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.

Hucksters and Angels, Part I

Integrity and Taxi Fares for Greenhorns

In my recent trek throughout Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania I was reminded that traveling invariably spawns more frequent and memorable encounters with the nefarious and the noble than we usually experience in the humdrum of everyday life. Guess what? The occasional shameless New York cabbie that has refined the duping of unsuspecting out-of-towners into an art form has distant cousins in Zambia and Malawi.

I rode with one such relative in Chipata, Zambia, on a short taxi trip to the Malawian border. Cabs here are shared, so as to optimize fuel efficiency and maximize revenue. However, in Chipata I sniffed another revenue maximization scheme, charging inflated muzungu (white person) rates. I asked two passengers already sitting in the cab what fare they were paying. They had just spoken with the driver – uh, in Nyanja, not my strong suit. They casually responded with a fare twice what I’d just been quoted ten minutes before by another cabbie whose car I refused to enter because it was grossly overloaded. I took the ride aware that I might be getting hosed. Upon arriving at the border, the driver bounded out of the car and approached me to pay him before and quite a distance from any of the other passengers. After I paid him my mind involuntarily went to work trying to reason why what occurred felt so wrong, in principle. “What just happened?” I said to myself.

While walking across the border I asked a Malawian immigration officer what the fare should be for the next leg, to the bus station. “Three hundred fifty Malawian kwacha,” she said. When I got to the taxi rank a gaggle of cabbies was hanging out between the first two cars in line. “Three hundred fifty kwacha to the bus station,” I confidently said to the apparent driver of the head car. Shaking his head no, he countered with, “Five hundred kwacha.” I said, “No, not the “muzungu fare,” the fare you would pay for this trip.” The crowd smiled, and with all the sincerity they could muster protested on behalf of their buddy that I’d been quoted the correct fare. The “muzungu fare” they said, would be seven hundred or a thousand kwacha! Later I wished I’d come back with, “Ah, so we HAVE established that there IS a ‘muzungu fare,’ and it’s higher!” I laughed with them and decided I’d let them in on my little conversation with the immigration officer, about the legit fare being three fifty. It was as if I’d caught them with their pants down (when they were really on fire!). They were stunned! Addressing the most vocal guy with all the sincerity I could muster, I challenged the whole gang to help me confront the immigration officer for lying to me. Oops, they hadn’t planned on that response! What followed were snickers with sheepish grins and eyes averting my gaze, but no takers. I decided to have some fun with this and take the ride, literally and figuratively. As in the previous cab, I was shown the single bucket seat in front. We departed for the station once the driver found enough riders to give everyone in the car claustrophobia. Along the way a would-be rider waved us down. There was only room for him to squeeze up front with me. I turned to my friends in back and asked what fare they were paying. Deafening silence. I asked whether they were paying five hundred kwacha. Again, the only response I got was smiles and nervous laughter. They were on to the driver’s ruse but remained loyal to their countryman. I leaned over and quipped to the driver that now that I was sharing my seat, the fare should go down to three fifty. At the bus station the driver again zipped over to me first, for payment, again apart from the others riders. This time however, I refused to pay first, telling him I wanted to allow my fellow passengers to pay, so they could be on their way. I would wait patiently until he was done with them. That driver looked more like a “deer-in-the-headlights” than I thought humanly possible! That expression was priceless, well worth the cost of getting taken for a ride previously. If he wasn’t sure before, he now knew I was on to him. What would he do? Surely he suspected I would watch and listen as others paid. He slinked over to collect the fares from the others, knowing full well that there was no way on earth they would pay 143% of the going rate, even if they could afford it, which they probably couldn’t. I couldn’t tell from the hushed tones what was being said or how much they were paying. Finally, the driver came to me, and needing to save face said, “Since I had to put someone in the front seat with you, I’ll only charge you three fifty.”

