Leaving Malawi

Jackie and I had a plan for traveling from Malawi back to Tanzania. We wanted to leave early Saturday morning, make our two transfers, arrive at the border before it closed (6 pm) and then get 112 km into Tanzania to the nearest major town. If you've been reading the other posts from this trip, you can probably predict that almost nothing goes according to plan.

We started off well. Jackie and I left at 5:20 am (the best part about Jackie is that she loves mornings as much as I do, which is not at all). It was pouring rain, and she was carrying all her supplies that she has for her year-and-a-half time here, while I had the sheller once again on my back. It started pouring right as we went out the front door, but we lucked into finding a taxi to the bus station before we were completely drenched.

We searched around the bus station hoping to find a vehicle heading to the border, but no such luck. We wound up finding a minibus (remember, I said in my last post that it's not as bad in cities) going partway to the next big town (the attractive feature was that it was about to leave instead of waiting 20 minutes to 2 hours to fill up). We hopped on and rode to the town and changed to another minibus which was supposed to take us to the town that would have transport to the border town. Minibuses are always making lots of stops, so we were feeling a bit anxious about the pace that we were setting and whether we would make it to the border in time. Then, the driver kicked everyone off the minibus, refunded part of our cash and set off somewhere else (I don't speak Chichewa, the Malawian language, so I didn't get all the details of what he was saying).

Jackie and I were not thrilled at this point, and we calculated that our only shot was to hitch with a fast driver. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long. We spotted a nice Land Cruiser and asked if we could hop in. The driver checked with his only passenger (sitting in the backseat) and then invited us in. We found out that they were heading toward the border, and Jackie and I had an unspoken high five. The passenger mentioned that he was an MP and asked us some questions about where we were coming from and all that stuff. Jackie and he were chatting a bit, while I was trying to find a good spot to jump in and find out a little bit more about being a Malawian member of parliament.

As we drove on, he told us a lot about his work and his life before joining Malawian politics (I was especially interested in what he had to say since a lot of his work focused on international trade). We told him about the work that GCS does and he sounded very interested. He invited us to stay at his house and show him how the sheller works. Jackie and I looked at each other and smiled. We rode on and talked about life as an economist (our host), an engineer (Jackie) and a scientist (me-- well, that's what my degree says at any rate). My favorite part of the discussion was discussing Malawi's new Youth Enterprise Development Fund (worth about $20 million) for young people to have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs.

Before we got to his house, he took us to a campsite on Lake Malawi. The lake, the hills and the entire setting was just gorgeous. The campsite is within his constituency, so he is good friends with the owner, so he introduced us to a nice Dutch gentleman. My favorite part was the dog at the campsite: half Great Dane, half greyhound. The dog was an enormous beast, with seemingly no meat on his ribs.

We arrived at his house and he invited us to swim in Lake Malawi. We quickly changed and all three of us headed for a quick swim before sunset. The water was warm and calm and we all felt incredibly refreshed. Dinner was incredibly fresh fish, with a delicious variety of rice that apparently is grown locally in northern Malawi. He also showed us some videos of Malawian singing and dancing, which was pretty fun. Jackie and I were reluctant, but we had to excuse ourselves early to go to the guest room and do some work. We had a really productive evening (mostly emails) and then crashed.

The next morning, we woke to the sound of guests. Our host had invited several neighbors who grow maize to come over and see how the maize sheller worked. They brought dried maize and bicycles as well so that we had everything we would need. Jackie and I ate a quick breakfast (cassava is a good way to get the energy you need for the day) and began setting up. We started putting on all the parts, but soon everyone was enthusiastically helping, so I stepped back a bit to let them feel that they were owning the project. After making some final adjustments, we were all set to go and started feeding maize through the sheller. Everyone was impressed at how fast and easily it fed into the machine. They all tried to convince us to leave the machine with them, but we sadly had to take it back (somewhat cruel, but there will be other demonstrations on this trip).

We quickly disassembled the machine and packed our bags before heading to the border. The driver gave us a lift, and we crossed the border without event. Jackie and I both felt immense relief to be back in Tanzania and able to communicate in the local language (my feeble attempt in Malawi was to use Malawian grammar structure with kiswahili verbs, since they are both Bantu languages). We hopped a bus and completed the last leg of our journey. We checked into a hotel and took some much needed rest.

Our initial plan set aside Sunday as our rest day (for all my talk about taking a vacation, I still hadn't taken a day for resting). Didn't quite work out that way, and I think this pace is catching up with both of us.