Flashback to 1991. A lone medical student makes his first trip to Africa, passing through Zimbabwe and Zambia en-route to Malawi...
The Dark Continent
The Day Star, sulking low in the haze of a winter horizon lights, but barely does it warm. There are few colours in the frost-crippled botanical gardens although the earliest of blossoms now appear, signalling life's eagerness to flourish at winter's end. Ducks waddle with exaggerated unsteadiness across the surface of their frozen pond, while sparrows peck expectantly in the mud and among the fallen leaves. This crisp day predicts a cold night, one sure to thicken the existing coating of ice always found in the abode of shadows. Children are skipping in play-motion, singles reading and couples talking, huddled on the benches. And the dreamers, we are dreaming... like the others, expelling condensation with every breath. Winter is a time of the senses... a reminder of vulnerability... the recollection of past suffering at the hands of Nature. And how our kind must have suffered upon leaving the warmth of our African cradle, exposed in both nakedness and naivete. Were it not for the endowment of intellect, our ancestors could not have wandered so widely, and I could never bear witness to such a winter in southern New Zealand.
Africa. It's very name commands images of animal majesty, and human prehistory. As a child of Africa, of sorts, how could I not return? Nowhere but in Africa has one such a strong sense of being Natures' subject rather than it's master. And, possibly, never has there been a place so misunderstood. I travelled there as a medical student, to Malawi, hoping to learn a little about child health in the so-called Third World.
Zimbabwe
Between the Zambesi and Limpopo rivers lies the land called Zimbabwe. I stayed New Years Eve 1991 in a cheap lodge in Harare—but the shower was fantastic after my first day in the heat and dust of Zimbabwe's capital. Walking down the streets of Harare I felt very colour conscious, which annoyed me immensely. I was the sore-thumb minority in a sea of shiny black faces. In this educational reversal of minority experience, I felt that I was the one stared at, that I might be victimised in retaliation for the colour of my skin. Afterall, Africa had been much maligned, used and abused by non-Africans and their less-than-educated views. I found this in the house library:
If a child is left in it's natural state and deprived of education, there is no doubt that it will grow up in ignorance and illiteracy, it's mental faculties dulled and dimmed; in fact it will become like an animal. This is evident among the savages of Central Africa who are scarcely higher than the beast in mental development (The Reality of Man: excerpts from the writings of Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-bahá. Bahá Publishing Trust, Wilmette, Illinois 1975 p 42.).
As I travelled south toward Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, the vegetation became sparser, turning into farmland punctuated by termite mounds. My train had to derail itself in a controlled fashion in order to take a sharp bend in the track that had yet to be repaired. There was nothing to do in the intense heat for two hours, but sit and reflect on the fact that this is Africa and part of the deal, and to corroborate stereotypes. Real people actually live in round thatched mud huts. Woman really do carry things balanced on their heads.
Perhaps it is my imagination, but colours seem much brighter in Africa. I wonder how the rural people always seem to have clean clothes. I wonder do these people care at all, about the outside world. Do they know of the Decade of Democracy? The hole in the ozone over Antarctica? Does their world begin and end with day-to-day sustenance? How pleased I was to buy a Coke in Bulawayo when we eventually arrived.
It was an interesting night voyage to Victoria Falls, The Smoke That Thunders. The sleeper compartment's windows were open and through them could be seen nothing but blackness and stars. Our compartment filled with an astonishing variety of insects, the smaller sorts of which penetrated my mosquito netting.
Victoria Falls
Zambia
Exhausted by the humidity of Victoria Falls, I rested for the night across the border in Livingstone. I was rather dehydrated, but it so happened that the lodge had run out of Coke. Coke. I mention it again. Coke is to the traveller in Africa what a boat is to a fisherman—survival. The epitome of capitalism worth it's weight in gold to the sweating tourist. I had to settle for water from the dirty plastic bottle in the fridge behind the bar. Tomorrow would be another long, hot day.
