Quiet Times

7/18/2013

 
PictureA skink at Nkwichi - one of the most common animals here. Unlike many animals, the female has the yellow head and bright blue tail; males are dull brown.
JULY 6: Since I came back early from the previously scheduled trip, I have had some time to help other volunteers with their own projects.  I have spent some terrific, peaceful time at the farm cutting dried lemongrass to package for lemongrass tea to sell at the lodge and at other lodges in the area.  The farm project is working hard to become self-sustaining, and these sorts of value-added projects will help a great deal if visitors to the area buy them.

Another project I have been assisting with is English teaching.  The newest arrival, Trish, has actually been coming to Nkwichi for many years now, teaching the staff English.  Because people are at varying levels of proficiency, she usually gives private sessions, which means a lot of walking from lodge to farm (a little over a mile) and back again, being careful to schedule lessons in out-of-the-way places when guests are present so as not to disturb them.  My task is to help her with comprehension tests.  The materials she has brought from England include dialogs to help assist her most advanced students in their listening comprehension.  The only problem is, many of the dialogs are discussing things that would be completely outside the realm of people’s experiences here.  One dialog has two friends going through photographs of a holiday in Spain, where they visit museums and castles, and record lectures on a cassette recorder (!).  Another involves a sports centre (what we would call a “gym”), with a discussion of what bus to take, what clothing one needs to bring and whether you can buy sandwiches there or not (people do not eat sandwiches here.  Needless to say, it is difficult to know how much of the comprehension gap is linguistic and how much is cultural.  It is as if I were getting a comprehension test in Nyanja in which two people building a house were discussing the relative merits of ten different types of grasses for thatching a hut, or a dialogue in which a man was negotiating a dowry with the uncle of a potential second wife.  I wonder how I would do, and admire how the students press gamely on.  “What is this ‘casa telly’?” [castle] they want to know.

Three villages had mentioned that they might like to have me come back for a second training session: Uchesse, Chigoma and Mbueca.  Since they are among my favorite villages (though I have to admit, nearly all the villages are my favorite villages), I have been hoping to go back.  Still, all these villages being on the lakeshore, Mr. Joe has been able to contact the northern villages via Skype phone from the lodge.  Of course living in Mbueca he can speak directly to members of the choir.  In these calls and visits, it turns out that the three groups feel good about the training they have already received and are content.  Mr. Richard has returned to Uchesse on his time off to work with his home choir, which is much better than me going and doing it anyway.  Still, it is a little sad to see this part of my time here coming to an end.  My last village to visit and work with will be Mala on the 13th.  Mala is the village closest to the lodge – only a forty-minute walk – so it will be a one-day affair.  No more camping out, no more long hikes – at least, barring the unforeseen, which is not insignificant here.  No, our focus now turns to preparations for the festival and the choirmaster training sessions at the end of the month.

Lily, Joe and I have a meeting making checklists to prepare for the festival: Where will we get the flour for the nsima?  How many greens did we buy and where did they come from?  Will we have goat or chicken this year?  How will we get the big generator from Metangula; and since the starter on it has been broken for years, who can we hire who knows how to make it operate anyway? - On and on the details go until my head is spinning.  I need to write the script for the master of ceremonies, Mr. Patson, so that Joe can translate it into Nyanja.  I will also make the certificates of participation and achievement, which will also then need to be translated.  The handouts for the two-day choirmaster training festival must be ready for the next trip to Lichinga, whenever that will be, so that they can be printed.  I won’t be lacking for things to do!  It will just be a different experience than I have gotten used to.

For this evening’s dinner, Doctor Peg comes.  She is preparing for a trip to England to visit friends and family and is very much looking forward to her time there.  We have dinner on the platform built into rocks that jut out into the lake.  It is one of my favorite settings here, although it can get a little chilly this time of year.  Before dinner, I am once again asked to tell my story of my big day a few days before.  Then Doctor Peg tells her own story of her one time experience with a police chapa.  She was carrying a blood sample for analysis in Lichinga.  This blood came from someone who was potentially HIV positive among other problems.  She had it bundled carefully, but almost just out of Cobué, the police took the corner so fast that the bottle came out of her hands and shattered, spilling on her.  She wiped it as quickly as she could, but she noticed that her own hand had a cut on it.  She hoped it had been from a day or two before and was already healed enough to prevent any potential transmission, but she couldn’t be sure.  When she arrived in Lichinga, she was so busy with her work and the needs of people there that she actually forgot to take the prophylactic medicine, which she admitted was not good.  At a later time, she was demonstrating for some trainees at a clinic how to take a blood sample and read an HIV test.  She told them of what had happened and said she would use her own blood because she really needed to know.  Step by step, she showed them the process and then they all crowded around in silence waiting for the results to show.  Negative.  Can you imagine?  Unbelievable.

It is time for my final visa run to Likoma.  I will leave on the 9th.  Unlike the last trip, this visit will only be one day.  I wonder if I will have any trouble at the immigration office based on my little episode this week….    

 
PictureOur packs are placed where we pitched out tent. The home is abandoned; the roof has collapsed as people have used its bamboo for firewood. The building on the right houses the village's motorized corn mill.
In which the author realizes he has come a long way in every sense, yet knows very little.

JULY 2: This day may well have been one of the strangest days of my life.  If the last two days were Mark in Manda, then this day put me Through the Looking Glass, coming and going.

Mr. Elias did end up arriving back in Luiga rather late (“Malawi midnight” or “Niassa midnight,” which is a local term for nine p.m.).  We were already in our tents, but I could hear Mr. Joe and he were talking over the events of yesterday and what would be happening today.  I could not make out what they were saying, though.

It was very cold here last night (it can easily get in the 40s in these mountains at night), and both Joe and Elias were sneezing and coughing a lot.  I am a little concerned about Joe because he never really seems to have gotten over his cold from the last trip; in fact, it sounds from the cough as if it is turning into a pretty serious case of bronchitis.  I wonder what one does for illnesses like that in Mbueca…. 

I also wonder how people sleeping in the many open-air huts in this village could possibly cope with not having any blankets.  Yet somehow they do.  Nobody here thinks anything of it, and nobody anywhere else would think that families in this part of Africa might need warm blankets for very cold nights.  Life goes on, I guess.    

PictureWild dog tracks on the road
We awoke to mist from our breath and condensation on our tents.  I also awoke to discover that my plastic sunscreen bottle had exploded inside my backpack during the chapa ride the day before.  Lucky for me I had anticipated something might happen like that and had packed it along with my shower gel inside a giant Ziploc bag.  It was a mess inside the Ziploc; but the bag had held other than some lotion oozing out of the top, so my other belongings were mostly undamaged. Only the items nearest the bag needed some wiping down, which I did with the roll of toilet paper a graduate student at home had wisely told me I would always need to carry everywhere while in Africa.  Thanks, John!

The morning stayed cold, but we had a good breakfast of hot tea, warm rice and Maria biscuits, plus some bananas that somehow survived the chapa ride in the back – ironically, the ones I was “guarding” were too bad to eat!  “A full English breakfast!” Joe joked.  It really was substantial for a village trip.

We will not be going to Chissindo it turns out; there is no choir there.  Nobody even knew where the information would have come from that there ever had been a choir or that anyone wanted one.  Nope.  No choir.  I am a little disappointed that there will be one village in the Manda Wilderness that I will not have visited, but it would be ridiculous for the three of us to hike for seven hours just to say “hello, we heard you do not have a choir; but we are thinking of you…” then turn back the next day and hike seven more hours, especially given the health of our expedition party at the moment.  We will take the chapa back to Cobué today.

I have grown weary of terrorizing the local children; so I decide to take a walk north up the road, back in the direction from which we came.  On the first hill outside the village, I spot an animal that looks much like a domestic dog only thinner in body and face and with a very long tail. As I come closer it turns around and runs uphill away from the road.  When I get back to Luiga after my walk, I ask what it might be. At first everyone is insisting it is a fox, but the tail was not bushy at all, and it was taller than that.  They think then that it could be a very rare African wild dog, but ONLY if it is truly as I described.  The children are beginning to return for another game of scream and run away from me, so I take another walk.  When I near the spot where the animal turned and ran, I take pictures of the footprints I find.  This is no dog or fox; the front and back prints are spaced right next to each other.  When I return and show the pictures, all agree that it was in fact a wild dog.  Only wild dogs and leopards run that way, apparently.    

PictureThe view from Mr. Bondo's restaurant's front window as I wait (I know, the bars go the wrong way for a prison...). The tailor's porch is in the center, across "the street." The building to the right is the maritime police headquarters. Immigration is in a small building next to the radio tower.
We continue our wait for a chapa.  Now we are waiting for one coming from Metangula, so there is no such thing as an early chapa in Luiga.  It will get here when it gets here.  Joe and Elias pass the time playing bawo with the teens and with each other.

Around 11:30, the president’s family feels bad that we have been waiting so long, so the amayi prepares some cassava nsima with tomatoes and mustard greens for the sauce.  This was a delicious meal and just the right size before the long journey we would face in the big, slow chapa.

Right around noon, Elias heard the sound of a truck and went out to the dirt road to hail it.  As it is slowing down and stopping, I notice that this particular white pickup truck has the word “Policia” painted on its side in big black letters.  As appears to be common in this region, the police are picking up passengers to make some extra money on the side, using their police vehicle as a chapa.  After a bit of dialogue about who we are and where we are going, they admit us to the back of the truck. 

There are three people in the cab of the truck: a man dressed in a dark green uniform, with sunglasses and some sort of serious gun at his side.  Pistol Pete, I thought to myself for no particular reason – but the name stuck in my mind.  A well-dressed woman in a bright floral tea-length dress was sitting in the middle carrying the ammunition clip to Pete’s gun – Mystery Lady; and a man in civilian clothing (soccer shirt and shorts) was nearest the passenger door.  Random Guy, I thought.  In the back of the truck sitting up high and near the cab on the driver’s side, a man in his early twenties dressed in a dark suit and gray shirt with no tie sat with a machine gun pointed up into the air.  American Country and Western music was playing loudly from the sound system, I don’t know who.

Apparently Random Guy was there to collect the money for the ride so that nobody could say that any money had crossed the palm of a police officer at any time.  He quoted a fee to Joe and Elias, they agreed, and off we sped.  And I do mean sped.  On roads where a chapa would go twenty miles an hour, we were going forty.  When a chapa would do thirty, we had to be doing fifty.  And there we all were, bouncing around in this back cab of a police truck.  I looked around at my fellow passengers.  Over the course of the bumps in the road at that speed, Joe had been folded up and was wedged between rice bags and some empty plastic buckets that someone kept warning him to take good care of.  Elias was sitting by Machine Gun Kid.  Over near the wheel well on my side was sitting James Bondo from Cobué, and just behind the middle of the cab sat the mfumu of Mandambuzi and his first wife!  The whole scene could not have felt more surreal.

About a third of the way between Luiga and Mandambuzi, the truck slammed on its brakes and we skidded to the side of the road.  The three hopped out of the cab, and Machine Gun Kid jumped down.  To the side of the road, there were trees cut in a sort of beaver style, looking like giant pencils that had been buried eraser-side down.  On a tree that had been left intact, someone had carved a message in Portuguese: “This is my land and I WILL farm it – Lucas.”  Pete, Mystery Lady and Random Guy all pulled out their cell phones and began taking pictures.  Pete took out his gun and Machine Gun Kid put his gun at the level, doing a sweep of the territory.  They crossed the road, where a fire was still burning in a campsite.  Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler was playing from the cab of the truck. You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em / Know when to fold ‘em / Know when to walk away / Know when to run….  Not finding anybody, the four got back into their respective places and we sped off again, even faster to make up for lost time.  Sometimes to avoid colliding with an oncoming car we would swerve suddenly and stop even faster.  Pistol Pete would make the other car stop and would ask them questions about who they were and where they were going.  Then we were back on our way until the next vehicle.

When we got to Mandambuzi, many people got off at “the chief’s house,” including, appropriately enough, the chief and his first wife.  In another bizarre scene that made me think I might still be dreaming in my tent in Luiga, someone tossed a bag to the elderly wife of the chief.  She caught this bag that turned out to be filled with bread rolls, and the crowd cheered loudly, laughed and clapped – including the police.  She giggled like a schoolgirl, spun in two circles and then literally ran into her house, knees bent the whole way, not to be seen again.  Nobody I have told this to seems to know the origin or purpose of this event.  One staff member has offered, “The crowd might have been excited because bread is very expensive in the villages and she made a good catch.”  It is certainly as good an explanation as any other.

Mr. Joe got off at Mandambuzi, too.  He really was not well at all by this point; being folded in half and slamming his upper back against the low metal wall of the truck bed over and over at twenty-five miles an hour seems to have taken a lot of his strength for some reason. It would be easier for him to hike to Mbueca rather than take the chapa all the way to Cobué and do all the rest of the routine that it would take to get back going that way.  He gave Random Guy 500 meticais: 100 for himself from Luiga to Mandambuzi, and 150 each for Elias and me, with 100 in change due to Elias when we got to Cobué.  I heard Pistol Pete asking about “o branco”[the white one], and Joe assured him that I was going to Cobué and that he was paying for me.  With a wave from Joe, we were on our way again, our load considerably lightened. 

