Mango Season

 

Bumpy back-of-the-truck view.

Annette finally got an affirmative answer to the question she gives new travelers: Can you teach us a new card game? The game is Skippo. And we ended up following the two Dutch sisters who taught it to us to Nkotakota to play it some more. We rode in the back of a truck amidst the stream of travelers and livestock heading home for the holidays. In addition to lots of people, supplies and children in the backs of trucks, the holidays brought buckets of fish, huge catfish tied together with reeds, goats strapped to the backs of bicycles, and babies holding chickens. In Malawi, Santa drives a matola. I presume this steady stream of live animals is headed to slaughter for Christmas feasts.  

Morning comes early in Malawi. The sun rises by 5:30 a.m. We leave the Anglican Church guest house in Nkotakota for breakfast and another truck to three-minibuses in order to get to Mzuzu. The ride gets better as we go. Tiny yellow mangoes are messy and sweet as can be. They are everywhere on the roadside. Kids count the number of people in the back of the truck as we pass. First it is fifteen. It reaches 25 at its height. And there is no shelter from the sun. But, soon enough, we are shepherded into a mini-bus with Lucius Banda tunes bumping. Good Malawian reggae/high-life sounds. Sweet mangoes. Windy mountain roads. Sweeping views of the clear waters of Lake Malawi. Temperatures cooling. Life is good.

By sunset, we are on the doorstep of the Church and Society office in Mzuzu, welcomed by Moses. We ate catfish with him back in New Orleans last April when he was visiting as part of a delegation sponsored by the State Department. Annette kept in touch. So, now we ride in his Ford Expedition passed gas lines that block one direction of traffic down the main street of Mzuzu. We end up at “The Club,” as he calls it. It’s a country club frequented by the movers and shakers of Mzuzu. We are introduced to entrepreneurs, politicians, civil society leaders, professors. The crowd gets more raucous, the conversation more lively as the drinks flow and the night wears on.

The professor professes to us that he is a failure, a lowly university lecturer, because he doesn’t feel that he is producing the students who can lead Malawi to the future. Dan the politician explains the challenges with the current regime and his strategies to bring the opposition to power and lead a unified government. There should be a press conference today on the subject. Meanwhile Moses plans the Saturday’s funeral for a recently-passed Chief Justice with a few gentlemen at the bar.

I pitch the idea of collecting used cooking oil from the roadside chips stands and converting it to biodiesel. It is novel idea here. And needed, given the fuel crisis and Malawi’s dependence on foreign imports of fuel, tourists and everything else but corn, tomatoes and mangoes. Moses reiterates his April invitation for us to move to Malawi. And the idea is appealing. Biodiesel could work here.