Dec 17 Paul 1, Mulanje 100

The past few weeks have been pretty slow here in Malawi. I am getting so used to some things that when they occur, they just don’t seem so special so I don’t write about them. People keep asking me if I am ready to come home. I say yes and no. I do miss my friends and family, and there are certain things that drive me absolutely crazy about this country, but Malawi is starting to grow on me. I am starting to have long individual conversations with the students, and I know they are starting to feel more comfortable around me. Lawrence dropped me off a few weeks ago and a few of the girls asked him if I was single and if I liked Malawian women. I am excited to come home, but I will miss some of the people here. I didn’t think I would miss the whole Christmas season in the USA as much as I really do. Yesterday I popped into Shop Rite (the super market) to buy a few things I need to get me through the week; I was only planning on getting a few things and getting out quick, but they had Christmas music playing so I ended up spending almost and an hour and a half just enjoying the music. It was the first Christmas music I had heard in English the year. I am also starting to really like and enjoy the DIs that I am working with from around the world. They are truly special people and have made this experience a million times better. If I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to meet and work with them, I would still be counting down the days till my flight leaves. I almost forgot, on a very special side note, right before Thanksgiving the Mary Jean Perrini Inspire to Serve award was officially given to Mary Perrini by The American Humanics Student Association from Kansas State University. So for those of you that know Mary, send her an email or give her a call at Miege to congratulate her! This past weekend I went with Chihiro and three other DIs to mount Mulanje. Mount Mulanje is the tallest mountain in Malawi. I was under the impression that we were going to hike around for a few hours, go to the waterfalls, and spend the night in a little town about 10km away. BOY WAS I WRONG! Chihiro and I met up with Calou, Caesar, and Anna; three other DIs that work in the TCE (total control of the Epidemic…HIV/AIDS program) in Limbe on Saturday morning. Anna and Caesar are a couple from Brazil. They are both have degrees to be pharmacists, but they want to get out of Brazil to do their work. Calou(sp?) is from Japan and the only thing I really found out about her was that the school that she trained at was in Michigan, and she went to Royals/ Whitesox game in Chicago. When we met up, we went food shopping and Chihiro and I were informed that we would be staying on the mountain at a little camp. I just thought ok sounds fun. When we got to the mountain and met up with our guide, Caesar and Anna said that we wanted to make the 6 hour hike to the CCAP lodge. When I heard this my jaw dropped and I my mind went blank. I thought 6 hours; these people have to be kidding! Then I came to my own conclusion that this 6 hours was really like 4 or less if you kept a steady pace, so we stretched out bought some bananas and got ready for the hike. Our guide doubled as a porter and he carried one of our back packs the whole trip. We set off and after the first 45 minutes I knew I was in trouble. At this time came to the realization that 6 hours for our group was really going to mean 8. Plus I only had brought 1.5 liters of water and I had already sweated out at least a half liter in the first 45 minutes. By hour number two, I had sweated out at least 1.5 liters of water and was still trying to ration my water. We came across 2 streams in the first few hours and our guide Fred said that they were clean and we wouldn’t get sick if we drank from them, but I wasn’t buying that! None of us were, we all walked right by and over them as our guide got fresh water each time. After it had seemed like we had hiked forever, we finally reached the half way point, and I was officially out of water. At that point we stopped to take a break and sat on a flat rock that poked out of the forest and showed the entire mountain. The view was incredible, it was so exciting to see trees again. The best thing from this view was how far we could see. I could see land clearly for miles away. The sky was clear and the land looked so peaceful. While we were resting and having a snack I asked Fred (the guide) if there was any more stream crossings coming up. I was out of water and I knew if it didn’t refill as soon as possible there was a good chance I would get dehydrated and maybe worse. Luckily there was one, only another hours walk. By the time we got to that stream my legs felt like jello and it was around 5 pm, but we still had at least another 2 hours till we got to the hut. I refilled my water, snapped a few pictures, and got ready to go. Needless to say since we were going very slow, darkness came before we arrived at the Camp. As the sun set and black started swallowing the sky, my legs had had enough hiking. I started to get cramps in my thighs, followed by my calves, and then those nasty ones in my hamstrings that wake you up at night. During this little episode I was having, I realized that there was absolutely nothing anyone else could do for me. I was up on a mountain in the middle of Malawi, 10,000 miles away from help. I guess I could