I wiggled my way into a pretty comfortable spot at the rear corner on the passenger (left) side of the truck.  I was on a bag of some commodity or other (most likely rice), and my backpack was protected next to my knees.  Unfortunately we were now on the busiest part of the route, between Manda (as everyone here calls Mandambuzi for short) and Litanda.  Once again, we were stopping every two hundred feet or so, and once again, people were only getting on, not off.  As the bags got piled on, my formerly comfortable seat was altered and raised so that the majority of my body was higher than the edge of the truck bed.  This meant that every time we took a curve at about thirty miles an hour, my body was swinging out slightly over the side of the truck.  It really was dangerous, and suddenly just outside Litanda the truck slammed on the brakes.  Pistol Pete and Mystery Lady got out and readjusted the load so that I could sit lower in the bed.  Each of them took hold of one of my legs and literally pulled them out from their trapped position under three bags of rice.  “Isn’t that better?” they asked kindly. It was; I could already feel the circulation slowly return to my feet.  I braced them against the tailgate, and, grateful for still being flexible at my age, I bent forward and gripped the tailgate for dear life with both hands.  Yes, it was as uncomfortable as it sounds; but I was secure.  Sort of.  We roared off again.  I held on as tight as I could as we took the curves of the oito oito.  We were going way too fast.  There were times on some of the hairpins that the truck’s weight shifted so that those of us on my side were looking down the precipice as we rounded the curves, even as the weight of the other people conspired to push us off the side of the truck.  Many people were screaming, except for the teenage girl next to me who threw her arms up in the air as if she were riding a roller coaster, laughing and calling out “wooooooooo!!!”  I don’t know when I have been that scared in my life.  This was not an event where the inexperienced white man from America was terrified of the commonplace.  Everyone was afraid and grabbing anything that felt at all fastened to something, anything.  At least twice we were two feet from going off the road, rocks and dirt spraying from the rear wheels.  All I could do was grip the tailgate, hope my phone didn’t fall out of my pocket and tumble down the cliff, and try not to notice that my side of that back door was starting to come unfastened from all the turns and weight pushing against it.  I pulled against it as hard as I could while still bent in half.  We’re almost to Cobué – I kept telling myself.  Hang on a little bit longer. We’re almost there….

Suddenly about a kilometer out of town, we screeched to a halt.  Random Guy came around and collected payments.  He came up to me and started to ask for money, then remembered the conversation with Joe and moved on.  Once the money was collected, we screamed our way into town, almost spinning out in front of the tailors’ porch.

We all jumped out as quickly as we could, as if in fear that the demonic contraption might start up and take us on that hellish journey all over.  I never noticed where Machine Gun Kid went, but somehow he melted into the general bustle of Cobué and I did not see him again.  Elias and I were at the intersection in front of James Bondo’s restaurant, near where we had been only yesterday morning.  It was as if the past day had not happened.  We had the three backpacks (Joe had not taken his, feeling too sick to carry it), along with a pack for food and the tents.  Pistol Pete and Mystery Lady approached us.  They did not like that our belongings were “in the street” – street being a relative term in Cobué… most of the rest of the world would call it “dirt.”  Elias told them that we would be going soon, but first he needed his change.  They gave him fifty meticais.

This made Elias angry.  The change was supposed to be a hundred meticais.  The police were using any excuse they could think of – our excess baggage, which was patently ridiculous given all the bags of rice the truck had carried, the length of time we had been on the chapa, the inconvenience of advance payment (!).  Money got passed back and forth with Random Guy and the argument got heated – all in Portuguese of course, since the police were from Lichinga.  Eventually Elias had no choice but to accept the fifty meticais, but I could see he was very angry about it.  Townspeople nearby were trying to pretend that they were not watching.

The police, embarrassed by this public demonstration of their taking money for the use of a government vehicle (something everything knew was happening anyway since it is hard to disguise twenty people and their luggage and bags of rice), decided to turn their attention to me – still all in Portuguese.  “And you!  Where are you coming from?  Where are you going?  Where are your documents?”

My heart sank, but not before it felt as if it had briefly stopped.  Mozambican law requires that you have your passport physically on your person at all times.  In the villages I always carried it in my solar backpack so it would be with me but not actually on me.  This trip, though, I had left my solar backpack at home because of the potential damage in a chapa – and I had forgotten that my passport was in there.   I had realized it halfway on our journey in the boat to Cobué and mentioned it then, half joking.  “Don’t worry about it!  Nothing ever happens!”  When we got on the police chapa, I had mentioned it again to Joe.  “I hope they don’t ask for my passport!”  “Don’t worry about it!  Get in!  Nothing ever happens!”

Something was happening.

I explained that I did not have it on me at the moment; it was at Mchenga Nkwichi (the full name of the area of the lodge.  It literally means squeaky beach, “nkwichi” being the sound of the sand when you walk on it).  This of course was not the right answer.  “You will follow us, please.  We are going to speak with the immigration officer.  Take your bags with you.”  This reads very politely, but it was all shouted.  People were not bothering to pretend not to stare now.  They were staring.  Pistol Pete was touching his gun.  Mystery Lady was yelling.  Random Guy disappeared somewhere, now that there was actual police work to be done.  We gathered up our packs and bags and walked up to the immigration office for interrogation.

“Sit down, please,” to me – again, not so politely as all that, but those were the words.  “You, too,” to Elias – a translation that better captures the abrupt spirit of the moment.  The tirades and volleys of questions began.  “Why are you here?  What are you doing?  How do we know you are really from Nkwichi?”  Pistol Pete would begin.  Then Mystery Lady, behaving as if she were a sidekick in an old gangster movie, would repeat in a shrill voice “Yeah!  Why are you here?  What are you doing?  Nkwichi!”  I recognized the younger of the immigration officers, currently staffing the desk while Mr. Immigration was still away. I was trying to explain to him in Nyanja what had happened.  I forgot my passport.  I always keep it in my solar backpack when I am in the villages.  I forgot to bring it…” They cut me short.  “What day did you enter?” they asked.  I could tell they wanted this question to fluster me, but I knew the answer:  I have entered the country on the tenth of every month, and said so.  Mr. Immigration Junior sprang up to the book and looked it up.  There I was.  I pulled out my other forms of identification to prove I was who I said I was, but they would have none of it.

“The book says you were to be at Mchenga Nkwichi!  You were picked up in Luiga!  What were you doing so far from the lodge?  How can we believe anything you say?”  Elias was trying to tell them what I was doing here, and the immigration officer was helping a bit, but they were not listening.  I could tell Elias was really getting angry now.  “How do we know what you have been doing out there?  Did you see that field near Luiga?”  They determined they would need to search all our belongings.  Elias began to open our packs one at a time, mine first.  I was glad I had at least left those mushy bananas in Luiga, for his sake.  The first bag that came out was the exploded sunscreen and bottle of shower gel.  I knew this bag would look suspicious, and I was right.  They practically screamed: “What is this????!!” Elias looked at them with contempt.  “Pomade.” he said in a tone dripping with sarcasm.  They opened the bag and sniffed it.  It passed the test, and they tossed it aside.  Soon Elias was pulling out my solar flashlight/radio that I always bring on village trips.  “Aha!  GPS!  GPS!!!!  Why do you need a GPS just to be in a village on the road?”  I explained in my broken Portuguese that it was only a solar flashlight and radio.  For a moment their demeanor changed and they spoke to me as if they were just there passing the time of day; big smiles spread across their faces.  “Ah!  A radio! Solar!  Very nice.  Did you hear that your President Obama is in Tanzania?”  Then back to their former tone.  “Keep going.”

Elias unpacked all the bags one by one, item by item.  They were screaming at him “This is YOUR fault!  Your fault!  You are responsible for this visitor!  You should make sure he has his passport!”  I couldn’t let this stand: “Não.  A falta é minha,” I tried to insist.  They turned on me, yelling and pointing their fingers in my face.  “We could take you to Lichinga right now!  Do you understand?  Lichinga!”  They were correct, of course.  That was the law.  Elias had had enough.  He folded his arms and looked them in the eye.  “Posso falar?” [May I speak?] he said in an icy voice.  Oh, dear Lord, I thought.  Just let them do this and let them go.  Please don’t get them angrier.  Two thought streams were going in my head:  “How will I get my belongings shipped to me in the States from the lodge,” and “I wonder if this is what the INS is like in the States….” I hear they are pretty rough, too, to undocumented aliens, which is just what I was.

The bags were all lying in a heap in one corner of the office.  Our belongings were strewn all over the floor.  The two of them put in their parting shots in.  “You had better not do this again.  You had better be on that boat to Mchenga Nkwichi by the end of this day!”  “Yeah! Nkwichi by the end of the day!  On a boat!” And with that, they stormed off to their truck, leaving Elias, Mr. Immigration Junior and me in the office.  A goat began to bawl in the distance.  Elias and I began to repack as Mr. IJ began to lecture me firmly but gently.

“Mr. Mark, you do good work here, but you must remember your documents!  Please always have them on you!”  I promised and said it was a one-time mistake that would not happen again.  We left the office.  In Nyanja, Elias said we should go to James Bondo’s.  As we were walking across the street, he called out again for the benefit of those who were still watching “Mr. Mark!  Remember your documents!”  I promised that I certainly would from now on.

Mr. Bondo had witnessed the beginning of the scene when he got out of the chapa and seemed to have anticipated our coming to his place now.  Within seconds of us walking in the door, he brought a thermos of hot tea, two big mugs and a giant bowl of rice.  He looked at me.  “You could use some tea,” he said.  Elias went to borrow a phone from someone to call the lodge and have them bring a boat.  I poured the tea slowly, trying to steady my shaking hands.  It wasn’t easy.

After a half hour, I was just beginning to calm down.  The police truck came roaring back up the hill on the road from the secondary school and shops.  I heard them asking around at the tailors’ if anyone had seen us.  Nobody claimed to know anything.  I was beginning to like Cobué a little more.  James Bondo’s restaurant has barred windows; I felt as if I were in jail – or in hiding!  That was it!  I laughed a bit to myself, but I have to admit not so loudly that I would give away my hideout.  The next thing I knew though, I began to hear “Chauta!  Chauta! Ndiye mbusa wanga!  Sindidzasowa kanthu.”  My miniature fan club must have seen me come into the restaurant and were re-gathering in their semi-circle like a group of carolers going to visit a prison.  Cheese it, kids!  You’ll blow my cover! I was thinking to myself.  Is that how they talked in those old movies? Like Mystery Lady.  Yeah! Yeah!  Old movies…. I think I was getting a little giddy and overtired.  When I didn’t come to the window, my carolers gave up and disbanded.    

It was taking forever for the boat to arrive, it seemed.  We were sent the slow motorboat Yellowfin since it was the only boat available, and it was taking a while to lumber up the lake.  When it got there, we had to wade into knee-high water to climb in because it couldn't dock any closer.  I didn’t care. I was in the boat.  They said I needed to be on the boat, and I was.  I made it.

After he went up the hill to pick up fuel and a few supplies from Mr. Bondo’s, the boatman Mr. Dalisso and the two of us were on our way.  In the way that one can only tell a story in Nyanja, Elias was telling Dalisso of our adventures over the sound of the motor and the waves, using all the ideophones he could muster.  We all joined in the laughter.  The Cobué shore was far enough away that I could begin to enjoy the absurdity of the entire day.  Wild dogs, exploding sunscreen, bawo, terrified children, non-existent choirs, burning fields, a machine gun, country and western music, mysterious bread dances from first wives of important chiefs, death-defying speed on precarious mountain roads, interrogations, children singing songs back to me in Nyanja as folksongs that I myself had brought from America – all of it.

When I got to the lodge, I had to tell the story four times over.  Someone said, “Well, nobody will be able to say you didn’t use your time to get the full African experience when you were here!”  And she was right.


Postscripts: Joe later told me that as he was paying he looked in the cab of the police truck and saw several empty beer bottles on the floor and at least three in progress.  I don’t know whether I would have wanted to know that on the day we were on the road or not.  People are not overly concerned about drunk driving here, since few drive to understand how dangerous it is.  Most people appear to assume it would be like drunk walking; you might stumble around, but you will get there eventually.  Undoubtedly the alcohol played a part in the aggression of the confrontation in Cobué.

Joe also told me that the conversation about “o branco” I had overheard was already involving questions about my origin and destination; the burning machamba [field for cultivation] we had passed truly seems to have raised their suspicions about me.  Joe told me that Pistol Pete had said to Joe, “It’s okay.  We know you and what you do.” I guess they changed their minds…. 

 
PictureA small chapa just beginning to be loaded (not one we took). Note the goat behind the rear wheel. It is about to be tied, front legs and back legs, and placed on the bed of the truck.
JUNE 30: I always set the alarm on my phone on voyage days, but I never need it.  Still, the one time I don’t set it, that will be the one time I will be late.  This day we cannot afford to be late because we have no control over our travel connections.  By five I am up taking a nice, long hot shower: the last one I will have for a week, I know.  A little after six, Mr. Joe and I are on our way to Cobué on the speedboat.  We stop at the beach by the church in Mala to pick up Mr. Elias, then on to Cobué, where we dock by the White Buffalo boarding house beach and wade ashore.  Once again we climb the slope to the two tailors’ porch to sit and wait for the early chapa out of town.  Soon it became clear something was wrong.

