Now The petite lady to my left had the leathery, wizened skin of someone who had spent the better part of her life bucking the SPF trend. She also had the eyes-half-closed-sway-to-and-fro look of someone who had spent the better part of the evening imbibing something stronger than juice. With the DJ spinning throbbing techno music, she was doing some protracted arm-flopping dance that reminded me of a dignified English woman fluttering through a parlor, checking on her guests having tea.
Under the cover of night, on the terrace of “Villa 33” in Blantyre, Malawi, I looked up and saw a silvery disco ball hanging from a tree.
Having had the impression that this “Braai” (Afrikaans for grill or cook-out) would be a more casual affair, I showed up in flip-flops and a boring T-shirt and was unpleasantly surprised to arrive at a veritable scene, where some of the hippest of Blantyre were decked out for a night of clubbing, some in sky-high heels, skinny jeans, and earrings that scream fabulosity.
So I found myself awkwardly bopping on the dance floor, shifting my gaze from that woman, to the tree, to the maroon-painted concrete floor, everywhere except to my German colleague at my right, and asking myself, how on earth did I get here?
Oh yeah, I remember: Feeling both sore from having hiked Mount Mulanje all day and inadequately dolled up for such an affair, I had a burger and coke and was ready to make a discrete exit. I asked Esme, a cute and bubbly blonde girl who worked at the place for the phone number of a taxi company, and though she was from the British Isles (a guess, based on her accent) and should have understood English, her answer to this question was, oh let me take your purse, stash it in some undisclosed location, pour you an apple pucker shooter, and then drag you onto the dance floor.
And there I was, bouncing on the last of my hamstrings, wishing that that apple pucker shooter had been either a cupful of absinthe (recently legalized in the US after all) or laced with arsenic.
My current 4-week stint in Malawi has brought back a flood of memories from the last two years, mostly memories of Rwanda and other African travels, times and places almost a year since my last post on this blog… Though it started out as another much-loved diary, my blog has lately become nothing but a source of bottomless guilt. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to write about; on the contrary, so much has happened. I have simply lacked the stamina and discipline to write down my thoughts and after a while, it becomes like an old dear friend with whom you’ve totally lost touch: cut off for so long, you scarcely know where to begin and your sense of guilt almost paralyzes you from being able to come across as normal. You wonder if you should just launch into your life as it is, or spend some time recapping everything that’s happened in the intervening months and glossing over the forgotten time in the hopes that he/she doesn’t notice how badly you have neglected him/her.
Then
I thought about the last time I shared a dance floor with colleagues… After a dinner of sushi and white wine, I found myself mangling a rug at Murphy’s, a dance club on the ground floor of the Hilton Hotel, one of two business traveller havens in Ankara, Turkey. My 2009 started with a 2-month project in Ankara, where I proudly watched Obama become the 44th President from my hotel room alone. That sentiment summarizes my time there fairly well, in the sense that my stay in Turkey was overwhelmingly dominated by work and therefore revolved around my hotel room or the client site. In any case, the evening at Murphy’s, a weekend trip to Istanbul, a bomb scare outside the hotel, the start of the Obama years, among others, were all blog-worthy memories that never found their way to paper. A few excuses, some procrastination, and suddenly the opportunity/inspiration to write a Turkey blog post evaporated.
I thought about my last project in Africa – a 5-week sweat-fest in The Gambia. Like Blantyre and Kigali, in no time flat, I found myself tangled in the folds of the expat community of Senegambia, again amazed at how large and small these communities are… Large in the sense that I would have never guessed that Banjul and Senegambia would be home to so many English, Dutch, and Germans; small in the sense that I could not go anywhere without running into at least one familiar face. It was project work of a totally different beast, requiring trips into the deep countryside in the middle of the night and long hours in telecom exchanges staring at masses of tangled cables. I started a love affair with mangoes there that to this day burns unabated (despite not being able to find good ones anywhere since). A trip to James Island, Ramadan by proxy, sabotage and reckless incompetence, and more – all entirely blog-worthy moments, all entirely lost to pure laziness and a dearth of motivation.
There were more moments, including, simply, life in Germany… In 2005 I made my maiden move abroad to Frankfurt and after moving back in August 2008, I felt like it was a homecoming of sorts. Since Frankfurt, I had moved to Brussels and then Kigali and visited countless other places in Europe and Africa, so I arrived back in Germany feeling a bit more like a seasoned traveller. I will never outgrow my inherent naïveté about the world but at least, with all these travels, I have tried to lessen it. Besides happily dusting off my German textbooks, I have enjoyed my job and life in Deutschland. From my perch in Bonn, I have been able to revisit my ole stomping grounds in Brussels, chaperone betrunkenen colleagues at the company Christmas party, take a trip to Edinburgh, wine in a circle during a Carnival extravaganza in Trinidad, celebrate my 30th birthday during a training session in the Netherlands, and go skiing in the German Alps… All, again, fitting stories for my blog but saved from immortalization by a simple inability to get my $%&* together.
Now
I can hardly right past wrongs by writing a bunch of delinquent blog posts now, but I can at least try to resolve to write on my blog with renewed enthusiasm and greater regularity! To that end, this post as well as the subsequent four will be part of a “Flashback” series, meant to recount some of the more memorable interesting encounters here in Malawi, as well as to include snippets of moments past that didn’t make it onto my blog. I hope you enjoy them.
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Malawi Fast Facts
Big City (and the capital): Lilongwe (population ~866,000)
Next Big City (and the financial+commercial center): Blantyre (population ~733,000)
People: ~13,900,000 (more than 10 different ethnic groups, mostly from the Chewa tribe, many Asians and Europeans as well)
Official languages: English, Chichewa
GDP per capita: $312 (nominal)
Size: 118,484 km2 (45,747 mi2, or almost 5 times the size of Rwanda and similar in size to the US state of Pennsylvania)
Elevation of the Shire Highlands (where Blantyre is located): 910 m (3000 ft)
Religion: 80% Christian, 13% Muslim
Primary Exports: Tobacco, sugar, cotton, tea
Life Expectancy: 43
The ravage of AIDS: 14% of population infected, 250 new victims are infected each day, and 70% of Malawi’s hospital beds are occupied by HIV/AIDS patients.
Trivia: Madonna put Malawi on the pop-culture map by adopting a Malawian child, David Banda. She continues to make waves here through her ”Raising Malawi” foundation, which focuses on raising money and building infrastructure to help AIDS orphans, as well as through her bid to adopt a second Malawian child.
Quick History:
1859 David Livingstone reaches Lake Nyasa (today known as Lake Malawi) in Nyasaland, under British colonial rule.
1964 Nyasaland gains independence and renames itself Malawi, under President Banda.
1993-1994 Government reforms enforced, new constitution enacted and first multi-party elections held.
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