Hello, or muli uli, or matandala, or mwauka uli, or whatever, from yours truly in Malawi. Yep, still here and still kicking, though my legs are threatening to fall off from all of the walking I’ve been doing over the past two days.
You see, there’s a thing called a “petrol shortage” in this lovely country. What that actually translates to is slightly more complicated. As you may know, if you’ve ever once read a piece of news about Malawi, the President here is slightly off his rocker (thanks in part to his close friendship with a certain other African President, name rhyming with Bugabe). He kicked out the British ambassador, lost over 40% of his country’s aid money as well as a new multi-million dollar grant from the US, and raised the taxes on basic food items. Upon the resulting devaluation of the Malawian currency and the screwing of local economies, he began hoarding forex (that’s dollars, mostly). Now, as you may be aware, forex is kinda necessary for cross-border trading (especially when your local currency is the kwacha, a beautiful but rather useless bill), and when the President makes it very, very difficult to purchase anything with said forex, well… cross border trading gets slowwwww. In fact, it gets so slow that things like petrol, available from Tanzania and the southern countries, stops coming. It also means that things like beverages are only available on a week by week rotation – no coke one week, no beer the next, currently no bottled water—that the grocery stores outside of the big cities are running out of basic stock – and that prices on everything keep going up (the US and other countries who rely on petrol to transport goods should take note).
So, this relates to my legs in the following manner: we don’t have any petrol up here at the Mushroom Farm (as a reminder, located a convenient 10KM uphill from the closest hovel, and 32km from the nearest thing resembling a town with a useful shopping center). In order to get petrol to go to the big city of Mzuzu for shopping, tax paying, visa extensions, and basically everything you can’t do from a mountain lodge 10km from anything, we have to drive 32KM in the wrong direction, buy it on the “black market” (it’s been smuggled in, or really just driven across the border, from Tze), and then hoard it so we actually have some when we get back from driving 150KM both ways and need to lug all of our goods back up the hill. This takes time, time that Mikael and I have to be away from the camp, time that our staff have to pretend to be responsible managers and look after things while we’re gone. So, in order to minimize this time, our solution was to send Jess (that’s me) on foot to the bottom of the hill, to have her hitch a ride to Mzuzu, do all of the administrative bullshit necessary to keep a camp running and certain Americans/Swedes legally present in Malawi (on foot), stay a night, hitch a ride back to the bottom of the hill, and start walking back up (hoping to catch a ride part way, and luckily timing said trip for the hottest 3 days Malawi has ever seen). Mikael would drive the car down the hill the next morning, grab some black market petrol, drive to Mzuzu, drive around and complete extensive shopping adventures, sleep, and drive back. In conclusion, Jess’s legs would nearly fall off.
But enough about that… okay, not quite enough. This all wouldn’t have been nearly so dramatic if, a week before, I had not walked down the hill, hitched to this town 32KM north, purchased 30meters of reinforcement iron, tied it into a heavy 4meter long bundle, waited for a vehicle big enough to take me back to the turnoff to the farm, and then waited 10hours (that’s Ten, with a capital T) for a ride big enough to drive me and my rebar back up the hill. A ride that, of course, broke down, calling for a rescue mission from Mikael at around midnight. A rescue mission that resulted in him starting the broken down ride in under 5 minutes, and then driving me home. Retrospectively, this may not seem very related to the above paragraph, but trust me, it’s all connected.
Anywayyyyy…. Putting aside the petrol shortage and related issues, Malawi continues to be beautiful, and much continues to be done at the Mushroom Farm. People come and people go (mostly neither right now, it being rather slow for tourism in Malawi), and we continue to try to build houses, instill manners into our animals, and try not to fall off the mountain side. Out of the only two downsides that Mikael and I have found here at the farm (Malawian staff not wanting to work and a lack of cheese), the cheese-related one has recently been satiated by a small, rather tasteless (and yet wonderfully delicious) block of mozzarella donated to our cheeseless-cause by a lovely American couple who stopped in for a few days. Lots of fruit is coming into season, promising some epic fruit salads in our near future; and I met a nice Malawian woman sitting at the turnoff to the farm during that 10hour stretch who actually bought ME a Fanta and chatted about life, rather than asking for money or a pen or anything from me. Nice lady, I’m hoping to visit her later this year (and to tell her husband to give her money to go back to school – he apparently believes that she’ll get wooed into running away with a fellow student if she returns to school, though she’s had 3 of his children so far. Men.).
