The Nightmare Truck Ride and A "Gift" for Aaron

August 4th, Day 54:

            The ride to Mzuzu was the least comfortable motorized vehicle experience of my life. I was feeling sick when I first got into the back of the truck, and therefore decided to take a spot on the bed of the truck rather than the side to minimize the amount of potential swaying. However, I ended up getting so crammed in that I could not move a single muscle in my body. This is not an exaggeration- I counted six separate bodies making physical contact with mine, meaning I was really get pushing at all angles. Also,  many of the people in close proximity to me were fisherman carrying there catch to the market in Mzuzu for the morning sales. They had with them baskets full of seafood, which not only smelled great, but spilled onto me at every big bump in the road. When we finally arrived in Mzuzu after a little more than 6 hours careening over the mountains through the night, I smelled absolutely terrible.

            Sick, exhausted, and smelly, I tried to gather my things and get out of the truck. Unfortunately the last thing I grabbed, my bicycle, appeared to have had an even worse ride than me. The entire front wheel was crushed, probably having been smashed into a wall or tree along the way. Eric gave me a sharp “I told you so”, as if it was my fault my wheel had broken, and immediately became furious with me. However, I figured that he was probably just in a bad mood from the truck ride, and sometimes he has a tendency of taking his bad moods out on me. So I decided to try to fix the bicycle despite Eric’s explanation that it would be impossible and that we were screwed. It was a tense morning…

            Having had some success with local African bicycle repairs I set off for the local market to see if we could rig something up. I quickly came across a man who looked at my bike, diagnosed the problem, and led me swiftly to his friend. His friend was a man named Lemon, who turned out to be a tremendous bike mechanic. Lemon took one look at my bike and told me he could fix it. I said great, so we got started right away. He took all the spokes out of my wheel and took the hub off, then put them back into a big steel rim that he had sitting around. It was quite an impressive fix, and even Eric was pleased with it. The only problem was that I had checked on the bus times out of Mzuzu and the only one going where we needed to get, Karonga, was leaving in 30 minutes. I decided that I would go to the bus terminal, buy a ticket, and start to arrange how to load our bicycles while Eric did some repairs on his bike.

            The bus terminal was crowded, and full of people bustling to and fro, selling anything you could imagine. It was hot, so I helped myself to a coke and some water to rehydrate. I then talked with the bus driver to see if he thought he could fit our bikes in the bus, and luckily he led me to a large compartment in the rear of the bus that was empty, just waiting for us he explained. Eric managed to arrive just in time and we loaded our things into the bus and got on the road for Karonga, which would be a long ride. We were pretty upset with how many rides we had taken lately, but our little adventure getting lost in the mountains for several days had not only fatigued us and broken our spirits a bit, but also set us behind schedule. We had to catch up.

            Bus rides in Africa are a family affair. They cram people in to the point where if you don’t know your neighbor initially, you will know them very well by the end. When I first took a bus in Africa I assumed that I was seated with a large extended family. They were passing babies between them, different women were taking turns breastfeeding different children, and the kids were all playing. However, when everyone disembarked I realized that the people did not even know each other prior to getting on the bus.

            It seemed that it took a bus to raise a child in Africa- and I got to experience this first hand when a woman sitting next to me passed a baby to me just after breastfeeding it for a bit. Apparently it was my turn.  Some of the other passengers noticed the situation, and I saw people looking over and laughing at the sight of a white boy trying to keep an African baby from crying so its mother could take a break. However, the other children around me, some of who may have been the babies siblings, I have no idea, were very helpful to me. They helped me keep the baby calm, and after a while the baby and I really hit it off.

            Turned out the kids name was Gift, and was almost one full year old. Gift really grew on me because he was the only person I didn’t have to feel weird about not being able to talk to. My language skills were usually just bad enough where I could not quite have conversation with anyone, but had to make the effort. With Gift we could just chill. I decided that I might as well show gift some pictures of Obama however, since it was my usual go-to move, so I got out the book and waved the cover photo in front of the kid. He loved it and his face lit up with a beautiful smile, which made me pretty happy.

            I then decided that Gift was a special child, so I figured I should start to teach him how to read and write. Who cares if he’s not a year old, it couldn’t hurt. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the words of Obama when he wasn’t busy poking at my nose, and really seemed to take the ideas to heart by how willing and open he was the different cultures. I then placed a pen in his hand and demonstrated how to write. He didn’t feel like writing however; the artist in him took over instead. Immediately he began to scribble all over my notebook, and drew some magnificent post-modern pieces that I still have saved, hopefully I will scan them soon.  His mother also looked over and seemed to be really enjoying our friendship, so she asked to borrow my pen so she could write their address to me so we could stay in touch.

            Just as she handed me the note with her details Gift decided to give me a parting gift by throwing up all over me. I was a bit surprised by the whole situation, and very unsure of how to act. However, I realized I was already so dirty that a little baby gift wasn’t so bad. The mother, on the other-hand, felt terrible. She immediately started trying to clean me and kept apologizing. I was trying to tell her it was okay, but she seemed quite embarrassed. The rest of the bus seemed to just think it quite amusing.

            When we finally arrived I took my things off the bus and set out to find a place to sleep where I could use a shower. After evading the first horde of people that approached us when we disembarked from the bus I finally was greeted by a young man who seemed quite nice and offered to show us a place to stay. We followed him on our bicycles and went to a great place on the lake. When we handed him some money for his services, which was customary with any help you got, he looked taken aback and explained that he just wanted to help. We were a bit confused as to why he was so nice, and then when we offered to take us to the lake we figured that we might as well stay with this guy.

            His name was Chikondi, and he turned out to be a real stand up guy. He had a shirt that I was quite fond of so we decided to make a swap, but he insisted on cleaning his shirt for about 15 minutes, scrubbing as hard as he could, just to make sure it was fresh for me. I couldn’t quite repay the favor since my hand-washing skills were not up to par, but he didn’t mind.

            After bathing with us in the lake for a while and showing us around, he then led us to a place to eat. However, when he heard the prices that we were being quoted he became very upset, thinking that we were being ripped off because we were white, and announced that we would eat bread and butter instead.  He wasn’t joking- he vanished and returned 15 minutes later with just what he had mentioned. Eric and I decided to bite the bullet and order to excessively priced food anyways, but the bread and butter were also nice.

            Finally, we decided to head for the bar to play a few games of pool before bed. After beating Eric, I was then promptly defeated by an extremely drunk local woman, which Eric thought was hilarious and wouldn’t stop laughing at me about. I was exhausted after the defeat and went to bed to let Eric take her on. I found out the next morning he too lost to her, despite the fact she could barely stand. It was a bad night of pool for us.

-Aaron

(Chikondi's pig)