When it was moving in, I saw its underside, catching the sun and churning with sand, and it was brown. But then as it sunk, it all turned to sky blue, the retreating waters and the wet sand together. Every few seconds, brown, blue, brown, blue.
God is the greatest artist. A few days by the sea in Mozambique were a precious reminder of that.
Keep reading, I've got some stories left: I'll tell more about the robbery, and about the charm of Mozambique's Marxist street names, and even some very old stories from Malawi, including a bitter old colonialist I met in Liwonde...
BACK IN THE USA
I had a rough trip back to the US: we got robbed our last night in Mozambique, and then the airline lost my suitcases on the way home! I cancelled the day in Kenya I was planning to spend: without money, and shaken up by the robbery, it seemed less appealing. I have a few stories left to tell though, so keep reading. Meanwhile, I'm starting up my old blog again, which has quite a different tone.
I had a rough trip back to the US: we got robbed our last night in Mozambique, and then the airline lost my suitcases on the way home! I cancelled the day in Kenya I was planning to spend: without money, and shaken up by the robbery, it seemed less appealing. I have a few stories left to tell though, so keep reading. Meanwhile, I'm starting up my old blog again, which has quite a different tone.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
MOZAMBIQUE
Not everything went well with our litle one-week vacation in Mozambique. We were surprised by the high prices, higher than in some much richer countries and often much higher than the Lonely Planet would have us believe. Beaches are the main attraction of southern Mozambique, and we got to one on our second day, the "Costa do Sol" (Sun Coast) on the outskirts of Maputo, bu, thinking the out-of-town beaches might be better (more pristine, and on the open ocean rather than the bay) we rented a car and headed north to Bilene, based on a vague recommendation from someone in the airport in Jo'burg. Stupidly failing to check the book (this time it's not the Lonely Planet's fault) I thought it would be a short, hour or hour and a half, drive, but it was 140 km and took all day Saturday; on Sunday, after spending most of the day on the beach, the drive home took us well into the night. In Malawi, driving at night is dangerous because the roadsides are full of pedestrians and bikers which are hard to see. Mozambique is more developed and less crowded, so there are fewer people on the road but more cars, some of which are absurdly slow trucks, going at 30km/hour while long and miserable backlogs of cars pile up behind them, constantly sliding a bit into the right line and hoping for an absence of headlights so that they can pass en masse.
Bilene does have a nice beach, and a walk along it at night was a very haunting experience, because there was a huge moon overhead, but also because the waters of the lagoon were so still and clear that you could see right to the bottom, and watch the way the ripples refracted the moonlight, concentrating it in moving lines and webs on the sand. Touch the water with your foot and the moon-webs would come into motion, rippling outwards in glistening circles... In the day, we would have liked to swim a bit more, and as for soaking up the sun, we stupidly didn't bother with sunscreen, and it took me about three days to recover from the sunburns. That night, as our little car splashed our way into rain-drenched Maputo to look for a hotel, I was really suffering. And the first few places we tried were full. Finally we found a guesthouse, beautiful place, great deep brown wooden floors, sculptures and jungle vegetation around the swimming pool, huge plush furniture, jade-colored tiles in the bathroom, high ceilings, spacious, elegant... Despite the $85/night bill we decided to stay two days. But we got a bit of disappointing travel advice from one of the guys there. The Maputo Elephant Reserve, and Punto d'Ouro, a beach with dolphin tours, were only reachable by 4-wheel drive. My pocketbook was reeling by this time, so for the last three days we found a little backpacker place along the Costa do Sol, and returned the car, to rely on the minibuses to get in and out of the city. Finally, a good deal: it was clean, friendly, very close to the beach, with a wonderful balcony, on the top floor, looking out on a palm tree with HUGE leaves, about 20 feet long. My fiancee had to work on her final on paper (she's supposed to be in school right now) so the last three nights are turning out to be quite pleasant, laid-back, and cheap. My sunburns are subsiding. Yesterday we bought a huge supply of foodstuffs at the market, including two crabs and a kilo and a half of prawns, and cooked them at home. Mm-mm! (Even if seafood is very labor-intensive to eat.)
Even if we weren't the shrewdest or most fortunate of Mozambican tourists, impressions of the country have been interesting.
LANGUAGE AND DEVELOPMENT
The biggest question that interested me in my first few days here is this: Why is it that Portuguese has become the native language of many Mozambicans, while no Malawians seem to have become native in English? I first learned about native-Portuguese-speaking African Mozambicans when I met the wife of our transporter friend in Blantyre. Here in Maputo it's quite noticeable. The conversations you overhear in the street seem to be in Portuguese. People can understand my Spanish decently well. On the streets, you see Portuguese everywhere, which doesn't prove much per se-- in Malawi English was everywhere-- and yet it's more abundant and colloquial here.
I have several theories about this. The one my fiancee believes is that there are just too many different "tribes" here, so they needed to learn Portuguese in order to communicate with each other; in Malawi, Chichewa was widely enough spoken that it wasn't so necessary to adopt a European language. But that doesn't quite seem to explain it. Just because Mozambique "needed" Portuguese as a national language, doesn't explain why, in practice, people would adopt it. In Malawi, I didn't quite understand why they used English as much as they did, since Chichewa seemed fairly universally understood. English is an international language, useful for trade, of course, but that hardly explains why streetsigns, advertisements, school textbooks, newspapers were exclusively in English when most of the population has a pretty feeble command of English and even the best-educated seem to like switching into Chichewa to explain things that are unclear. Malawians seem to have an inferiority complex about their language, anway: they call it a "vernacular," and I remember the man in the hut in the village who insisted, rather than answering my Chichewa in Chichewa, on answering in English, saying with stiff pride, "I an educated man. Can speak English."
The role of English puzzled me greatly, in fact. It always seemed to me they should just use Chichewa as a national language, even if it was so obscure and lacked international recognition-- like the Czechs and the Finns, for example, who going happily speaking and writing and publishing newspapers and conducting government business in their language, even if to all but a few million speakers their language seems extremely obscure. And in thinking about why they didn't, I started to think of all the things a full, upstandnig, self-respecting language needs. Speech and grammar and speakers are not enough: you also need a literature, including translations but preferably some masterpieces in the language itself. You need good writers to develop good style, to develop an advanced vocabulary. You need libraries, and preferably internet resources... Maybe Chichewa just didn't have the literary sinews it takes to be a national language, and that was why so much of Malawi's national life was conducted in English, even if it was the language of the colonialists which few Malawians really knew well.
So anyway, all this makes me quite impressed with the native fluency of so many Mozambicans in Portuguese. And it makes me wonder: is that part of the reason why Mozambique is so much more successful than Malawi? Mozambique has enjoyed very fast growth in recent years. A big reason is that they're so close to South Africa, of course. The sea helps, too, and the Mozambican government is probably a lot smarter than the Malawian. But does their command of a European language change the culture somehow. This has the feel of a Latin country. The women dress to be more beautiful here, they wear their hair long, and public display of affection is more acceptable. The architecture is Mediterranean, and I often imagine I'm in Latin America or Portugal or even Italy.
So, back to the question I started with: why do Mozambicans speak Portuguese so well? Maybe it's because the Portuguese were here longer: the British arrived in Malawi only in the late 19th century, whereas the Portuguese were in Mozambique centuries earlier. But they left the place almost untouched, staying mostly on the coasts, until the Scramble for Africa in the 19th century. Mozambicans have much more reason to resent the Portuguese than Malawians the British. Whatever the British may have done elsewhere, in Malawi they came as missionaries and humanitarians, stopped the slave trade, and governed with relative wisdom and moderation (though a certain dose of racism mars the picture, of course) and left willingly enough in the end. The Portuguese were slavers, conquerors, made no investment in the African population when they finally moved in, and fought to the bitter end before suddenly abandoning the country to a horrific civil war.
