life

I found it! A peaceful place in Nhkata Bay where i feel i belong. A restaurant/cafe where the owner and her sister are nice and sweet. The place is unobtrusive, cool and breezy. There is a steady stream of people walking past but I can tuck into the corner to avoid people i don't want to see or wave if i want to chat. I went flor lunch again today and suddenly felt this wave of peace roll over me. Finally!

So I have made it to Lake Malawi. And it is all for which one could hope. A huge body of crystal clear, almost Carribean blue water. The fisherman set out sometime at dark and come back soon after first light. Speaking of, the sunrise this morning was unreal. The golden beams of light were streaking down between stormclouds and the Mozambique coastline was softened by the rain in the distance.

All night long there had been very distant thunderclaps and flashes of lightning though not much rain on this side of the lake. The fishing boats all have lights on the bow and you could see them bobbing up and down.

I am staying in a beautiful thatch roofed cabin on stilts out on a rock creeping into the lake. So i listen to the water lapping the piers below my head all night long. In the storms the waves beat the piers enough to shake me awake in bed.

I speak so fondly of having finally found a peaceful place because Nhkata bay has not been a great town yet; full of tourists and poor interaction with local people. i've not really felt welcome. And it segues into a few topics that I have been meaning to discuss for some time.

Any of you philosophy or art majors who want to chime in with a professional treatise on the subject, please do. The first topic is the idea that as a traveller I have a moral obligation to spend money and the second is the idea that class and economic position of an artist is a consideration in the value of art.

I am a believer in buying locally and in plowing money back into a community. It is why I rail against multi-national corporations. And franchise stores. I often say that if it is possible for me to buy something everywhere (Starbucks coffee for example), then I do not wish to buy it anywhere (even in Seattle where it IS a local chain).

Because this tends to remove capital from a community. And no, I do not even begin to buy the argument that the employees working there get the money and put it back. Those of you who have worked at Target want to chime in with your wage compared to the stockholder dividend? But this is a discussion for another time.

So I was hanging out with some local guys the other day. Artists one and all, making traditional inspired wood carvings and jewelry. Also doing more pop art like T-shirt screenprinting and such. They invited me into their shops and I told them that there was very little chance I would buy anything (I already spent this month's art allowance on some great paintings I found in Mzuzu) but I'd love to come chat and take a look. Nothing appealled to me and I figured that would be it. But they decided to come along on my hike to the beach nearby. We continued to talk, conversation moving into political corruption and the horrible state of the roads in rural areas and the lack of money in Nhkata bay and how poor these guys are.

This then became part of the reason why I should buy their wood carvings. Because they needed the money. We went around and around the subject because it doesn't make sense to me. I think that the distinction must be made of whether this is art (or even just a souvenier) - purchased for the value i see in it and from a desire to experience it over and over at home. Or whether it is charity, given as a thank-you for a monetary donation. This one is deeply seated in my own cultural background and i can't withdraw enough to see the other side, however, so if anyone has insights please interject.

At one point in the afternoon, I received a lecture about coming to Malawi and not spending money buying stuff from these three guys and how that wasn't right. As though I were taking things (pictures of the beautiful lake and stories of my adventures) and not giving back enough. Now I am not much of a consumer of product. I spend my money on good food and drink, and on travel. Julie and I travel to Illinois to see my family and friends, to Massachusetts to see her family and friends, to weddings around the world, to holiday in various places around the country and the world. But I don't buy a lot of 'items'. They aren't very important to me. Yes I would like to have more art in my house but I am not about to buy a bunch of wood carvings in Malawi, take them on a minibus to South Africa, and on a plane to Morocco and Senegal. I have one small bag and it is full to overflowing already.

I also got a heated lecture about staying in a hostel owned by a South African, an American, and a Brit. I asked about another place only to find that it was foreign-owned as well. I asked if there were Malawi-owned places in town and only got evasive answers. Perhaps there aren't any. And certainly the resthouses aimed at overland truck drivers, not tourists, leave much to be desired in terms of cleanliness and ammenities and location without saving a worthy amount of kwacha.

I'll talk more later (maybe after leaving the country) about my feelings on the mistaken priorities of the Malawi government. But for now let me just say that on many levels I agree with these guys. There should be more Malawi-owned businesses. There should be more community development.

But I do draw the line at being viewed as a walking bag of money; which is sometimes how i feel.

To make matters worse, the guys lecturing me and telling me how poor they were had spent from 11am until about 5pm hanging out with me. Just hanging out, doing nothing.

