A Crowning Achievement in Stupidity
As I’ve mentioned previously, I live pretty close to Karonga town. If I want to stock up on supplies that aren’t available in the village, have some money to spend on internet usage, or just get out of site for a few hours, I can go there. It’s particularly good for buying things in bulk, which I can do in the village with only some items. On one particular day, I went to Karonga to buy a large quantity of rice as well as a few other things. I had my burlap sack and took it to the lady in front of the bakery with buckets overflowing with Karonga rice and had her fill it half full, which should last me until the end of the year. She was very pleased with my massive purchase, and so carried my bag to the bus depot for me, where I hopped on a minibus coming out of the gate. This is where the day started going downhill.
I had foolishly assumed that getting on a minibus that was coming out of the depot meant that we would be immediately departing, even though I was one of only two passengers. This is foolish, because on a minibus the journey only begins when passengers are packed in like sardines. These are small, rickety vehicles deemed no longer road-worthy in Japan or China and intended to seat sixteen passengers. The actual number of passengers is almost always higher, many of which are riding with baggage, children, chickens, or other stuff that makes the ride much more unpleasant. Currently the police are trying to enforce safety regulations that limit the number of passengers to 16, but at the time of this misadventure, this was not the case.
So this bus was under the control of three young guys, all of whom were quite amused that I could explain where I needed to go, what I was doing, and that I’m just learning Chitumbuka, in Chitumbuka. They began driving around the area of the bus depot, asking any and all in the streets wandering close to the minibus if they were going to Chilumba, this minibus’s final destination. I suppose it was better than just sitting at the bus depot and sweltering until there were enough passengers to depart, but not much. Clearly, these men were idiots, and I was left to sigh and fiddle with my phone, attempting to activate my new Telekom SIM card, which didn’t actually need to be activated. The idiocy of the driver and his cohorts, and the fact that I couldn’t get my phone to do what I wanted made me rather irritated. After driving around for almost an hour, the number of passengers was suitable for departure, and we were off.
After a little doze, I was being conveniently dropped off at the well across the M1 from where I stay, and hoisted my bag of rice onto my head for the short walk to my house. I made a little idle chatter with the neighborhood kids following me along the path, very tired and glad to finally arrive home. As I was walking to the door, I reached into my pocket for my phone and found nothing. I reached into the other pocket, and then all my cargo pockets, and still found nothing. I dropped my rice and swore loudly, which is something that I think my neighbors might be getting used to. I don’t do it often, but when I do, nothing is said. Still, they’re all so nice. How can I be so crass?
So it seemed that I had left my phone on the minibus. This was a disaster. How long had it taken me to walk to my house, maybe five minutes? Maybe if I biked fast enough, I could catch the bus. They make frequent stops. yes, I would pedal my ass off and triumphantly happen upon the minibus stuffing more people than necessary into the cabin, and would reclaim my phone. Into the house I went, dropping my backpack and donning my helmet to burst through the front door and hop onto my bike.
“Mark!” called my neighbor, Silipo. He was pointing south, something that I didn’t quite understand. Right now, there was no time to understand.
“Suzgo!” I called back. Problem. “I left my phone on a minibus!”
He just looked down and shook his head, releasing me to my pursuit. I sped down the path leading from our compound to the M1.
Now, my area has this wind. It always blows north, and it blows hard. Some days, I think that the roof is going to blow off of my house, and that nearby trees will be uprooted. This, of course, makes biking south quite a chore. I hadn’t remembered the wind being that strong throughout the day, and as I was barreling towards the tarmac, I was too crazed to notice if the wind was, in fact, a problem. I prayed that it wasn’t as my tires hit the pavement.
A gust hit me almost immediately. I pressed on, shifting into a high gear to get as much distance and speed per pedal as humanly possible, which in such wind was an incredibly stupid thing to do. Within minutes, my thighs burned, and I was panting. Because of that damned wind, my pace was restricted to a moderate jog. I scanned ahead. No minibus. I was imagining the driver’s delight upon discovering the phone that the stupid mzungu had carelessly left behind, to be used by him or sold. With this scene playing out in my head, that awful wind not relenting one bit, and the minibus surely far gone, despair and anger came quickly.
