Malawi

Malawi:

Mark and I boarded a train in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to take us to the border with Malawi. We discovered that the carriage built for six had been booked for nine. The conductor seemed as surprised as we were. Apparently someone in the ticket office was making a profit from this train trip, so they sold too many tickets and kept some of the money for themselves. (Maybe the rent money was due!) Anyway, we crammed in and reshuffled so that there were seven of us in the carriage. We spent a hot night sleeping on hard bunks and awoke to discover that we had stopped for six hours during the night because of mechanical problems. So our 22 hour train trip turned into a 28 hour journey.

When we finally arrived in the town of Mbeya, we knew there was a slim chance of us reaching the border before it closed for the night. Mark and I, along with a family of four and the seventh passenger in our carriage, hired a mini van to take us to the border. Our private hire taxi proceeded to pick up ten more passengers and drop us off ten minutes later to pay for another public bus to the border. There was absolutely nothing that we could do. We'd been had!

The public bus took us to a town five kilometers from the border, but the border had already been closed so we were forced to spend the night in the town. We were tired, frustrated, and feeling abused. It was now dark, around eight o'clock at night, and we'd been traveling hard for over thirty hours. Just when I decided the day was a complete disaster, the people on the bus started singing. It was the most beautiful and spontaneous thing I'd ever seen. These people sang hymn after hymn in their beautiful local languages and harmonies. I thought to myself, "Now, this is what I came here for."

We arrived in Malawi just before Christmas. We spent a day in Livingstonia, a sleepy town on the top of a large hill overlooking Lake Malawi. We spent Christmas in the tiny village of Chitembe located at the botton of that hill. On Christmas Eve and the evening of Christmas Day we had meals cooked over an open fire, because the village had no running water or electricity. After dark the sky was filled with thousands of fireflies. This was the most beautiful Christmas light display I'd ever seen!

We celebrated the New Year at a small traveler's resort on Lake Malawi called Njaya, in Nkata Bay. The resort hired a Malawian dancer to perform. The music was entirely percussion with three drums. The rhythms were incredibly complex. The male dancer wore a grass skirt and bands onhis wrists and ankles with some kind of cymbals attached to them. While the drummers played he shook his hips and stomped his feet to make the cymbals clink along with the percussion. Many of the young children came to dance and sing with the performer. These young children seemed to have an infallible sense of rhythm.

From Nkata Bay we went to the capital city of Lilongwe where I visited an international school. This school was very similar to a school in America. The school consisted of more ex-patriots (people who have left other countries to live in Africa) than Malawians.

I also had the opportunity to visit a local public school in Zomba, Malawi. The school was an all girls school. Most of the classrooms that I visited had one teacher and at least seventy children crammed into them. The young children sat on the concrete floor because they don't have chairs. There was no electricity and running water. The girls wear uniforms, except on Wednesdays so they can be washed because the families can afford only one.

Until 1994, schools were not free. Up until that time each child was required to pay the equivalent of one US dollar. When the fees for primary schools were abolished in 1994, 1.3 million additional students enrolled in schools. The government found it necessary to hire students just out of secondary schools to be teachers for these young children.

Malawi is ranked among the poorest countries in the world. Despite their poverty, or perhaps because of it, the Malawian people have been incredibly friendly and interested to learn about our country. I found very many people who wanted to talk about America and how they can get there. In the other countries that I've visited, I have been aware that the people think I am wealthy, and they want to make money on me. Most of them have wanted to make money on me so they can better their lives in their own country. These people seem to want to make money off me so that they can leave. I have found the visit in this country to be very educational.