Honk once to let me know you’re around!

To follow up on my last post about cars, buses and roads in Malawi, here is something ridiculous that happened to my friend Lisa. She is using a motorbike to go to the field but the horn is broken. The horn for a vehicle on the roads of Malawi is like the mirrors on a car back home, really important! People use it when they go too fast and don’t want to brake but let you know they are coming, or simply to advise or even better, to say hi to someone on the street. If you don’t honk, goats, chickens, cows, pedestrians and bikes will stay on the roads, so not having a functional horn is a safety issue here. Lisa, decided for safety reasons to go to the mechanic shop to get it fixed. She was in Salima, and there are no real big mechanic shops. She went to one of the small shops, explained the small problem, took an appointment for the afternoon and gave the dude K500 so he could buy the stuff needed to fix the bike. When she got back from the field around 2pm, she left her translator/driver at the shop to check things out and call her when it was ready as she had work to do. Around 4:30, she called him and asked if the bike was fixed, the translator said no, and that she should come. When she arrived at the shop, the bike was in pieces on the ground and the mechanic was drunk trying to fix other stuff. He took the money she left for parts and went and got drunk!! The translator never thought of calling Lisa because he knew she was working and didn’t want to disturbed her. This is a typical Malawian problem…so frustrating! Anyway, she was out of her mind and asked the mechanic to put the bike back together because she needed it. After arguing a bit, the dude did what she asked him. But even after all this, the horn was still not working. She took off without paying him. The next morning, the motorcycle wouldn’t start. She had to push it to another mechanic shop. This mechanic eventually fixed the new problem (collateral damage!) and the horn.

Mechanics in most small towns are not well trained and they make judgement mistakes. They often fix things momentarily until they break again due to the lack of tools, spare parts or knowledge of the actual problem. They are limited in a lot of ways. And costumers don’t like to bring their vehicle to the repair shop because they will often come back unfixed, worst and/or without any fuel left as the mechanics will take it to run errands or visit family. When you find a good mechanic, you hold on to them as they are rare.

This problems also applies to drill rigs. When they break, they take a long time to be fixed because the drillers don’t have enough money for the repair and the spare parts are hard to find. This will obviously affect projects and delay everything.

Maintenance is not something Malawians are used to do. Maintenance of their vehicle, their borehole or mostly anything. Therefore, when breakdowns happen, they are often important ones that could have been avoid if the vehicle (or borehole) would have been serviced properly. But why would you want to spend money on something that is not broken??

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Malawi is now well into the dry season. The sun took over the clouds. The beautiful green luxurious landscape has been replaced by a brown layer of soil. The crops have been harvested, the trees are losing their leaves. The wind is slowly picking up and the nights are getting colder as we are entering, at a strangely fast pace, the cold and dry season. It is still warm during the day, but really cold at night. In some parts of the country (further inland), it gets close to the freezing point. Houses are not insulated and most don’t even have windows to prevent the cool air from getting in. It feels like September in Canada. I was not expecting this climate, so I’m often cold. Grace, I should have brought with me the cute tuque you gave me for Christmas! I regret it now. But the cold weather only last a couple of months. Everyone says that September to November is unbearably hot, even at night. I find it weird that the coldest and hottest months are right next to each other. Then will come January and the rain will start again, making the warm air extremely humid….

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I’ve been feeling sick this week, hopefully it is nothing serious. I’ve also found a place to a stay in Senga Bay. I’ve only seen the outside of it while walking on the beach a month ago. I’m getting the keys tomorrow, so I can move sometimes next week. It is a small and rustic cabin by the beach. It has electricity and a toilet inside, but the best of all, is that there is a kitchen, small, but with an oven apparently! Yay, I will be able to bake and cook my own food… I can’t wait. I can stand living in a village, having a latrine and an outside bathroom. I can stand sharing my room and even my bed. I can wash the dishes using sand and wash my clothes by hand. I thought I would have problems with integrating and making friends in the village, I thought I would find it hard to do the tasks, but it turns out that what I miss most is to cook. Ah, don’t get me wrong, I cook in the village, but I have to cook the things they like (nsima and some kind of relish) the way they do it and when they want to do it. Since wood or charcoal is expensive, I don’t feel like I can cook my own things if I feel like it, which would probably be impolite of me anyways. I’m excited to go to the market, find stuff that is in season, be creative with it and cook something! Pho, burritos, crepes, pasta, apple crumble, cake, oatmeal…and coffee! I’m also happy that I’ll have more freedom and alone time. Time to read, reflect and write, I miss this tons. I thought that electricity and running water would be the things I miss most, but they aren’t. If anything, they make you dependant and when there is a shortage (which is often), you rely on them and can’t do much. I’ll have the best of everything now: power, running water and the lake right in my backyard if I need water (I have a good water filter now, so I can even drink it…thanks Andrew!). The cabin will not exactly be mine, but I am renting it out from an older expat couple, who Andrew knows. They live and work in Lilongwe. They only go to the lake one day every six weeks or so. The deal is that I live there, can use all I want, keep it nice and clean, and go spend a night somewhere else when they are coming. I think it is a pretty awesome deal as housing in Senga Bay is hard to find and pretty pricey. I’ll try to arrange transport with someone living there and working in Salima, but for the moment I’ll commute using a motola (back of a pick up truck!!). It is only 20km away and costs K100 each way ($0.75). I’ll let you know more about my new life by the lake in my next post, I’ll try to send pictures, but it is quite hard to upload them through Blogger. Sorry!

Now, I have to tell my family in Salima that I will be moving. It makes me sad and breaks my heart a little. But I’ll visit them; I’ll go for lunch every week. I just know that they will have a hard time understanding that I’m moving. ahhhh, if only they could read my blog! haha…

Ok, that’s it for now

Ge