Christmas Adventures

Disclaimer: It’s been a pretty crazy past two weeks, most of it good, but with a few notable really bad incidents. I debated on whether or not to put them in the blog, but in the end I decided that I am doing this blog so that you guys can see what life here is like, not just to keep a running account of Margaret’s cheerful happy fun exotic adventures in Africa. That said, I’m still extremely happy here. I’ve been meeting great people, hanging out in beautiful places, eating wonderful food, and I’ve been completely healthy for three weeks straight. Go me!
My holiday adventures began Tuesday, the 22. Alyssa and I had agreed to meet in Mzuzu, and Jenn had said she would join us. I texted Alyssa as soon as I got up (5:30) with “Rock Mzuzu! Whoo!” and briefly wondered if the other two were as excited as I was. Fifteen minutes later I got a text from Jenn asking what time I planned to arrive in the city.
Travel out was smooth, with only one slightly problematic incident. It’s rainy season now, not throughout the whole country, but definitely at my site, which is pretty perpetually buried in clouds, and since I’m 45 min away from tarmac the roads are all mud. At one point going down a hill the car I was in fishtailed and spun around. We were going really slow the whole time though, so it was much more fun than scary. Even if we had skidded off the road, we were surrounded by fields, so there was nothing we could hit, and we were only going 25 miles an hour, maybe, so I wasn’t too worried about safety.
I got into Mzuzu at about ten o’clock, and immediately bought a jar of homemade peanut butter and homemade honey, unfolded myself on the hammock and began to eat them plain. It was pretty heavenly. Jenn and Alyssa rolled in a bit later, followed by Tina and Zeb, our group’s married couple. Three of the first year environment volunteers stuck around and we all had a really nice night, playing Christmas carols on some ipod speakers while cooking baked macaroni and cheese and chocolate chip cookies. Malawi has three transit houses for PCVs to stay in. Of the three, Mzuzu house has a reputation for being the most chill, and I have grown to love the nights small groups of us just hang out talking and cooking.
Jenn was planning to spend Christmas with some other people from our group up north, while Tina and Zeb wanted to return to site, while Alyssa and I were heading south to Senga bay. Alyssa and I hitched down to Lilongwe with a really great couple who had just moved back to Malawi from Botswana. They told us there education is free, and they feed the children lunch. Oh government funding. It would be so nice to have it. I hitched down to Senga bay with Tim-O, a volunteer from my group and the two of us picked up a ride within five minutes on a pickup truck that, conveniently enough, was transporting a couch. So we sat on a couch the entire way down.
We arrived in Senga bay Christmas Eve, and everyone was in a pretty strange mood. Here we were looking out over the lake in 80 degree weather while in the background radios blasted “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.” Senga bay was amazing, but there was no getting around the fact that it was Christmas Eve, and no matter how nice a beach we were at, we weren’t home.
For dinner Enrique Tim and I decided to go to another resort to eat. As we arrived Mom called, so I stepped away from the group to talk to her and Dad. When I returned I noticed Tim was gone, and asked Enrique where he was. Enrique told me a boy had drowned in the water a few hours earlier and people were now combing the water for the body, Tim had gone to help. Even though we were near a fishing village, most people don’t know how to swim and when his canoe had capsized the boy splashed around, but didn’t ever call for help. No one knew he was drowning until it was too late. Tim came out of the water after half an hour, the search having been called off; the village would just wait for the body to surface, which it did two days later.
Tim sat down next to me and when I asked him if he was okay he just sighed and said, “Merry Christmas.” I had a thought then, very acute, that this was one of those moments in life that you tell stories about later, under the heading “the worst Christmas Eve I ever had” and you end it with “but I got through it, and things got better after that.”
And that’s what happened. We ended up having a really good dinner, talking with some people from South Africa until almost eleven. On Friday half the group decided to go home, so the rest of us actually switched over to the other resort and hung out with the South Africans we had met.
At the resort Caitlin, Alyssa, Joce and I took a canoe and paddled it out to an island in the middle of a lake. We will now take a slight interlude for facts. Lake Malawi is known as the calendar lake because it is 365 kilometers long, 52 kilometers at its widest point, and fed by 12 major rivers. It is home to the largest amount of freshwater tropical fish, most notably cichlids (I think that’s what they’re called?). They’ve discovered over a thousand species of cichlids, but they discover a new species almost every time they look, because the species varies very easily, a separate type popping up once a generation. Basically every new habitat they find they speciate (biology people, is that the right word?) almost immediately. So Fred the cichlid will turn to his girlfriend and say “hey babe, I heard property in the lower portion of the water column over by some rocks was looking really good right about now, what do you say we settled down and start a family?” and bam, new type of cichlid.
