Top 10 ... of Malawi. Pepani!

So let me try and put together a top 10 of Malawi - quirks maybe, characteristics possibly. The top 10 hit-you-in-the-face-you-are-now-in-Malawi facts:

1. Food. Simply there is not much, or it is very expensive. There are hundreds of kilograms of tomatoes for sale, onions, bananas, a local type of spinach, rice, nsima (maize), casava, ... yep, that's pretty much it. Then you can buy white bread, and I sourced out some local good yoghurt. In the bigger cities there is more of a variety of fresh vegetables (debatable whether more expensive). Anything else, expect to pay through your teeth. According to consultants and such people, the lack of food is due to a) poor farming methods and lack of crop variety and b) lack of staggering of crop planting meaning when there is food there is too much food but no planting is done to ensure food during winter/the dry season etc.

2. Nali. The best thing about Malawian food - hot, spicey flavourful Nali sauce. In flavours hot, vey hot, garlic, curry.

3. Power's No. 1. A little sachet of alcohol spirits. Costs between 10 and 15 Malawian Kwacha (about 50-75c) and gets your powerfully drunk at 40% spirits volume.



4. A drunk country. According to independent sources (other travellers I met) it is agreed that a large part of the Malawian population is at some pint in the day 1)smelling of old alcohol or 2) drunk. I know this sounds like I am hating on the country. I am not. Malawi is truly a lovely country. But there is a lot of alcohol consumption.

5. They have Lake Malawi. Well I needn't say anything else really.

6. Two in one. Did you know that the whole of Lake Malawi is not actually IN Malawi. Yes, a portion in the north is in Tanzania and in Tanzania they call that part of the lake Lake Nyasa. But Malawians don't speak of this ;)

7. No dolla. There is a dire shortage of foreign currency in the country (after the president kicked the English Ambassador out of the country and thus England cut off aid money). And therefore there is a dire shortage of fuel in the country. Beware you can get stuck in place because vehicles cannot get fuel. Also the British money was used to pay the salaries of among others, Policemen. Now they are not being paid. Now they have been told to get their salaries from fining vehicles on the road.

8. One, two, three. Yes indeed, when I asked people in Malawi what the Chichewa words for one, two three etc were, I was simple told "one, two, three".

9. Rasta (non) loving. Apparently, and this I heard in Lilongwe, Malawians are not the biggest fans of Rastafarians. Therefore, thus and in conclusion, it appears that most if not all of the Rastafarians in Malawi now reside in and around Nkhata Bay.

10. Peanuts. Malawi probably makes some of the best roasted and salted peanuts (called groundnuts, or G-nuts) that I have ever tasted

Malawi, the warm heart of Africa

(PS which is true. It is the only country where, on being stamped into Malawi, the border official said "Welcome to Malawi, we are a country of warm-hearted people. Enjoy your stay". Therefore, in light of my sometimes harsh seeming quirks of the country, I wish to molify all readers by saying that while the above are my 10 quirks that I noticed in the country, all fits under the unbrella tone of warmth and friendliness as I experienced with the border official. And anyone who has ever crossed a border will know just how surly and sulky border officials can be if they choose so!)

Sikuachi, leo na kesho peponi! Top 10 of Zanzibar

A certain curly, red-haired young man challenged me to write a "Top 10 quirks of Tanzania". I don't know why I never thought of it before. So I started. But then I realised I had never really spent all that much time on the mainland. As I am sure all of you are exhausted of hearing, I love Stone Town, Zanzibar. So i thought I would be more qualified to write "Tope 10 quirks of Stone Town". Here it is:

The ten observed quirks of Zanzibaris in Stone Town

1. Mwah! Making the long extended kissing sound that in many countries would be a perverted call to sexy women, but is actually the sound that vendors make to advertise that they are selling water or peanuts etc, or as a way to tell people to move out of the way, especially if they are on a whizzing bike cruising down the streets of Stone Town

2. Looking away as the way of answering no (so that it seems as if they are just ignoring you)

3. Phone ringing = give the passengers on the dala dala some music to listen to. Many people on the island (and I am told, on Mainland as well - hell, even in Malawi) let their phone ring for a good 10-15 seconds before they answer it. Often the ring tone is the latest Bongo Fleva sound track. In my time in Zanzibar it was most definitely the song "hakunaga".

