Today has been a trying one, spent getting back to where we had just left. The founder of Katie's organization has her panties in a bind about a story CBS wants to do on Idah and her summer in the US. This return means that yesterday and today were utter wastes of both time and money. Leaving Zomba we were hustled into a bus that immediately got a flat tire. From there we were practically thrown into a second bus that blatantly charged us double what everyone else had paid (a confirmed fact, not just a suspicion this time) and then tried to not even take us all the way to where we were going. They tried to convince us that we were at our desired destination, miles short of the truth.The reason was just that the lazy thugs wanted to have lunch and were sick of doing their job. This stranded two other folks (locals even) besides us. We had been around for a bit at this point. We knew where we we supposed to be going. We yelled. Other people yelled. The mini-bus conductor ran away to eat sugar cane. The driver smiled the smug smile of an idiot who wont relent even the most preposterous scam. Things got tense. They would not give us our money back, and would not take us on to our destination. One of the locals was a younger guy transporting a 50lb bag of rice. They were shouting at him, trying to drag him off the bus, smacking him in the face with dirty socks... Katie yelled at one point, "You get back here or you're gonna get your ass beat by a white girl!" A different driver finally hopped in and took us to where we had paid double to go in the first place. A place where we were barked into another mini-bus that took every opportunity to stop and hang out with buddies along the way. 5 hours later from 2 hours away, we were back where we started. I am spiralling towards a low opinion of this place. I am a far cry from being miserable here, any adventure must float above the good and the bad. I am happy and honoured to be seeing and learning, but the joy that comes from poor people that can smile and say hello is slight and diminishing at this point. Why have we become obsessed with this place? Why do we continue to repeat the mantra: "Africa is hard, but a beautiful place filled with beautiful people."? Africa is filled with the blind poor and the visionless corrupt. There is good here, or course, but it is the good that exists anywhere in the world where there are humans living: the best doing the best they can, friends, and families. These "goods" are not particular to this country or this continent. If you marvel at perseverance, marvel at any of named and nameless things still living and thriving on this planet, not just the poor people. The culture here is vanished. In its place is only survival, Christ, and coca-cola. All energy towards the almighty and his almighty bucks. But the ubiquitous buck is boring. It is just that no one here has ever seen enough of them yet to know this. The most craft I have seen here goes into the making of their coffins, where the culture is already buried and rotting in the ground. There are countless jack-assed idle men learning nothing, and endless armies of replacements when these asses finally come down to rest forever in the nation's last craft. It is a beautiful land that has made itself inaccessible to human appreciation. Of course it doesn't exist for our eyes to marvel at, our minds to reel, but appreciation of the natural world is always appreciated. You cannot breathe deep Africa's air, or drink its waters. You cannot sit in its shade or soak in its sun. You cannot admire this place from the ground. To say there is no violence should not imply that there is peace. Again and again on this trip, I have been told that I am welcome here but I have never felt it. Only my money has felt truly welcomed here. Africa. You were once so rich, and now you are so poor. Your songs, which used to be about your people and your lives are now about Christs and politicians. Malawi, you call your president "the New Moses." Your countries are all cargo cults, enraptured by what has been imposed on you, you play a tragic game, pantomiming the motions of a system which has never had you in its mindless mind. You are difficult to love. By your own hand, and with our salivating encouragement, you have lopped off the limbs that made you a beautiful, branching, and mighty tree. I hope that you find yourself again. I think that we should leave you alone so you may do this. You may resent us for this, and all our past errors, but only Africa can fix itself, and Africa is indeed broken. Nothing here is maintained. Everything deteriorates. Broken and rotting until someone happens along, horrified enough to pick it up for you. If there is hope to have here it is that you will never be without potential to change your situation.
But of course my observations are a shrill hoax. There is not "one Africa," and I haven't seen anything. I know nothing, and I generalize inexcusably. I can represent nothing but myself. These are not truths on the page; thoughts only. Thoughts of a first time traveler in a very small part of a very small country in an enormous continent which the traveler knows nothing about except the notions given to him by another nation -ignorant and in the dark. The interesting fact is that this free-fall form of travel forces you to be more yourself at the same time it is stripping your identity away. Clear and misunderstood, this country is as ignorant of me as I am of it.
PICASA PHOTOS
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