This particular chapa we were going to take is owned and operated by one of the businessmen in Cobué.  Elias went over to talk to him and found out that the chapa had broken down somewhere on the road between Metangula and Cobué, somewhere where there was no phone reception and no reception near enough to walk to for them to tell the owner where they were.  There is phone reception between Metangula and our destination, Luiga, so it had to be somewhere before our destination.  The businessman had a deal for us.  He was sending out a truck today to repair the chapa.  He could take us as far as the chapa had broken down.  Then, if we wanted to go any further, we would have to pay the fee for hiring a private driver.  This was a huge gamble.  If the chapa had broken down halfway from Mandambuzi to Luiga, we could conceivably afford the rate the rest of the way.  If, on the other hand, the truck had broken down halfway up the mountains from Cobué, we would be stuck there until the next chapa came along – or we could pay an exorbitant rate we could not really afford.    

PictureThe chapa from above, almost two-thirds loaded. The passengers are debating whether the goat will suffocate underneath them. Half think it will, half think it won't. I do not know how it did.
We were not really sure what to do.  I tried to call the lodge, but my phone would not make calls out for some reason.  We borrowed a boatman’s phone, which worked, but nobody was at the lodge yet.  I left a message for someone to call us back.  Ten minutes later, the repair truck left.  There went that option.  By the time the lodge called back, I could anticipate what was going to happen.  I asked if we could get a ride back to the lodge and try again tomorrow.  We can’t really afford two trips to Cobué.  I’m afraid you’ll have to stay there overnight.  Maybe you can work with a choir if you are bored. [click]  I had anticipated the first two sentences.  Rather than stew over the unintentional insult, I chose to ignore the third.

There was nothing for it but to head to James Bondo’s house and restaurant.  It was not yet ten o’clock, and we would be in Cobué all day.  Churches had already begun services.  We took a little tour of town.  We went down to the new boarding house for girls the Wilderness Trust is building for girls in the other villages who want a high school education.  The dormitory is now finished; it only awaits the construction of a kitchen and the toilet.  The hope is to have it ready for the start of the new school year in January. 

We came back and ate the lunch that was meant for us to take on the trail to Chissindo.  In the afternoon, we walked down the main shopping street twice: the second time to repair the sandals Joe had bought back in Chigoma that had now broken.  The cobbler was not there, but he had left his tools at the farmer’s market, so he and a merchant found some thread somewhere and Joe sewed a temporary fix.  We came back to find that Mr. Bondo’s wife had heated water for us to wash.  I didn’t really need to wash because of my long shower that morning, but it was something to do.  Joe and Elias went to the lake to bathe.  When they came back, we pitched our tents.  Their tent was just outside the restaurant, but I would stay in my tent inside the restaurant.  The restaurant has a gravel floor, which is actually kind of a practical floor for a restaurant, though I doubt it would go over well in the United States.  This brought us up to about two thirty.

We had been told there was going to be a soccer game between the Cobué Secondary School and the men’s team from Chilola at three o’clock.  I was looking forward to this novel way to alleviate boredom, but we were halfway there when we found out it had been cancelled because the Chilola team had not arrived on the chapa coming into town from the north. 

While in the area we looked again, but the cobbler never came back all this day.  We checked many times, which involved a walk past the farmers’ market and past one of the many liquor stores.  Liquor stores here sell something called “sachets,” little individual-size pouches that contain an unregulated potent substance of unknown origin.  The most popular, judging by the number of these sachets littering the pathways, goes by the name of “Double Punch.”  When I first was walking the paths two months ago, I saw these pouches and wondered if they were juice packets for the children’s school lunches.  Lily was incensed: “Juice is a luxury here!  Families could never afford to send their children to school with juice!”  I spent a lot of time on trails pondering the luxury of juice versus the apparent necessity of mystery hooch, when I wasn’t observing how frequently these empty sachets were strewn on the path together with free condoms distributed by the United Nations.  But I digress….  Ah, yes.  I was actually noting the irony of this particular liquor store’s name.  Underneath the list of three types of sachets it had for sale, including the ubiquitous “Double Punch” (not the cheapest, by the way), was the name of the store: Mulungu Alinane – God Is With Me.  Something new to ponder on the trail.

Joe and I took one more walk around town while Elias visited with friends.  It was between four and five by now, so we simply sat on the front stoop of James Bondo’s restaurant and waited for dinner.  Some children between the ages of four and ten saw me and began to sing: “Chauta!  Chauta!  Ndiye mbusa wanga, sindidzasowa kanthu.” This is the song I have been teaching everyone in the villages.  Children appear to really love it, and now on my return to Cobué, I find that it really has “gone viral,” if you can imagine a sort of Nineteenth Century sense of that term.  Children know the song and know that I am the one who brought it.  Seven of them stand in a semicircle in the restaurant’s front “yard” near three stray goats, and we give an impromptu concert of this same song about ten times straight.  The goats aren’t bad, either….  Sometimes the tailors or their customers watch this strange sight for a while, and then return to what they were doing.  This little vignette really made the whole day feel worth it to me.  I had no idea the song was going over that well!  One young boy of about six was trying to learn the solo verses as well.  We passed the time until it was time for dinner.

Mr. Bondo made a delicious dinner of corn nsima, rice, beans and mustard greens.  I turned in early for bed since once again we were going to try to catch the early chapa.  Pea gravel is surprisingly comfortable as a sleeping surface… or maybe I have gotten a little less choosy since I have been here.  Whichever was the case, I was asleep in no time.

JULY 1:  Today we woke and packed early to be ready for the chapa.  The early morning weekday chapa has a double long bed to pack in twice the people and belongings.  I steeled myself with our breakfast of tea, rolls and bananas.  Despite the promise of an early start, the chapa was still loading and rumbling about town until it reached us just before nine.  We started to run to pile on.  “Take these bananas!”  Joe said, handing me two of the tiny bananas, I imagine for the hike.  I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but I had an extra pocket in my hiking pants.  I put them in there.

Mr. Bondo was taking this same chapa, and as I approached, he knocked on the front door.  “Please!  You will be going in here!”  I really didn’t want to, but I could tell everyone expected me to.  Mr. Joe said “See you in Luiga!” and jumped into the back.  Someone took my pack, and up I hopped, and now the ride began to seem like something from Alice in Wonderland.  Maybe it was Mark in Manda. It does have a nice ring….    

PictureOne of the small open-air houses of Luiga. You may be able to make out the bed (blue) visible from the outside. The round building to the left is a granary for corn.
As I vaulted up, a man began banging on my hiking boots incessantly.  I turned around to see who it was, and it was the senior immigration officer of Cobué.  He did not recognize me.  The driver was saying of me “He does not know Portuguese, only English.  Only English!”  I wanted to show them I knew Nyanja at least a bit:  “Ndikhale pano?” [Should I sit here?] I said, indicating the back area of the cab.  “Eee,” [Yes], but it turned out I needed to remove my shoes before getting in.  I climbed back and put my feet on the center tool storage area to take off my boots.  Mr. Immigration came back with me and stretched out as far as he could, piling his suitcase and Hulk Hogan backpack in his corner and using them as pillows.  It was evident that such an important personage expected the full backseat on his own, and that he was miffed that I had the audacity to be there.  He put his feet on my leg.

The front seat, it turned out, was reserved today for the chefe do posto.  This is the name of the government’s representative in a district – sort of above the level of mayor but below the level of governor.  This is an appointed position, but it is done from Maputo, a very long way from Lago District, where we are in Niassa Province.  These chefes do posto are often moved around seemingly at random.  This particular chefe do posto is unusual in that he is local.  He jumps into the front, looking jaunty and happy today in his pink Colorado Rockies hat.  From my view in the rear-view mirror, the back of the large double-length chapa looks very full but not horribly uncomfortable.  Still, I am painfully aware of my very privileged position sitting in the front.  I am also painfully aware of the Immigration officer’s feet and the two bananas in my right lower pants pocket.  I am a little squeezed; I only hope the bananas remain intact for the journey.  Despite the fact that everyone in the truck but me is local, they choose Portuguese as the language for conversation.  That leaves me out, but I catch that something has happened with Nelson Mandela.  There is something to not being able to keep up on the news, but I would like to have known what this was about.  No chance, though: the Portuguese is too advanced for my limited study.

We begin lumbering out of town and up the oito oito [the eight eight], which I have learned is the local nickname for the twisting, turning mountain road I so learned to loathe on my last chapa ride.  Obviously it is not nearly as bad when riding in the front, and this driver is going much more cautiously than the one on my previous trip.  We stopped just before the T-junction where I got off last time. One of the workers who loads the chapa jumped off the back to relieve himself in front of the truck.  Four elderly men and two young women take this cue to jump off the back and do the same, although all but one elderly man choose to go some way into the woods.  After this impromptu rest stop we resume our journey.

Once we get to Litanda, it seems we stop every two hundred feet or so to pick up people and cargo.  Cargo in this rice-producing area right now often means three or four giant bags of processed rice to take to Metangula or Lichinga to sell.  Nobody seems to be getting off.  I am wondering how the back is for Joe, Elias, Mr. Bondo and all the others.  Sometimes the chapa stops just because the driver knows somebody and wants to catch up.  Of course the people in the back have no idea why we are stopping, but they must simply sit and wait patiently.  The owner of this chapa gets in when we reach Mandambuzi, and he comes into the back and sits between Mr. Immigration and me.  He promptly falls asleep and his head falls onto my shoulder.  I am beginning to smell bananas.

On the other side of Mandambuzi, the chapa slows again.  “Carne!  Carne!”  The chefe do posto and Mr. Immigration are interested in this development as well.  The driver has spotted a woman with a metal bowl on her head.  They recognize her as a local meat merchant.  The driver stops and purchases the slabs of raw meat she has been carrying in the mid-day sun.  He briefly debates with her whether he should wrap them in his colleague’s t-shirt that is on the front seat: “He never wears that one anyway,” but in the end thinks the better of it.  He opens the front toolbox and removes all the tools, then puts them in the compartment of his door.  This requires his moving his toothbrush and toothpaste, which he does, then receives the meat in his hands.  He places the meat in this toolbox, but from my angle I cannot see whether there is anything between the raw meat and the bottom of the box.  He then wipes his hands on his pants and readjusts his toothbrush.  On we go, as the men discuss various ways to cook meat.

We enter a different sort of habitat than I have been before while here:  mountain woods with different trees that grow much more closely together.  We have left Mandambuzi and there are no houses or fields at all, just trees.  It stretches on and on.

We stop again.  This time it is the chefe do posto who must answer the call of nature, but he must do something a bit more significant than was done at our previous stop.  Two men hop out of the back with machetes.  The chefe do posto squats down in the woods but within view of the chapa nonetheless.  A few minutes later, the two men are hacking at twigs and saplings and covering this unexpected byproduct of our trip.  All resume their places on the chapa and we start up again.  The chefe do posto takes out a bag of cookies, opens it, digs his hands in and then hands it to the driver and Mr. Immigration, who each take some.  Then he offers it to me.  “Não, obrigado,” [No, thank you]  is all I can manage to say.  Is it my imagination, or is one of the bananas starting to feel a little soft?

A little more than three hours after we boarded, we have reached Luiga.  We get all our belongings and jump out.  The back of the chapa looks as if it has sixty or more people on it.  It rolls off, leaving us at the edge of this village.  We are across the road from the president of the village’s Umoji Association, and we cross in order to speak with him and learn more about what is going on with choirs in the area.  The trip has taken too long for us to hike to Chissindo today; we would still have an hour to go when it got dark, on a mountain trail in a leopard area.  We will need to stay here and leave tomorrow.    

PictureThe Roman Catholic Church of Luiga, cassava drying in the front. Notice the entrance is only about four feet high under the thatched roof.
It turns out that the president (Luiga does not have an mfumu) is not there, nor are many other adults from the village at the moment.  There is a funeral in Thulo, the next village south, and people from Luiga and Chissindo are there to pay their respects.  For the mourners of Chissindo, this would of course be a one-day journey there, the funeral, and a one-day journey back.  Hearing that there are many people from Chissindo who have come, Elias borrows a bicycle and sets off to meet his friends and perhaps relatives and to learn what exactly the state of choral music is in Chissindo.

Meanwhile, we talk to two teenagers here in Luiga.  It seems that there is in fact no choir here after all.  Maybe it would be “a good idea” to form one.  Maybe tomorrow?  The problem is that there was a choir until the choirmaster died last year, but all the former singers are at the funeral today, so it won’t be possible to do much about it right now. I have been here long enough to know what all this means.  They have no intention of forming a choir, but it would be impolite to say so.  All of what they say is true, but the fact remains that they could send word to these homes now or this evening to spread the word that we are here and that the choir is starting up again.  The fact that they do not offer to do this tells us all we need to know.


There are no adults to visit, so we sit for a while and watch the teens play bawo, the African strategy game that involves rows of stones or marbles on a long wooden board.  I sit and watch for a long time, as they play one another and Joe.  I want to learn the rules but it is too complicated to figure out just by observing in one afternoon.  I decide I want to learn, though.