Which all leads me to a disturbing thought: did the Portuguese cause Mozambicans to learn the Portuguese language, and with it absorb Portuguese/European culture a bit more, thus enabling them to be more prosperous now, while the British actually did the Malawians a disservice with their humanitarianism and moderation which allowed the Malawians to stagnate? Or was the civil war, perhaps, useful, tearing the country out of its traditional ways and energizing it to embrace the modern world? Hmm... well, probably Mozambique's success can be explained in less politically correct ways, so there's no need to run the risk of resorting to such heretical thoughts. But being here, and comparing it to Malawi, it's hard to silence the idea.
Not everything went well with our litle one-week vacation in Mozambique. We were surprised by the high prices, higher than in some much richer countries and often much higher than the Lonely Planet would have us believe. Beaches are the main attraction of southern Mozambique, and we got to one on our second day, the "Costa do Sol" (Sun Coast) on the outskirts of Maputo, bu, thinking the out-of-town beaches might be better (more pristine, and on the open ocean rather than the bay) we rented a car and headed north to Bilene, based on a vague recommendation from someone in the airport in Jo'burg. Stupidly failing to check the book (this time it's not the Lonely Planet's fault) I thought it would be a short, hour or hour and a half, drive, but it was 140 km and took all day Saturday; on Sunday, after spending most of the day on the beach, the drive home took us well into the night. In Malawi, driving at night is dangerous because the roadsides are full of pedestrians and bikers which are hard to see. Mozambique is more developed and less crowded, so there are fewer people on the road but more cars, some of which are absurdly slow trucks, going at 30km/hour while long and miserable backlogs of cars pile up behind them, constantly sliding a bit into the right line and hoping for an absence of headlights so that they can pass en masse.
Bilene does have a nice beach, and a walk along it at night was a very haunting experience, because there was a huge moon overhead, but also because the waters of the lagoon were so still and clear that you could see right to the bottom, and watch the way the ripples refracted the moonlight, concentrating it in moving lines and webs on the sand. Touch the water with your foot and the moon-webs would come into motion, rippling outwards in glistening circles... In the day, we would have liked to swim a bit more, and as for soaking up the sun, we stupidly didn't bother with sunscreen, and it took me about three days to recover from the sunburns. That night, as our little car splashed our way into rain-drenched Maputo to look for a hotel, I was really suffering. And the first few places we tried were full. Finally we found a guesthouse, beautiful place, great deep brown wooden floors, sculptures and jungle vegetation around the swimming pool, huge plush furniture, jade-colored tiles in the bathroom, high ceilings, spacious, elegant... Despite the $85/night bill we decided to stay two days. But we got a bit of disappointing travel advice from one of the guys there. The Maputo Elephant Reserve, and Punto d'Ouro, a beach with dolphin tours, were only reachable by 4-wheel drive. My pocketbook was reeling by this time, so for the last three days we found a little backpacker place along the Costa do Sol, and returned the car, to rely on the minibuses to get in and out of the city. Finally, a good deal: it was clean, friendly, very close to the beach, with a wonderful balcony, on the top floor, looking out on a palm tree with HUGE leaves, about 20 feet long. My fiancee had to work on her final on paper (she's supposed to be in school right now) so the last three nights are turning out to be quite pleasant, laid-back, and cheap. My sunburns are subsiding. Yesterday we bought a huge supply of foodstuffs at the market, including two crabs and a kilo and a half of prawns, and cooked them at home. Mm-mm! (Even if seafood is very labor-intensive to eat.)
Even if we weren't the shrewdest or most fortunate of Mozambican tourists, impressions of the country have been interesting.
LANGUAGE AND DEVELOPMENT
The biggest question that interested me in my first few days here is this: Why is it that Portuguese has become the native language of many Mozambicans, while no Malawians seem to have become native in English? I first learned about native-Portuguese-speaking African Mozambicans when I met the wife of our transporter friend in Blantyre. Here in Maputo it's quite noticeable. The conversations you overhear in the street seem to be in Portuguese. People can understand my Spanish decently well. On the streets, you see Portuguese everywhere, which doesn't prove much per se-- in Malawi English was everywhere-- and yet it's more abundant and colloquial here.
I have several theories about this. The one my fiancee believes is that there are just too many different "tribes" here, so they needed to learn Portuguese in order to communicate with each other; in Malawi, Chichewa was widely enough spoken that it wasn't so necessary to adopt a European language. But that doesn't quite seem to explain it. Just because Mozambique "needed" Portuguese as a national language, doesn't explain why, in practice, people would adopt it. In Malawi, I didn't quite understand why they used English as much as they did, since Chichewa seemed fairly universally understood. English is an international language, useful for trade, of course, but that hardly explains why streetsigns, advertisements, school textbooks, newspapers were exclusively in English when most of the population has a pretty feeble command of English and even the best-educated seem to like switching into Chichewa to explain things that are unclear. Malawians seem to have an inferiority complex about their language, anway: they call it a "vernacular," and I remember the man in the hut in the village who insisted, rather than answering my Chichewa in Chichewa, on answering in English, saying with stiff pride, "I an educated man. Can speak English."
The role of English puzzled me greatly, in fact. It always seemed to me they should just use Chichewa as a national language, even if it was so obscure and lacked international recognition-- like the Czechs and the Finns, for example, who going happily speaking and writing and publishing newspapers and conducting government business in their language, even if to all but a few million speakers their language seems extremely obscure. And in thinking about why they didn't, I started to think of all the things a full, upstandnig, self-respecting language needs. Speech and grammar and speakers are not enough: you also need a literature, including translations but preferably some masterpieces in the language itself. You need good writers to develop good style, to develop an advanced vocabulary. You need libraries, and preferably internet resources... Maybe Chichewa just didn't have the literary sinews it takes to be a national language, and that was why so much of Malawi's national life was conducted in English, even if it was the language of the colonialists which few Malawians really knew well.
So anyway, all this makes me quite impressed with the native fluency of so many Mozambicans in Portuguese. And it makes me wonder: is that part of the reason why Mozambique is so much more successful than Malawi? Mozambique has enjoyed very fast growth in recent years. A big reason is that they're so close to South Africa, of course. The sea helps, too, and the Mozambican government is probably a lot smarter than the Malawian. But does their command of a European language change the culture somehow. This has the feel of a Latin country. The women dress to be more beautiful here, they wear their hair long, and public display of affection is more acceptable. The architecture is Mediterranean, and I often imagine I'm in Latin America or Portugal or even Italy.
So, back to the question I started with: why do Mozambicans speak Portuguese so well? Maybe it's because the Portuguese were here longer: the British arrived in Malawi only in the late 19th century, whereas the Portuguese were in Mozambique centuries earlier. But they left the place almost untouched, staying mostly on the coasts, until the Scramble for Africa in the 19th century. Mozambicans have much more reason to resent the Portuguese than Malawians the British. Whatever the British may have done elsewhere, in Malawi they came as missionaries and humanitarians, stopped the slave trade, and governed with relative wisdom and moderation (though a certain dose of racism mars the picture, of course) and left willingly enough in the end. The Portuguese were slavers, conquerors, made no investment in the African population when they finally moved in, and fought to the bitter end before suddenly abandoning the country to a horrific civil war.