Pricing for travelers can be more of a game or a dance than it is in everyday life, akin perhaps to buying a car in the States (which clearly is not an everyday purchase). Often enough, the game denies equality among buyers and discounts integrity among sellers. In Zambia and Malawi at least, on the sell side the game is based on the seller’s perception of a buyer’s economic status vis a vis the seller and thus the buyer’s ability to pay (and the seller feeling entitled to a price hike). On the buy side the game hinges on the buyer’s awareness of the fair price, alternative products, services, or sellers, and the perceived value of the good or service purchased. As I discovered, at some point the game may also involve the seller saving face. Ignorance and underestimating the other can cost either player. Caveat emptor yes, but integrity should not be for sale. That spirals into certain bankruptcy.

Christmas in Mzuzu

Prior to reading Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa, my vision of Africa featured parched deserts, dense jungles, grassy savannahs, and muddy watering holes. Absent were hills, at least not green ones. That perception changed with my recent travels to and through the verdant hills and sprawling mountains of Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania.

Unlike Hemingway’s dull book, the green hills of Africa bowl you over, shimmering emerald that stands in bold relief to russet-hued clay. Now I at least appreciate his choice of title.

The green hills and mountains of Mzuzu, Malawi – that’s where I spent Christmas. Mzuzu is situated in northern Malawi, thirty miles from the western shores of Lake Malawi. My friends Paul and Darlene Heller hosted me. They oversee the Ministry of Hope's crisis nursery for babies orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic (www.ministryofhope.org; http://suffer-the-little-children.blogspot.com/). They care for about a dozen and a half infants. On a visit to the nursery, before I knew it, Darlene had hoisted a chunky little tike named Frank, into my arms. At Mzuzu’s hospital, babies and children share large open rooms, occupying hospital beds with no rails. Anxious mothers curl up next to their little ones. We had come to see baby Hilda, who on Christmas Eve had been struggling mightily to elude the icy grip of death.  Thankfully,  Hilda prevailed in her first bout with malaria.

We walked Mzuzu’s hills, farms, and footpaths, and hiked one of its mile-high green mountains. Mzuzu’s crisp, clean air is discernibly thin. Our treks around Mzuzu left me winded, but piqued my curiosity. Never before have I seen insects that resemble origami made from pieces of straw, or waist-high heavy-laden banana trees.


My respect for African women mounts; they may well be the backbone of Malawian (and Zambian, and perhaps even African) society. We pass several of them carrying twelve-foot-long bundles of firewood – on their heads of course! Will this ever cease to amaze me? It saddens me when they seemingly instinctively step aside for us muzungus to squeeze by the narrow path we’re following. As they ascend one of Mzuzu’s lush mountains, three women pilgrims stop, kneel, and pray, aloud.

Atop the mountain, groups of other pilgrims unabashedly raise their voices to sing God’s praises. Children at the local church Christmas pageant recite their lines flawlessly, and confidently belt out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” How had I never realized how fitting those lyrics are for Christmas? For the dramatic rendering of the Christmas story that is to be his Christmas morning sermon – from the vantage point of Mary’s husband-to-be Joseph – (Rev.) Paul Heller dons a long, curly white wig (Paul's sermon was the first of two in that service!). Back at the Hellers, we have devotions around the Christmas wreath, then dive into Darlene’s homemade Christmas cookies. Delish! We sip some South African red wine, watch movies, and indulge in other treats Darlene has hoarded for Christmas. Christmas with the Hellers in the green hills of Africa, sans Western commercialism, is the next best thing to being home.

Nature vs. Creation

Oddly enough, life in Africa triggers thoughts of . . . Texas, and Texas playing second fiddle no less! This would be unthinkable for Charlie, a college classmate who was a Texas evangelist of sorts. Every chance he got Charlie spouted the good news of the state that stands alone; everything in the Lone Star State: bigger and better.