After we all tire of bawo, the teens offer to show us the church.  Why not?  We walk down the road, and after about five houses, I hear unmistakably “Chauta! Chauta!  Ndiye mbusa wanga, sindidzasowa kanthu!”  I can’t believe it!  Here, in Luiga, the song got here before me?  A teenager comes running up to us.  “Zikomo kwambiri!” [Thank you very much] he says to me with a big smile.  It seems an odd thing to say.  He tells Joe that he is from Mcondece and sings in the choir there but is visiting family in Luiga; do I remember him?  I say that I do vaguely, which is my equivalent to the answer the boys gave me earlier about the choir.  Now I understand: he was saying zikomo kwambiri to me because he was teasing me.  I must have said it too much for his taste when I was in Mcondece – no doubt to the amusement of the teenagers in the ensemble.  I probably did say it too much, but they were so formal there!  I didn’t know what else was appropriate to say in such circumstances. He means it in good fun, though; I don’t take offense.  We head to the church together.

The church is charming but tiny.  There is a cross in the front behind the altar and in the back.  Joe asks the teenager who brought us if this is an Anglican or Roman Catholic church.  “I don’t know,” he answers.  This is just where we go to church.  Joe is incensed that the worshippers here do not even know what denomination they attend, but it makes sense to me; why do they need to know if this is their only Christian choice?  We find out later that it is a Roman Catholic Church.    

I am learning more about Luiga.  This is a nomadic village consisting of buildings along the single road.  The fields people cultivate are far away in the mountains, so they live in Luiga for eight months of the year, and then they go to work their fields for four months.  When the children left the open air schoolhouse each year for a few years, the government gave up trying to provide a teacher, so the children here have no school and no prospect of a school.  There is no clinic.  There is a borehole well.  There are two small stores for general supplies, and there is a woman with clothes on a tarp, selling from her front yard, with the usual crowd around trying things on, though I do not see anyone buying.  Many people’s homes are tiny, and most are in some stage of disrepair.  The clothes here are more ragged than in most other villages I have seen.  This is clearly one of the poorest villages in the region.  I am finding it all a little depressing.  I wonder why the children would not want a choir; what else was there to do?

The younger children here are fascinated and repelled by me.  They edge close to me, but if I move in any way, they scream in terror and run away.  This evening around the fire as we prepare our dinner, one child gains the courage to shake my hand, and all the others scream.  Two more try it, but they cannot bring themselves to touch me again, and they run off.  A drunken man comes to the fire and begins to speak very loudly to everyone and nobody in particular.  I never understand drunken people well here; I hope he does not turn to talk to me.  Joe and I move over near our tents to eat our pasta dinner.  Nobody joins us.

Elias has not yet come back from the funeral, but others are returning.  The president and his wife arrive after a while. The president explains to Joe that when Lily came through, she did not see him because he was working in his field.  Thus, she got an incomplete message.  Someone told her that the choir had met, which was true, but they had in fact decided not to begin rehearsing at this time.  He was so sorry for this misunderstanding.  So, there we have it.  No choir in Luiga.  Now we must wait to hear from Elias regarding Chissindo.  It is long past dark, and Joe thinks he may have had to stay in Thulo, especially if his bicycle had problems – not an unreasonable thing to think might have happened.

I crawl into my tent as I hear the drunken man talking to the president, railing against azungu [white people].  I shut it out.  I remember the bananas.  They are mushy and black, but only a small bit of one has been smeared into the pocket.  It will dry. Tomorrow, no matter what, we will go.  That is fine with me.    
 
PictureThe view north towards Malawi from "Lookout Point," otherwise known as "The Place to Make Phone Calls." Mala village is spread out below, Chizimulu is far to the left and Likoma is barely visible behind the tree.
JUNE 26: Power!  Electric power and internet!  Though it is true that the lodge office still needs its new batteries to be connected soon, it is also true that all the difficulties of the last two weeks were due in large part to two crossed wires.  How anyone figured this out I don’t know, since we were out on the trail; but now I can transfer my videos and audios and work on notation when I am at the lodge as I had always hoped.  Victory!  As I was eating lunch, I let all my videos from this previous trip load into my laptop.  Then I edited them and backed them up on my external hard drive.  I transcribed one piece into music notation.  All of this I could not have done in one day before this, let alone half a day.

There was hot water for the shower this morning.  The night watchmen must light a fire at five in the morning under a barrel boiler encased in the local mud-cement.  Then by six, those of us in Volunteer Village have enough hot water to take hot showers; but only when the night watchmen are not busy with other duties.  When guests are here, they must light these fires for each individual guest chalet plus our little “village” (four huts) and the other little “village” (three houses). I am happy to say they have been able to provide us with hot water now for several days running.

Breakfast was a roll and coffee, and we had fresh water to drink, too.  Lunch had a green salad and even had sprouts, plus spaghetti and sauce, a frequent lunch entrée when there are no guests at the lodge.  We had passion-fruit cake and fresh papaya for dessert!

Guests arrived later in the day. We volunteers often join them for sundowner drinks; it give us an opportunity to meet some different people and share news of what we do here.  Today, they boated us all out to Rock Island, which is exactly what it says it is: a giant, dramatic rock out in the lake, with a flat space for pillows and a picnic to be spread out.  In fact, I learned the lodge can set up a bed, toilet and shower on the island for honeymooners!  It was a fantastic place to watch the sunset, but I did feel bad for the boatman and server who had to go early to set up, head back, pick us up, then stand around the entire time we were there just to wait for us to have enough and head back.  As we were getting back in the boat, I told them each to get something on me when their shifts were over.

Dinner at Volunteer Beach was very pleasant.  Lily and Ines are not back yet, but we got a nice fire started and had rice and green beans. Because of my food allergies, I could not have the entrée, so they made an omelette just for me!

I came back to my hut to see that it had been thoroughly swept and my laundry taken! All in all, this was a day when I felt very taken care of.  It was very easy to fall asleep, but in a different way than when out in the villages.

JUNE 28:  Yesterday was our anniversary.  I have told people that I have to climb a mountain to make a phone call.  Maybe they think I am being figurative or exaggerating, so I decided to put some pictures I took just before making my anniversary phone call to prove it!  One literally has to stand on a cliff, looking for the place where the reception bars will light up.  But as you will see, it is hardly a difficult chore when the view looks like this!    

Picture
Turning so I faced south, I took this picture of the Mozambican mainland. The mountains jutting out are part of Tumbi, a village just past Mbueca and not part of Manda Wilderness.
Picture
Gratuitous sunset picture taken just after I finished my call. Sunsets here are never subtle! Here in Mozambique, the sun sets over Lago Niassa (Lake Malawi), but the Malawian flag (which I really like) of course represents the sunrise over the same lake.
Lily arrived at Nkwichi at four this morning.  She had had to wait until nighttime to release the fingerlings at the Fish Farm in Litanda, and the committee had had some disagreement about how and where to release them.  Committee meetings can be very long here – even at midnight!  Eventually, all was resolved, the fish were properly released and Lily and Ines were back on their way.  Ines stayed in Cobué because she must do a visa run to Likoma.

Naturally I did not see Lily until the afternoon.  Her news was that, unlike past years, Luiga and Chissindo, those distant mountains in the previous pictures, do in fact have choirs!  She had checked with the president of Luiga’s Umoji Association on her way through, and he had confirmed that they did in fact have a choir, and Chissindo did as well.

This was a bit of a shock, since all the other villages had told us that these two villages did not have choirs.  We had always been scheduled to leave for Luiga and Chissindo on the 29th, but I had half given up on the idea that we would actually go.  Now not only were we going, we were supposed to leave tomorrow!

Joe was still recovering from his illness, though, and was not at work.  This meant we would need to leave on the 30th.  This was a good thing; I had some research to do!  These two villages are quite a bit further inland and have entirely different cultures.  Chissindo is primarily Yao, and they practice a form of folk Islam, which makes them highly unlikely to participate in choirs.  Luiga is apparently half Nyanja and half Yao.  I plan to spend tomorrow doing some research on the Yao people and their customs as well as trying to learn a bit more about these villages.  I brought extra choral pieces with me in case I did need to form a new choir out of whole cloth, so I will bring those along.


There is no way around it: this trip will involve a much longer chapa ride than the first one I took.  From there, we will hike seven hours to get to Chissindo, spend two more days there working with this new choir, then take a day to hike back to Luiga, work two days there, then take the chapa back to Cobué and the boat back to Nkwichi.  Because of the extended chapa ride, I am going to need to leave all my recording equipment and solar backpack at the lodge to avoid the damage that is almost guaranteed to befall them if I bring them.  I fully charge my phone and power it down, only to be used in emergencies and for recording and picture-taking.

JUNE 29: Today I tried to do as much research as I could on Chissindo and the Yao people.  There is precious little information online:  I found one Islamic site that gave the proper times for all prayers when one is in Chissindo, and I found some Christian missionary websites that explained how “the glory of the message of Jesus Christ has yet to reach these people.”  I did find a little on the Yao language – enough to know that there are some similarities but also big differences.  Nyanja will not get me by with someone who speaks Yao.

I am having difficulty at the lodge explaining why it is so important that I do this research.  I based my music and plans upon one culture, but I am traveling to an area where this is not the primary culture.  I included religious songs because church and state and daily life are not separate here; they are all inextricably intertwined.  Now I would go to a primarily Muslim community and teach American spirituals about Jesus?  I hear “anything you teach them they will be grateful for,” which may even be true, but that would not make my taking that assumption for granted ethical.  Teaching people something when they don’t know what they are learning, that advocates something to which they are opposed, is certainly inappropriate at best.

In the middle of the afternoon, Mr. Elias comes to talk about Chissindo, which was his home village before he moved to Mala to work at Nkwichi.  He tells us that there are churches in both villages and that Nyanja is spoken in addition to Yao.  This was contrary to all reports we had received before, which is why one should always go as close to the source as possible.  Once I learned this, I knew what I would be doing and working on when in these villages.  Lily asks Elias if he would be willing to accompany us on the journey.  Since this is a rare opportunity for him to get an all-expenses paid visit to his home area, he readily agrees.

Because of the travel and the new culture, this trip always loomed as a large challenge on my schedule that I was not sure I was ready for.  Now that I know I am going and have a better idea of what I will be doing, I am actually starting to look forward to it.

Mbueca

7/12/2013

 
PictureA small part of the field of wildflowers on the path between Litanda and Mbueca
JUNE 24 [continued]:  We begin the trek to Mbueca with a very brief, gentle climb on a path I had not yet seen.  Part of it is through an incredible field of yellow wildflowers that had been a cornfield high on the mountain until corn season was over.  Walking through this field certainly makes the climb more bearable!  My pack does not feel nearly as heavy today; I am convinced that I was fighting something off to have felt the way I did three days ago.    

PictureBricks lined up and curing for the new clinic. The two school buildings are in the back, with the concrete water tank in front of the brick building. Completely cured bricks are visible behind the brick schoolhouse.
After the pass, we merge back to the path I recognize from the trip to Mandambuzi.  The remainder of the hike was indeed much easier when most of it was downhill.  If you have hiked with a heavy pack, you will know that it takes much more thigh muscle going down, but I do not find that difficult.  It seems very little time at all until we arrive at Mr. Joe’s house; I learn that that is where I am going to stay tonight!  Needless to say, I am excited and honored to be staying in someone’s home instead of in the tent I have always been in everywhere else.

Joe shows me to my room:  it is the front bedroom, which has a rope bed with a blue mosquito net and a nice blue quilted bedspread.  There is a wooden chair to put my belongings, and the window has a screen.  As in all homes here, doors are used for outside entrances; inside doorways are made private by hanging a sheet or, rarely, a curtain.  It was just this way on my grandparents’ farm.

The backyard at Joe and his wife’s home is a constant scene of activity.  Once again, a pack of clothes for sale is present.  People are coming and going in a constant stream of visitors, many of them trying on clothes from this large pack (a tarp, really) that has been spread out in the “back yard.”  Young and old, mfumu and field worker – at one time, the mfumu and his son, the lay leader of the Anglican Church in town, a very old woman from the village, two mothers with six children between them, and two young men straight from the field with mud still caked on their legs were all visiting at the same time, gathered in the yard with Joe and his wife and their daughter and with me.  Everyone was talking and laughing at the same time, and for once there was no hesitation in including me in the general merriment; I was just part of the scene.  I felt I could just breathe and enjoy.  It was fantastic!

One of the women was going into the house to try on a tight t-shirt.  It should be said that many women regularly dress in what might be thought of in the West as a rather provocative way on top, so that is not all that shocking.  Women here nurse their children on demand regardless of circumstance, and it is not uncommon for young mothers as a matter of utility to walk around in tight clothing with one breast exposed so their baby can have access to nutrition as needed.  What was surprising with this woman was when she emerged from the house wearing a pair of tight jeans; this just simply is not done here!  Women generally wear skirts and zitenje that are below the knee, and nothing form fitting below the waist.  I have never seen a woman wear something like this here before.  She is in a backyard and it is like a party, so it is apparently okay; and immediately everyone begins to cheer and laugh and clap at this audacity.  The deacon turns to me and gives thumbs up.  “Nice, eh?  Maybe for a bar… she should buy them.”  After much teasing, she does just that.  I add this to my list of cultural anomalies I hope to understand eventually.