I hopped off my bike, dissolving into a roadside hissy fit complete with loud strings of profanity and a launch of my helmet into some nearby bushes. Shit, man! A new phone would set me back at least 6,000 kwacha. Luckily I still had my Celtel SIM card in my pocket, though their reception is rather awful at my site. How could I have been so negligent? Damn! No, stop this. I could get my phone back. I had to.
I saw a truck coming over the hill I had been ascending and flagged them down. A man and a woman were in the cabin, and another man rode in the bed. I explained my predicament to them, and in a very odd act of desperation, informed them that I would pay handsomely if they would turn their truck around and drive fast to help me chase down the bus. They wanted 3,000 kwacha, and while I was desperate, I wasn’t 3,000 kwacha desperate. I offered 1,000 and they balked, but began asking questions about the minibus.
My powers of observation, as we have seen with my gauging of the wind, are not so great. I rifled through my memory for details. It was dark blue. Wasn’t it? Red upholstery. A mass of tangled wires where a radio would normally be. And it was going to Chilumba.
“Was it a Nissan?” One of them asked. Whoa, man. That’s pretty specific. I had no idea. I just wanted a ride home; I didn’t look at the make. I don’t think many of them say, anyway. However, it could have been a Nissan.
“We know it,” the driver said. Holy shit! Really?
“Yes, there was music inside?” I had already explained that there wasn’t, and reiterated this. They still insisted that they knew the guy, and I figured that even if it wasn’t the right one, he might know the right one.
“We have his phone number, call him right now,” another said. Didn’t they remember why I had offered them money to chase the minibus down? No matter, time was wasting. They gave me the name and location in Chilumba of the man they thought I wanted, and after I thanked them profusely, they left and I was back on my bike, speeding back to deposit it at my house and catch a minibus to Chilumba, some 25 kilometers away.
It must be noted that this is highly unusual behavior for me. In America, my response would have been, “Oh well, fuck it. Guess I’ll have to get another one.” But in this place, I felt compelled to chase down my phone. I knew that there could be some kind of confrontation, some bargaining to get it back if the driver had, in fact, confiscated it from his bus. But I’d still have my phone, and along with it around 6,000 kwacha that had not been spent on buying a new one to put towards something else. It was a test of will that I would not allow myself to fail.
Luckily, my neighbor’s son intercepted me where the M1 crosses the path heading to my neighborhood. I instructed him to take my bike to his house for safe keeping and flagged down the first minibus that I saw. At this point it as around five in the afternoon, and the sun was rapidly sinking towards the horizon. At this point in the day, minibus conductors are making a mad dash to pick up as many passengers as possible before they must hang up their keys for the day. The minibus that I boarded was the same one that I had taken into Karonga that morning, and it was beyond jam-packed.
Now would be a good time to explain the minibus phenomenon. A minibus is public transport, but it is privately owned. It is about the size of a minivan, and almost always in a very poor state of repair, having been sold to Malawians only after having been deemed no longer road-worthy in China or Japan. There is seating for sixteen passengers squeezed together. However, there is always room for one more, and so it is not uncommon for over twenty people to be packed into one of these little deathtraps. The minibus in question certainly fit this description, and at one point in the journey people were literally hanging out of the open sliding door. This compounded my stress, but the kicker was the jerry-rigged car stereo blasting awful, awful Malawian music directly into my face. I honestly believe that Malawi’s music industry was born out of a misplaced shipment of shitty Casio keyboards, the kind that have a few sample drum loops over which one can play tinny, monotonous melodies. That is also an accurate description of the music itself. It makes me want to kill myself, even when I’m in a pleasant mood.
So there I was, speeding down Malawi’s main paved thoroughfare in an overstuffed minibus, ears full of the most awful music on the planet, trying to chase my phone with only a vague lead from helpful strangers. My realization of the absurdity of the situation is probably the only thing that kept me from clawing my own eyes out when the driver turned the music up, or picked up another few passengers. Jesus. What the hell was I doing?