have stopped walking and asked to take a break, but every time we did stop the pain just got worse and the cramps came back so I just kept moving no matter what. I don’t know if I have ever pushed myself that hard. Whenever I have been completely exhausted, I have always been able to stop and rest or have a “state regulated” water break, but up here there was nothing but me and the mountain. It was one of those moments in life that you can be really proud of yourself. I feel like I accomplished something. I didn’t climb all the way to the top, but I set a goal and reached it. It was probably the most physically challenging thing I have done in the past 10 years. Yes there were other people and we were all in this together, but everyone was facing their own battle on our night hike. We hiked for about 45 minutes in the dark, there was no moon and so I used my phone flash light to guide me. Chihiro had one of those lights that you wind up the battery (I think dad gave me one of those for Christmas onetime, but I didn’t bring it), and the other people had their own lights. It was amazing that even in the pitch black our guide knew exactly where to go and every turn to take. Our 6 hour hike took just about 7 hours and 45 minutes by the time we finally arrived at the camp. We got some fresh water, made dinner (pasta), met a very nice Englishman named Anthony, and went to bed. In the morning I awoke to Anthony and another group of travelers from Holland making breakfast. There were three hikers from Holland, who had gone to bed right as we had gotten to the camp the night before. After they made and ate breakfast they said goodbye and started their descent down the mountain. About the time they were leaving my group was just waking up. We made a quick breakfast and left the camp a little past 8. It was already a beautiful day, but unlike the day before it was getting hot early and there was just that hint that we needed to get on the move before the rains came. Once we were out of the camp and had climbed out of the small gully the camp was in, you could really see the mystery and history of this mountain. There was an old dirt landing strip inside the gully that used to fly supplies in, but hadn’t been used in at least 20 years. It looked like all of a sudden whoever used it, just stopped and no one had touched it since. There was grass and weeds that had overgrown the entire thing, but a lot of things have that same dilapidated feeling in Malawi. On our way down the mountain I got the chance to have a few conversations with Anthony. He had quit his job in England and agreed to come over to Malawi for 6 months and supervise the building of a school. It was all set up through his church. He had come across a lot of the same problems that myself and the DIs had. The one thing that really bothered him was the rudeness of the people here, more specifically the lying. Lying is very common here. Lying is no big deal. I have had project leaders and teachers lie to my face about things as simple as being late or why they couldn’t do something. It seems like it doesn’t bother anyone to lie here. If you have ever known a pathological liar, who lies about everything from the weather outside to whether or not he/she was actually dying, that is the type of liar that you find in Malawi. When I got back to the college on Sunday, one of the students who I really like asked me why I didn’t go to Mulanje? When I replied that I had, she just said no you didn’t Paul you are a liar. You lie you lie you liar. I don’t know about you or anyone you know, but I don’t like to be called a liar, that’s just not part of normal conversation where I come from. Anthony brought up a good point, he said, “in your church isn’t lying a sin?” I said yes and that I was also raised not to lie. He then talked about how he just didn’t understand how these Malawians could argue against every wrong doing of anyone by saying Jesus taught us this and God wants us to do that, but then turn around and lie to your face if you asked them if they had gone to church that week. The other thing that bothers me besides the constant lying (which isn’t done by all Malawians, but enough to make it a point) is some of the people are just playing and flat out rude, they have no regard for other people’s personal space or belongings. Ok, well I found out that personal space like your “personal bubble” didn’t exist in the first week that I got here, so I am used to that, but what I mean is my room is my personal space, and if I forget to lock my door whether I am in my room or not people will just walk in. No knock or anything, the thing that set me off on Sunday was the fact that one of the teachers had hung up a clothes line right in front of my door. Now I understand you need to dry your clothes, but we all have a clothes line hung up in our rooms, if the two communal lines outside are taken. Well I guess this teacher didn’t want to use the space in his room for his clothes so he hung his clothes right in front of my door. It is more the inconsideration of it all, like if you are living with other people you don’t use all the water, but not here, or you clean up after yourself, well here you just throw your trash outside and expect that someone else will pick it up. No one cares about the little things, and that bothers me. Anyways, Anthony had also run into several problems with knowing who to