On the bus to Lusaka, one might be excused for thinking the driver was drunk, swerving all over the road. But no, he was skillfully avoiding the more bone-jarring of the potholes. Alec, whom I sat next to, offered me a share in his dried fish head, which I respectfully declined. I wasn't that hungry all of a sudden. The police in Lusaka were armed with automatic rifles. I don't think that made me feel altogether safe. I was warned a number of times to guard my possessions. For me, however, my most precious possession at the moment was water.
In Lusaka, I was approached by a small middle-aged man, eager to help me find a hotel out of the goodness of his heart. Knowing I would eventually be asked to part with cash, I let him hook me and he lead me to a good hotel: $US 45 per night! "Absolutely not", I said.
So we set off again through crowded and dirty streets to the local transport. Three kilometres out of town we stepped off the bus, so crowed that it had been impossible to take a proper breath in. There I stayed, happy to be anywhere. Early next morning my friend Donald assisted me to catch a lift on one of the trucks making for the border with Malawi. Sometime after sunset we had covered the 600 kilometres to Chipata, and to my relief I had come through without a coccyx fracture. My maximum strength sun block had been poorly matched against such a fierce sun.
There was still a way to go to the border, so an American and I decided to find and share a taxi. The taxi was, to say the least, an incredible vehicle. After a push start, the driver proceeded to navigate the road with dim headlights through a shattered windshield. The threadless tires could not propel us forward at more than 35 km/h, since our driver feared one of the wobbly wheels might part company with the axle. Once through the border, the American and I caught a lift into Lilongwe with a Dutch couple, sprawled out in the back of their pickup truck. We collapsed exhausted at a council Rest House, where the beds were good, the showers cold, and the toilets covered in misdirected diarrhoea.
Malawi
Expatriates lead a very privileged lifestyle in Malawi. The place I stayed had a house boy, gardener, and nanny. I was related a story about a man with two kids and a good job. He was able to send them both to a good school. Shortly afterward six cousins turned up believing they deserved an equal opportunity, and it is not the custom to refuse. Despite the poverty, there is an apparently powerful community spirit. I would often think about the meaning of their lives. The woman lingering outside Bottom Hospital seemed so aimless in their movements. The woman sitting outside Bottom Hospital seemed so aimless in their movements. They would amble around as if they were going somewhere, but hadn't yet decided quite where. They think that because you're white you can give them money. They're right of course: you can... always. Even the budget traveller can spare ten tambala. But they approach you because of your colour. Colour sets you apart. You can't get away from being white. You're looked at differently, you mean certain things. When are they going to pop the question?:
What you give me?
It tainted almost every apparently friendly encounter with suspicion.
In the heat, stationary in the car, I was approaching the point of molecular disintegration. I had gone up to Nkhoto Kota District Hospital to sit in on a clinic with the paediatrician. It was living history. The operating theatre was a nineteen-thirties original, complete with period table. There was a fairly large hole in the concrete floor, big enough to twist an ankle. I wondered what had collected there over the preceding fifty years. More paint had peeled off than remained on the walls, and the window glass had long since ceased to be a barrier to the vehicles of disease. Still, one could not expect modern equipment or practices in a place like this. Even in Lilongwe, sometimes it could take quarter of an hour to locate some methylated spirit to prepare the skin for a lumbar puncture. The rewashed latex gloves we wore were for our protection, not for the patient's. When it was done the hole we had made in the child's back had to be sealed with ordinary office sellotape. I will not forget the image of recycled syringes bobbing up and down in a bowl of cold water, ready to deliver the next dose of drug and God knows what else.