I made it to Chilumba, though, and was very happy to be off that minibus. I was not happy, though, to see that the minibus to which I had been guided was not the one I sought. A couple women were staring at me, and were probably frightened when this sweaty, crazed-looking, shaggy-haired mzungu immediately launched into asking them where he could find the driver of this minibus. In Malawi, all must be preceded with the proper greetings. I tend to skip this when I am in a hurry, feeling particularly businesslike, or in this case, flipping out. However, the driver was brought before me, and after some questioning in my lousy Chitumbuka, he revealed to me that perhaps it was another driver from his company that I sought, one who stayed on the road to the Jetty. I don’t know what exactly the Jetty is, so I can’t really explain. But I took down the name he gave and started walking. Daylight was quickly fading. This was getting bad.
As I neared the jetty turnoff, I saw a most remarkable thing-another mzungu. He was about my age and similarly disheveled, walking with a Malawian and a bike like mine. This must have been a fellow Peace Corps volunteer and his counterpart.
He was, in fact, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. He was Jim, the environment volunteer for Chilumba and a friend of a few of my fellow training classmates. I explained what I was doing and who I was looking for, and of course Jim’s Malawian companion knew where I could find him. Jim volunteered to accompany me and for this he has secured a place on my list of excellent people.
We walked along and chatted about the rigors of adjusting to Peace Corps life, various experiences, permaculture, the like. Jim is from Ohio, and though I only spent a few years there in college, I’m rather fond of the state and am always glad to meet someone who hails from there. His company calmed me some, though I was still quite anxious to get a hold of that damned phone. We asked passers-by for more specific directions until someone took us directly to my target’s house. By now it was nearly dark. A pretty woman greeted us with a smile, and I thought that I recalled her braids in the front seat of the minibus I had left my phone on, perhaps out of hope, and asked, “Do you remember me?” I figure I stand out, judging from the stares I get every day. She looked suddenly perplexed, so Jim and I explained why I had showed up in her yard. She explained that her husband, the minibus driver, had gone to Uliwa. not far, but this chase would be elongated and it was basically dark. I simply could not win.
Suddenly two minibuses materialized out of the dark, coming down the road, and she indicated that one was her husband’s. Jim started saying something, but I was already running towards the buses. This had to be it! I leapt up to the driver’s side of the new bus, and the face peering back at me…was not that of the man who had driven my bus.
“Is this the one?” He asked.
“No…”
The first man I had met was with him, and indicated that they had seen me and followed. They really wanted to help, and despite the fact that my phone was as good as gone, that knowledge was rather comforting.
“I know you,” the new driver said.
“Oh?”
“Yes, I see you running, every day,” he replied. I’ve begun jogging from my house to the secondary school sign and back a few times a week. I instantly felt a little ashamed, because when a minibus passes me with the driver leaning out the window, looking backwards at the silly mzungu, I’m prone to yell things such as, “Watch the road, jackass!” This man, who went out of his way for me, may have been the recipient of such an epithet. I really ought to hold my tongue. Then again, they really ought to watch the fucking road.
I thanked him and the other driver for their kindness, and Jim and I walked back to the M1. I managed to flag down a passing truck, the driver of which agreed to take me home for free. I apologized to Jim about meeting under such circumstances, but it was nice to meet him nonetheless. Onto the truck I went. On the ride back, after having explained what I was doing in Malawi, I simply resigned. I lost my contact with home due to carelessness and would only reclaim it at a hefty price tag. Oh well. Life goes on. Lesson learned.
I hopped off at the junction of the M1 with my neighborhood path, and after fumbling in the dark for a while, my neighbor met me to lead me back to my house. I explained the failure to find my phone, but it was okay. Just a piece of plastic. A couple of his sons were on my porch, and apparently had been there for some time, waiting for me to return. My neighbors are really, truly great. I got into my house and lit a candle, suddenly having this urge to look into my backpack. Only after I had set off on this wild goose chase had the thought occurred to me that maybe I had left my phone in my backpack and forgotten. But if I turned back and it wasn’t the case, I would be totally screwed.
So I found my backpack and hoisted it onto my couch. I first went for the mesh side pockets. My hand alighted upon something hard, and semi-rectangular. It was my phone. It had been in that little mesh pocket the entire time. That little nagging thought had been accurate.
I really need to calm down.