Which all leads me to a disturbing thought: did the Portuguese cause Mozambicans to learn the Portuguese language, and with it absorb Portuguese/European culture a bit more, thus enabling them to be more prosperous now, while the British actually did the Malawians a disservice with their humanitarianism and moderation which allowed the Malawians to stagnate? Or was the civil war, perhaps, useful, tearing the country out of its traditional ways and energizing it to embrace the modern world? Hmm... well, probably Mozambique's success can be explained in less politically correct ways, so there's no need to run the risk of resorting to such heretical thoughts. But being here, and comparing it to Malawi, it's hard to silence the idea.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
ZOMBA
Northerners think of the tropics stereotypically as "paradise" just because you don't have to wear jackets and coats and stay indoors so your ears won't get cold. For about the first two weeks I was so grateful to be able to walk around in short sleeves that I was a bit giddy and had that "paradise" feeling, but you soon get past that. Just as Northerners think it would be paradise to take warmth for granted, I suppose Malawians think it would be paradise to take food for granted. The trees and flowers of Lilongwe are nice, but the city is flat and muggy and some parts are dirty and noisy, and it's certainly no paradise.
But Zomba, the old British capital, in the south-- there the stereotype of tropical "paradise" begins to seem valid. We spent a week down there for work, five days in the city, two on Zomba Plateau. The city climbs the slopes of the mountains. It's wonderfully lush. In the city center, stately bluegum trees line the road. Trees are bigger in Zomba, the air is cooler, the view of the mountain slope rising serenely overhead... I can't describe it adequately. Huge palm fronds. A big herbarium. The canopy high overhead, and on the mountain slopes, you can't see what's below it...
On the Plateau, it's a bit different, but in a way even better. We stayed at a hotel on the very edge of the plateau called Le Meridien Ku Chawe that must be one of the most wonderful places I've ever been. The architecture reminded me vaguely of a castle. Big rooms with fireplaces. Clean, brick corridors, with arches, terraced green lawns with palms. The plateau is covered in cloud often, and when it is, all the trees become phantoms. When the clouds are gone, the views are spectacular.
Northerners think of the tropics stereotypically as "paradise" just because you don't have to wear jackets and coats and stay indoors so your ears won't get cold. For about the first two weeks I was so grateful to be able to walk around in short sleeves that I was a bit giddy and had that "paradise" feeling, but you soon get past that. Just as Northerners think it would be paradise to take warmth for granted, I suppose Malawians think it would be paradise to take food for granted. The trees and flowers of Lilongwe are nice, but the city is flat and muggy and some parts are dirty and noisy, and it's certainly no paradise.
But Zomba, the old British capital, in the south-- there the stereotype of tropical "paradise" begins to seem valid. We spent a week down there for work, five days in the city, two on Zomba Plateau. The city climbs the slopes of the mountains. It's wonderfully lush. In the city center, stately bluegum trees line the road. Trees are bigger in Zomba, the air is cooler, the view of the mountain slope rising serenely overhead... I can't describe it adequately. Huge palm fronds. A big herbarium. The canopy high overhead, and on the mountain slopes, you can't see what's below it...
On the Plateau, it's a bit different, but in a way even better. We stayed at a hotel on the very edge of the plateau called Le Meridien Ku Chawe that must be one of the most wonderful places I've ever been. The architecture reminded me vaguely of a castle. Big rooms with fireplaces. Clean, brick corridors, with arches, terraced green lawns with palms. The plateau is covered in cloud often, and when it is, all the trees become phantoms. When the clouds are gone, the views are spectacular.
LEAVING MALAWI
I didn't get my contract extended here, so I'm going to leave sooner than I thought, and I'm a bit sad about it. I went to my favorite restaurant tonight, a Chinese restaurant in the City Centre, and walked around the streets beneath those beautiful African night skies, and already felt a pang of regret to know that I'm flying out tomorrow.
Which doesn't mean I'll cancel the blog just yet. First of all, I'm going to Mozambique next, for a week, and I'll also have brief stops in South Africa (Johannesburg) and Nairobi (Kenya) on my way back, which might be worth blogging about. Four African countries in toto, if all goes according to plan. Second, I've got quite a few stories left to tell.
I didn't get my contract extended here, so I'm going to leave sooner than I thought, and I'm a bit sad about it. I went to my favorite restaurant tonight, a Chinese restaurant in the City Centre, and walked around the streets beneath those beautiful African night skies, and already felt a pang of regret to know that I'm flying out tomorrow.
Which doesn't mean I'll cancel the blog just yet. First of all, I'm going to Mozambique next, for a week, and I'll also have brief stops in South Africa (Johannesburg) and Nairobi (Kenya) on my way back, which might be worth blogging about. Four African countries in toto, if all goes according to plan. Second, I've got quite a few stories left to tell.
Friday, April 16, 2004
THE BIG DAY LOOMS AHEAD
On May 18, Malawians will go to the polls. Who will win? Nobody knows, and that's good in a way, at least. It's not one of these countries where the result is a foregone conclusion.
It's obscene, the role that egos and corruption play in African politics. Bakili Muluzi, the president, whose picture is in every government office, has served his constitutional maximum of two terms, so why can't he just step down gracefully? Instead, he tried to get a law passed to allow him to serve a third. Parliament refused. So now he's picked some puppet to run for him. I don't know much about him except that everyone thinks he's a pure pawn of Muluzi. One newspaper says that Muluzi even wanted to put his own picture on the ballot, though he's not running. The way he chose the pawn, over the heads of senior members of his party, has created a big rift, with a lot of former UDF-ers running as independents.
And yet it still seems there will be a new president.
The opposition is fragmented. There were efforts to form a coalition, but all the candidates had their eye on the presidency. So it unraveled, and now there are a whole lot of parties competing. How that interacts with the voting system, I have no idea.
Some of the newspapers circulating in Lilongwe are passionately against Muluzi and UDF. "Save us from this torture, UDF," pleaded one of them, to the opposition candidates. Can't say I disagree. It seems that someone corruptly sold off the state maize stash in 2002, thus helping to bring about the famine then which killed many Malawians. They also defied the IMF, indulging in domestic borrowing which drove up inflation and interest rates and put the country on the wrong foot with donors for who knows how long. But will the papers influence the country's majority of illiterate peasants? Hardly.
Public opinion polls are inadequate here: rare, inaccurate, published when out-of-date, and so on. As far as I can tell, nobody has a clue what will happen come May 18th.
For my part, I'm rooting against UDF.
On May 18, Malawians will go to the polls. Who will win? Nobody knows, and that's good in a way, at least. It's not one of these countries where the result is a foregone conclusion.
It's obscene, the role that egos and corruption play in African politics. Bakili Muluzi, the president, whose picture is in every government office, has served his constitutional maximum of two terms, so why can't he just step down gracefully? Instead, he tried to get a law passed to allow him to serve a third. Parliament refused. So now he's picked some puppet to run for him. I don't know much about him except that everyone thinks he's a pure pawn of Muluzi. One newspaper says that Muluzi even wanted to put his own picture on the ballot, though he's not running. The way he chose the pawn, over the heads of senior members of his party, has created a big rift, with a lot of former UDF-ers running as independents.
And yet it still seems there will be a new president.
The opposition is fragmented. There were efforts to form a coalition, but all the candidates had their eye on the presidency. So it unraveled, and now there are a whole lot of parties competing. How that interacts with the voting system, I have no idea.
Some of the newspapers circulating in Lilongwe are passionately against Muluzi and UDF. "Save us from this torture, UDF," pleaded one of them, to the opposition candidates. Can't say I disagree. It seems that someone corruptly sold off the state maize stash in 2002, thus helping to bring about the famine then which killed many Malawians. They also defied the IMF, indulging in domestic borrowing which drove up inflation and interest rates and put the country on the wrong foot with donors for who knows how long. But will the papers influence the country's majority of illiterate peasants? Hardly.