4. Salaam Alaikum! As children walk from school to home on their regular route, there will be people whom they know who work/own the shops and businesses that they pass. And so if you find yourself in a shop and school has ended there will be at least one, often up to three children whom will file into the shop, will very seriously shake hands with the owner and then with you as you are the guest in the shop and then will walk out. Or they will come in and will have long teasing chats with the owners, sometimes being allowed to be quite cheaky and telling the adult off. And then they leave again only for it to be repeated the next day and the next…

5. Karibu chakula. Always, always willing to share their food. People whom you may have only met once will walk past you in the street and offer you some biscuits or fruit. Even people whom you just happen to be sitting with while drinking coffee on the side of the road will offer to buy you another cup of coffee or will offer you half of their doughnut

6. And speaking of food – I have never seen so much eating on the road. People can eat all their meals on the street – there are huge amounts of chapati, uji, urojo, kachori, bajia, chips, mkate wa ufuta etc etc sold everywhere for people to buy. And they are bought. Men congregate around tables selling pieces of octapus and they stand in silence stabbing up pieces of meat dipped in piri piri (pronounced pili pili) sauce. Similarly children sweep past stabbing pieces of cucumber or pineapple with tooth picks and dropping a sticky coin as payment.

7. The hood, yo! The young children rule the streets. In gangs. Enough said.

8. Baby-sitting. If you are sitting on a dala dala and you close your eyes or dose of for but one second you may wake up with an unknown child, baby or piece of luggage on your lap. When a parent gets onto a dala dala the cild is just handed to the first pair or hand they find. Sometimes they remain on the laps. The parents don’t really mind. The know that at some point in the journey the child will be passed from one to another and will find its way back to the owner. Sometimes there is no immediate available hand and so you will at least once witness a hangling baby in the centre of a dala dala.

9. Chocolate Zanzibar pizzas! (sorry no space to explain a Zanzibar pizza) There are disproportionate amounts of Nutella to people on sale in Stone Town. You can find it everywhere, even in shops that seem to sell only soap and dusty flour and sugar.

10. Piki-piki and keep-lefty. As in "so I suggest you catch a ride on a piki-piki taxi and then at the second keep-lefty you take the third exit and you will see the market on your right". Translated (for you mere non-Zanzibar mortals), "So I suggest you take the scooter (or motorbike) taxi and at the second traffic circle you take the third exit and the market will me on your right".

"Do white people drink milk?" "Yes, I think they do."

Or as Alice said to me, Alice who has lived in Nkhata bay for the last 4 years, who speaks Tonga almost fluently and who is married to Kumbu (a local celebrity there),

"Oh cource we do, don't you know this is how we keep our skin so white??"

We had to laugh. We were walking back from the Nkhata Bay hospital. One of the volunteers had strange blister growths on her hands and feet and we took her to the hospital. It really is funny to hear locals talking because they can sometimes say the most random comical things. And not for one moment do I think the sayer of this was truely ignorant of the fact that white people drink milk. It was just comic and funny to make that statement in the moment.

Once, while in a dala dala in Tanzania the bus conductor leaned out and asked one of the ladies walking "mama unene*, nenda Bububu?" Fat mother, are you going to Bububu? KiSwahili is rude and direct in its simpleness. You gotta love language in Africa.

*nene may be the wrong word for fat, but it is something like this. My dictionary is far from me!

On Revolution Day and running away (from police)

In Stone Town, people know how to celebrate: Eid ul-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Tanzanian Independence Day, Christmas, New Year, Zanzibar Revolution Day. And that was just in the five months that I was there. There are still seven months of celebration in Zanzibar that I have not been witness to.