I made the 8 hour bus trip from Lilongwe to Monkey Bay with my pack on my knees, wedged against the window by a man, his wife, and kid. The kid was wet in his wraps. After a few hours in the heat I realised that the musty urine smell was the same smell as that in the children's wards in Lilongwe. Later, en-route to Lake Malawi's Cape McClear, we passed a pick-up truck that I subsequently learned carried the asthma-stricken cook from the guest house I intended to stay at. He never made it to the clinic. It wasn't the first time, nor the last, that my stomach knotted with the frustration that I couldn't do anything. Soon we reached the Lake, and I tried to put the urine-sodden wards and the death behind me. Mozambique lay shrouded in thunder storm across the water. A beautiful scene that made me reach for my camera. It caused me to reflect on how difficult it was becoming for me to photograph people, as opposed to scenery. The more travelling I have done the more averse I am to intruding so into people's lives, especially in those cultures that believe a photograph "captures the spirit".
Lake Malawi
It's raining quite heavily at the moment. I like the sound of rain, don't you? It's somehow soothing, sedating. It's life renewing itself, quenching the thirst of the planet's bedrock. You can easily imagine all the growing, almost see the plant cells multiplying. And knowing that the rain will feed the vegetable that will feed you and become a part of you is something else. Thunder storms are almost a daily occurrence at this time of year. The lightening is awe-inspiring really. Some afternoons the sky is an incredible purple, as if the clouds have been bruised by the clap of thunder. I like the storms. I like to feel awed by Nature, to feel her power. I feel this way about the ocean, too. I like being on a choppy sea, to taste the salt on my lips, and to wipe the subtle sting of the sea-spray from my eyes.
The morning after watching a beautiful sunset from the Zomba Plateaux I took a bus south to Blantyre, again immobilised in the isle by fellow passengers. From Mulanje Junction I walked the 7 kilometres to the Likhubula Forestry Hut at the base of the Mulanje mastiff. A number of children accompanied me on my journey. When I stopped to slap on more sun block, they would stop too. And stare, and giggle. From Likhubula I began to climb the mountain. I'd already been carrying my pack for sometime at this stage, and it was scorching hot, awfully steep. I made the first hut that evening with the help of a porter. Renewed, I set of early the next morning and lost myself (spiritually) in the wilderness. Lost so, I found the timelessness of Africa I had expected. Here amongst the peaks of this gigantuan edifice to the aeons I am reminded of my own insignificance.
At the southern end of the Rift Valley, Mulanje is said to have been Tolkein's inspiration for the Misty Mountains in his trilogy Lord of the Rings, a story about the enslaving power of the One Ring. Power can enchant even nation-builders, like His Excellency the Life President of the Republic of Malawi, or Ngwazi, the Conqueror. The lies made me sick. At the time of my visit, Malawi was the world's fifth poorest nation. Sixty percent of it's children were stunted, nearly a third were dying before they reached the age of five. The official line was that Malawi prided herself in having sufficient food for everyone, with surplus for sale. Although I had anticipated seeing malnutrition, it was nevertheless a numbing sight. It was not uncommon to find the mother of such an afflicted child again pregnant, reinforcing the need for education about child spacing. But malnutrition at the decree of His Excellency's one-party democracy didn't exist. Are the match-stick limbs and protruding ribs imagined? Capital city was nothing but a monument to misappropriation and government-level pretence. In the neonatal unit, one nurse looked after thirty-four babies. They were wrapped in rags, some in incubators that didn't work, others in wooden boxes. Their mothers sat on the concrete floor breast feeding. Flies crawled unhindered over the weaker, unattended babies. There was nothing much that could be done in the way of medicine as we know it. Welcome to Africa.
Last night I thought I was going to die. I awoke yesterday morning light-headed and with diarrhoea. I got out of the shower shivering, and continued to shiver during the day. Now shivering is just not something that one tends to ordinarily do in the middle of Africa. With headache, abdominal cramps, muscle aches, fever, and drenched in sweat I began my antimalarial treatment. A further bout of diarrhoea later I passed out on the toilet after simultaneously retching into the hand basin. The diarrhoea lasted twenty-seven days. I lost several kilograms.
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