Evil Babies, Chickens and Automobiles

I imagine that when we get back to the UK a lot of my belongings will need replacing. My shoes for a start are falling to pieces. My jeans have become rather tatty from walking around on dusty roads and tracks. A lot of my t-shirts are starting to show signs of wear and tear and my flip flops have already been fixed once by a local cobbler, who did a fantastic job. However, my wallet is showing the signs of stretch marks, all thanks to the Malawian Kwacha.

Kwacha, the currency here, comes in various denominations, though the highest note is only a mere 1,000 Kw. This is the equivalent to around one British Pound. One. Pound. Imagine being in a country where you almost always have to pay in cash. Close your eyes and imagine paying for hotels, buses, dinners at restaurants and drinks in bars, all in cash. Not an issue you may be thinking. Well, now imagine that you can only ever carry one pound notes. That changes everything doesn’t it? I think the most we’ve had on us at one point was 400,000 Kw, which is around £400. 400,000Kw is four hundred individual notes. You literally walk around with a backpack full of money.

Not only this, but the Malawian ATMs only ever allow you to withdraw 40,000 Kw at a time. Add to this the fact that in many rural areas there are no ATMs, meaning that you have to withdraw rather large sums of money at any one time in order to stock up for the days or weeks ahead, and a rather awkward scenario begins to unfold. Imagine a large queue of people, locals all waiting to draw out some cash in order to do a bit of shopping. The queue gets longer as every minute passes, whilst Claire stands at the cashpoint – the only cashpoint for miles – trying to draw out around 300,000 Kw. That means the card goes into the machine, she enters her pin, selects the maximum amount, and takes it out. Before having to repeat this over and over again, all whilst the queue gets larger and larger. Claire takes out her fifth load, stuffing all of the bright green notes into her bag and goes to take out a sixth before the cashpoint tells her it’s empty. She pauses. Her eyes narrow. The people in the queue aren’t going to like this. Claire takes her card out and pops it in her purse, swings her backpack full of money onto her back, turns, and walks off quickly hoping to be as far away as possible before the next person in the line gets that message telling them there’s no money left. This is what happened in Mzuzu a few weeks ago.

However, we weren’t in Mzuzu anymore. We’d made it to Lilongwe, and after a few days chilling with friends and seeing what the capital had to offer we were heading off to Cape Maclear. Luckily there are plenty of cashpoints in Lilongwe so we walked into town to stock up on cash – Cape Maclear was one of the rural areas where there would be no way of drawing out any money. Lucky for us, this time there were no people waiting to use the ATM, so after ten minutes of repeatedly drawing out cash, we were on our way. First and foremost we had to get to the bus station. So, we jumped in a tuk tuk and told him where to go. He nodded, set the price – 1,000kw – and we were off. After pottering around town for a few minutes, dodging in and out of traffic we realised that the tuk tuk driver didn’t have a clue where the bus station was. Claire had her phone open with a map on it and we told him he had to turn left. He ignored us and continued on his way. “You’re going the wrong way,” we said to him, telling him again we needed to get to the bus station. He replied saying, that if we wanted to go to the bus station that would cost us another five hundred Kwacha. We told him to stop and got out. He clearly didn’t know where he was going and we could walk the rest of the way.

Arriving at the bus station Claire and I had to look for the correct bus. Bus stations tend to be a sea of white minivans and larger buses all with a wooden board in the windscreen saying where they are headed. We were going to Monkey Bay. And, as usual, a local came up to us asking where we were heading. These guys appear at every bus station. They want to show you where the bus you require is in exchange for some money. Though you can always find the bus with ease due to the aforementioned large wooden boards in the windscreens. We were loaded up with bags and looking for the bus when a man asked us where we were headed. We said our destination, but declined his help and continued to walk on. We found the buses heading in our direction and asked the conductors how much. The empty minibus was cheap, but wouldn’t be leaving until it was full and at the moment we arrived it was empty. Then, a conductor from another bus came running over to steal our custom. And, as we didn’t want to sit in the bus for an hour or longer waiting for it to fill up we decided to go with him. This lead to the conductors of about four buses all arguing loudly over who would get us in their van. We’d found our seats in the bus and were sitting comfortably before some of them even noticed that we were a lost cause.

We’d just sat down on the bus to get comfy for the long drive ahead when the man from before – the one who offered to help us find his bus – stuck his head through the window. He was saying things in Chichewa, the local language, and we couldn’t understand him. The Malawian lady who was sat in the window seat translated for us. “He wants some money,” she said. We asked her why. She spoke to him and came back with, “he helped you find this bus.” Claire responded saying that she had in fact found the bus. The Malawian lady relayed this message to him and said, “he says he helped carry your bags.” He didn’t help carry our bags. And we didn’t give him any money. Claire and I are not averse to paying locals for their help, and have used these bus station guys a fair bit on our travels, always paying up if we do use their assistance. But after visiting countless bus stations along the way we knew what we were doing by now and in this instance, his help wasn’t required. Moments later the bus pulled off and we were on our way to Monkey Bay. Or so we thought.

As usual, the bus took us about sixty percent of the way to our destination before we had to go on a different mode of transport.  We weren’t too perturbed by this as it was something we’d become accustomed to. When we got to Mangochi the conductor told us he’d pay the driver of the next vehicle on our behalf so we could get all the way to Monkey Bay. We double, then triple checked with the driver of the next vehicle that he had received the money before climbing aboard.

