Arrival in Malawi - January 2010

11 January 2010

Yesterday’s heat has dissipated and its 5h30. The morning sky is cloudy and has allowed a fresh breeze to recharge the air. I used to have a quiet corner at the side of the house in Makupo, away from the kitchen where generally no-one passed, but since the new well is in all the folks from the trading centre beside the bus stop, walk right over my feet on their way to the well. Instead of being able to get my head into a thought or write a journal entry, I am continually distracted by the obligatory morning greetings.

I like the spot a lot because it is close to the house and slightly hidden so that I can see the road but am not very visible to those driving or biking by. That is a perfect scene for good sociological observation. But with this new busyness as the women, young girls and small boys go by on their way to the well, it has lost its cache. They are so well trained or culturally indoctrinated that they cannot pass an elder without genuflecting and greeting, which is all well and fine for cultural learning, but really difficult for an old guy trying to get a bit of work done in the early hours of the morning.

The great plan that I had to get straight to the village started falling apart even before I left Canada. With Patrick Bolland getting sick, it complicated things a bit because I no longer had an excuse to stick to my agenda and so I had to be a bit flexible. I had already been pressured by Sautso to spend a night in Lilongwe upon arrival, instead of going straight to the village. She wanted us to catch up on things and have some time together before I disappeared into the countryside. When I passed by Ivy’s place, the famous Ufulu Gardens Lodge, on the way to the hotel, I discovered she had gone to Blantyre to see Miriam so 2 of the 3 sisters (Nellie being the senior and 3rd) were down there.

I had to check in with Miriam once I got settled and she told me that her husband, Henry, was in town, but that he was leaving on the Sunday morning. If we didn’t meet that weekend, then it was a lost opportunity, because his pilot schedule was not predictable enough that he could arrange his times with mine. We had last seen each other for one night in January of 2004 and that was our first time since 1976. We had fled Malawi first, in 1976, Horace died in the early 80s and Henry and Miriam had left in the late 80s.

For the year June 1975 to May 1976 Henry and I were two thirds of the indomitable three musketeers. Along with Nellie’s younger brother, Horace, we spent many a long evening carousing together. Henry married Miriam, Nellie’s cousin sister and became a pilot with Air Malawi. Like so many Northerners under the Banda / Tembo regime, Henry found his career progress blocked by jealous tribalists and fearing arrest in one of the many sweeps of northern professionals, he moved to Gaborone and flew for Air Botswana for many years. More recently he has been in Equatorial Guinea setting up their national airline, but found he couldn’t deal with the repression and is between jobs. Over the years of exile, working at expatriate salaries, Miriam and he have managed to put together the money to build a beautiful house in Blantyre and slowly buy a few plots of land to be developed. The last couple of years now of his work life are going into developing their land so he has a revenue when he eventually retires from piloting.

Whle we were together in Blantyre, I took the opportunity to interview Miriam for the family history and learned a great deal about AnaMumba’s life. That is another story unfolding, but it is due to the motivation given to me by Thokoza. She is very keen to write the family history, and over the years I have threatened to do it but when Thokoza gets it in her mind then I will have little choice but to do it. Drawing some sort of chart or family organigram is useful, but our plan is to augment that with oral histories, written, recorded or videoed and of course collecting pictures whenever we can.

The Mennonite side of the family is relatively easy, since so many people have written about their evolution, It is quite another story in Malawi where the bridge between the old oral tradition and the ability to recall many generations into the past via stories past down from great-grandmother to great-grandchild has been broken asunder by the arrival of European style schools. In her case, Miriam was one of the younger generation to spend as much time as she did with anaMumba. She was there at the inception of Makupo village and was very informative.

So I arrived on Friday. Saturday Sautso and I drove to Blantyre. I took Henry to the airport Sunday morning. He was on his way to India looking for a job in the East. Then Sautso and I came back to Lilongwe. She drove half the distance each way which allowed me to get some scenery photos. We had supper with Undeni and another woman who had been in England with her. Monday I had to do a bit of shopping and settle some money issues before setting off for home in Makupo.

It is good to be home, but boy were there a lot of issues to deal with. The obligatory thing is that everyone had to come and sit with me and share condolences since this is my first visit since Nellie’s mom died. After an hour or so Frazer was showing me around the village and what has changed when I got a phone call from Chimwemwe in Canada. Malawi was beating Algeria 2 to 0 in the first half of the Africa cup of nations competition in Luanda Angola. He was watching the game and couldn’t believe that I wasn’t somewhere taking it in.

I have written a bit more about this in my article on CAF football.

More soon.

Doug