My favorite shopper was actually the chief’s son, playing out a scene any parent would recognize.  He was in his early-to-mid teens, and he was really looking for a blue t-shirt.  He was trying to decide between one with a large graphic Spiderman or, interestingly, the one that appeared to be his favorite, a lighter blue t-shirt that had a map with an arrow pointing to India and the slogan “Building Schools: Transforming a Generation.”  He tried both on – the men were using an outbuilding to change. All people went one at a time into a changing area, never in pairs or groups.  This appears to be a modest and private culture except at the lake, where bathing is expected.  He really wanted a t-shirt, but his father the mfumu wanted him to get a pair of pants that would be good for church and “for Cobué,” i.e., the “city.”  I could tell the son did not like the pair of pants that his father favored but knew he was going to get them anyway.  His father was in no hurry to go anywhere, so this young man was trying on several pairs of pants, hoping to find something else they could agree on.  He did end up getting other things in the end, but of course that pair of pants was in his pile. They were new, again with the tag still on: Old Navy (again!), $4.99.  He got them for 180 meticais, or about $5.50.  This is a crazy world.

After lunch, where for the first time I had the delicious local green mchicha, which is usually cooked with peanuts, we returned to the yard for a bit.  After a bit, Joe offered to take me around to see Mbueca.  I joked with all there that I had thought I wanted to see Mbueca, but now it seemed to me that I might see Mbueca better if I stayed in Joe’s yard!  On the way to start our tour I asked Joe if his yard was always that busy, and he said it usually is when he has a day off from the lodge.  Some day off!

Mbueca has three churches: a tiny Roman Catholic church with a 6 foot by 6 foot or so side room that currently serves as the health clinic, the somewhat larger Assemblies of God church, and the truly large Anglican Church.  This church is obviously the oldest and most attended.  It is built on top of a rise looking out over the lake and up into the foothills.   It is an impressive setting for a church.  The congregation has nice, high wooden benches to sit on for services.  The choir will not be rehearsing on floor mats here.

We also saw the school, which has four classrooms in two buildings that serve five grades.  Three of the classrooms are completely finished and one is in progress, although it already has a large crack from settling.  Two of the classrooms have the nice desks like the ones we saw in Mcondece.

Outside the school there were rows and rows of bricks.  Joe explained that these were being made for the new clinic, which would be next to the school.  The original plan had been to build it in the northern part of the village, which had taxed itself and found a site “under that palm tree over there,” but the southern part of the village had complained that the tree was too far from them.  The north told them fine, but we have raised the money already.  If you want it closer, you must make all the bricks.  The south agreed, and now work has begun.  Joe showed me the pit where the men dig the dirt – quite a task in dry season.  The women fill buckets of water and bring them the mile or so from the lake and dump the water into a large concrete tank just outside the school.  The dirt and water get mixed and poured into brick molds to cure.  After a day they are ready to remove from the mold and cure further in the sun.  Finally they are stacked to await building.  This is brick-making season, and one encounters new houses under construction and other building projects in all the villages now.  Mbueca’s goal is to make one thousand bricks for the clinic.  This was their third day of work and they were making good progress.    

PictureMbueca's Anglican Church Choir. Mr. Afonso Ndungulu, choirmaster is in the back row center in the light shirt.
By the time we got back to the house, Joe set two chairs out on the front porch so we could watch the sunset over the lake.  There were still people in the back, and the mfumu came to join us in the front.  We talked about many things including, surprisingly, the United States again.  The lay leader had wanted to know about it, too, earlier in the day.  When I said I was from America, he assumed I meant Brazil; this is not an unusual assumption here.  I normally remember to say Yunaitedi Statisi.  The deacon was then telling other people that that meant I was close to England, then!  I did not think I should correct him in front of his congregation.  Still, people were curious in Mbueca and wanted to know about crops and population.  They could not believe my tiny state could support one million people.  The Manda Wilderness is half the size of Rhode Island and has twenty thousand people who struggle to get enough to eat with the resources they have.  No wonder people are curious as to what can be grown to eat in such a country that can support so many people in such a small area!

The chief stayed a very long time and seemed to be waiting for an invitation to dinner, which he received, refused, but came anyway.  It turns out that the mfumu is Joe’s wife’s eldest brother and is a family regular, apparently without his two sons.  We had a very pleasant meal together, and then it was time for bed.

Joe has a little black and white cat that is one of the few domesticated animals I have seen here that is not mistreated.  When I got into bed, it hopped up by my feet and began purring.  I didn’t have the heart to take it off the bed to lower the mosquito net; and as it was a breezy night with no mosquitoes, I felt fine leaving the net up.  It was one of the best nights of sleep I have had in all my time here.

JUNE 25: After a breakfast of bananas and tea, we went back to the Anglican Church, which is a bit of a climb that last bit to the churchyard.  Some choir members were actually there at the scheduled start time of 8:30, and by 8:50 the choir was warming up.  They “warmed up” by singing five or six songs along with their keyboard setup, complete with the seemingly obligatory blinking multi-colored lights on the speakers, car battery, inverter, cables and all other equipment necessary to get an electronic keyboard to work in an area with no electricity.  The festival is a cappella, however.  They had brought all this equipment and gone through all that work merely to warm up.  They would not use the keyboard again for rehearsal the rest of the day.

After the warm-up, I received two very formal welcomes from the choirmaster and the choir chairman, during which they said that they were here for training and wanted to do anything I wished; they were here to learn.  In my speech I assured them that I would work on many things but that I, too, was here to learn and was looking forward to all that they would have to teach me as well.  I work very hard from the outset in each village to make clear that we will be working together and that I am not coming as an authority imposing outside notions but rather as a colleague here to work on concepts of mutual benefit.

This is another choir with good, energetic dance.  Some of them bob their heads excessively when they move, and we work on that.  They began to concentrate so much on proper alignment that it affected the fluidity of their dance.  I assured them that the two concepts did not have to be mutually exclusive; as the day progressed it did get better.  I hope their integration of healthy posture will continue to improve and become more organic with time.

We also talk about starting, stopping and facial expression.  This ensemble does not sharp as much as most others, which is nice.  The sopranos scoop when they get tired during a song, so we talk about that.  The basses are nodding enthusiastically when I bring this up to them; but to be fair, the songs in Mbueca are quite lengthy: usually at least seven minutes of energetic dancing and singing!

As with other highly disciplined groups, this choir is a little slow to pick up “Chauta,” but we get there eventually; and they do seem to enjoy the song.  We have had a good morning’s rehearsal; in fact, it is actually one o’clock!  The schedule calls for me to work with the choirmaster after lunch, so I begin to make a nice thank you speech.  There are usually two speeches I give: a preliminary thank-you-for-your-hard-work speech, then the choir gives a response, then my it-has-been-a-pleasure-good-luck-at-the-festival speech.  This time, though, the choirmaster rises to explain that they have planned to spend the entire day with me in training, and that they have brought lunch and we are to stay!

This threw Joe and me off completely.  We had to explain that I at least had to pack, since I needed to be on my way by four in order to be back at the lodge before dark.  We walked as fast as we could the long mile to Joe’s house, where I threw things back in my pack; then we were back on the path to the church, where we arrived at two.  Fortunately, lunch included nsima, so it was still not quite ready to serve.  The keyboard player had figured out the chords to “Chauta” and had given it a beat as well.  All the children of the choir were singing the eight-measure refrain over and over and over.  Those who find repetitive mantras a path to enlightenment would positively glow in the Nyanja culture.  I guess the piece was a hit with the Mbueca choir.

The choir brought a floor mat into the church for me and for Joe.  Lunch was nsima, rice and chambo with tea.  I enjoy most local foods, but chambo is not my favorite fish; I prefer kampango because chambo is bony and therefore a little hard for a novice like me to eat with nsima.  I always get bones embedded in the nsima when I dip it, which makes me a little nervous about swallowing the nsima ball.  I manage a polite amount and fill up on nsima and rice mostly, which of course is just fine.

By three, we are ready to start again.  We reviewed “Chauta” again twice more seated and then we added movement.  We reviewed one of the shorter songs from the morning (one that I hope they use at the festival because of its unique dance); we had our real parting speeches, during which they announced that they would like me to return sometime between the 10th and 15th of next month (!).  I left at four, but the choir remained seated; they had come to rehearse until five.    

Joe’s cold had moved to his throat as a raspy cough, which had been making his work as translator difficult all day.  I told him just to take me on the path back just far enough to where there were no possible wrong turns I could take and I would go the rest of the way.  I make it back just as it is getting really dark and go to the beach to meet the current guests and a new volunteer, here to teach staff English.

I take what has become my customary long shower after a long time away, this time under the half moon.  The lodge needed my huts battery for guests, so I use all my solar lanterns to find my way to bed, first making sure I put all my clothes high up in my new laundry basket.

Now I have worked with twelve choirs and officially visited thirteen villages (Matepwe had no choir of course).  I have Mala, the closest village, and Luiga and Chissindo, the two furthest, still to visit.  I fall asleep listing the villages in the order I visited them.  It is hard to believe that this portion of my work is coming to a close.  Still, I do have at least one major trip ahead, one with entirely new challenges I have not yet faced.    

Litanda

7/11/2013

 
PicturePart of the view from the compound; again, the picture does not do justice to the beauty of the actual panorama. That is Chissindo Mountain on the horizon.
JUNE 23: We left Mandambuzi fairly early this morning.  It is Sunday, and we want to arrive in Litanda early enough to attend the church service and hear the choir.  The church is a little further into Litanda than we had hiked in the previous two days, so it takes a bit of time.  We arrive to find three people sitting outside the church.  Joe asks what time the service begins.  “Nine,” they say.  It is 9:15.  As we are sitting one of the people waiting, who turned out to be the lay leader who would lead the service, takes our backpacks and puts them behind the altar – but not before I ask him to wait a second, so I can take out my bible.  I had bought a Chichewa bible in Lilongwe when I was there so that I could study and find passages for choral music.  This was the bible that I had used to find the words to “Chauta.”  I had noticed that people brought their bibles to church here to follow along with the readings, and I wanted to do this, too.  When I pulled out my bible, though, the lay leader immediately asked if I wanted to do one of the readings for the morning. “Aaaa!  Iyayi!” No!  I said.  It actually would have been fun to try if I had had time to prepare, but many of the words in the bible are too complicated for my pronunciation, and I would not want to put the congregation through the ordeal of their reader sounding out the words in front of them.  I will be happy just to follow along.

People very slowly begin to gather, and the service begins around 10.  Because it was a lay service it was quite brief – about an hour and a half.  There were about eighty of us present, approximately thirty in the choir!  Most of the congregation is very young; this day, almost all are in their teens or younger.  My guess is that most adults are again busy with rice harvesting; the mountain villages appear to be responsible for most of the rice production of this region.  During the service, when I introduced myself in Nyanja, one of the adult women who was present ululated after my speech.  These small cultural gestures of welcome always make the day a good day instantly and naturally affect my impression of a place.  I am liking Litanda already.

After church, we camped at a house directly across from the fish farm.  The Wilderness Trust helps to fund projects decided by the local communities, and several people in Litanda asked for a fish farm to provide fish for the village, a source of protein that is popular but expensive there.  With assistance from US AID and from volunteers at the trust who provided expertise in fish farming, a committee of about fifteen from the village, along with Mr. Joe at the Trust, dug two ponds and built an office building over the course of the past year.  The ponds have begun to fill up very nicely and are now ready for their fish.  The fingerling fish for stocking the pond are scheduled to arrive soon, and the Trust will go and pick them up when they get there.  The compound where we will stay tonight is slightly up the hill from the road and has a spectacular view of the broad valley.  Two of the members of the fish farm committee live in this compound.    

PictureThe door of the home of our host in Litanda. Many doors have such decorative patterns.
For lunch we have some of the fresh rice that the chief of Mandambuzi had given us on the way out of the village.  I have to admit that rice was never something I had ever thought of as possibly being fresh; but now that I have had some, I won’t ever forget that it can be!  The family has cut some limes for Joe to squeeze into his tea.  He has not been feeling well for some time now.  Maybe the citrus will help improve his bad cold.

At two we head back to the church.  This is the first ensemble I have encountered here that has better dancing and presentational skill than it does singing.  We work first on starting and stopping together.  The three more experienced sopranos do not begin the songs together, and the men do not always end with everyone else.  We next start our work on breathing techniques to improve the tuning of the sopranos.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, the choirs here tend to move sharp over the course of a piece; some groups modulate upward as much as a perfect fifth!  However, all other groups have all tended to sharp together, at least staying in tune within the ensemble.  In this ensemble, however, the sopranos tend to always be a bit more sharp than the rest of the group, with painful results at times.  One of the older men in the group is the former choirmaster, and he thanks me during the question and answer period for addressing these issues.

Another first I have encountered in this village: the choirmaster does not snap!  Hallelujah!  In all other villages, the group gets started on a song in the following fashion: first the dance begins, either from the choirmaster or from experienced sopranos in the front row who are told which song it will be.  Next, the choirmaster sings the beginning notes or phrase of each part from top to bottom, usually at least twice.  Then, when the choirmaster feels the group is ready, he or she snaps fingers loudly, often right in the faces of the youngest sopranos.  This is their cue to begin the piece in two beats or so.  I am really happy to find a choirmaster who does not snap.  In place of this rather harsh method of beginning, he says quietly “Stot” [start] so that only the sopranos can hear.  They are having some trouble with this novel method, but I praise him profusely in front of the group for this innovation, hoping that it can start a new trend.  If he can get it to work it is going to seem to the other choirs who see them that the choir started as if by magic.  I have no doubt it will catch on if that happens.  At tomorrow’s choirmaster meeting I want to make a special point of helping him to get this to work.

