New Years' Malipenga

While touring the nooks and crannies of St. Peter’s cathedral, I ran into Vincent, a short, smallish, gray-haired man. He had the kind of cheerful spunk I find so refreshing and winsome, especially in someone who’s logged seven or eight decades. Vincent spoke English well and shared the congregation’s history with me. I asked him whether the 6,000 people who call Likoma home do anything special to celebrate the New Year. “Yes, of course,” he replied. There would be church at 0800 hours tomorrow morning. The lives of many if not most Malawians, like Zambians, are rooted in Christian faith. The spiritual realm is part of the fabric of everyday life. The spiritual is not compartmentalized as “personal and private” or even non-existent, as in the West. Life revolves around faith and religious conviction. Faith is not peripheral but central to peoples’ lives. It disappointed me to hear that there would only be one New Year’s Day service at St. Peter’s, in Chichewa. Vincent also told me that tomorrow I could see crowds of Likomans at the Malipenga, a traditional African dancing event at Chiponde Beach. He said he would be there, and dancing!  I decided that tomorrow, I would be there too; but my eyes and not my feet and body would be dancing, looking for Vincent.

Having found my way into Chipyela made getting back to Mango Drift easier. Lauren, the South African manager (and seemingly part-guest) offered us the opportunity to spend New Year’s Eve at Mango Drift’s sister establishment, Kaya Mawa. Kaya Mawa is an exclusive resort for the well-heeled. (I heard that it’s listed by Conde Nast magazine as one of the ten most romantic resort destinations in the world; it’s a honeymooners paradise.) Room rates start at about 17 times more per person per night than at Mango Drift. As it happened, Kaya Mawa had only seven guests, four of whom were newlyweds. Our offer to spend New Year’s Eve there then, was presumably motivated by the party atmosphere ten or twelve more of us would bring to the place. Made sense. I am not generally a fan of the contrivance of New Year’s Eve but I did enjoy chatting it up with South Africans and Brits, from a teacher, to a contemporary furniture designer and entrepreneur, to a London-based fashion designer and her husband, who grew up in Malawi’s capital, Blantyre; he was a dentist and the son of a prominent researcher of anti-malarials. It was great fun, though I couldn’t help wondering what difference the money spent there would make in the lives of the Likomans who staffed the place.

New Year’s Day. On to the Malipenga. I had a difficult time finding Chiponde Beach because none of the dirt roads on Likoma is marked. The Likoma map in my Lonely Planet was useless. Villagers pointed me in the right direction and I eventually appended myself to the clusters of Likomans making their way to the Malipenga. The dancing had already begun when I arrived. I could have been there at the beginning, but expected that the 1 p.m. starting time really meant 3-4 p.m. The “dance floor” was an area of dirt bounded by twine strung around a series of gigantic baobab trees. Malipenga is a dance competition of sorts. Only men perform, representing their respective villages in a group called a boma. Onlookers from Likoma’s twelve villages stood behind the string barrier to cheer their favorite boma. The competition takes place one boma at a time. I saw American Boma and Nyanja Boma perform.
A spirited older man led American Boma. The men stood in ranks and files like a marching band, each one grasping his musical instrument, which for all but the bass drummer was a hollow gourd. I was slightly disappointed not to see the elaborate headdresses, colorful facepaint, and grass skirts that I had imagined. Instead one group wore street clothes, and another olive shorts and white shirts, some with neck ties.  A few donned a feather or two on their head. They shuffled forward to the beat of the bass drum, leaned over and blew into their gourds, straightened up, bellowed something in unison like a Big 10 marching band, and turned ninety degrees like they were dancing the “Electric Slide.”    At times the leader seemed to be screaming at his troupe to encourage or motivate them. Every now and then the crowd erupted with laughter or applause. Young boys darted into the block to join the men. What I presume were judges watched from their seats in the shade. American Boma won that day. There would be another Malipenga tomorrow, and next year. Ring in 2010 on Likoma Island, Malawi and see who wins the next Malipenga!

On Likoma Island

The published schedule said the ferry trip from Nkhata Bay to Likoma would take five hours. That would put me ashore at some unnamed point at one o’clock Tuesday morning. Mango Drift, where I’d be staying for the next four and a half days, was about a forty-five minute trek somewhere across the island from here. It didn’t seem prudent to be stumbling clueless around this strange place at 0100 hours. Hence my relief to have arrived on African time, as I’d hoped we would. It was 5 a.m.! Though we’d arrived late, we landed just in time for the change of command ceremony. The dark blues of night surrendered to pastel mauves, yellows, and pinks. In the distance across a twenty-five mile stretch of calm lake, the sun inched its way from behind the hills of Mozambique. The new day was warming quickly.
A trio of South African brothers, a couple of Brits, and I were all relieved to hear that Mango Drift had sent a launch to taxi us around the bottom half of the island to our west side digs.

At Mango Drift I was pointed to a bamboo hut with three wood-shuttered windows sans screens or panes, a bed with a mosquito net and single bare light bulb dangling overhead, and a wooden door with no lock or key. I soon found myself curiously peering down into the knee-high tower of the eighteen-inch square cement security box intended for storing valuables (for which one had to supply one’s own lock). I was bewildered to see either an enormous spider or the spindliest crab ever. It turned out to be a “spider crab!” Likoma is purported to have a crime rate of zero, so there’s little need for either the lock the box or the spider crab to guard its contents.