Move over Texas. Zambia will give you a run for your money, at least in terms of the natural world. Everything wild here seems bigger (bees) or more threatening (mosquitos and thunderstorms) or more determined to survive (termites), if not conquer (ants). Here for barely a week, I had the thrill to see a lion in the wild. The beast was scarcely visible as it hunkered down at dusk in the wispy, straw-colored bush grass, calculating taking an unwitting other’s life. “How violent!” I said to my colleague. He pointed out that if the other animal didn’t die, the lion would. How violent. What came to mind was the difference between the world as it was created, “good,” and as it became after the Fall. Good Creation became violent Nature.


The rainy season in Zam spawned chameleons. They really do change colors. Fascinating. They also eat unsuspecting grasshoppers, live, headfirst. How violent.

Lion ants, or "doodlebugs " carve conical traps in sandy soil. Then they burrow beneath the sand and wait for insects to stray into the crater.

When these panic-stricken insects struggle to crawl up and out of the hole to evade the lion ant’s clutches from below, the sides of the pit collapse. The hapless victim becomes a protein shake. How violent.

I have never before experienced thunder and lightning storms as violent as in Zam. I have a newfound appreciation for the "I hear the rolling thunder" lyric of the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” The other day my eight-year old neighbor admitted to his dad that even though he knew there was no reason to be frightened, he was afraid of the thunder. I’m not sure his premise is valid. A shiver ran up my spine when that thunder cracked right above me. What power.

Now I can’t get Psalm 29 out of my head. Google it and note how it ends.

Even the slightest of insects are associated with danger, insects I’ve only known as pests. Here they can kill you. Zam’s mosquitos look smaller than ours, but they dart around much faster, and are better at dodging my attempts at violence. Of course, they transmit malaria, which I know too well. I’m among the fortunate. One million African children die from malaria every year. How violent.




What if someone could come and reverse this violence and death, bring hope, new life, break into space and time and usher in peace, renew and restore Nature to Creation? If only there was One to come free us from this violence. O come, O come, Immanuel. Peace and Joy! Merry Christmas!

“Our Forefathers Weren’t Stupid!”

As we made our way through Zambia’s Central Province, my colleague Richard extolled the virtues of a Bemba tribal farming technique in use for centuries, the Chitemene system. Around October, villagers gather brush and cut trees to a height of about three feet. They surround the perimeter of this rectangular plot and set it ablaze, sentinels poised with their leafy tree branches in hand to deny the tongues of fire ingress to their village. The villagers plant millet and ground nuts (peanuts) in the powdery ash now fortified with carbon and nitrogen. For two years these crops will thrive and the stumps regenerate and bear fruit.

Richard mentioned that a rival tribe employing a different agricultural method used to ridicule the Chitemene system. He defiantly replied, “Our forefathers weren’t stupid!” That exclamation seared my consciousness: “Our forefathers weren’t stupid!”

Being immersed in a foreign society triggers an involuntary reflex to make sense of the plethora of cultural gaps. Strangeness smacks me in the face at every turn. I find myself incessantly musing, “Why do they do this that way?” In a culture I just don’t understand (and still won’t even after being here a year), it seems prudent, though it’s not always easy, to resist the temptation to suggest some alternative way of doing things. As opportunities present themselves I respectfully inquire about Zambian ways. Nevertheless, it’s a huge blessing to have a great bunch of ex-pat friends with whom to hash out these experiences.

Occasionally I can sort out the rationale for Zambian ways. For example, local minivan-sized buses here do not operate on a schedule. They depart when they’re full (and don’t idle while they’re waiting). This is fantastic when I arrive to occupy the last seat. It’s somewhat less exhilarating when I’m the first to arrive for the next bus! Wouldn’t you agree that considering that one gallon of fuel here ranges from nearly $8 to $12, this system makes perfect sense? There are good reasons other “tribes” do things “their way.” That’s not to say we can’t help each other develop new and different, and yes, even better ways of doing things.
I’m discovering that Zambians can teach us a great deal about things that really matter – like the importance of relationships, community, and faith, and freedom from enslavement to the clock. Richard ended his lesson by proudly informing me that the rival tribe ended up adopting the Chitemene system! No Richard, of course your forefathers weren’t stupid.