Public opinion polls are inadequate here: rare, inaccurate, published when out-of-date, and so on. As far as I can tell, nobody has a clue what will happen come May 18th.
For my part, I'm rooting against UDF.
ENCOUNTER WITH A SPIDER
I was startled a few days back when, walking across the floor, I seemed to catch a bit of motion from the corner of my eye. I looked down at the rug, and it took my eyes a minute to notice it. It was a bit dim, the rug was dark blue, and the furry brown legs spreading out sort of blended in, so that it took the eye a moment to identify... a piece of cloth?... did I drop something?... It was startling to recognize what it was, and a tremor of horror ran through me as I moved back.
But the horror lasted only a second, and soon was eclipsed (not exactly replaced) by fascination. My fiancee was delighted, partly because she found my fear amusing. (She rather overestimated how afraid I was, because she thought my fear of spiders was comparable to her fear of cockroaches. I'm not actually that arachnophobic.)
We gazed at it for a while on the rug. Then we watched it run. Against the white tiles of the floor it was much more visible. Legs included, it was about three inches in diameter; the biggest spider I've ever seen outside of a cage, but I know there are spiders quite a bit bigger.
My fiancee did what is traditionally, I suppose, the man's job: she followed it with a plate, trapped it, slid a magazine under the plate, picked up the magazine-and-plate prison with the spider inside, took it outside and released it. I remember the way the spider moved under the plate, its legs rustling around. The way it slid along under the sloped sides of the plate revealed the softness of its body.
It ran across the stones of the courtyard and disappeared into the grass. Sometimes we remember it and miss it a bit. But I wouldn't sleep well with it in the room. Spiders kill our enemies, insects, not us, so why do we hate and fear them? I don't know, but it's an instinct that I for one can't overcome.
I was startled a few days back when, walking across the floor, I seemed to catch a bit of motion from the corner of my eye. I looked down at the rug, and it took my eyes a minute to notice it. It was a bit dim, the rug was dark blue, and the furry brown legs spreading out sort of blended in, so that it took the eye a moment to identify... a piece of cloth?... did I drop something?... It was startling to recognize what it was, and a tremor of horror ran through me as I moved back.
But the horror lasted only a second, and soon was eclipsed (not exactly replaced) by fascination. My fiancee was delighted, partly because she found my fear amusing. (She rather overestimated how afraid I was, because she thought my fear of spiders was comparable to her fear of cockroaches. I'm not actually that arachnophobic.)
We gazed at it for a while on the rug. Then we watched it run. Against the white tiles of the floor it was much more visible. Legs included, it was about three inches in diameter; the biggest spider I've ever seen outside of a cage, but I know there are spiders quite a bit bigger.
My fiancee did what is traditionally, I suppose, the man's job: she followed it with a plate, trapped it, slid a magazine under the plate, picked up the magazine-and-plate prison with the spider inside, took it outside and released it. I remember the way the spider moved under the plate, its legs rustling around. The way it slid along under the sloped sides of the plate revealed the softness of its body.
It ran across the stones of the courtyard and disappeared into the grass. Sometimes we remember it and miss it a bit. But I wouldn't sleep well with it in the room. Spiders kill our enemies, insects, not us, so why do we hate and fear them? I don't know, but it's an instinct that I for one can't overcome.
MARKET-DOMINANT MINORITIES
There is a phenomenon all over the world that certain ethnic groups perform very well and dominate the economy. Amy Chua's book World on Fire describes the phenomenon. In Southeast Asia, it's the Chinese. In Russia, the Jews. In Mexico and West Africa, the Lebanese. In Latin America, the whites. The Jews are the stereotypical example of a market-dominant minority. Market-dominant minorities make democratic capitalism very difficult, because if the rich are members of an ethnic minority they are easy to isolate, and the majority is always tempted to dispossess them if they can control the government by their votes. Market-dominant minorities are associated with poor development outcomes. The East Asian countries that achieved booming growth-- Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea-- all lack them, as do Europe and the US.
In Malawi, the phenomenon of market-dominant minorities is starkly visible. It seems that almost every business establishment is run by some kind of ethnic minority. Indians are a market-dominant minority. Whites are a market-dominant minority. Arabs are a market-dominant minority. Chinese are a market-dominant minority. Of the market-dominant minorities I've talked to personally (whites and Indians, no Arabs so far) they tend to have a bleak view of the country, and their attitudes to Malawians tend to be scornful and racist. By an unspoken pact, they mingle with each other as equals, and the blacks remain in a subordinate role. Pardon the generalizations, and of course this is no scientific survey. But you notice the pattern.
(By the way, it might seem more "politically correct" to say "Africans" than "blacks." But this seems unfair to me. A lot of whites, not to mention Arabs, were born in Africa. The term may make some people uncomfortable; it makes me uncomfortable too, actually. I think this discomfort is something you just have to swallow and transcend. Maybe that discomfort is a reminder of facts about the world that should make us uncomfortable: if so, that is useful, and we shouldn't try to sterilize the language through political correctness.)
I haven't noticed any resentment against the market-dominant minorities from the blacks. Which is good, I think, because it's always a temptation for the non-market-dominant majority to think the minority cheated somehow, and the problem is just maldistribution of resources, whereas in fact market dominance always (possibly "always" is too strong, but I doubt it) reflects certain aspects of the character of the market-dominant ethnicity. And yet I always find the phenomenon a bit mind-boggling. Why are the two photo shops in town run by an Arab and a Chinese? Why don't the millions of blacks decide to do that? How do the handful of whites, Indians, Arabs and Chinese here manage to float so high above the rest? People look so equal; why do some groups do so much better than others? This mystery has its exciting side-- if we could all change our behaviors a bit, do business like them, imagine how prosperous the world could be!-- and its disturbing side-- as if people are predestined to certain stations in life, not by laws, not by macroeconomic conditions, but by their own cultural programming. Why and how is cultural programming so strong?
Big question, of course. I'll stop there.
There is a phenomenon all over the world that certain ethnic groups perform very well and dominate the economy. Amy Chua's book World on Fire describes the phenomenon. In Southeast Asia, it's the Chinese. In Russia, the Jews. In Mexico and West Africa, the Lebanese. In Latin America, the whites. The Jews are the stereotypical example of a market-dominant minority. Market-dominant minorities make democratic capitalism very difficult, because if the rich are members of an ethnic minority they are easy to isolate, and the majority is always tempted to dispossess them if they can control the government by their votes. Market-dominant minorities are associated with poor development outcomes. The East Asian countries that achieved booming growth-- Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea-- all lack them, as do Europe and the US.
In Malawi, the phenomenon of market-dominant minorities is starkly visible. It seems that almost every business establishment is run by some kind of ethnic minority. Indians are a market-dominant minority. Whites are a market-dominant minority. Arabs are a market-dominant minority. Chinese are a market-dominant minority. Of the market-dominant minorities I've talked to personally (whites and Indians, no Arabs so far) they tend to have a bleak view of the country, and their attitudes to Malawians tend to be scornful and racist. By an unspoken pact, they mingle with each other as equals, and the blacks remain in a subordinate role. Pardon the generalizations, and of course this is no scientific survey. But you notice the pattern.
(By the way, it might seem more "politically correct" to say "Africans" than "blacks." But this seems unfair to me. A lot of whites, not to mention Arabs, were born in Africa. The term may make some people uncomfortable; it makes me uncomfortable too, actually. I think this discomfort is something you just have to swallow and transcend. Maybe that discomfort is a reminder of facts about the world that should make us uncomfortable: if so, that is useful, and we shouldn't try to sterilize the language through political correctness.)