Likoma is a great place to unwind. I alternated between days chilling on the beach reading and cooling off in the clear blue water and exploring the island. On New Year’s Eve day, young men beached their dhow at Mango Drift and unloaded firewood they’d brought over from Mozambique. It would fuel the bonfire we’d build at Mango Drift that night. Seven miles east one can see Chizimulu, Likoma’s sister island, rising proudly from the lake.

I set out to explore Likoma, hiking past humungous baobab trees, up and over rocky hills, and along a dirt path into and through local villages. By now, I’m accustomed to the scads of curious children who try outrunning each other to greet a fair-skinned muzungu. I greet them and shake hands with some brave ones. We all exchange smiles. My footpath cuts right through villagers’ “yards” and I find myself ducking beneath clotheslines to avoid getting tangled in laundry dancing in the breeze. As the hills sloped downward I finally came to a stand of tall shade trees and oddly enough, eyed what looked like a gothic window. “Could this be some pious Malawian’s home?” I wondered. It turned out to be my destination, St. Peter’s Cathedral, aptly named for the apostle who fished. Completed in 1905, European Anglicans built this massive structure using only local labor and materials, including Likoma red mud-clay bricks. Those Anglicans are said to have been the driving force behind the 100% literacy rate Likoma once enjoyed. After touring St. Peter’s, which is still active today, I made my way through the small town of Chipyela. Like many roads on Likoma, the road through Chipyela leads to the waters of Lake Malawi, across which Mozambique looms in the distance. Here too, piled on the beach, are mounds of firewood. Likomans would cherish the luxury of using it to usher in a new year with a bonfire.

Nkhata Bay <--> Likoma Island, Aboard Ilala

During my recent year-end travels I spent a chunk of time in Malawi. After a splendid Christmas with friends in Mzuzu, I proceeded to Nkhata Bay. This place is like a freshwater version of the Caribbean, even in its laid-back attitude. Malawians slice through placid waters in dugout canoes as crystal clear waters in mesmerizing shades of azure, green, and turquoise lap their way onto course sandy beaches. It’s difficult to imagine that Lake Malawi could be home to a nasty parasite called bilharzia. The bugs surreptitiously enter (human) hosts through the skin and take weeks or months to make their presence known, wending their way to reside in and feast on kidney or liver tissue. Fortunately they’re quite susceptible to readily available antibiotics.

Cool offshore breezes betray the presence of kapenta, a small, sardine-like fish. Villagers splay the silvery, pinky-length stuff on long, bamboo mats to dry it in the hot December sun. The same breezes escort billions of tiny midges ashore. These minute insects live for only twenty-four hours. Towers of them rise like smoke over the lake, resembling dark tornado funnels. Nkhata Bay also buzzes with villagers jockeying around the produce market and stalls displaying of carved wood. The ferry Ilala sputters along the Malawian, Tanzanian, and Mozambiquan shores of this massive pool (~ 360 miles long x 50 miles wide), drawing people to the towns where it calls.

Ilala stops in Nkhata Bay twice weekly. I boarded the Monday 8 p.m. ferry bound for Likoma Island. The scene paralleled the description Blaine Harden penned of his trip on an African riverboat in Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent. The vessel reflects mid-twentieth century design, with her superstructure standing just fore of midships. That, along with her rusty hull and dry, worn wooden upper decks, give away her six decades of service like the ringed cross-section of an ancient Giant Sequoia. Still, hordes of us crowded aboard. We squeezed along the decks like shoppers squishing into a store at a day-after-Thanksgiving door-buster sale. Upon reaching the (open-air) upper deck, I scoped out a white fiberglass bin containing lifejackets, against which I propped my backpack. This would be a good place to sleep, more or less (mostly less!), with one eye open. Once underway, debris from the stack drifted aft and down onto my sleeves.

Since only a few shore-side destinations can accommodate Ilala, the boat usually alights passengers into its diesel engine lifeboats. The deck crew launches and recovers these creaky taxis with expert efficiency, far better than the crew on a typical deep-sea U.S.-flag merchant ship. Disembarkation is practically a stampede over the side, down the sole cargo net, and into the lifeboat. Sturdy African women, heads and legs wrapped in colorful chitenges (traditional, two-meter length multi-utility cloths), tote children in the chitenges strung across their backs. Watch out! Heads up! These same women swing huge bunches of green bananas to others waiting below! They shimmy down the net lugging bulging plastic bags and suitcases. Men heave sacks sagging with maize meal and blue barrels and bright yellow rectangular plastic containers into the lifeboat, and more bags and suitcases. Inattentiveness, poor judgment, or loss of balance can land you in the lake or the hospital. The system, if you can call it that, is neither efficient nor safe. Somehow, it works.

It is my prayer that Ilala and those who sail her never join the bloated ranks of two-thirds-world maritime disasters. This rust bucket is a lifeline for the people who live on and around Lake Malawi and the islands in its midst. I shudder to think how many lives will be set adrift on the day Ilala’s stack debris showers her decks no more, but as the sun slowly rises, it dawns on me that these hearty Africans have thrived for millenia before anyone ever thought of laying Ilala's keel.