The remainder of the rehearsal follows what has become the more usual routine: the videos, the feedback, the standard comment about the judges and fairness, the speeches and the farewells.  I look forward to tomorrow’s meeting with the choirmaster and make a point of telling him so before we leave.

From our vantage point up the hill, we watch a beautifully giant blood-orange full moon rise over Chissindo Mountain far in the distance.  Joe has pointed out to me the single mountains across the valley where the farthest villages in the Manda Wilderness are, those of Luiga and Chissindo.  I have a hard time imagining getting that far by any means of transportation I have experienced.  We watch hunters burning brush on distant Luiga Mountain.  They use this technique to flush their quarry.  Joe is surprised that this is happening this early in the year, since they do not usually begin doing this until September.  As night falls, the children in the compound and one of the fathers are singing “Chauta” together.  It’s going viral!    

JUNE 24:  Mr. Paulino, choirmaster, came to the compound this morning.  He has dressed formally for the occasion, complete with suit jacket and a very nice cap, and has arrived shortly after eight; we were scheduled to meet at nine!  Clearly the meeting is important to him, and I am glad I had planned to put on my nicer hiking clothes for the journey today.  Together we have a breakfast of tea, rice and Maria biscuits in the front room of our hosts.  Then we adjourn to the front dooryard for our meeting.  His first question is about the sopranos starting together.  Once again I praise his starting method.  Among the other ideas I offer, I suggest he practice with the sopranos alone and tell his three starting sopranos “I so want you to be able to learn this way of doing things so I don’t have to give your solo to someone else.”  I said to watch how fast things improve after that!  He also is having trouble with the basses not being together in the dance, but this is a more difficult problem.  He is quite young (maybe early twenties), and the basses are all considerably older than he is.  Add to this the fact that he has only been choirmaster for three months, and he is simply not comfortable addressing the issue directly, which would involve publicly correcting people older than himself.  I tell him I understand and recommend that he try the circle rehearsal method.  When it becomes clear to the ensemble what is happening with the basses and their dancing, some of the older singers in other sections will certainly be comfortable with speaking to them about it.  He will have addressed the problem without having to take care of it by direct confrontation of his elders.

As we are speaking together, Joe suddenly stood up and bolted toward the road, saying, “I will be right back!” as he ran down the lane.  Needless to say, Mr. Paulino and I were somewhat nonplussed at this.  A few minutes later, though, we understood when a truck came lumbering up the lane.  Lily was driving it, Ines who volunteers at the Trust was in the passenger seat, and in the back of the truck were Doctor Peg and a patient writhing in pain.  “Malungo,” [malaria] Mr. Paulino says knowingly.  I am not so sure.  Lily and Ines jump out to let us know what is happening, while a water pump gets unloaded for the fish farm project.  Together they will all go to Lichinga to get treatment for this patient that they picked up along with Doctor Peg in Cobué.  Next they will spend two days getting supplies for the Trust, followed by picking up the fingerling fish and bringing them back to release into the pond.  After this quick update, they spring back into the truck and head down the road toward Mandambuzi.  We all sit down again and continue our meeting.

Mr. Paulino wants his choir to begin coming on time for rehearsals!  Can I believe my ears?  I tell him that the Festival provides a great starting point.  He can simply let the choir know that if any member is late a certain number of times, he or she will not be allowed to go to the festival.  The ensemble knows he has to reduce the number of attendees to twenty from their current thirty, so they should know this is not an idle threat.  Attendance should improve right away.

He thanks me for my help and I let him know that I think he has a lot of potential as a choirmaster, with some good ideas and leadership ability.  Joe and I had already taken down our tents and loaded our supplies before breakfast, so Mr. Paulino takes up my pack and we walk together about a mile until we reach the path towards Mbueca.  Joe assures me the path will be much easier on the way back.  I hope so!    

Mandambuzi

7/10/2013

 
PictureView north from the chief's house. Behind the distant mountains are the villages of Mcondece, Matepwe and Magachi
JUNE 22: I wake up feeling much better, both in mood and in body.  It has been a consistent surprise to me these past two months, but as usual I am not sore from the hike other than where the shoulder straps of the pack have been.  This is the third backpack I have tried (the lodge has some spares which one can sign out) and it seems this is a problem that is unlikely to be solved due to the weight of the pack.  Given how sore I expected to be the entire time I was in the villages, this comparatively minor inconvenience has come almost as a relief.

I was hoping at some point before now to hear the story behind this village’s interesting name.  Manda means “cemetery,” and mbuzi means “goat [or goats].”  Thus the name “cemetery goats” would seem to have a legend behind it.  The closest I can get, though, is someone telling me “there was a cemetery around here and it had some goats.” A person at the lodge recently speculated that the civil war and the resulting two-decade population dispersion utterly destroyed the local folk tradition.  There is certainly merit to that theory.

This morning’s meeting begins around 8:30 with just the choirmaster present.  He is relatively new to his position, and it turns out that he has concerns about discipline in the group.  Apparently there is one talented adult male singer who feels himself to be above the rest of the group and sees no need to come to rehearsals.  The sopranos are young and inattentive.  I tell him I will watch carefully during rehearsals and try to say things that reinforce what he has been teaching.  I also let him know that no singer can be above the good of the group.  This is a difficult message to hear when one has a talented singer, but if he is not following the same rules as the rest of the ensemble, it will bring down the discipline of all the others as they observe what he is allowed to do.

Slowly other members of the choir begin to come in.  It soon becomes clear that my concerns yesterday about the difficulty of this day may be justified after all.  The choirmaster wants to talk to me further about his issues, but the committee keeps interrupting with their own ideas and things they want to talk about.  At times they simply talk over him as loudly as possible to make sure I hear what they want to talk about.  At first I make every attempt to address my comments to the choirmaster only, but I can see that he is gradually withdrawing and allowing the choir to take over the meeting.  Soon he has become an interested spectator at his own meeting, reduced to looking to me for answers to their questions.

Someone wants to talk about judging at the festival; I explain what I am doing to standardize the adjudication. 

Another person wants to complain that their choir is never invited to the lodge to perform.  I should explain that sometimes the local choirs are invited to Nkwichi to perform for guests when the lodge has many visitors at the same time.  The invited ensemble then receives a stipend for having come.  This has proved to be something of a windfall for the most villages closest to the lodge, Mala and Mbueca, but other choirs naturally would like the opportunity.  I am not here as an employee of the lodge and must be very careful what I say, so I simply tell them my standard response to this matter in these more remote villages:  I will bring their request back with me to the lodge, but they should understand that the lodge must know months in advance that the rooms will be booked, then they must send a letter to the choir being invited, then the choir must respond in a timely fashion and be sure to send as many singers as possible on the day of the performance.  I then make a point in front of them of writing their request to perform into my journal, just as I have recorded all other comments, suggestions and requests in each village.

The next complaint comes from a tall woman who is unhappy because the first two years of the festival there was not enough water for the singers to wash their hands before the dinner that is provided for them.  She is quite exercised about it: “This is a matter of respect!  Respect for those who have come on this day!”  I ask her if this was a problem last year, and she admits that it was not.  I suggest that the two people who coordinate the festival are continuing to learn what is needed and have improved the event each year.  I also suggest that anyone who may see something that needs to be done on the day of the event would be very welcome to volunteer to assist, as well as to notify those working that day as to the problem.

The complaints and comments are coming at a steady pace, and I am really seeing why the choirmaster is concerned about the discipline of his ensemble.  I decide to take a rather drastic tactic compared to what I have done anywhere else.  I turn back to the choirmaster only and in front of the gathered assembly tell him as if speaking to him privately “I want to return to what we were talking about earlier.  It is very important that if the group wishes you to be choirmaster that it allow you to tell them what you need to do the job.  If the choir is unable or unwilling to do that for you, then I think you should consider whether you wish to continue in the position with this group.  I suggest a meeting soon after today’s events, when you have had time to think about what you need to do your work and how it can best be accomplished.”  As I had hoped, this quiets the complaining and talking over the choirmaster.  He thanks me in front of them and tells me that he will indeed do that.

I look over at poor João.  He is squirming because of the difficulty of translating all of this and because he knows some of these people and probably finds this new view of them very uncomfortable.  He is being forced to tell them words he might not have chosen to say and must feel caught in the middle.  He keeps apologizing for his translations: “You are good at Nyanja.  Please tell me if you think I am not saying something correctly.”  I am assuring him he is doing fine.

About an hour into this meeting, Joe suddenly appears around the bend in the path coming directly from Mbueca.  He has been hidden from view by tall grasses almost right up to the point of his entering the churchyard.  João cannot jump up fast enough from his place next to me on a bench.  “Here you go!” he almost shouts.  “This is your place.  I need to go now and get back to the farm.  They need me.”  He does not leave right away, though, since that would be rude.  He has no choice but to stick it out until lunchtime.  I am sure he is relieved that he is at least no longer in the translator’s chair.

By this point in the proceedings, enough of the choir has gathered that we can actually do some rehearsing.  I observe four songs: two seated and two dancing.  The church is tiny, but the choir is not!  The congregation has two churches: one is large and is used during the rainy season.  This tiny one is used during the current rice-harvesting season, when few can spare the time to go to church.  When the ensemble is dancing, the twenty-five of us present take up well over half the space available to the congregation.

It is true that the young sopranos have attention problems, but it is also true that no one has space to get in front of them and teach them or monitor what they are doing.  This afternoon I think I will want to try to rehearse in a circle, but there will not be room in the church.  Maybe we can try it outside.

The big action of the day comes at the lunchtime break, when someone comes by the chief’s roadside table and unpacks a satchel of clothing.  In no time, the choir and others have gathered around the table, picking through the clothes and trying them on.  Some clothes still have their original tags on them [Old Navy: $5.99], some have red and blue dots from thrift stores, and others even have a few holes in them.  Interestingly to me, people were shopping first by color, and then by graphics, only last by what seemed to me like the quality of the item of clothing.  Colors and styles do not have the same gender classifications here as they do in the United States.  Pink of any type is a very popular men’s color, even if the t-shirt has a picture of a white ballerina on the front.  Women wear sports t-shirts that sometimes have double entendres they surely must not understand.  The choirmaster comes by and purchases what in a former life were women’s Capri pants. They fit him perfectly as full-length pants. The Nyanja people tend to be short as a rule; indeed, only now is the scab on the top of my head healing fully from all the church entrances I banged into the first week I was here until I finally got used to the height difference.  For now during lunch, I watch the colorful parade of people and clothes and learn something about the local sense of style.    

After João leaves us after lunch from the churchyard but before the afternoon rehearsal begins, the chief stops by the church and says in front of the choir and townspeople who have assembled to watch the rehearsal that the church wants a keyboard and needs funding.  He looks at me directly.  “Would you care to respond?”  This request comes as a surprise.  I explain that as a volunteer I am not in a position to make any commitments to such requests, but I will try to see if I can find any sources of funding when I get back to the United States.  Perhaps there is a church congregation that might want to adopt this cause.  What else can I do?  Some choirs have saved up for their keyboards from earnings they get from their singing; it doesn’t seem fair to just give keyboards away.  On the other hand, choirs in the more remote villages really don’t have any opportunities to earn money with their singing and the congregations love to have a keyboard available for their services.  I am at a bit of a loss as to a solution to this one, though I have contacted two church music organizations in North America to see if they might be interested in this cause.  No response so far.

The afternoon rehearsal is very interesting.  When the first piece did not go as well as the choirmaster wanted, he came up with the great idea to have the group form two lines facing each other.  This almost worked, but his youngest choir members had some left/right confusion and were always on the wrong foot because they were looking across for guidance.  Before I could say anything about a circle, he came up with the idea of a square.  This formation worked much better for the group.  I was happy he came up with this idea on his own, and I had another chance in front of the group to exhibit approval of his leadership and rehearsal techniques.

The choir really does have discipline and attention problems, and I reiterate again in front of the ensemble that the choirmaster must have a meeting soon with his group to discuss discipline and consequences.  I am saying it as much to give him the courage to follow through as I am saying it to them to remind them of the morning’s discussion.

This choir actually had some trouble learning “Chauta.”  To tell the truth, I am not sure that this choirmaster’s ear is his strong suit.  He is not singing the eight measure tenor part correctly, even though I have been singing it with him eight times straight through.

The video review sessions really help the group to see that they really must begin to act together to prepare for public performance.  I hope that my reinforcement of the choirmaster’s authority will help get the group out of their current quasi-dysfunctional status.  I wish them well at the festival and Joe and I head back to the mfumu’s compound.

This evening the mfumu visits with us a bit before dinner.  I believe he is the first person in the villages to take an active interest in where I come from.  He is asking about what sorts of crops they grow in America, how do people make their money, what are the jobs available.  He is incredulous that many of our jobs are solely technology based.  But what do people make? What do they grow?  I try to explain the vast size of our nation and the differences among states in terms of what they can grow and what jobs are available, but of course this is outside his experience.  He also wants to know if we eat nsima, and if so is it corn or cassava?  He has heard that they grow much rice in Toronto; is this true?  I appreciate his curiosity and do my best to answer his questions.

