mafia, mangoes and mosquitos

Travel Tales #4
Mafia, Mangoes and Mosquitos

After almost 40 hours on a series of crappy buses from Dar es Salaam, we were very happy to finally arrive in Malawi. Except that we still had a wad of Tanzanian notes that nobody wanted.

Chalking it up to experience was not an option. Our budget was tight.

After a lot of walking dusty streets with heavy bags on our backs, we eventually met someone who knew someone who would exchange our notes.

We were led by a skinny, beaming kid who hadn’t grown into himself yet, through a maze of pathways between closely built shanties, into an open-air marketplace in the middle.

The man he delivered us to looked like he'd stepped out of a 1940s gangster movie.

| Mafia |

Cuffed trousers with a crease impeccably pressed up the centre of each leg, were pulled up over a generous belly almost to his armpits, with a crisp yellow collared shirt tucked in. And despite the dust, his two-tone shoes were shiny. Let’s call him Mr Corleone.

We communicated through calculators.

Nath typed in the amount we had to change and showed him the screen. He took it and typed in how much he would give us in Malawi kwachas. It was far below what we knew to be the exchange rate.

We shook our heads no, typed in the amount we were after and handed the calculator back to him.

By this stage a small crowd had gathered around to watch the mzungus doing business with what must have been the village head honcho.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for his verdict.

Just as we were all running out of breath Mr Corleone smiled, slapped Nath on the back and said something to his henchmen who reached into their underwear and pulled out fistfuls of kwacha notes for us.

Everyone exhaled (including us), laughed and chatted between themselves.

We counted them, to the continuing amusement of everyone around us, thanked him and then walked out of there…

You know the walk when you’re trying to seem relaxed but really your legs want to run? That walk.

We reemerged back onto the jacaranda-lined main street feeling relieved, jubilant and full of nervous excitement.

Now we had cash for a minibus to Nkhata Bay, a town on the shores of Lake Malawi.

| Mangoes |

We were squished up in the back corner with the sun baking us through the window. I felt like one of the the dried fish that were sold in stinking piles on the roadside.

As we got going a cool breeze blew in through the window and admired all the trees that seemed to either be in flower or laden with mangoes.

Once we arrived, local boys touting guest houses jostled for our attention as soon as they saw the mzungus emerge from the minibus.

We had mostly done our best to bypass them at each new destination, but the pictures of one place looked beautiful and the price was less than even the most basic places we’d stayed in Tanzania, so we followed them.

It was everything they said it would be - charming bohemian straw huts with shuttered windows opening to the shimmering lake below, and a lovely covered communal area with big comfy chairs.

After settling in we wandered into town to have a look around. The township was essentially one dirt road lined with flowering poinciana trees and stalls with people selling piles of fruit and vegetables neatly arranged on mats.

There were mangoes everywhere, and they were cheap. Five kwachas for the most expensive ones – the equivalent of about 10 cents Australian.

We ate whole fresh mangoes for breakfast the next day, which for a girl who grew up in country Victoria (Australia) where tropical fruit was either not available or extremely expensive, was an absolute treat.

It was the first time I had ever eaten a fresh mango. I started to peel it like an apple. Nath, who grew up in the sub-tropics, asked me what I was doing, then showed me how to cut off each cheek, cross hatch the sweet flesh then turn it inside out for easy eating.

We spent the afternoon snorkelling amongst the rocks just outside our bungalow. The lake was full of schools of colourful tropical freshwater fish called Cichlids.

We ate mango curry for dinner and played a few games of bao - an African board game that some local kids had taught us to play.

The rest of our days in Nkhata Bay progressed in much the same way - swimming, snorkelling, reading and relaxing.

As idyllic as it was, I was restless and ready for the next adventure, so on we went.

| Mosquitos |

Another crowded minibus that stopped and started to pick up and drop off passengers, to fill up with fuel, to change a flat tyre, and eventually to not start again at all.

The driver refused to take us any further as he apparently didn’t have enough passengers, but perhaps it was for a ‘Malawi gold’ break under a tree. He also refused to refund our money.

But he hadn’t banked on such stubborn cheap-ass backpackers. One hour later they handed over our kwachas, and left us there in the middle of nowhere in the peak heat of the day.

After a hasty trip to a maggot infested drop-loo we managed to find another van going our way. We jumped in, thankful we didn’t have to opt for the back of a pick-up bouncing around on bags of grain in the heat.

This time we refused to pay until the end of the trip. Lesson learned.

It was as always, a relief to reach our destination, but it wasn’t exactly inspiring. Just a dusty street and a ramshackle marketplace with kids wandering around proffering deep fried birds for sale.

With limited options, the room we found for the night was a dive. It was full of spiders and the bedding and walls were filthy.

But it was nice to be away from the main tourist route. Instead of asking us for money the kids just sat and stared at us inquisitively.

We spent the afternoon and evening sitting on a fractured cement step in front of our room reading, playing cards and watching local life go by.

Young kids with a mango in one hand and a machete in the other (yes really), women wrapped in colourful geometric fabrics, with a baby slung to their backs and something big balanced on their heads, and men (who mostly carried nothing) who seemed to be all arms and legs.

As night came and a bare globe above us took over from the sun, we watched fat geckos gorging themselves on a smorgasbord of insects, and then incongruously a bright orange frog hopped by. We delayed retiring to our room as long as possible.

That night was quite possibly the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had, or more accurately didn’t have. The room was steamy from a day of sun beating down on the tin roof and the night was still, so there was no breeze coming in through the small window and no fan to rescue the situation.

There was a mosquito net, but it was so full of holes it didn’t stand a chance against the range of flying and crawling critters that called that room home.

We laid our sarongs down over the filthy mattress, praying it wasn’t full of fleas and bedbugs and tried our best to get some sleep.

In the middle of the night Nath went mosquito hunting and squished a couple of fat ones that were gorged with our blood. We hoped there wasn’t much malaria in the area, since we’d opted not to take antimalarials.

Sounds horrible doesn’t it. But you know what? I remember that night much more vividly than any that we spent in that idyllic bungalow by the lake. And I was sick of mangoes!

That’s the paradox of travelling – often the shittiest times are the memories that keep on travelling and the stories that get retold.

Leonie x