I arrived in Unguja, Zanzibar near the end of Ramadan. It was a hungry 10 days. I will always remember where I was at the end of the fasting. It was Forodani Gardens, at the night food market. There were people everywhere, eating much food after a day of nothing. Ramadan ends when the new moon is sighted. It had been seen in Malaysia. People were excited, and full of food. No moon was seen that night. The next night again the market, lit by gas lamps that swarmed and shimmered with people. The message spread again: they'd seen the moon in Dar es Salaam, surely now it was a mater of minutes. And then the call rose up from the middle of Stone Town and people in Forodhani cheered and hugged each other. Fourty days of fasting was over. The next three days were celebreation days. The streets buzzed with exquisitely dressed women and children - new dresses of blues and red and yellows, flowing chiffon, lace, bling. Thick make-up. Men and boys clean and smart. The day time for visiting friends and family and eating. The night time for night markets and street games and general celebrations.

The second Eid, Eid al-Adha, is supposedly the biggest Eid but it snuck up quietly and suddenly we were told that tomorrow and the next day and the next day there would be celebrations. This time I was involved and I went house to house visiting friends, drinking litres of chai and eating what seemed to be whole cakes and kilograms of biriani. It was like the first Eid but it lasted more days. It didn’t seem as festive as the first one but that may have been because at the first one people were hungry and so their happiness seemed larger as they suddenly had boundless energy from the regular meals they had been eating.

On Independence day, to be honest I didn’t do much. But I know there were celebrations on Thursday and Friday night.

Then came Christmas and never before have I have I been in a place where Christmas is not only celebrated by opening presents and being with family, it is CELEBRATED on the 24th, the 25th and the 26th (regardless of whether you are Christian) with music and dancing and many parties, out in the open for all to join. And New Year, well, in all the markets and in all the dance halls and beaches and in all other public spaces, everyone together to count down to 12 midnight. Everyone with everyone, it seemed as if no one was by themselves.

My final celebration and my actual point of this story was Zanzibar Revolution Day. It was on a Thursday. At 12 midnight on Wednesday night, air-raid sirens began wailing around the town and the sound of machine gun fire echoed off the stone buildings. If you did not know it was Revolution Day you would have thought the island was under siege. Glowing “bullets” were being shot and they arched over Stone Town and neighbouring Maisara. The sirens and gun fire continued for a long time, interspersing the impressive and very loud fireworks display happening in Mnazi Moja show grounds. The air lit up and would explode into hundreds of coloured lights and then du-du-du-du-du-du-du, more bullets were shot.

After the fireworks, the crowd turned and began the walk to The Traffic Circle (or as it is called in Zanzibar, The Keep Lefty). Here there would be lit up water fountains. But people were really going there because this is where cars would take it in turn to race around the circle and the more daring of the crown would try to jump on the vehicles. Dala dalas, trucks, scooters, Jeeps, minis, all these and more took their turn to drive. And as the night wore on the driving got more daring. Of course this is illegal. Up until 12:30am the police were there, closing the road, preventing the cars from entering. And then the game began.

It would have been boring for the police to stay there the whole night, both for the crowd and the police themselves. So the police leave, knowing full well that the cars would arrive and the people would get slightly out of hand and slightly dangerous. And then I can just imagine the police saying to themselves, "man I am bored, do you think we have waited long enough, I want to join the fun”, and then when they thought they had left just enough time for things to be getting a bit crazy, the would come roaring down the road, lights blaring and they would skid to a halt and armed reinforcement would spew out of the back of the vehicle and begin the chase.

I was with my Danish Tanzanian friend, watching the cars from a distance. And then there was a shout and another and we turned to watch the spotlighs blaring down on us and then the crowd started running and so we joined, running, running away from the cops, laughing at being chased and then stumbling to a stop and watching and waiting for the police to leave again, giving us space once again to get a little reckless so they they could play again and come and pretend to chase us away.

It was a big fat game that the police and the people played that night. It did however somehow prevent the drivers and the audience from getting too dangerous as each time they came to chase us, the level of recklessness dropped and as far as I know, no one was killed…

Three days later I left Zanzibar, the island of celebrations. The thing is with Zanzibar, they know how to celebrate, to celebrate out in the open, for all to join. And this makes the whole event all the more festive and you, the celebrator feels part of something bigger, really part of a town who knows how to have fun and does so at any excuse.