Funny side-story regarding Malawians asking for stuff: every time I’m at the bottom of the hill, it’s an exciting occasion for the Malawian children who live down there. They get to sneak around corners, dare each other to get close to me, and practice their very limited English, primarily “give me money/coke/water/pen/book/insert-newest-English-word-here” . One daring young lad, no more than 6 years of age, was nominated to be the talker in one recent encounter, and in true Malawian style, the following words came out of his mouth: “Give me my…. name”. Rather than attempting to explain to him that I was not keeping his name in my backpack, I called him Theodore and got on with my day.
Which brings me to another side note, primarily regarding Chinglish – in this case, not the common Chinese-English hybrid, but a Chichewa-English mash up. Some signs/shops/slogans here are very, very funny (and often quite creative). A few for your pleasure:
On the front of a shop in a rural village: “Quality items sold here less”.
The name of a shop at the bottom of the hill: “No sweets without sweat shop”. (It sells phone credits).
The slogan on many public service announcement road signs: “Arrive Alive”. Only funny when you know that Malawians constantly (and with great consistency) switch their pronunciation of “l”s and “r”s (like the Asians), resulting in “Arrive Alive” being “Alive Arrive”, which makes me giggle.
Phew. I’m getting tired, but before I go, there are two items of importance I wish to address, so please continue to give me your full, hopefully divided attention (I can’t entertain more than 2 people at once, and then only if one of them’s asleep). Here they are, in no apparent order:
I’m taking suggestions on things to do with my future, since I’m rather indecisive and only know what I know. Catagories to consider include sweet jobs (NGOs, or businesses in Africa get higher consideration), finding a way to fund my travels, and going back to school (masters programs, apprenticeships, all other sorts of programs considered). If you’ve got any good ideas…. Write me!
2. Many of you wonderful people have asked about sending me care packages, and have asked that I provide a list of desired goods (as well as an address) to this end. In light of a recent mailing success (shout-out to WT, who’s books have arrived in good form), I have taken the time to sit down and compile my mostly (strange) food-related desires. I would recommend, if you’re planning to send along any of the items on this list that look like I only need one of them (I’ve “*”d them), that you comment on this blog with your intentions in order to let others know that they don’t need to send dog bling too. I would also recommend that you cover any packages with various Christian phrases and stickers, as they are less likely to get stolen if they look God-related. The list, then, is:
- Some sort of bling’d out dog collar befitting of our new puppy named Mr. T*
- Any good books you’ve finished reading
- Candy, including twizzlers or chewing gum or circus peanuts or anything (except chocolate, chocolate has been removed from this list because of melting potential)
- Random food stuffs that I can’t get here, including but certainly not limited to marshmallow fluff*, chocolate chip (or any) cookies, season salt (the seasoning)*, mac and cheese, bacon bits, blue cheese dressing*, poptarts, homemade jams/marmelades/preserves, mustard (ideally spicy, stone ground, etc), triscuts, olives, olive oil, maple syrup, fruit snacks, koolaid packets, pepperoni/jerky and other similar dry sausages/meats, and any baking recipies/brownie mix that you don’t have to add butter to.
- A new nose ring(the bent stud kind), preferably with a small sparkle, as my sparkle has fallen out*
- Duck tape*
- Chewable pepto and vitamins and any substance than might help heal cracks in feet*
- Hankerchief/bandana type things
- And, most importantly, anything cheese related. It’s been suggested that hard, wax wrapped cheeses such as parmesan will ship well (expect 2 weeks in a box), but if you think this is a bad idea, I will gladly accept that strange parmesan that comes from a jar that you shake onto pasta and pizza at “Italian” restaurants.
- Sheepish request: money. If you feel compelled to donate to the “Jess never really works at jobs that pay enough to fund her adventures but goes on them anyway” fund, let me know – I'll come thank you in person when I'm back stateside :)...
- Finally, anything else that strikes you as something that I’d appreciate. Which, in case you aren’t sure, is anything at all.
The address anything could get sent to is:
Jess Scott
c/o The Mushroom Farm
PO Box 101
Chitimba, Malawi
East Africa
Phone (in case you’re interested): +265999652485
And now I’m off to bed, it being 6 minutes past my bedtime (that’s 8:06pm, in case you want to make fun of me). I hope you’ve enjoyed this missive as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it – and thanks in advance to anyone who wants to send anything at all along, it will be great fun to get packages all the way here in Malawi. Lots of love to all!
Jess
