Magical Malawi and the Nc'wala Ceremony
I gave fair warning that it would be a struggle for me to find the time to write about my adventures in Malawi, so I don’t feel quite so guilty about the delay this time 'round! Since I got back to Zambia I’ve also been to Livingstone and Kafue, so I have a lot of catching up to do!
As always, apologies for my long-windedness.
~
So... Malawi. Malawi was great. I left from Chipata, after spending two days there helping out with a workshop on Proposal Writing for NZP+ Support Groups in Eastern Province (workshop was uneventful aside from the fact that, after being surprised at how well they all pronounced ‘chlorine’, the group whose project was on water purification put up a flip chart with the word ‘CHROLINE’ proudly written in big bold letters!) The day before I left Chipata I did a lot of asking around to get info on how to get to Nkhata Bay in Malawi, how long it would take, how much it would cost, etc. A la Zambian, every single person I asked gave me a different answer, so I was unsure what to expect as I headed out in a taxi from the hotel at 5:30 am. The taxi ride to the border was my first adventure: instead of getting dropped in town and getting a shared taxi, the driver and I negotiated that he would take me all the way to the border if he could pick up one other passenger. I figured this would save me time and hassle, but, of course, one passenger became three, and 'straight' to the border involved a massive detour through the compounds of Chipata. I let the colourful sunrise keep me calm and eventually I made it.
From the border it was a shared taxi (8 of us in total) to Mchinji, and then a minibus to Lilongwe. As we drove, I got to view the whole tobacco production process from my window: from the plants growing in the field, to the yellow leaves being hung outside the mud houses to dry, to women sitting among piles of dry brown leaves, sorting. I also got a piece of Wrestlemania bubblegum complete with rub-on tattoo from the women next to me, which made the whole journey worthwhile!
In Lilongwe things seemed calm. Until we reached the bus station, that is, and a crowd of boys surrounded the bus pressing their noses to the window to see what luggage we were carrying. But, I quickly managed to get my bag out safely, thwart an attempted pick-pocketing, and find my way to the gated station where long distance buses departed. I wandered until I found a bus with a sign that said Mzuzu, asked the driver if it went to Nkhata Bay, bought a ticket with the little change I had left, and the bus left 20 minutes later. Not bad!
The drive to Nkhata Bay was lovely. I sat next to Evance, a man studying at the Baptist Theological Seminary who, in addition to trying to convert me, was an excellent source of information on Malawi and all the sights we passed. There were lots of other friendly and interesting folks on the bus, and of course lots of adorable children that, once they got over their fear of my whiteness, were full of giggles. The only downside was that, given that my trip had been so perfectly timed, I never had a chance to eat. Roadside dining consisted of roasted or boiled maize, hardboiled eggs or cold fritters – nothing to scoff at, but I have to admit that for the first time in months I was having a very untimely craving for a cappuccino and a croissant! Evance, bought me a cob of roasted maize and I managed to get my hands on four of the smallest bananas on earth to tide me over on the 9 hour trip. It also rained about 5 times throughout the trip and the bus leaked, right above my head of all places, but everyone was very helpful in rearranging so that I could avoid an impromptu shower.
When I arrived in Nkhata Bay there were a few guys offering a free ride to Njaya, the lodge I was headed for, and it turned out they all knew the Lusaka VSOs that had visited over Christmas – it was like meeting long lost friends I didn’t know I had. Friends named Cheese on Toast and Happy Coconut, but friends nonetheless.
The next morning I was stunned as I awoke and opened the door of my beach banda to the the incredible view in front of me. I was also stunned by the monkey that jumped down into a tree right next to me! After a breakfast that more than made up for my lack of food on the previous day, I returned to my beach banda to read. I didn’t get far before Alex, one of the guys I had met the night before, came by to teach me how to play bawo, a board game named after the baobab trees it was traditionally played under (equivalent to Zambian nsolo). I had learned to play when Mel brought a board back from Malawi and I figured I was pretty good, but I was no match for anyone I came up against during my 4 days there. It’s bizarre, because simple multiplication proved difficult for some of them, and yet the math they did in their heads when playing this game and the speed at which they do it is astounding. It brought the ‘multiple literacies’ concept introduced to me in my Masters to a whole new light - these guys were definitely bawo-literate!