I haven't noticed any resentment against the market-dominant minorities from the blacks. Which is good, I think, because it's always a temptation for the non-market-dominant majority to think the minority cheated somehow, and the problem is just maldistribution of resources, whereas in fact market dominance always (possibly "always" is too strong, but I doubt it) reflects certain aspects of the character of the market-dominant ethnicity. And yet I always find the phenomenon a bit mind-boggling. Why are the two photo shops in town run by an Arab and a Chinese? Why don't the millions of blacks decide to do that? How do the handful of whites, Indians, Arabs and Chinese here manage to float so high above the rest? People look so equal; why do some groups do so much better than others? This mystery has its exciting side-- if we could all change our behaviors a bit, do business like them, imagine how prosperous the world could be!-- and its disturbing side-- as if people are predestined to certain stations in life, not by laws, not by macroeconomic conditions, but by their own cultural programming. Why and how is cultural programming so strong?
Big question, of course. I'll stop there.
STEVIE AND CHERRY TOMATOES
A snatch of everyday life that might help you to imagine Malawi:
Five minutes from my office is a parking lot/town square with a couple of restaurants. Tasty Take Aways is very quick, cheap (under $3, typically) and has friendly staff, and Ali Baba's is slower but tastier, with larger portions, and only slightly more expensive. I go there for lunch a lot, and the streets are full of kids and young men selling things. There are beggars too, some crippled, some women with babies, to whom I would immediately give change in the US, but here... how can you help everybody? Some of the boys are beggars. "Please boss, no mother no father give me your money..."
But not Stevie: he sells things. And he recognizes me as a customer. Once, early on, he sold me cherry tomatoes. They were about 10 times cheaper than what you'd pay in the US, so I gave them a try. They were pretty good, and addicting. I loved the way the juice popped in my mouth.
Lots of other people sell things too. Ties are a popular item, and I've bought a couple of them. Guys walk around offering them, with great selection and prices. I've picked up a couple of shirts too, one of which I particularly like. But so many of the merchants don't have a clue. They'll walk around with one thing to sell: say, a cell phone, or batteries, or plugs, or bicycle parts. "Very cheap, very cheap." It doesn't seem to register that price isn't the problem: we just don't need the things. They keep talking about the cheapness as if that would help. I felt sorry for them as much for their poverty as for their seeming lack of commercial savvy.
I had hopes for Stevie, though. He recognized me as a customer, and he picked up the fact that I really liked the cherry tomatoes. I was hoping he would become my supplier. I told him once that if he brought cherry tomatoes again I would buy them for sure. I said "tomorrow." But "tomorrow" I went past City Center in my car but did not stop in that part. I returned the next day hoping for my cherry tomatoes.
"I had them yesterday," he said. "But you didn't come. You just drove past..." he pointed to the road where I had driven past. "Today I don't have them." And then he wanted me to buy his wares for the day, probably big tomatoes or something, I don't remember...
I've seen Stevie a lot of times since then. He always recognizes me. But he never seems to have the cherry tomatoes, so I never buy anything. I guess it wouldn't make sense as a business model, getting the cherry tomatoes for my occasional visits. I don't know. I really want to give him some business but I don't want it to be charity, but real business: identifying a motivated buyer and catering to that demand. I'd pay him three times what I paid the first time for those delicious things. Too bad.
A snatch of everyday life that might help you to imagine Malawi:
Five minutes from my office is a parking lot/town square with a couple of restaurants. Tasty Take Aways is very quick, cheap (under $3, typically) and has friendly staff, and Ali Baba's is slower but tastier, with larger portions, and only slightly more expensive. I go there for lunch a lot, and the streets are full of kids and young men selling things. There are beggars too, some crippled, some women with babies, to whom I would immediately give change in the US, but here... how can you help everybody? Some of the boys are beggars. "Please boss, no mother no father give me your money..."
But not Stevie: he sells things. And he recognizes me as a customer. Once, early on, he sold me cherry tomatoes. They were about 10 times cheaper than what you'd pay in the US, so I gave them a try. They were pretty good, and addicting. I loved the way the juice popped in my mouth.
Lots of other people sell things too. Ties are a popular item, and I've bought a couple of them. Guys walk around offering them, with great selection and prices. I've picked up a couple of shirts too, one of which I particularly like. But so many of the merchants don't have a clue. They'll walk around with one thing to sell: say, a cell phone, or batteries, or plugs, or bicycle parts. "Very cheap, very cheap." It doesn't seem to register that price isn't the problem: we just don't need the things. They keep talking about the cheapness as if that would help. I felt sorry for them as much for their poverty as for their seeming lack of commercial savvy.
I had hopes for Stevie, though. He recognized me as a customer, and he picked up the fact that I really liked the cherry tomatoes. I was hoping he would become my supplier. I told him once that if he brought cherry tomatoes again I would buy them for sure. I said "tomorrow." But "tomorrow" I went past City Center in my car but did not stop in that part. I returned the next day hoping for my cherry tomatoes.
"I had them yesterday," he said. "But you didn't come. You just drove past..." he pointed to the road where I had driven past. "Today I don't have them." And then he wanted me to buy his wares for the day, probably big tomatoes or something, I don't remember...
I've seen Stevie a lot of times since then. He always recognizes me. But he never seems to have the cherry tomatoes, so I never buy anything. I guess it wouldn't make sense as a business model, getting the cherry tomatoes for my occasional visits. I don't know. I really want to give him some business but I don't want it to be charity, but real business: identifying a motivated buyer and catering to that demand. I'd pay him three times what I paid the first time for those delicious things. Too bad.
TEA FIELDS AND THE SOUTH
One of the things that makes the views of Mount Mulanje so beautiful are the tea fields. Unlike the shaggy and often half-dead cornfields that cover so much of Malawi, tea fields are bright green and very neatly shaped, almost like a hedge. I don't know if they grow that way naturally or are pruned (which would be a lot of work for no reason that I can see), but anyway the effect is lovely. Tea fields are a cash crop, for export, unlike the cornfields, which are planted for subsistence-- you hardly ever see maize even in restaurants and cornfields. It's only one symptom of a general phenomenon: "the south is better." There's a bit more cash-crop and industrial development, Blantyre is a genuine city (even sort of modern) and Zomba a very pleasant African town among the mountains, the landscapes are nicer, more rolling... you noticed it in all sorts of ways.
One of the things that makes the views of Mount Mulanje so beautiful are the tea fields. Unlike the shaggy and often half-dead cornfields that cover so much of Malawi, tea fields are bright green and very neatly shaped, almost like a hedge. I don't know if they grow that way naturally or are pruned (which would be a lot of work for no reason that I can see), but anyway the effect is lovely. Tea fields are a cash crop, for export, unlike the cornfields, which are planted for subsistence-- you hardly ever see maize even in restaurants and cornfields. It's only one symptom of a general phenomenon: "the south is better." There's a bit more cash-crop and industrial development, Blantyre is a genuine city (even sort of modern) and Zomba a very pleasant African town among the mountains, the landscapes are nicer, more rolling... you noticed it in all sorts of ways.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
MULANJE
Mount Mulanje is the highest mountain in Malawi at 3001 meters (about 10,000 feet.) That won't impress Coloradans (ours go over 14,000 feet) but I've sometimes wondered whether there would be a better way to measure mountains that took account of the degree to which they loom over you when you stand at the foot of them. Looking up at the summits of Mulanje from directly below, they loom very grandly: a 70-degree angle maybe. Glorious. Mulanje is actually not a single mountain but a "massif," an area 300 km square that surges out of the surrounding countryside, with a lot of different peaks. The massif faces the world with huge cliffs, some of them thousands of feet high, and it is often shrouded in cloud. Canyons cut their way into it, and through one of these we went up to Chambe Hut, on the "plateau." It has a great view of Chambe Peak, but as a destination I prefer lakes, perhaps... The hike was beautiful, though. We passed one lovely waterfall where my fiancee went for a swim (sadly, I had forgotten my suit). One of our guides also swam a bit. I was very envious of the swimmers. Sad, sad, sad. But a beautiful falls.
