TIA = This is Africa!!

(Caution: This blog post got a little long, but I had a lot to fit in. So feel free to take breaks while reading through it [I've provided resting points in the form of paragraphs, and there are pictures to keep you entertained]. Also be sure to drink plenty of water and take a walk at least once every two hours. And yes, the lake pictures are here to make you extremely jelous.)

Thanks to the movie Blood Diamonds (which stars Leonardo Dicaprio as a swashbuckling ex-mercenary – yeah, right) the phrase TIA, “This Is Africa” has become a popular way to explain why crazy things happen in Africa. As if only crazy things happen in Africa. I think it fits in with the dominant view that people have of Africa where the four horsemen of the apocalypse (war, famine, pestilence, and death) dominate the only headlines that escape the black hole of information that envelops the continent. It’s a trite and hackneyed statement that could be used to capture so much more…as I found out this weekend.

To me this weekend felt like a 30-minute sitcom sort of situation where so much emotion is packed into such a short time that it hardly resembles reality. You know how a major problem is introduced and 21 minutes later it gets resolved. Yeah, that’s kind of how the weekend was.

My week ended on a down note emotionally. A couple of things came to a head on Friday. The first is that I finally made it out to a market to buy some gifts for back home. One of the really difficult things about Africa is that a white person can’t go anywhere without having a thousand hands held out palm up asking for money. It makes it really hard to be a tourist, but at the same time, isn’t that what I came to see? In the moment, though, I struggle with how to deal with it and usually just mutter a “Sorry” and try not to make eye contact. As if making eye contact obligates me to stop or maybe just makes the encounter more personal. Sometimes I take advantage of the attention and stop to discuss their lives to get a first-hand account. I’ve had the best conversations through such encounters, but they always end up the same way. Just as I think I’ve made a friend in Africa, they ask me to come check out their booth or buy some of the necklaces. It feels like to them I will always be a dollar sign.

So obviously this gets magnified when a muzungu (white person) voluntarily enters a market, which I did on Friday. This time, however, with the intent to buy. Of course in these market situations they always start with an exorbitant price and hope that the muzungu doesn’t try to barter down. In these situations my competitive instinct always comes out. I ended up bartering down to some extremely low prices for some pretty nice carvings which they had done themselves, probably in the last day or two. Afterwards I ended up feeling terrible and overcome with guilt. This is the only money that these guys were going to make that day probably and I talked them out of something like $1.50. Did I really need that $1.50 more than they did? Of course not. So now even when I do give them money I felt bad. I wondered if this is how Africa would always be for me. That there would always be a barrier between me and the potential beneficiary of my perceived wealth. The outgoing American Ambassador of Malawi said as much to me. He told me that everywhere he goes people ask the US for money through him. He hardly had any Malawian friends because it was so hard for him to break through. TIA=This is Africa

The second thing weighing on me had to do with one of my security guards named Frank. One night after work I came through the gate and asked him how he was. This is usually a formality in Malawi where whenever you see someone you ask them how they are and it’s usually just a string of platitudes from there. But this time Frank said that he wasn’t doing okay. I asked him why and he showed me an insect bit on the back of his neck. Through broken English he said it was giving him a bad headache and making his whole body sore. He didn’t have any money for a doctor and he definitely couldn’t afford to miss a shift. So he was forced to come to work for his 12 hour over-night shift feeling terrible. The guards don’t even bring food for the shifts because they can’t afford it. I looked through my medicine travel kit and all I could find was some ibuprofen to give him. I gave it to him with some water and a banana and wished him well as I went to bed. The next evening I saw him again and again he wasn’t feeling great. The bite mark had gotten bigger. I gave him 2 more ibuprofen. A couple of hours later he knocked on my door and said that the medicine had helped him so much that he wondered if he could have more. My heart broke that this proud Malawian would be in such pain that he would break the rules of his job to come beg for some more medicine. I gave him enough to last through the night, but knew it wouldn’t solve the problem. This was the same week in which my other security guard told me that his 10 month old daughter had contracted malaria but had recovered, and even the computer technician at work had come down with malaria. And these are the people who actually have jobs and live in a relatively developed city. It all just became so heavy for me thinking about the 11 million people in this country who live in much worse situations. TIA=This is Africa

With all of that on my mind I headed out to visit Lake Malawi for the first time. Lake Malawi is third largest lake in Africa and is formed between the thousands of hills created by the escarpments of the Great Rift Valley. It’s supposed to be most endearing parts of “The Warm Heart of Africa”. It ended up being one of those instances in life where reality surpassed the hype. I took public transport to get there which allowed for some new forms of travel for this Texan wandering across the open plains of southern Africa. I left Lilongwe in a mini-bus with 17 other people and a sign on the back that said “No Fear”. Not a comforting sign when your crammed in like a sardine to the back seat. They call mini-buses “matolas” here in Malawi. Matola is Chichewa for “Close your eyes around corners!” Just kidding. It means mini-bus. The matola ride took 40 minutes to start as we waited for people to pile in. After two hours of driving we ended up in Salima which is about 20 km from the beach. From there I hopped on the back of a kid’s bike – a Malawian taxi. So add to my previous list of things on Malawian’s bikes a 182 pound Texan with a 40 pound rucksack in tow. It took him awhile to get going which drew laughs from the on-lookers. Then I loaded into the bed of the smallest Toyota pickup truck I had ever seen. There were 16 of us crammed in there along with two large baskets of tomatoes. Hold on to something!! This was a 40 minute drive to the beach. TIA=This is Africa!!