By now I know this chief’s home is a busy place day and night.  People who saw Joe and know him have been stopping by to say hello to him.  A radio is playing Malawian radio stations somewhere in the compound.  A satellite dish is aimed toward Tanzania, though I do not see the glow of a television.  There are LED lanterns glowing from the windows – not too brightly so as not to attract too many mosquitoes.

Children are outside playing just before it gets too dark; the most popular game for boys is the old-fashioned tire rim pushed by a stick.  There is another game both sexes play in these villages which one child is “it” and throws a ball at the others.  If he or she hits the child they were aiming for, that child becomes the new “it.”  If they miss, however, they have to chase the ball while the child at whom the ball was thrown fills an empty soda bottle with sand or dirt.  Once the bottle is full, the child who finished filling it gets to spray its dirt all over the other children.  Then this bottle filler becomes the new “it.”

Joe is chuckling to himself.  I ask him what is so funny.  He tells me that it appears my name in the villages has become “Madala Amdala,” which roughly translates as a respectful “Old Man Grandpa.”  Given that the average life expectancy here is forty-eight, I can understand.  I am actually a little flattered that villagers care enough about my presence here even to have given me a name.  It is true that they find my name hard to pronounce.  It basically comes out as “Maliki Konili.”  I have come to introduce myself by pronouncing my name its usual way, then giving the Nyanja pronunciation of my first name, which the group will then often repeat.

In some ways, I feel more incorporated into the culture after these last two days.  I am a little less starry-eyed and idealistic.  I am able to anticipate some cultural expectations and adjust my interactions accordingly.  And now I find out I have come to be known in the area by a nickname of sorts.  Madala Amdala.

And no, dear students at URI, you may not use it. 
 
PictureMr. João leading the way in the foothills. The perspective is not good here; this is not flat. We are going UP.
JUNE 21: We are scheduled to leave for Mandambuzi today, but there has been a snag. Mr. Joe is once again my scheduled travel companion.  In the five days between our last trip and this one, he had to hike and then catch a chapa to Metangula and Lichinga in order to run errands.  Yesterday he had to get some documents renewed in Metangula, and he waited in an office there only to find out they couldn’t help him because some important personage or other was in town and they could not be bothered with his issue.  In all the bureaucratic delay, he missed yesterday’s chapa and will have to take today’s.  Now at the lodge this morning we are debating what to do.

My suggestion is to wait and leave very early tomorrow.  We must pass through Mbueca, Joe’s village, on the way.  What if I head out at 5 in the morning and pass by his home and then we go together from there?  Of course, this does presuppose that Joe will be able to take today’s chapa and will actually be back.  Given that he has completed his errands, however, that seems likely.  Though I have not been, there is apparently little to do in Metangula, especially if all his errands are complete.

Lily is not comfortable with this.  Though it is true that I am scheduled to begin with the choir tomorrow at 7:30, and though it is also true that not a single choir thus scheduled has begun anywhere close to that time, that does not mean that we should not honor our commitment as the Trust works to bring the villages into a concept of time that comes a little closer to the rest of the world’s.  There is a man at the Farm who is known here as John but whose real name is João.  He is the man on Farm Day who put me in the group of students taking the farm tour in Chinyanja.  He is from Litanda, the second town on our itinerary.  It is another sort of “twin village,” the Chicaia to Mandambuzi’s Cobué.  This solution concerns me because although I like and respect João very much, as does everyone in the villages we will be visiting, he is not experienced in musical vocabulary or translating.  Still, it is decided to keep our time commitments as given in the letters that were sent, so this is the best solution.  Messages are dispatched to the farm to let João know of this plan, and we begin a hasty packing job.  We will go this afternoon.

It takes an hour and a half from the lodge to hike to the village of Mbueca.  Here we leave a letter at Joe’s home with his wife explaining when we got there, when we left and where we plan to be.  The hike to Mbueca has a couple of hilly spots and some beach walking, but nothing I am not used to by now.  From Joe’s house, though, things are looking up.  Way up.  We are going back into the mountains, and the foothills start right away.

For the first time since I have been here, I am feeling grumpy about being on a hike.  Because João is from the area and is anxious to see friends and family, he is going at a quick pace - or at least it seems quick to me this day.  It doesn’t help that this is by far the toughest hike I have been on yet here in terms of terrain.  The entire path is on a course for a steady to sometimes steep incline as we work our way through the mountains back into the high plateau.  Our destination will be more or less the same valley as the previous trip, but much further south.  

PictureOur campsite, complete with fence and bamboo market stand, looking across the road at a neighbor's home.
On the trail, rivers have carved deep ravines in places, and we must make quick descents and equally rapid climbs on a very rocky trail.  The ascents are practically vertical at times. At those points it is necessary to grab rocks with both hands and hoist oneself up and over them.  I learn after a couple of tries not to hoist myself too enthusiastically, otherwise the weight of my backpack keeps my momentum going forward after I clear the rock, once almost taking me off the trail and down a steep hill that would have put me in a river.  I am huffing and puffing, and for the first time on a trail since I got to Africa I have to ask to take a break.  My shirt is so wet I can literally wring it out; I tried it on the bottom of the shirt just to make sure I wasn’t exaggerating in my mind.  This is not normal for me; it is starting to dawn on me that my mood and this excessive sweating might be telling me that if I am not sick, I am on the verge and I had better take it easy if possible.  It is not possible at the moment, though.

João does not know me very well, and he is trying to be kind. “This is probably very hard for you.  Africans are used to walking, but I know you Americans drive your car everywhere.”  Despite the fact that this is true, it does not help my mood at all.  I keep quiet and keep moving.  “Slowly, slowly,” he is saying, although it doesn’t feel slow to me at all. Grrrrr….

My mood lifts a bit when we get to the summit of our third mountain pass and there, spread out before us, is a valley much broader than anywhere on the last trip.  The beautiful vista (and the end of the climbing) comes suddenly and as a total surprise.  I feel at that moment it was almost worth the hike.  Almost.

We make a slight descent into the village of Litanda.  We have to cross a small pond, which is spanned by a log with a bamboo handrail planted into the mud at the bottom of the pond but not attached to the bridge itself.  João goes first, but halfway over his sandal slips on a wet spot and he falls onto the log.  Fortunately he bends his right leg as he goes down, otherwise his injury would have been much more serious.  The log catches the bend in his leg and he is flipped into the pond, backpack and all.  He jumps up quickly and claims to be unhurt, just wet and a bit embarrassed.  I am not convinced.  I offer my first aid kit, which he refuses, and resolve to watch him carefully for any signs of pain.  We move on, but not before he insists that I walk around the pond.  Although I have been on bridges before much more precarious than this one, I won’t argue.

We stop briefly at the home of the mfumu of Litanda to let him know we will be returning the day after tomorrow.  After a stretch of a mile or so down another dusty road (the main road from Cobué to Metangula), we arrive at the home of the chief of Mandambuzi.  His compound is right on the main road; he has a bamboo roadside stand set up to sell wares and produce to the passers-by.  I later learn that “the chief’s house” is the name of this particularly busy stop when one wants to be let off here on the chapa.   

At first the mfumu thinks we will want to camp at the church, but João and he go to investigate and find that this will not be suitable at all; there isn’t enough space for two tents and there is no place to build a fire to cook.  He tells us we should stay at his compound, and we set up camp near the roadside stand but behind his fence.

 

The mfumu is a nice, older man.  Before the day is out I also meet two of his three wives.  Polygamy is not unusual at all here: João himself has two wives.  Usually these truly blended families all live together in the same compound, though there are some men who maintain completely separate homes for each wife.  In some ways this entire concept still seems so very strange to me; but because I was thrown so quickly and so completely into the culture, I have not had much time to think about it.  It’s just the way things are, that’s all.  Here is the chief’s eldest wife.  And here is his second.  I never met the third.  Regarding his own family, João tells me that he works at the Farm and stays there all week because he has a home in Litanda where he supports his two wives and seven children, his mother, and various brothers and other relatives.  I am trying to imagine how that can even be possible on the type of salary one earns here, even a job as good as the Farm.  Fortunately for them, they don’t have to live off of my imagination.

The night is cool, which is helpful, since we arrived too late to do any washing.  We are both exhausted.  I am watching him for any signs of limping, but so far at least, João honestly seems fine; I don’t even see any cuts or scrapes. We say our good nights and head to our tents.  Tomorrow’s schedule begins at “7:30” with a meeting with the choirmaster and a small committee of choristers.  I am very tired, and I hope a good night’s sleep will help me to feel better.    
 
PictureThe fateful corner as it looked on move-in day in May. The basket on the left disappeared after one day. The basket on the right is the one that was eaten through.
JUNE 16: The slow boat that brought us to Cobué a few days ago did indeed bring batteries back to the lodge to better charge the solar-powered office.  Unfortunately, the fittings are different from the fittings for the system currently in use.  The current batteries are losing charge rapidly.  Thus, no charge for computers in the office and extremely limited internet, a few minutes at a time.  There is no guarantee that anything one does online can be completed before the signal cuts out.  The lodge is working to fix the problem, but of course one does not simply order parts online or by phone and have them shipped here overnight.  I cannot imagine anything can be done about the problem this week before I must leave again.  We work out a system whereby we each go to the kitchen, which does still have solar power, and charge our computers one or two at a time in order to avoid overloading the kitchen’s circuitry.  Then we run back up to the office, hoping that the internet might be working when we get there.  There always seems to be a solution or at least temporary fix here no matter where one goes; it just takes some time and patience.

Today is the Farm Lunch that Marcos and I had shopped for in Cobué.  The Farm occasionally hosts these luncheons to welcome or say farewell to volunteers or simply to invite staff and volunteers to visit the farm and share a meal.  I am curious whether they had any use for the tomato paste.

On the way to the Farm, I tell everyone I want to stop by my hut to see if housekeeping had come to sweep and pick up laundry, since they had not had reason to do this for a few days and I wanted to make sure they knew I was back.  They had in fact not come yet, so I thought I might put my clothesbasket outside to let them know I was here.

As I glance down at the clothesbasket, I notice that there is a sort of muddy dirt on the top of some of my clothes.  That’s odd, I think. There was definitely no mud on this trip, especially on the part of the trip where I wore those clothes on the top of the pile.  I pick up the shirt to investigate and find it covered in termites.  These are not the termites I know from home, but African mound-building termites (Macrotermes michaelseni). They are long insects, at least a half an inch long, with white bodies and orange heads with powerful jaws.  See the previous post for a picture of a completed home for these bugs. Apparently a colony had begun to build a mound under my clothesbasket while I was gone, coming up through the hard-pack mud floor.  In the dark last night, I had simply tossed my clothes into the basket, not normally being accustomed to checking for giant clothes-eating termites before retiring for the evening.  Unfortunately, the moisture in the clothes only encouraged the colony to send a message to all its workers to gather and feast overnight.

I quickly snatch up the basket to begin a salvage mission.  They have already completely eaten through the bottom of the basket, though, and the clothes simply fall through.  I throw the basket outside far from the hut to get the termites latched to its side out of the way. Next, I frantically grab the clothes up and dump them on the chair outside on my “porch.”  The giant swarm of white, grubby-looking bugs that had been under the basket begins to sink into the floor, disappearing as if by magic, looking for all the world as if they are going down an earthen drain.  I go out and pick up a shirt and begin beating it against a tree, whipping the cloth as if I were snapping a towel.  Many of the termites fall off, but some are firmly latched on.  I have to physically pick them off, one by one.  One of them is not happy at this interruption in its meal and gives me a good bite with its powerful mandibles.  It hurts!  I dispatch the beast and resume my rescue mission.  I have to decapitate some that are firmly latched on and then pick off their heads.  As I am continuing the laborious removal, someone comes to check on me and see why I haven’t rejoined the group.  I show them what is happening and tell them to continue to the Farm, I will be there soon.

When all the termites are off the clothes as far as I can tell, I do an inspection.  They have eaten sizeable holes in many of the natural fabrics.  The one exception seems to be my woolen hiking socks, which indicates they have discriminating tastes; I would not want to munch on those either after this past week’s hike.  The one long-sleeved shirt that I brought and wore to church services is completely ruined, large holes all over it.  In total, I may have lost three shirts and at least one pair of pants.  I leave the clothes on this chair to continue to dry while I head to the Farm in a foul mood.  Maybe I can think of what to do while I eat lunch, if I can regain my appetite.    

PictureMy shelves, also from move-in day. The new basket is on that top shelf now.
When I get to the Farm, news has already traveled as to what has happened.  People point out that I can still use the pants with holes for hiking, which is true.  A couple of volunteers offer me shirts, and I learn that there is a sort of clothing storage box from which staff often get articles of clothes that former volunteers and guests have left, either intentionally in the case of the former or through forgetfulness for the latter.  I am welcome to avail myself to this store as well.  I begin to feel a little better; there are possible solutions even if everything has been ruined, which it hasn’t.  Calming down, I remind myself of what I have learned, that I will still be better clothed than well over half the people I have met in the villages even if I do nothing more than wear only the eaten clothes I now have.