One strange thing about mountains is that they're supposed to be harsh, but they can be so wonderfully, madly full of life. Certain stretches of Mulanje were like that: lush with ferns, with pine trees with hanging needles that reminded me of maidens' hair, with vines, with spiderwebs that dangled among the trees, shone in the sun, miracles of design.
I would rather have done without the porters, perhaps. Unix and Rafik, two local high school students, met us as soon as we came into town, and helped us to the lodge, then showed us up the mountain. They were very friendly and cheerful for the most part, and we couldn't have found the way without them. But on the way they started telling us their sob stories about the difficulty of paying school fees. Then they seemed disappointed at their pay, which was above the standard daily rate and far above what they had casually mentioned the night before (unless they had meant an hourly rate, which they didn't specify at the time, and even if they did we were not far short of paying them that). Then the next day they played a tacky trick on us. They said they needed a ride to Mulanje town, and we agreed. But once we got there, they said they needed to buy school uniforms but didn't have the money, and "we're just begging" for more. We broke and gave them 200 each (about $2; they asked for 500). I wish I had given them nothing and scolded them for dishonesty. Instead, I created an incentive for it.
Mount Mulanje is the highest mountain in Malawi at 3001 meters (about 10,000 feet.) That won't impress Coloradans (ours go over 14,000 feet) but I've sometimes wondered whether there would be a better way to measure mountains that took account of the degree to which they loom over you when you stand at the foot of them. Looking up at the summits of Mulanje from directly below, they loom very grandly: a 70-degree angle maybe. Glorious. Mulanje is actually not a single mountain but a "massif," an area 300 km square that surges out of the surrounding countryside, with a lot of different peaks. The massif faces the world with huge cliffs, some of them thousands of feet high, and it is often shrouded in cloud. Canyons cut their way into it, and through one of these we went up to Chambe Hut, on the "plateau." It has a great view of Chambe Peak, but as a destination I prefer lakes, perhaps... The hike was beautiful, though. We passed one lovely waterfall where my fiancee went for a swim (sadly, I had forgotten my suit). One of our guides also swam a bit. I was very envious of the swimmers. Sad, sad, sad. But a beautiful falls.
One strange thing about mountains is that they're supposed to be harsh, but they can be so wonderfully, madly full of life. Certain stretches of Mulanje were like that: lush with ferns, with pine trees with hanging needles that reminded me of maidens' hair, with vines, with spiderwebs that dangled among the trees, shone in the sun, miracles of design.
I would rather have done without the porters, perhaps. Unix and Rafik, two local high school students, met us as soon as we came into town, and helped us to the lodge, then showed us up the mountain. They were very friendly and cheerful for the most part, and we couldn't have found the way without them. But on the way they started telling us their sob stories about the difficulty of paying school fees. Then they seemed disappointed at their pay, which was above the standard daily rate and far above what they had casually mentioned the night before (unless they had meant an hourly rate, which they didn't specify at the time, and even if they did we were not far short of paying them that). Then the next day they played a tacky trick on us. They said they needed a ride to Mulanje town, and we agreed. But once we got there, they said they needed to buy school uniforms but didn't have the money, and "we're just begging" for more. We broke and gave them 200 each (about $2; they asked for 500). I wish I had given them nothing and scolded them for dishonesty. Instead, I created an incentive for it.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
CHIROMBO THE DOMESTIC HYENA
One of the chief attractions of the lodge where we stayed is the "domestic hyena." Semi-domestic, I would say. Peter, the stout and humorous owner, and Garret, an Englishman lingering in Africa after volunteering who stays at the lodge for room and board (but no pay), keep saying "he's just like a dog." They got him from a trader someplace and he would have been killed without them, and now he's five months old. It is certainly remarkable to have a hyena walking around, to see his face, his head, his colors. You can watch the way he behaves and imagine him in the wild...
But he's not "just like a dog." Only "semi-domestic," I would say. His mouth and teeth are always active. Not that he really bites, I guess; hyenas actually live on their mothers' milk for a year, and Chirombo is not ready to eat meat yet. But you can see how he is, as Garret puts it, "programmed;" he'll put his teeth around things, people's body parts, feeling them, playing... I guess with a carnivore the way of discovering the world is by biting it. I felt sorry for him; it's as if he wanted to be like a dog, but he couldn't. Peter and Garret claim they'll just keep him. Hmm. Right now, a person can overpower him, but when he gets bigger... I wonder if a person could love a hyena. No doubt they could, but there would be something sad about it, because the hyena's strange, sneaky, tooth-gripping nature would always be a barrier to real friendship.
Hyenas are somewhat ugly. Oh, and they do laugh: Peter grabbed Chirombo by his hind legs and hung him up-side-down and the sound he made really was like a weird, screechy kind of laughter. So people have trouble taking them seriously, and are inclined to think they are scavengers off the prey of lions. But it seems that hyenas are actually better hunters than lions: the hyenas kill something, then the lions come and chase them away from their kill, and the hyenas wait and get the leftovers. It seems like that must be a metaphor for something.
For the moment, he's still small, and it's fun, though still a bit scary, to play rough with him. You have to be mean to have your way with him: beat him away, wrestle his head to the ground with all your might, then do it again. He has tremendous stamina, never gets tired, and doesn't seem to mind the beatings, doesn't get mad, it's even his way of being playful.
One of the chief attractions of the lodge where we stayed is the "domestic hyena." Semi-domestic, I would say. Peter, the stout and humorous owner, and Garret, an Englishman lingering in Africa after volunteering who stays at the lodge for room and board (but no pay), keep saying "he's just like a dog." They got him from a trader someplace and he would have been killed without them, and now he's five months old. It is certainly remarkable to have a hyena walking around, to see his face, his head, his colors. You can watch the way he behaves and imagine him in the wild...
But he's not "just like a dog." Only "semi-domestic," I would say. His mouth and teeth are always active. Not that he really bites, I guess; hyenas actually live on their mothers' milk for a year, and Chirombo is not ready to eat meat yet. But you can see how he is, as Garret puts it, "programmed;" he'll put his teeth around things, people's body parts, feeling them, playing... I guess with a carnivore the way of discovering the world is by biting it. I felt sorry for him; it's as if he wanted to be like a dog, but he couldn't. Peter and Garret claim they'll just keep him. Hmm. Right now, a person can overpower him, but when he gets bigger... I wonder if a person could love a hyena. No doubt they could, but there would be something sad about it, because the hyena's strange, sneaky, tooth-gripping nature would always be a barrier to real friendship.
Hyenas are somewhat ugly. Oh, and they do laugh: Peter grabbed Chirombo by his hind legs and hung him up-side-down and the sound he made really was like a weird, screechy kind of laughter. So people have trouble taking them seriously, and are inclined to think they are scavengers off the prey of lions. But it seems that hyenas are actually better hunters than lions: the hyenas kill something, then the lions come and chase them away from their kill, and the hyenas wait and get the leftovers. It seems like that must be a metaphor for something.