There is an honest belief that each and every Mazunga (foreigner) has a money tree in our backyards. And seemingly nothing I say can convince the people that I have had to work for years to be able to take this trip. Some of this stems from seeing us on vacation, lying around reading books, swimming, playing and having fun, never working and it has become so pervasive that now the idea of a mazunga working is unbelievable. Some of my new friends had a landslide from the rains cause damage to their house - I offered to help them with construction, even telling them that I was a bit of an experienced builder (see my other blog at: 3540remodel.blogspot.com) and it was though I was suddenly speaking in Czech - they could comprehend me giving them money but not offering labor.

My friend Simon, who has lived here longer, was actually able to convince some local friends to let him help fix their fish drying racks and the villiagers came from a mile around when they heard a mazunga was helping with building. I think it was just that it was completely outside of their worldview.

...

So I have spent a few more days here and have grown quite fond of the place. I stopped for an avocado and limes at the market last night. Nhkata bay regularly does not have electricity on Sundays during the day. It usually comes back on around 6pm but was still off at 7:30 so my market trip was in utter darkness illuminated by the occasional candle; so i accidentally got tangerines (which, like oranges here have green peels). But my avocado! About the size of a softball it was rich, ripe, soft, and fleshy. Amazing. And costing about 12¢. Apparently pineapple season in November is insane!

I know that it is true but I can't get over the excitement that fruit grows on trees - just right there for the picking! Seattle has its share of berries which grow everywhere. Blackberry bushes on every corner and every park and I do gather quite a lot but avocados and bananas and pineapples and mangos.... YUM!

I have infiltrated the ex-pat crowd as opposed to the tourist crowd. The juxtaposition of the two is interesting to me. The tourists wear long pants to avoid malaria, the ex-pats don't care and say "oh, I've only had malaria twice this year, it's fine." The tourists are wary of the water, ordering drinks without ice, afraid of schistosomiasis in the lake; the ex-pats get as much ice in this heat as they can find and say "this lake is to beautiful not to go swimming."

Sure they all know each other and it feels a bit like middle school, but it's also nice to have some insider views. Mike is originally from Cape Cod and has lived in Malawi for years. He leases some beachfront land north of Nhkata bay and built a house there at the back of a tiny village. Being 6'3" (1.87m), skinny, white, and gregarious, he is well known by literally everyone; for probably a 50-mile radius.

He brought me up to his house the other day to get away from Nhkata bay and see the countryside. We got off the minibus at an anonymous spot in the midst of corn and casava fields. He led me along a dirt trail which narrowed to become a dirt path and meandered through fields and across streams for nearly a mile before reaching the village (20 thatch and mud houses) and then over a small rise to the beach.

What a place. The beach here is amazing - smooth white sand and not a soul for a mile in either direction. He has a Malawi woman and two of her kids living with him. She made us a delicious beef and rice dish and some Nsima for the kids.

Nsima is the national dish of Malawi. It is actually identical to Ugali, the national dish of Tanzania. It is much like polenta in the southern USA but less grainy. It is basically a maize-flour porridge cooked until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes. You take a small bit in your hand, roll it into a ball to soften it and then push it flat with your thumb. Then you use this piece to pick up and eat the fish, chicken, or beans. No forks. I quite like it though most Mazunga think it is too bland and heavy. I'm learning how to make it so perhaps I'll make some when I get home.

The kids are 4 and 7, adorable. We went swimming and I helped them with a coloring book. Mike dotes on them, especially the little girl and talked about adopting them sometime. It seems depressing to talk about adoption when their mother is still here but due in a large part to the extremely high rates of HIV infection in East Africa the average life-expectancy is extremely low. Which leaves many many children in desperate need.

On our way back to Nhkata Bay, I took yet another form of local mass transit: the matola. This is just a pickup truck running a vague route between towns. For a pitance you can climb abord, nestle between sacks of charcoal or vegetables and hang on for dear life. A recent law limiting the occupancy of minibusses has greatly increased their comfort (before you would literally have people sitting on your lap), but this law does not apply to matolas so it can turn into quite the spectacle with people clinging to any available surface, nearly being dragged behind or thrown off while the vehicle navigates the potholes masquerading as roads.

However it was quite late at night so our ride was not full and I actually found this to be one of the better modes of transport. At least there was air. I don't know what to tell you about the safest way to travel. Traffic accidents here are frequent and deadly. It feels as though human life is completely undervalued as drivers compete with each other, overtaking on blind curves, driving well above a safe speed. Common thinking is that the large busses are safer than the minibusses but I met a Dutch couple that told me they were waiting at a bus terminal for a bus to depart and found a minbus that was leaving earlier so they took that. Later they heard that the bus for which they were waiting had a terrible crash and killed 15. It does make you appreciate every day you live.

Imagine for a moment, all of you who live in the western world, a life expectancy of 40, the complete lack of medical treatment and what there is you likely can't afford. I mean in Tanzania mosquito nets cost about $1 and many people can't afford them. Such a simple way to prevent a terrible disease but out of reach.