Before I Forget - 1

I put on Graduation Goggles in my last 24 hours in Malawi. I know the Malawi experience was intense and full of contradictions but in those last 24 hours I couldn't imagine why I was leaving the country because my brain only recalled the best moments of my time there. But now I'm back and Malawi already seems like a part of the distant world out there. So I figured I should make the traditional Top 5 list of the fun-nest people, places anddd.... things (?) seen in Malawi, before I forget!

So here is my Top 5 list of People. Not only the trippiest people with the most bizarre stories but also the ones who most affected me, make this list.

5. Greg. Scottish, tall, lanky, 42, absolutely yummie and affectionately called the Silver Fox. Currently working in the juvie prisons in Lilongwe, his life story is one of the most exciting I've ever heard. He grew up in the Middle East and decided early on that his life was going to be about travelling and seeing the world. Among his many jobs are bar-tending in Australia and being an extra in the Matrix films. He is the only man I have *ever* met who on meeting me for the first time hugged me, took my bags, held open the car door and made me gush like a little girl.


4. CarolAnn. Worked as legal counsellor defending juvenile delinquents in the Lilongwe prison. She had the most gruesome stories to tell over dinner and she left 2 weeks before I did to go start work in Afghanistan. Most ballsy and fearless person I know.    


3. Muthi. Malawian, educated in Paris and the USA is now back in Malawi to help her Mum and keep her farm functional. One of the most beautiful women I've met, I was in awe of her       when I first met her. She's a bag-full of contradictions with the never-say-no Malawian culture and the no-nonsense-American style continuously warring. So when you invite her for a dinner party she'll always say "yes, I'll be there!" even if she's actually in another city but will tell you about her fantasies about Bill Clinton when you get her drunk. One of my closest friends in Malawi, I don't think I would have survived without her :-)

2. Les makes the number 2 spot with her outrageous sexuality, her crazy adventurous streak and her very good judgement of her friend's needs. Having dated many Indian boys, she was the one person who understood my Indian jokes, my rambling about Indian food and culture and why exactly my parents called me every other day :D  

1. Blondey. Tall. Gorgeous. Canadian. She left her cushy job in New York to come live in different countries in Africa for the last 1 year. She's impatient, hyperactive and doesn't believe in layers. What you see if what you get with her. She took charge of my social calendar in Malawi and we were a couple for almost everyone who knew us in Malawi. And through all the parties, the Malawi-Gin-n-Tonic, the trips and the bitching, she became my best friend in Malawi.

Aftershocks

Today's CNN article mentioned that after the Tohoku earthquake hit Japan last year, nearly 700 aftershocks were felt in various parts of Japan for months after. Obviously, this became the inspiration for the title of this post on what has been bugging me for a bit today- aftershocks of my little incident.  

Of course, I've spent a lot of time telling people what happened and at some level, people's shock and sympathy made me feel better. However, incidents like the one that happened in the last two days are common for people (especially expats) in Malawi. People get mugged, their homes get robbed and they are generally attacked for being the moneyed, elite class of people who can afford to spend the poor-man’s-monthly-salary on one good dinner in town. My Malawian friends have also noticed an increase in robberies and mugging in the last few months and most predict that this will only get worse as the Malawian economy goes to the dogs.

Personally, I can’t seem to reconcile my (by some standards) minor incident with my rather extreme reactions one day after. Tonight as I went out for dinner with friends and hung out later at the Shack (yes, Wednesday is Shack Night!) – I was conscious that I was suspicious of every Malawian in the house. At one point, a Malawian guy crept up behind my friend to surprise her and I spontaneously yelled thinking that some unknown guy was creeping up on her. Turns out that he was her friend which led to acute embarrassment but didn't reduce my fear. Maybe the fact that I was stone-cold-sober exacerbated my reaction. I forced myself to go onto the dance floor where both expats and Malawians were dancing, but still scooted away every time a Malawian came in the vicinity.

My mind tells me that such reactions are extreme and unnecessary. But I can’t help feeling that every other guy on the street is watching me and wants to snatch my purse. At our girl’s dinner tonight we were discussing how we end up feeling guilty because African women get treated terribly on a daily basis and manage to lead normal lives despite being physically and mentally abused. And here one “little” incident is enough to shake us up and make us suspicious of everyone around us.