For the moment, he's still small, and it's fun, though still a bit scary, to play rough with him. You have to be mean to have your way with him: beat him away, wrestle his head to the ground with all your might, then do it again. He has tremendous stamina, never gets tired, and doesn't seem to mind the beatings, doesn't get mad, it's even his way of being playful.
HIPPOS IN LIWONDE
In Liwonde, we saw impalas, waterbucks, baboons, mongooses, a hyena and a wide variety of birds, but the biggest attraction was the hippo. Hippos are massive creatures, the third largest land animal after elephants and rhinos. Elephants, by the way, also live in Liwonde, but this time of year it's very hard to see them. They are further north, where the ground is less boggy, and the bridges and roads there are not passable during the rainy season. Hippos stay put more. Their way of life seems a profoundly reasonable one, more so, in the African climate, than that of diurnal human beings. Hippos come out of the river at night to feed-- night, when the air is cool and fresh, and a glorious array of stars is strewn across the sky, when the landscape loses its gaudy suncooked colors and a tenderness and mystery weaves itself into the world. I would rather be nocturnal in Africa. The hot daytime hippos spend in the river, first sleeping, later playing.
The strangest thing about hippos, though, is that there was something ghostly about them. Before we went to the lodge, we walked across the floodplain that gradually turns into the wide swampy edge of the river, when through the air we heard an oink-like grunting sound. We guessed it was from hippos. Hippo noises always seem much closer than they really are.
Later we saw the hippos in the river, on a long canoe ride through the wetlands along the side of the river. We rowed around a lagoon and saw the hippos in the middle of it. But except for the rare moments when they would jump, or yawn, you could just see their eyes and noses. They're dangerous, so we couldn't move in close. They seemed to be having a good time. You didn't know how many there were. We observed a group of hippos for a while and we had counted about five, when suddenly the number of hippos' heads poking above the surface increased. The count jumped all the way to ten. Then back down to five or so, but now the question was, had there really been a group of five, or were there more, and they were rotating which ones were on top? There was no knowing.
We rowed in the marshy edge of the river for a long time. Sometimes the bought was pushing through tall grass, and I'm sure that from the sure you wouldn't have known it was a river. I kept my eyes peeled for crocodiles the whole time, but in vain. "They're shy creatures," the guide told us. "They've already heard the commotion and gone down to the bottom." By contrast, the hippos were not shy, grunting and oinking and splashing and floating around for all to see-- and yet still far away, still mostly submerged.
We saw them again at night, this time on land, in the light of a bright flashlight. The night drive seemed about to come to an abrupt halt early on when the vehicle, a huge beast of a machine that ran through roads no 4WD I've driven would dare attempt, got stuck in the mud. I joined Peter, the main man at the lodge, and a black employee, shoeless in the mud and pushing with all our might, and, as in Msinja, it seemed pretty hopeless for a while and then we finally managed to get it out. And went on with the night drive. We saw four hippos in all, and all of them briefly. They vanished into the bushes. They don't graze on the banks of the river, it turns out, but prefer to go up the mountain slopes for a ways. We only saw them passing, ten or fifteen seconds, then they were gone. By the time I woke up in the early morning, they were back in the river. And yet my fiancee said she heard them in the night, their oinky sounds. They may have walked right past the lodge, and we wouldn't have seen them, not without the bright flashlights that Peter brought with him.
Hippos-- happy, jolly stereotype strangely at odds with their brisk nocturnal activity, huge and yet somehow ghostly, mysterious.
In Liwonde, we saw impalas, waterbucks, baboons, mongooses, a hyena and a wide variety of birds, but the biggest attraction was the hippo. Hippos are massive creatures, the third largest land animal after elephants and rhinos. Elephants, by the way, also live in Liwonde, but this time of year it's very hard to see them. They are further north, where the ground is less boggy, and the bridges and roads there are not passable during the rainy season. Hippos stay put more. Their way of life seems a profoundly reasonable one, more so, in the African climate, than that of diurnal human beings. Hippos come out of the river at night to feed-- night, when the air is cool and fresh, and a glorious array of stars is strewn across the sky, when the landscape loses its gaudy suncooked colors and a tenderness and mystery weaves itself into the world. I would rather be nocturnal in Africa. The hot daytime hippos spend in the river, first sleeping, later playing.
The strangest thing about hippos, though, is that there was something ghostly about them. Before we went to the lodge, we walked across the floodplain that gradually turns into the wide swampy edge of the river, when through the air we heard an oink-like grunting sound. We guessed it was from hippos. Hippo noises always seem much closer than they really are.
Later we saw the hippos in the river, on a long canoe ride through the wetlands along the side of the river. We rowed around a lagoon and saw the hippos in the middle of it. But except for the rare moments when they would jump, or yawn, you could just see their eyes and noses. They're dangerous, so we couldn't move in close. They seemed to be having a good time. You didn't know how many there were. We observed a group of hippos for a while and we had counted about five, when suddenly the number of hippos' heads poking above the surface increased. The count jumped all the way to ten. Then back down to five or so, but now the question was, had there really been a group of five, or were there more, and they were rotating which ones were on top? There was no knowing.
We rowed in the marshy edge of the river for a long time. Sometimes the bought was pushing through tall grass, and I'm sure that from the sure you wouldn't have known it was a river. I kept my eyes peeled for crocodiles the whole time, but in vain. "They're shy creatures," the guide told us. "They've already heard the commotion and gone down to the bottom." By contrast, the hippos were not shy, grunting and oinking and splashing and floating around for all to see-- and yet still far away, still mostly submerged.
We saw them again at night, this time on land, in the light of a bright flashlight. The night drive seemed about to come to an abrupt halt early on when the vehicle, a huge beast of a machine that ran through roads no 4WD I've driven would dare attempt, got stuck in the mud. I joined Peter, the main man at the lodge, and a black employee, shoeless in the mud and pushing with all our might, and, as in Msinja, it seemed pretty hopeless for a while and then we finally managed to get it out. And went on with the night drive. We saw four hippos in all, and all of them briefly. They vanished into the bushes. They don't graze on the banks of the river, it turns out, but prefer to go up the mountain slopes for a ways. We only saw them passing, ten or fifteen seconds, then they were gone. By the time I woke up in the early morning, they were back in the river. And yet my fiancee said she heard them in the night, their oinky sounds. They may have walked right past the lodge, and we wouldn't have seen them, not without the bright flashlights that Peter brought with him.
Hippos-- happy, jolly stereotype strangely at odds with their brisk nocturnal activity, huge and yet somehow ghostly, mysterious.
BEAUTIFUL MALAWI
We had a few days off for Easter Break, so we left Lilongwe and went down south to Liwonde National Park and Mount Mulanje. "There are so many beautiful places in Malawi, why did we have to end up in the worst of them?" was my fiancee's comment by the end of the trip. Both Liwonde and Mulanje were really wonderful. In general, I prefer the south, although there are things I like about Lilongwe too. But it's a bit flat, and hot, and it was nice to find out that Malawi has its fair share of natural splendor.
We had a few days off for Easter Break, so we left Lilongwe and went down south to Liwonde National Park and Mount Mulanje. "There are so many beautiful places in Malawi, why did we have to end up in the worst of them?" was my fiancee's comment by the end of the trip. Both Liwonde and Mulanje were really wonderful. In general, I prefer the south, although there are things I like about Lilongwe too. But it's a bit flat, and hot, and it was nice to find out that Malawi has its fair share of natural splendor.