The next vehicle was a small pickup truck. The compartment on the back (the ‘cargo box’ according to Google), where we were to sit, was about two-and-a-half metres long and around a metre-and-a-half wide. At its most full point there were over thirty of us in the back. Plus three babies. Claire and I were perched on the edge, our hands behind us clinging on to the metal beneath our backsides, to keep us from falling backwards off the truck. We were joined around the edge by plenty of others, whilst the rest were squashed in the middle, some sat down and others stood. There were around fifteen people stood up, which was OK for those at the front, who could cling to the top of the cabin, but those in the middle had nothing but other people to hold on to.

Whilst we were waiting for the truck to fill up, which takes forever when it is never ever deemed ‘full’, Claire and I tried to get comfortable. There was a woman on the bus holding a chicken by its feet. It was resting on her thighs upside down and was relatively calm, chirping every now and then. That was until the baby came. A woman with a baby sat down on the floor next to the woman with the chicken. The baby saw the dangling chicken’s head and started to poke it. The two women were oblivious, focusing their attention elsewhere, whilst I sat in shocked silence as the baby continued to prod and grab at the poor chicken’s head. At one point he had its beak between his index finger and thumb and was stretching the animal’s head away from its body before it shook him free. In my mind I, rather unfairly, denounced the baby for this cruelty. ‘Here,’ I thought to myself, ‘is an evil baby’. Despite the child clearly being too young to comprehend what it was doing, I was still, in my tired state, happy to label it a tyrant for the mean way it was bothering the bird.

Then, whilst the two women allowed this baby to torment the chicken, another baby came to the bird’s rescue. Another woman climbed aboard with another baby and this baby saw what was going on. He saw his fellow baby bullying the chicken and decided it was time to take action. He did what I wasn’t brave enough to do and intervened. As baby number one went to poke the chicken in the eye for the thirtieth time, baby number two stuck his hand out and whacked away the bully’s evil mitt. I am pretty sure I was the only person in the truck watching as this heroic baby made his stand. ‘What a fantastic baby’, I thought to myself. ‘Here is a hero, a baby of the people. Here we have a baby who can tell right from wrong’. The chicken calmed down and remained unmolested, baby number one was put in his place, and I was pleased that justice had been served thanks to the integrity and honour of baby number two. However, my image of this champion, this bastion of animal welfare, was shattered almost instantly. Baby number two then began prodding the chicken himself. Baby number two, who I had heralded my hero, had the chicken’s head in his hand and was twisting its neck when I decided to turn to my left and see who Claire was talking to.

It turns out she was chatting to an almost incomprehensible drunk man. Neither of us could make out what he was saying.

After half an hour or so had passed, we were on our way. The truck, filled to the brim with people and bags and evil babies and tortured chickens, was flying down the road when suddenly an argument broke out next to us in the local language between a man and a woman. We couldn’t make out what was being said but after a few seconds almost everyone on the bus shrieked in horror and two women near the cabin were calling for the driver to stop. The driver screeched to a halt, causing everyone to lurch forwards, and walked to the back of the van and began shouting at the man. The woman was also shouting at the man. As were a few others. Claire and I were bemused. He was being lambasted from all angles and was forced to get off the truck despite his protests. Another woman handed him some sugar cane, he got off, and we left him in the middle of nowhere. We hadn’t a clue what had just happened, until a man opposite said; “Do you understand what happened?” We told him we didn’t. “He accused that lady of stealing his sugar cane”. Justice was served…

As we got nearer and nearer to Monkey Bay, more people got off allowing us to get more comfortable. When the drunk man climbed off the van Claire turned to me and told me that he kept grabbing her bum when he was trying to cling to the bit of the van that she was sat on. He couldn’t help it, it really was squashed. And, to be fair on him, Claire’s thumb was pressed up against my bum, just as much as mine was on the lady’s next to me. Claire mused that squashed buses would make it easy for people to find potential suitors. About fifteen minutes before he got off, the drunk man fell backwards and nearly went off the side of the truck. Luckily we were stationary. He instinctively grabbed Claire and the lady on his other side, so he was literally hanging off the side of the truck being held on by two people. A few people shrieked and he was pulled back up. Good job all of this walking with heavy backpacks has made Claire stronger otherwise she may have gone over the edge with him.

When we arrived at Monkey Bay we were pretty tired. It was dark, we’d been travelling for much longer than anticipated, and it was not the most comfortable of journeys in the back of the truck. So, when the drive of the truck tried to claim that we hadn’t paid him, when in fact our bus driver had paid him on our behalf – a fact we had checked with him himself – Claire went turbo. She angrily told him that we had paid and said that he was lying and trying to get more money off us. She even pointed her finger at him. It was funny. I haven’t seen Claire this angry before. He backed down almost instantly.

Anyway, we climbed off the van and a man with another van that was heading to Cape Maclear, our final destination, came over. We agreed to go with him and started walking over when a man sidled up to me. “Bike, bike!” he said. He had a motorbike and wanted to take us to Cape Maclear himself. “Bike! I have a bike, come with me!” he shouted, rather aggressively. I politely declined his rather brutish offer of transport. “But there are no more cars!” he shouted. I pointed out that there was another vehicle heading that way, as I literally climbed onto the back of said vehicle. He conceded defeat and walked away. Twenty minutes later and we had made it. We walked into The Funky Cichlid and sat down to eat our well deserved dinner.