But I guess we live in different worlds. I can’t feel guilty for being lucky enough to have a safer world. My reality is that getting attacked is not on my watch-out-for-list. I have not been taught how to deal with situations where I feel insecure all the time – day and night. And I’m not going to feel guilty for having had that privilege. 

The day I (actually) got mugged

January 24th, 6:00 am
I forced myself to wake up at 5:30 am this morning to go for a jog. My friend Lesley was doing a very good job of dragging me out every morning by messaging/ knocking at my door/ being generally persistent about exercise. This morning I got out of bed, ran in and out of the bathroom, grabbed my ipod, tugged my shoes on and was out of the room in exactly 5 minutes.
I stretched, breathing in the cleaning morning air and felt like this was going to be a good day! As Lesley and I started walking, I recounted last evening's incident to her and she was pretty shocked. We also admitted that it may have been a little stupid to be walking around at 7 pm in Old Town.

We had  run about 500 metres when our 2 minute timer went off and we started walking. I saw two men approaching us on the road. I had a moment where I thought they looked sketchy, but there were many other people around so I ignored the feeling and continued walking. The next thing I know, these two men  grabbed us, snatched my iPod out of my hand and ran away. We struggled, yelled for help and tried to fight back, but obviously they were stronger than us. There were people on the road (including some guards) who watched the incident and did not help us. A Malawian lady passed us by and apologized, but at that moment all I wanted to do was abuse her so I stared straight ahead. We then realized that another friend was jogging alone in a different loop, so we jumped into a taxi and picked her up. That was the end of our morning jogging expedition.

For this to happen so close to last night's incident points to a few things. First, that people are watching us and know that we are long term guests at this hotel. Second, that the situation in the Old Town area has deteriorated more than I had initially thought. The tension is no longer confined to women wearing trousers or vendors being kicked off the side-walks. It has become a larger problem where walking on the street in some areas is unsafe even in broad daylight.

Sure I'm pissed about losing my old iPod with all the music collected over the years. But I'm more shaken up by the violence of the incidents. The grabbing, snatching of purses, yelling and pushing created a panic that I wasn't prepared for. I've been robbed before, in the train and in public places in India. The difference was that those thieves had class. They found cunning ways of getting my purse and my phone without me realizing. Today's incident made me respect the genius of pick-pockets, who are just after my money and not after me. Then, I was sad about losing my things, but not scared or worried about safety. After today, I'm going to worry about my safety in Malawi. And not go out jogging. Shit.

       

The day I (almost) got mugged

January 23rd, Monday, 7 pm

It was late evening and we had decided to go for dinner to Noble China, a local joint located a couple of blocks away from the hotel. It was twilight as we started walking the approximately 1 km distance and unthinkingly switched on our torches as we went down a street without street lights, loudly chatting in English about the day’s work. It was a street off the main road, with mainly residential buildings and large trees flanking both sides of the street.

Unconsciously, my friend Lyndsey and I had flanked our newest companion, who was visiting Lilongwe for a few days. About 200 metres from the gate of the restaurant I felt someone running towards us and turned my torchlight on our thief just as he went for Lyndsey’s bag.

What followed was a blur of the thief jumping for Lyndsey’s bag, me jumping for the guy and yelling loudly and Lyndsey falling to the ground holding on to her bag. After a brief scuffle the guy ran off with neither of us trying to go after him. We pushed ourselves up and walked quickly to the restaurant, all the time looking behind us. Obviously, we took a taxi on the way back.   

A few things struck me as we discussed the incident over dinner: 

1. The experience of being mugged is quite scary even if it’s not violent. Neither of us quite remembers what happened in that 30 second blur of activity, except for Lyndsey falling to the ground and me screaming. On my part, I remember feeling like I was stuck in a slow motion film while the thief was racing through with his moves. I couldn’t get to him fast enough while he tried to steal our bags. 

2. Typically, as the economic situation in a country deteriorates, the security on the streets deteriorates proportionally, with muggings slowly becoming more frequent and violent. Malawi is clearly on that path. Till last year you couldn’t walk on the street for fear of animals, but now I think I’m not walking down the street in the evenings for fear of being robbed.

3. From what I understand, similar security annoyances in other African countries don’t go away as the economic situation improves. For example, in some countries, even though the economy is stronger, getting mugged on the streets and getting your house cleaned up by thieves is so common that people have started factoring it in their regular budgets.