trust. He was living with the pastor and church officials from a sister parish, but coincidently they were the ones trying to rip him off. The people he was supposed to trust were trying to get him to buy cheap materials for the school so they could pocket the rest of the money, it is sad, but this problem happens almost every time a school or any aid building is built. I also got a chance to just converse with another native English speaker. It was great, I really hadn’t had a full conversation with an English speaker since I had gotten here, besides Lawrence, but I mean a native English speaker. We mainly talked about movies which I really didn’t mind, we could have talked about British history and soccer for all I cared, just having a conversation was great. The way down the mountain was more frustrating for me than the climb up. There was a cover of dew on most of the trail on the way down and I fell down at least 10 times. Besides the dew, the ants were out in the morning and there were at least 3 separate times where I had ants in my pants. I think I pulled 24 ants off me on the way down, after they had let me know they were there (by biting me). Also on the way down I got to enjoy the scenery much more than on the way up. The paths were covered in every type of tree I had seen in Malawi. We would walk for what seemed like an eternity through thick dark luscious forest and all of a sudden pop out for a minute of spectacular outlooks all the way up and down the mountain. The view was not only over the puffy clouds as they smashed into the mountain, but you could wait for 2 minutes and as the clouds cleared you could just see Africa. Every time we popped out on to one of these ledges, it was like the view from the Lion King, looking down from the top of the lion’s den over a vast never-ending kingdom of life and land, with only very few tiny buildings, houses, and huts and fewer traceable roads, this view was picturesque of what I had grown up hoping Africa really looked like; purely beauty and wonder. Since we didn’t stop on the way up at the “mulanje waterfall”, we decided to do it on the way down. Right as we got to where we could actually hear the stream turn into the waterfall it started to rain. We asked Fred if it was really worth going to see, because it was very obvious that all of our group was tired and getting hungry. It was almost one at this point and Fred assured us that this was something that we had to see, so we followed him down a “short-cut” to the waterfall. One thing we thought was funny was how Fred would describe the trails we were taking, he kept saying this next climb is very gentle don’t worry it isn’t hard, so when he said please be careful and watch your step when we took the shortcut, I thought to myself what is this guy getting us into? The short-cut we took was more like a death-cut. The side trail was wet and very steep, every now and again we would have to slide down a flat slippery rock surface, but not too fast because you wouldn’t stop if your body got going. Then we came to the back part of the waterfall, and our good guide Fred just hopped down onto three big rocks and said come on. I knew it was going to be difficult for the group to get across when I went after Fred. There was about a three foot space in between the first and second rocks. The first one was also quite a bit taller than the second one, and I couldn’t reach from boulder to boulder and if I couldn’t reach how were 2 small Japanese girls going to do it. For me Fred made a ledge with his foot and I was able to shimmy across, Anthony lowered himself down on a vine like Tarzan, and somehow Fred got everyone else across. The waterfall was nice, but nothing that special, I would rather have stayed on the normal path and not gone to the waterfall than take the “short-cut” and go through all that. Also on the way out of the waterfall as we were crossing more boulders I lost my balance and almost bit it into the river. If I wouldn’t have caught myself on a nearby rock I would have also gotten to see how a medical response team works in the middle of Malawi, and that would have been so much fun!
After the waterfalls we were making our way back down when Caesar saw a guy he knew. The guy was an American who was working with Doctors without borders. I was again excited to meet another American. Caesar told me that he was from Chicago and his name was Matthew. I said hello an introduced myself to Matthew, I said so you’re from Chicago, I’m from Kansas City, I wanted to ask him a few questions about Doctors without borders, but before I could say anything he looked at me and said yea… you sound like an American and walked away. It was one of those moments where you just stop, and ask yourself did that really just happen? I was super excited to meet another American that works for a great organization that a lot of people dream of working for (me included), and guy just blows you off. At least if was to my face right? When he was leaving, I said it was nice to meet you and he responded with yea? Not an oh you too, likewise, or even some small remark that makes a person sound like they give a damn, but just yea. Rude people have always bothered me, but it is worse when you are abroad. There is absolutely no need for shit like that, it is unreal. Sometimes it is just easy to see why so many people hate Americans. Some people are just Jerks.