Farm lunch was rice, beans and chicken.  The beans have a sauce with a distinct tomato flavor; my curiosity is satisfied.  We watch a video the Trust has posted online of the farm staff and volunteers building their chicken house.  Though it has been viewed many times online by this point, the staff has never seen it.  The video has portions in which the video is sped up to show the lapse of time in the building process; the staff finds this technique very funny and laughs uproariously every time it happens.

After lunch, I head back and carry my laundry to the office to figure out what to do with it.  It is quickly whisked away and sent off first to boil and then to wash.  We’ll see what comes back and what shape it is in.

This entire trip I have been very careful to return items to their plastic bags, to screw lids tightly, to zip everything up, to seal and lock all my bags.  I was just beginning to think I was being over-zealous and was about to relax these precautions.  Did the termites do me a favor, then?

I come back to my hut later that afternoon.  I find the floor swept and a new laundry basket in a new spot.  It is on my top shelf, where it will certainly remain for the rest of my time here!    

This evening, we have the honor of being visited by Peg Cumberland, who is justly a legend in the region.  This English doctor has worked in Mozambique for seventeen or eighteen years now, which means she began her work here during the civil war.  She has been in Niassa Province for nine of those years.  Her first two years in the region, she had no permanent residence. She simply walked from village to village with a backpack of supplies, staying in people’s homes.  She still does this when she is “on the road,” though she now has a nice, neat home in Chicaia at the Cobué border, near what is now called “Peg’s Beach.”  She has worked toward building small clinics in the villages for treatment and for health education.  I have seen the fruits of her work in many of the villages I have visited.  The school, the church and the clinic are always the three points of civic pride for the villages that have them and are always the best maintained buildings – certain signs that a village has “arrived.”  Cobué also has a maternity clinic, built in cooperation with Peg Cumberland’s Anglican charity and the Manda Wilderness Community Trust.  She has also been directly responsible for the training of over four hundred local volunteers who now provide first-line care in these clinics.

From time to time, she comes through Nkwichi and stays for dinner or even overnight, simply to recharge her batteries for a much needed retreat.  We had a wonderful conversation about medicine and about choirs, her time here and the music in the villages.  I was thrilled to have finally met her; anywhere one travels in this region, one has only to say “Dokatala Peg” and the person to whom one is speaking breaks out in a smile. “Have you seen her?” I am sometimes asked.  At last I can say I have.  Maybe our paths will cross again before I leave.  It would certainly be a pleasure.

POSTSCRIPT: JUNE 18:  All my laundry arrived back this day.  It turns out that one pair of white hiking “under socks” that I mainly have used here as socks with my tennis shoes at the lodge have been thoroughly eaten through and cannot be used any more.  I have two other pairs, though.  My long-sleeve “dress” shirt is also unusable, but I knew that already.  The two other shirts end up having small holes and look as if I had pulled at them in places; they can still be worn.  One pair of pants has holes, but it can be worn on hikes – just not otherwise, since some of the holes are in shall we say strategic places.  Despite what I thought about their good taste, there are some small holes in some of my wool hiking socks, but they are all still usable, thank goodness: these were actually the items I was most worried about!  Some holes will undoubtedly get larger in the next few weeks, but not so big in the time I am here as to affect their use.  I will not need to borrow or take any clothes; there is nothing wrong with making do with what I have.    
 
PictureA termite mound built around a tree along the path
JUNE 15:  For whatever reason, the animals are very active early this morning, and I have been up since 4:45.  That was plenty of sleep, since I went to bed around 8 last night and fell asleep almost right away.  Now I lie awake listening to the different bird and animal calls of the mountains.  I notate some of the more interesting and funny ones in my journal.  There are some funny frogs that sound as if they are saying: “We DID it! Woomp! Woomp! We DID it!”  The goat cries are not as funny as they were in Mcondece, though.  Goats have very individual cries. One goat in Mcondece had a cry that sounded like a very grumpy BWAWAWAWAWAWA.  This one made everyone laugh, because “Bwawa” is a greeting one gives on a path when both parties are in a hurry, carrying heavy loads, or when one encounters someone one has already exchanged formal greetings with earlier in the day.  This goat sounded like a grumpy old man waving people off even as he was greeting them.

After an early breakfast, the mfumu showed us the “shortcut” from Magachi down to the lakeshore.  We would end up in Uchesse. At that point we would take the same path we took at the very beginning of my time here in order to get back to Cobué to catch the boat – we hoped, if we could get to town early enough to notify the lodge before their solar power shut off.  After all, they had no idea where we were or what way we were coming back; there are several options, all long trips.  If we didn’t make it in time to ask them to come get us, we would have to camp in Cobué after the long day’s hike, a prospect I did not look forward to at all.  I was determined to keep a good pace.

As the mfumu of Magachi walked with us to share the beginning of our journey (of course not carrying any of our belongings, he being a chief), we passed a small clearing not far from his home.  He pointed to it and looked at me.  “This is your land for your house, if you move to Africa.”  Of course I was charmed by this “invitation”; it’s nice to have someone make your entire day that early in the morning!  I did not know at the time that this was more than idle courtesy.  In this part of Mozambique, the chief of a village actually owns the land of that village to distribute to families as he will.  He actually could have made a land grant to me if he wished.  Perhaps he did!  Once in a while on the hike, I imagined our family’s potential home in Magachi.  As the journey went on, I began to wish for it, in fact.

Partway into the mountains I realized that of course I had not topped off my water bottle.  Fortunately, the reason I had not yet realized that was because I was not at all thirsty. I was certain I should be able to manage with what I had until we got to one of the lakeshore villages with a safe water supply.  We had left at 8, and though we already could tell that the day would be warmer than usual, we were walking through woods, mostly through cool valleys carved by tiny brooks that I imagine are torrents in rainy season.    

PictureI wish phone cameras gave a better impression of height and distance. The lake is the dark blue band, and the dark land on the right is part of Ngofi, far below. Uchesse is straight ahead.
We stopped for a break around 10:30, and I drank a bit of water.  That was fine – it was plenty!  Mr. Joe and Mr. Marcos were having sugar cane.  I think they assumed I don’t like it – I’m not sure why, since I actually like it a lot and never recall giving any indication I didn’t; but I am absolutely certain they would have shared with me if they had thought for a second that I might have wanted some.  People do make assumptions about what white people do and do not like to eat and drink here. This often results in people going to extra trouble cooking or bringing along unnecessary foods for me.  Marcos pulled out a Maria biscuit, which is a nice flat shortbread-type cookie.  I took one for energy; they are quite tasty after all.  If only I had thought about how dry they are!  Dry, dry, DRY! I had to use almost all the rest of my water store just to wash it down.  Lesson learned, but too late.

We continued our hike through a beautiful new terrain for me, uninhabited mountain forest – this is the hike on which I got the picture of the wildflower in June 27th’s post.  I was looking around when it was safe to do so, but also I was listening to Marcos’ colorful Nyanja.  The language has a lot of what are called ideophones: words that sound like their meaning.  We have a few in English: boom, moo, smack, etc., but nothing compared to many African Bantu languages.  Some native speakers use almost no ideophones, but Marcos’ speech is full of them, and it is an absolute delight to hear him talk along the way.  It’s like listening to the soundtrack of a movie, complete with sound effects.  Joe is laughing heartily at his story.  I don’t know enough ideophones to know what he is talking about, so I just enjoy the music.

By this point in the journey, I have come to think of Marcos as Papageno.  Like that character in Mozart’s Magic Flute, all he needs to be content in life is a full stomach, a roof over his head and good company – preferably that of a nice lady whenever possible – to be content.  His speech is colorful, direct and forthright, and he does what needs to be done with a minimum of fuss.  As I have mentioned before, he is a gentle, natural teacher and does not hesitate to help me with my Chinyanja and with teaching me about the trees and birds of the area.

We come over the last mountain and suddenly spread before us are the villages of Uchesse and Ngofi far below.  The lake is visible for the first time in days and I realize how much I have missed it.  “Nyanja yathu!!” I called out – “Our lake!” to Joe’s and Marcos’ amusement.  I heard them say it more than once after that as we continued down the trail.    

The path down the mountains was not bad at all until we got into the foothills at the Uchesse border.  It was there that I began to feel the first inklings of blisters.  The best thing to do is to ignore them; what else was I going to do?  We were only about halfway to our destination.

By 11:30 we had already passed through the corner of Uchesse that touches the mountains and we were in the center of Chigoma!  Joe stopped to talk to a family he knew, and a woman of the family offered Marcos and me some of their borehole well drinking water, otherwise known as manna from heaven.

We continued to the other side of Chigoma, where we stopped at the home of several of Joe’s sisters-in-law. He asked them to prepare us a lunch while he caught up on family news.  We had nsima (for them), spaghetti (for me, sigh), mustard greens – a vegetable! - that Joe had bought earlier from two girls along the path for 100 kwacha, and also some usipa at Joe’s request.  And water – borehole well water!  They had actually set out a Western-style table for us in their shady and neat “back yard,” complete with tablecloth, water pitcher and plates, spoons and forks for each of us.  This was a pleasant lunch.

A man drove by on his motorbike and offered to take me into Cobué while the other two hiked the rest of the way.  Of course I refused, though I do wish we had been able to send our packs with him for us to pick up when we arrived.  His bike wasn’t big enough for that, though.  Now that we were out of the mountains we were close enough to Likoma to have phone reception, so we borrowed his phone to call the lodge and let them know we would be in Cobué by 4 o’clock.  I had my doubts about that arrival time, because it was already 2:30.  I assumed everyone would know we were talking about African 4 o’clock and that they would be there around 5.

After lunch, Marcos took the lead and really picked up the pace!  Here I received a real shock.  We had turned from the path and were walking on a wide, dusty road.  Joe asked if I recognized it, but we had not come down any roads the last time I was in these villages.  Our entire journey before had been on narrow footpaths.  It was then that Joe told me that this was the footpath we had taken before!  Apparently there is a company doing gold mining in Tanzania that wanted access to Cobué, so they simply created a road from the Tanzanian border all the way to Cobué with no Mozambican government involvement or supervision.  They were in such a hurry to create this road they had simply bulldozed dirt into the dry riverbeds.  All these parts of the road were certain to wash away during rainy season, but people told me the company would be long done by then and would not care what happened to the road at that point.  Maybe the government would adopt it and maintain it, maybe not.

Already some families had begun to set up little shops and wayside restaurants and bars to cater to travelers. Some huts even had little pull-in makeshift parking areas big enough to accommodate two cars.  Thus far on the road itself, I only saw evidence of footprints, shoe prints and bicycle tire tracks; but the cars would come.  The cars and trucks were sure to come. I don’t know if I could have asked for a more graphic demonstration of the effects of development, good and bad, than that dusty road and the homes of those who just happened to live along it.  I was glad I had seen the area before the road was built, as it was certainly prettier and more natural then.  Still, I had to admit this relatively smooth, wide road was very easy to walk on, important to a hiker who could actually feel blisters forming as he walked.  People did not have to carry heavy loads on their heads while crossing rivers spanned only by a single, narrow round log. Families clearly had some hope to get income beyond their sustenance farms’ occasional bumper crop.  Nothing is ever simple, apparently.

The journey through Mataka seemed to take forever; I thought we had crossed over into Chicaia long before until we passed the tiny church in Chilola, a small village that is part of Mataka.  We left the road and began taking footpaths again near the lake, but fortunately not too often on the sand.  When we did have to go through a sandy portion, walking with that heavy backpack was twice as arduous, and the push off one has to do with one’s toes to get any traction carrying a load on sandy soil was excruciating.  No choice but to carry on, though, and fast!  The sun was getting low in the sky.

We finally arrived at Cobué, all of us correct with our arrival time predictions.  Joe and Marcos had predicted 4 o’clock and we got to the beach at almost 5 on the dot as I had thought, which is exactly how time works here.  Sure enough, the boat had just pulled in to wait.  I gingerly pulled off my hiking boots and peeled off my socks and changed into sandals and waded to the boat.  That cold water felt so good on my hot, blistered feet!  I climbed into the boat and waited for Joe to run some errands in Cobué.  Marcos would not join us; he was going to continue to walk home.  While I waited to leave, I took my sandals off and dangled my feet off the side of the boat into the lake.  The children on the beach saw what I was doing and pointed and laughed at the man sitting the wrong way off the boat.  I cared not in the slightest.

Once Joe came back and I had shifted to sitting forward, we pushed off and headed out.  As we motored quickly back to Nkwichi on the speedboat, I stuck one hand into the water so that the spray would come up and hit my face.  Today’s hike alone had been twenty miles; I had hiked over sixty miles this week, almost all of it while carrying a backpack that weighed between twenty-five and thirty pounds.  Riding back, I realized I have changed physically since I arrived, and it feels exhilarating.  There is simply no way I could have done such a thing when I first came.

We got to the lodge, and I limped into Volunteer Village.  I took all my sweaty, dirty clothes from the entire trip and threw them into the woven laundry basket in the corner of the hut.  I took a long, long cold shower.  Then I put on the clean clothes I had saved in my suitcase for my return, since my laundry had not yet come back from before we left. ALWAYS reserve at least one set of clothing! Thus reasonably presentable, I went to meet the other volunteers for dinner. 

I have five days to get my blisters to heal.  Then, on to the next three villages.    

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    A choral conductor walking cheerfully over the world...

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