4. Later, our friend told us that she had noticed the guy as we left our hotel and that she should’ve followed her gut instinct and called him out earlier. It is a very weird experience when someone is following you or intently looking at every move you make – like someone is trying to pre-empt every move you make. I think I'm going to be a lot more alert and allow my gut to actually sense such people around me.  

Of course, we had our dinner and chatted happily about other things after this, but I think the bitter aftertaste is still there and my rating on the Malawi-is-a-shithole scale just took a huge hit. 

How Peculiar - 5

It's ironic that my last weekend in Malawi was the best yet - with me drinking water the whole night, having dinner and intimate conversation with a very good friend, followed by bizarre but hilarious conversation at Harry's till 2:30 AM with the unlikeliest of people. I learned more about my friends telling stories and laughing with them in that one night than I have in all the days of 'partying'. I'm glad it happened :)

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With three days for take-off, work is threatening to kill me. I know I've gone through worse but the stress of dealing with the government (OMG! How can they not realize I'm leaving! :P ) is getting to me. In my head I know that the government has better things to do than listen to my requests so I can help them to finish their own projects, but I just wish for the next three days we could move closer to an ideal world.

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Going back home means dal-roti, family, tv, friends, fuel, cars, power, internet and so many other guilty pleasures. But it is also going back into the uncertainty that dominated my life before I got here. As I was saying to a friend today, if my life allowed me to know what I was doing for more than 2 months at a time, I'd probably be shocked enough to faint. I'd rather be uncertain at home than uncertain elsewhere. I guess.

Sawa Sawa - 9

I made my first foray out of the expat bubble in Malawi on Sunday when I decided to go to the old town market in Lilongwe. I took the minibus (50 Kwacha - finally something affordable in Malawi!) and walked to the main market - a sprawling covered market with narrow streets, little light and treasures waiting to be discovered.

The real Lilongwe where people live, transact business and sleep was dirty, smelly and full of frantic (legal and illegal) activity. The streets of the market were dark and narrow, with houses rising on both sides and puddles on the ground from the recent rain. With the market selling everything from vegetables, chicken to music CDs, clothes and cosmetics - walking through the streets was like walking through the Crystal Maze. I found my way in easily enough but then spent 30 minutes finding my way out and getting lost. Had it not been for Malawi and people guiding me along with a smile and a friendly question, I'm sure I would have freaked out!

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Back in the bubble, we had the first of many Christmas parties at my hotel - complete with people wearing ugly sweaters (mine had green shiny Christmas trees on it!), Santa and reindeer hats, exchange of gifts under 1000 Kwacha, shortbread cookies and tonnes of chocolate!

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I'm not entirely sure what Sawa Sawa means (there's a debate between "open your heart" and "open your vagina"), but I know that the song has all the makings of a hit - a sexy beat, catchy chorus and lyrics that have attracted much controversy. The song plays in the taxi, on radio, at live shows, in clubs every night.. I can't get it out of my head!
So check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbUBSeNrV3c

Shack Night - 15

I'd never though I'd say this, but people in Malawi party way too much.

The tiny expat community has built a high-school-like culture where everyone is part of a gang (the cool gang, the pseudo gang, the desperate-geek-boys-gang) and there are places that everyone hangs out on any day of the week. So it is Thirsty Thursdays at Buchanans, Harry's on Friday.. so on and so forth.
I happen to have my first night out in town on a Wednesday, which in Malawi translated to: Shack Night!

The Shack is a unique party destination for many reasons. For one, it doesn't show up on the Lonely Planet which means that the crowd consists of expats living in Malawi, some locals and regulars who head over to The Shack every Wednesday. Apart from the nice relaxed "shack-like" atmosphere and a place to run into 80% of the young crowd in Malawi, the pub also hosts the Volleyball league every Wednesday. This highly competitive league involves three tiers, rowdy matches and some very hot European boys playing Volleyball :)
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Staying out till the wee hours of morning, didn't prevent wealthy Malawians from "celebrating" World AIDS Day on December 1st. The same crowd showed up to events recognizing World AIDS Day and made use of the subsidized cash bar. The most interesting part of these events was running into three fourths of the Indian community who, after showing appropriate shock and surprise at my sudden arrival in Malawi, inquired after my health, invited me over for some much needed dal-roti and then (on-the-sly) told me that they would give me a better rate if I wanted to exchange dollars in the black market. :D
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As Friday evening approaches and my friends decide whether to go Carol Singing at the Four Seasons or Harry's for a few drinks, I can't help but think ... people in Malawi party way too much!