One of the mind boggling things we found out about this mountain is that every year there is a porter’s race. All of the guides and porters race up around and down the mountain. The course is up to the top on the steepest trail, around the summit to the hut where we stayed the night, and then back down the trail we came down on. Anthony told us that he had hiked all the paths on this mountain and if he did the course and hiked it as fast as he could it would take him at least 10 hours and Anthony is an experienced hiker. The winning time from this year’s race was 2:05, two hours and five minutes; incredible! Our guide’s time was 2:23 and he was in 25th place. The only thing I could think of was just how amazing that actually is. I mean people that can run full marathons running like 8 minute miles or less amaze me (yes I mean you Aunt Mary), but going up this mountain is crazy with the heat and altitude, mind boggling is the only way I can describe it.
As I said before our guide’s name was Fred. Fred had been referred to us by other DIs who had come to the mountain. There were a few times that I was ahead of the pack with him that I got a chance to talk to him 1 on 1. Fred is 18 years old and in secondary school, which is like our high school. He has 4 siblings and lives with them and his mom. His father died in 2000 and he works on the weekend as a guide to support his family and pay his school fees. The average Malawian that works in this region makes about 150 kwacha or a dollar a day. A guide for the mountain makes about 1300 kwacha a day plus an extra thousand if he doubles as a porter and carries a bag, so Fred was doing alright for himself and made about 3600 kwacha from two days work. I was considering breaking my own rule and giving him an extra tip, because he really was a good guide, until he got me alone on the second day and said, “you look like you could afford to help me, and if you can’t I bet your parents can or you know someone that can!” I was just shocked, I said why do you think this and he replied something about how I looked like I worked hard and I’m from the USA so that means I am rich. So basically he saw the white man from the USA and thought to himself, YES, an easy target! I almost bought into it all too, until at the end he tried to get more money out of us, for “extra” work had done and time that he had spent with us. Ahh, this officially marks the millionth time in Malawi that a person has found out where I live and asked me to pay them money for something. This time it was Fred and paying his college school fees, last time it was a teacher from the school asking me to find money for her daughter, the first time it was the cook, and plenty of other strangers that right when I say I’m from the USA , I become a target for long distance donations. I mean it is so frustrating to be looked at by everyone you meet not as who you are, but as an object that can give them financial gain. It is the same in the stores, hotels, and the street vendors are the worst. Even at the hotels they have a sign posted that says Malawian price and White Price. The vendors will openly tell you they charge Malawians a 1/3 or a ¼ of what they charge Azungu (whites). I mean I guess that this describes a lot of third world countries, but it is definitely one thing that I will not miss about Malawi.
On Monday my body ached so bad. I haven’t been this sore for years, so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing? Walking around the school on Monday was a slow waddle, and the best part of my day was getting to stretch several times. My shoulders and neck also were a problem on Monday. My shoulders still had red indentations from my back pack and my neck was stiff. Tuesday my legs still hurt, but I went into town to get a few things from the store and meet Lawrence for lunch. Every time I started to get a good pace and my legs started to feel somewhat normal my groin felt like it would strain or something and I would slow back down. Not a good feeling either way. Wednesday was better, I actually had a little hop back in my step and today I am doing a-ok. I also have found Christmas presents for Dad and Mom, real traditional Malawian presents. On Saturday we are having a Christmas party here at Amalika. We will all sing songs and play bingo and I have been told Santa is making an appearance, coming all the way from the USA! Wow, I’m so excited to meet Santa I wonder which Mzungu is going to be Santa? After Saturday I will go into town and spend the next few days with Lawrence and celebrate Christmas with him and his family, although I do wish I was on a beach in Charleston with mine. The week in between Christmas and new years I plan on traveling. I hope I can meet with one or two Peace Corps volunteers and check out the Mizzou for Malawi project outside of Salima. Then after new years I will get back to Amalika for a week, pick up my primary school surveys, finish making clips for a Planet Aid video and say my goodbyes. See you all in a little over 3 weeks. Tio-na-na.