So we took a canoe out to this island and spent the day jumping off rocks, having a picnic, swimming through crystal clear waters, and staring at bright purple, blue, and even zebra striped fish. Alyssa and I swam around the island, both of us freaking out on the backside. Me because I could see the bottom, and this for some reason still unfathomable to me shook me up, Alyssa because she thought she saw a baby crocodile. I maintain it was a monitor lizard. Because I saw it. And it was.
Alyssa, Caitlin, Garth (one of the South Africans) and I headed up to Nkhata bay, a beach in the north, Saturday. We got some nice hitches in the beginning, but ended up on an Axa bus, which stopped every two minutes and where I was riding on the headrests of the seats because all the seats and aisle space was taken up. Never. Ever. Again.
Nkhata bay more than made up for the trip. It reminded me of Maine. We stayed in a small lodge that stood on some rocks overlooking a small harbor in the lake. We had free snorkeling equiptment and canoes so we alternated playing in the water with reading in the lodge’s wicker furniture. They had ice cream floats. And good food. We had planned to only stay one day, but quickly opted for two. The second day we literally ran into Meagan, Terence, and Danny (the first two are education volunteers from our group, Danny is a year ahead) while we were walking to lunch. So all in all we had a really great group just hanging out.
Although I hate to admit it, part of the appeal of Nkhata to me was how touristy it was. The only Malawians there worked there, and there were hardly any Africans. It’s strange because most people come here craving a taste of the traditional. They want to see how the villagers live, are intrigued by their traditional ceremonies and foods. I live that. On vacation, all I wanted was to get away.
I was also trying very hard to live on a Peace Corps salary. Part of my intent on coming here is to see what it’s like to live on a fairly meager fixed income. After all, my villagers live on less. I didn’t manage it. I ended up having to borrow 20 dollars from Alyssa (which I have now paid back, since we just got paid). The problem is when push comes to shove, if I really want an ice cream float, I’m going to buy it. No matter how little money I have in my wallet, I know I have over 100 American dollars stored up in Lilongwe just in case, that I’m in a group that lends each other money like it really is just paper, and that if I was ever really in a bind I have connections in America, I can get bailed out. I will never get to a point where I eat nsima three meals a day for weeks on end because it’s dry season, and that’s all I have.
Fortunately for the money situation, Meagan and I managed win a free nights accomodation. We took out a native dugout canoe, which tip very easy, and managed to paddle it around a float and back, a feat only accomplished by seven couples in the past ten years. We’re pretty proud, and bragging to anyone who will listen.
The bad party: Halfway through our last day in Nkhata, Danny got a call from someone in the Peace Corps office telling him Jenn and Tim W. (another Tim in our group) had been in a car that flipped, and were now in South Africa in the hospital. He didn’t get any more information than that and we took off for Mzuzu pretty soon after; worried, depressed, and wanting information. It was pretty shocking that Jenn and Tim were in a hitch when they crashed. Experience has taught us that hitches are by far the safest way to travel. The pickups and minibuses that make up the public transportation system here are incredibly unsafe. The drivers drink and speed ridiculously, the vehicles are overcrowded, and you hear plenty of stories about huge accidents where pickups flip, killing over thirty people, or the sides just give way and people fall into the road. We’ve even heard stories where a minibus is rolling happily along and the floor just falls out.
In hitches, best case scenario is you are in a car with a seatbelt, worst case is you are in the back of a pickup where the driver is not drunk and probably not speeding. Additionally, if you feel uncomfortable about a potential hitch, you can just pass it up. We kept wondering what had happened to flip the car, was the driver drunk? Speeding? And how were Jenn and Tim?
It turns out that the whole thing was actually a pretty freak accident. The car was speeding (not surprising) when a tire blew. Tim was wearing a seat belt, so he’s okay although with a pretty severe concusion. Jenn was not wearing a seatbelt (sometimes seats have them, sometimes they don’t) so she’s pretty beaten up, but stable last we heard. We’re all very relieved and keeping daily internet tabs, hoping for a speedy recovery. Happy New Years everyone, and Happy Birthday Ri-Ri!!!! I return to site tomorrow, where I will start teaching, should be back online in February.