And finally, the beach. Boy, was it a sight for sore eyes. What an incredible view to behold in the middle of this dry continent. I camped out for the night and saw one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen (pictured to the right). The powder blues and magentas of the sky overlooked the silvery water which seemed like an ocean of mercury. As I sat there in the cool night air I felt a thousand miles away from the crowded cities I had spent too much time in while in Africa. This ended up being the first time that I felt at home since I got here. Finally there were no people asking me for handouts. Out of sight, but definitely not out of mind. Even in this moment I couldn’t shake the emotional rollercoaster of the end of the week. But at the very least I felt like this great continent was reaching its giant arms around me and embracing me like a native son. As I looked out over the water I remembered Jodie Foster’s line at the end of the movie Contact where she’s supposedly overlooking all of the mysteries of the universe and she says “They should have sent a poet”. I felt like the most beautiful part of Africa was revealing itself to me in that moment. Suddenly all of the travel and fatigue was worth it. I was finally home. TIA=This is Africa.

One of the things I noticed while lying out on the lake enjoying some good books is how empty the skies are in Africa. I never really noticed it back home, but our skies are so cluttered with aircrafts. Maybe it’s because I only look up when I see planes flying. Maybe it’s because I lived right next to an airport and air bases in DC for the last year. But it feels rare to look up in the sky in the States and not see aircrafts, no matter how far out we are. Take a second to look up at the sky today and tell me what you think. But in Africa there is nothing above us. It’s a completely virgin sky…so natural. TIA=This is Africa.

At the same time, while I looked out over the pristine waters of Lake Malawi with fisherman busy at their vocation I was reading a book about some of the greatest tragedies that have befallen Africa in the last twenty years. In Central Africa there has been one genocide after another, and each time they dump the bodies in the rivers. As a result these waters are almost permanently stained, at least in the minds of those who witnessed the atrocities. It’s made it hard to look at waters in Africa and not think about the evil side of the continent. 300,000 killed in Burundi. 1 million murdered in Rwanda. 4 million dead in Congo. Each time the rivers ran red. This is the Africa that too often people choose to think about. And all the while Malawi has gone centuries without any major conflicts. This water has remained clean. TIA=This is Africa.

Even after such a beautiful experience, Africa was not finished revealing itself to me this weekend. Still a little heavy hearted after catching one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen (pictured to the left) I decided to head out on the arduous journey back to Lilongwe. As I was packing up my tent and leaving the campsite I ran into one of the venders who had come up to talk to me at the restaurant I ate at the night before. It was another conversation where I felt like we really got to know each other. We even realized that we shared the same name and had a good laugh over it. We called each other brothers – African Mike and American Mike. But at the end of it he invited me back to his shop to look at his key chains on which he could carve anybody’s name. I told him maybe in the morning on my way out just to get out of the situation. So on the way out that morning I had to walk back by his shop. I thought about trying to hitch a ride just to avoid another time when I had to disappoint him. But I kept walking and sure enough he was there waiting for me. African Mike greeted American Mike wearing a Houston Astros shirt he had found somewhere. I was in my Spurs shirt so we were in full Texas regalia. He told me to have a safe journey and then pulled out a key chain holder on which he had carved my name on one side and a rhinoceros on the other. I thanked him for it and asked him how much he wanted for it since I felt obliged to buy it now. He looked disappointed and said he didn’t want any money. I thought he was trying to get a pity donation, but he wouldn’t take any money. I practically tried to throw 500 kwatcha (~$3.50) at him but he wouldn’t take it. He just wanted me to have something to remember him by. So I took a picture with him (below) and headed down the road, almost emotionally overcome by my new African brother. TIA=This is Africa.

I kept walking down the road and all the little kids were yelling at me, saying “Hello! Hello! Hello!” This happens everywhere I go as if they just want to make contact with the outsider. At the same time they always keep their distance as if they don’t want to get THAT close to me. But for the first time since I arrived on the continent a little kid who must have been about 3 years old walked all the way up to me and grabbed my hand with the biggest smile on his face. And for about 100 meters we walked hand in hand as he kept saying over and over “Hello, hello, hello!” He seemed so proud to walk through his little village hand in hand with a giant mazungu. TIA=This is Africa.

I was going to write some snappy conclusion to this post. Something like, "For all it's problems there's still so much beauty in Africa". But that seems like such a hopeless way of summing up the weekend. All I can say for now is that I've got 8 more weeks here to try to learn a little more about Africa.