As I mentioned last time, bus journeys are very long. Don’t worry, that does not make me laugh. This country may have sent me a little crazy but I still hate sitting on sweaty buses for hours. Conveniently, there are people at every stop and bus station along the way selling items that you may need. They often have large trays which the hold above their head with straight arms so that people on the coach’s can see what they have. And they make the most vulgar sound to try and attract your attention. By blowing air between a tiny gap in their teeth, tongue thrust forward, a ‘tsck’ kind of snake hiss comes out. It’s hard to avoid turning your head, it’s like some mystic spell. Occasionally they whistle too. “Ooooh, don’t tell me he just whistled at me,” my mind wonders as I fight the temptation to turn and see what he has on offer.
The dealing is almost all done through the windows and there is no haggling. One price fits all, countrywide. Coke is 120 MK (about 50p) and the biscuits are 200MK (just under a £), it just is.
For some reason though, at every station, there are people trading goods that I wouldn’t expect. It only just clicked in my mind last week that it is actually odd, although I’ve been seeing them for months. Packs of toothpaste with complementary toothbrush are being waved in the air next to buses in the sweltering heat right now in hundreds of bus stations and stop off points all over Africa. It’s hilarious. There are shops, passing as supermarkets in every town, selling all the dental cleaning products one could need. But these guys think they’ve cornered the market. Buses, that’s where people want to buy their toothbrush. This is going to be big business, they are thinking. How often do people need to clean their teeth whilst journeying to a new destination? All the time. Of course – foolproof plan! Next stop: Dragon’s Den.
I will buy my next toothbrush from those guys – they deserve the custom, it’s a brave business to be in.
Drinks are a funny business here too. Everything, well 95%, is sold in glass bottles. All coming from the same distributer, Southern Bottles. Talk about a monopoly. There is no other place to get your beer, coke, fanta, sprite, anything. A few weeks back the machine in Mzuzu broke down and there were no soft drinks available. A few days went by and as shops, bars and lodges slowly ran out, there was no option other than beer. Terrible predicament.
Anyway, all comes in glass bottles and therefore retailers have to return the bottles in crates to trade their next lot – or they pay for the bottles. So bottles become big business. Most places require a deposit, or you swap empty bottles with them for full, so you can take them away. Last week myself and Laura got a couple of cokes whilst out and walked off. The chap from shop recognised us about an hour later and chased us across the road to ask for his bottles back. Obviously we returned them.
“God bless you!” he declared as he shook our hands with vigour.
Seconds afterwards, we walked round the corner to find our usual friend selling dodgy DVD’s on the corner of Peoples Supermarket. Great, I wonder what he has this time. Dodgy DVD’s are the only kind of DVD’s in Malawi, so it seems. Lilongwe has one shop which does rentals but it costs a fortune and compared to these disks – there’s no value.
This guy stands, with hands in pockets, learning against the cash’n’carry wall. His eyes are on a constant lookout, for what? The police? Ok, it’s illegal but they buy from him too. In front of him is a large sack full of DVD’s and a few, neatly piled, stacks of his best disks placed on the ground. Next to these are the dodgy CD’s, you can find all your fave’s (yes, Westlife, Craig David and Bob Marley)
“Anything good?” We ask. His half smile tells us the English wasn’t his favourite subject at Primary School. Searching through the South African and Chinese imports which are almost all 20-in-1 disks, we find the ‘Bruce Willis Collection’ with all the Die Hards, ‘Army Collection’, featuring films such as Hamburger Hill and Behind Enemy Lines, and then the classic. ‘The Mr Bean Collection’. This, I can tell you, is a big seller in Malawi. They just love Mr Bean. It makes me smile that something that the British enjoyed, yet find a little outdated now, is still enjoyed so much here. Children and adults (who are lucky enough to have a TV and DVD player) join together to watch Rowan Atkinson at his best. Then watch it all again the next day. Superb.
Community Projects have been continuing in the midst of all the rains. Laura and myself have completed the renovation of an old store room at the Luwawa Maternity Unit, turning what was a smoky, dirty hovel into a clean, comfortable visitors room. It will enable the guardians of mothers-to-be to stay comfortably at the centre for the duration of their visit. We feel it’s a great addition to the ever-improving medical facilities at a rather rundown forestry station and are extremely proud of what has been done.
We are back at the school tomorrow to deliver another of our series of environmental issues lessons to standards 6, 7 and 8. This one is going to focus on the problems of litter in and around the station.
The plan is to try and get the children to think of ways to re-use items as much as possible before ‘getting rid’. Homework for them will be to create a game out of used items and bring it in to show next time. The best one is getting a 500kwacha reward, so competition will be hot!
In addition to this, one of the days next week we will spend at Nyondo road block, about 5km towards the main road from the station, trying to convince lorry drivers to help us move a 2 tonne concrete cylinder down into the station. We are going to use this as a giant rubbish bin which will be burnt weekly. I know burning rubbish isn’t totally environmentally friendly, but the state of the place is getting really bad! Anyway, it’s better than landfill, right? And there’s certainly no rubbish collection round here!
Any ideas on better strategies would be greatly received.
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