Monday, April 05, 2004
UNDER AN AFRICAN MOON
The most spell-binding experience of the weekend was a walk I took along the highway just as evening was falling. It turns out that it's only about ten or fifteen minutes on foot from my guesthouse before you just about leave the city behind, and around you are the locust trees above the fields, the tall tall grass, not really wild Africa but feels close to it. And above it all, a moon. Big, fat, full moon, making everything bright, and the stillness all around. There was such satisfaction to the motion of walking, foot in front of foot, in the coolness of the air and the calmness of the evening. I felt like I could have walked all night long without getting tired, or even if I did get tired it would have felt good, just the land and the moon and the tall grass and the warm-cool air. Simple pleasures. From which the wealth bubble distracts you. That's true in the US too, I suppose, but far more so here.
Life's most wonderful moments are when you do something for no reason at all, something which you are free to do anytime but why would you bother with it, and find that you really enjoy it. It's wonderful because it makes it seem like probably most of the world is wonderful and you're just trapped in the grimy, stressful, tiresome parts of it, and if you could free yourself a bit, shake loose from things, all would be bliss. It happened to me once when I took a Russian electrichka to a random town called Saltikovskaya and had a day of pure freedom and bliss that was as easy as a breeze. That heralded an excellent summer... Last night a stroll along the highway had the same enchanting feeling. And the average Malawian may have hardly a kwacha to his name, live in rural villages with a chronically aching stomach, but evenings like that, outside of the city-- he has those to his heart's content. Maybe I should get out of the habit of pitying them so much.
The most spell-binding experience of the weekend was a walk I took along the highway just as evening was falling. It turns out that it's only about ten or fifteen minutes on foot from my guesthouse before you just about leave the city behind, and around you are the locust trees above the fields, the tall tall grass, not really wild Africa but feels close to it. And above it all, a moon. Big, fat, full moon, making everything bright, and the stillness all around. There was such satisfaction to the motion of walking, foot in front of foot, in the coolness of the air and the calmness of the evening. I felt like I could have walked all night long without getting tired, or even if I did get tired it would have felt good, just the land and the moon and the tall grass and the warm-cool air. Simple pleasures. From which the wealth bubble distracts you. That's true in the US too, I suppose, but far more so here.
Life's most wonderful moments are when you do something for no reason at all, something which you are free to do anytime but why would you bother with it, and find that you really enjoy it. It's wonderful because it makes it seem like probably most of the world is wonderful and you're just trapped in the grimy, stressful, tiresome parts of it, and if you could free yourself a bit, shake loose from things, all would be bliss. It happened to me once when I took a Russian electrichka to a random town called Saltikovskaya and had a day of pure freedom and bliss that was as easy as a breeze. That heralded an excellent summer... Last night a stroll along the highway had the same enchanting feeling. And the average Malawian may have hardly a kwacha to his name, live in rural villages with a chronically aching stomach, but evenings like that, outside of the city-- he has those to his heart's content. Maybe I should get out of the habit of pitying them so much.
QUIET WEEKEND IN LILONGWE
I had a fever Friday night and on Saturday I had a bit of a fever, so we dropped the idea of an out-of-town trip and stayed in the Lilongwe for the weekend. My fever got up to 102, and I got a malaria test just in case but it was negative. The malaria test was only $4, in a very nice clinic on the fringes of Lilongwe. Clean floors, professional nurses, a school, church and clinic altogether. There was an American doctor there, too, though I didn't talk to him. My fiance took very good care of me, so that it was almost pleasant.
Walking around Lilongwe in the afternoon, we found a Chinese garden. It was very odd to see the bright red and yellow and green, the wooden pagodas with stylized shingle roofs, there in Lilongwe. Who built it? More power to them, anyway. A bit run-down, and there was supposed to be a pond but it was dry, just a flat cement basin, but still, it was a pleasant (and odd) surprise. A Malawian chorus of some kind was singing there.
Africans are very good at a capella singing. While we were driving around the city we saw a lot of choirs walking along the road singing. They were dressed in uniforms and had labels like "Lilongwe Police Choir." Was it a fundraiser? I don't know. It looked like a political rally, too, but what does the Lilongwe Police Choir have to do with politics?
On Sunday we took a walk in the Nature Sanctuary. It was wonderful by the river. I should mention that the weather is getting cooler lately, and on Saturday walking outside was quite comfortable. When we went into Old Town to buy a radio, it was very hot, but in the Nature Sanctuary it's shady and cool. Bamboo, flowers. An interesting thing about this place is how the lushness and prosperity of nature contrasts with the impoverishment and bleakness of conditions for humanity, at least if you measure them in the terms of most other parts of the world. And yet humans are still prospering in comparison with their various animal rivals. They are increasing rapidly in population, and they probably starve less than lions or elephants do. It's all relative.
The lucky thing about the walk in the Nature Sanctuary was that a monkey had escaped from its cage, and we got to watch it cross the road, climb a tree with its baby, then run around as the animal trainers tried to catch it and put it back in its cage, eventually succeeding. Once the mother monkey (baby clinging to her stomach), about two feet tall maybe, ran up to me and for a moment put her arms around my leg as if she would climb me like a tree.
The unlucky thing was that the rain had made the logs on all the bridges soggy. One of the bridges broke and my fiance fell through (only one leg) and ended up rather bruised (but no complaints, she was a great sport about it :) ).
I had a fever Friday night and on Saturday I had a bit of a fever, so we dropped the idea of an out-of-town trip and stayed in the Lilongwe for the weekend. My fever got up to 102, and I got a malaria test just in case but it was negative. The malaria test was only $4, in a very nice clinic on the fringes of Lilongwe. Clean floors, professional nurses, a school, church and clinic altogether. There was an American doctor there, too, though I didn't talk to him. My fiance took very good care of me, so that it was almost pleasant.
Walking around Lilongwe in the afternoon, we found a Chinese garden. It was very odd to see the bright red and yellow and green, the wooden pagodas with stylized shingle roofs, there in Lilongwe. Who built it? More power to them, anyway. A bit run-down, and there was supposed to be a pond but it was dry, just a flat cement basin, but still, it was a pleasant (and odd) surprise. A Malawian chorus of some kind was singing there.
Africans are very good at a capella singing. While we were driving around the city we saw a lot of choirs walking along the road singing. They were dressed in uniforms and had labels like "Lilongwe Police Choir." Was it a fundraiser? I don't know. It looked like a political rally, too, but what does the Lilongwe Police Choir have to do with politics?
On Sunday we took a walk in the Nature Sanctuary. It was wonderful by the river. I should mention that the weather is getting cooler lately, and on Saturday walking outside was quite comfortable. When we went into Old Town to buy a radio, it was very hot, but in the Nature Sanctuary it's shady and cool. Bamboo, flowers. An interesting thing about this place is how the lushness and prosperity of nature contrasts with the impoverishment and bleakness of conditions for humanity, at least if you measure them in the terms of most other parts of the world. And yet humans are still prospering in comparison with their various animal rivals. They are increasing rapidly in population, and they probably starve less than lions or elephants do. It's all relative.
The lucky thing about the walk in the Nature Sanctuary was that a monkey had escaped from its cage, and we got to watch it cross the road, climb a tree with its baby, then run around as the animal trainers tried to catch it and put it back in its cage, eventually succeeding. Once the mother monkey (baby clinging to her stomach), about two feet tall maybe, ran up to me and for a moment put her arms around my leg as if she would climb me like a tree.
The unlucky thing was that the rain had made the logs on all the bridges soggy. One of the bridges broke and my fiance fell through (only one leg) and ended up rather bruised (but no complaints, she was a great sport about it :) ).