After losing one too many times at bawo, Alex, his 13 year old brother Khaiba and I went to the market in town to get some groceries and then went back to their place for a lunch of nshima and relish. After lunch I went for a swim and chilled on my own, and then went back to theirs for a lovely fish dinner, which they invited me to because I had paid for lunch. That night they accompanied me to another lodge and we sipped cokes while we listened to a great band and watched some amazing dancers shake every last inch of their bodies.
The next day was spent between the porch of my beach banda, Alex and Khaiba’s house, town, and the beautiful cool water of the lake. I can’t even remember what happened at this point (at the time it seems to me I had a million things I ‘had to write about’ on my mind) but I know it was a great day.
The following day I had arranged with David, one of the waiters at Njaya, to go visit Simon. Simon was a legendary man I had heard about from everyone that had been at Njaya over Christmas and I was instructed by all to greet him. Only he wasn’t there. He had had malaria and was back in his village, two hours away. I had promised myself I was in Malawi to relax, but when David offered to take me out to visit him I couldn’t resist the opportunity for an adventure. So there I was the next morning, in the back of a pick up truck on the first leg of our journey to Simon’s village. The second leg involved another pickup that required ambidextrocity (sp?) and otherworldly coordination to keep running. From where a vehicle could go no further, we walked for about an hour until we reached Simon’s house, with gaggles of wide-eyed children trailing behind the whole way. We weren’t actually sure we would find him there, since he is the chief of the village and they were celebrating the opening of a new clinic, but we found him in the field working. All 4 grinning feet of him. We had a nice visit and left him grinning, with the bread, sugar and tea we had brought, and headed on our way. We were fortunate to be shown a short cut, and managed to make it all the way back to where we originally began our second leg in just 1 hour and 20 minutes. It was a hot day, but a beautiful walk, so I was happy. And with a gorgeous lake waiting for me when I got back, I couldn’t have been happier.
The next day was my last day and I tried my best to just relax and enjoy it, but with all the lovely people I had met around, it was hard to do. I had lunch with Alex and Khaiba and spent some time in town with them, but declared the afternoon to be A-time and spent the last daylight hours of sweet vacation under the sun and in the waves of Lake Malawi. The day bid farewell with a spectacular sunset – a perfect goodbye from a perfect place.
That night I joined a group of guys at Njaya to watch Barca play it’s first round game against Chelsea in the Champions league. Their victory really was the perfect end to a perfect day.
The morning of my departure I awoke at dawn to see the rains thundering down on the far side of the lake. It was a beautiful sight, but I was pleased to see them at such a distance. I thought too soon. Alex – who insisted on meeting me at 5:30am and carrying my bag – and I were about five minutes down the 25-minute road to town when the rains began to fall. By the time we reached town I was absolutely and completely drenched. Soaked. Sodden. Sopping. Just plain wet. I tried to remember that each raindrop that fell upon was watering the land with the moist promise of sufficient food for the coming months, but I still hated each and every drop.
The rains also made all the Malawians, who, much like Zambians, wouldn’t dream of getting wet, stay inside and so the bus I finally reached was virtually empty and I had to wait out the rains until any more passengers arrived. I needed to make it across the border to Lundazi that day, which I had been advised was not easy, so I was quite anxious that precious hours were slipping by. Eventually the bus filled up and we were on our way. We reached Mzuzu in an hour, and I headed into the bus station asking for a bus to Jenda, where I would then hitch a ride into Zambia. It turns out, however, there is a bus straight from Mzuzu to Lundazi. Of course I only found this out once I was already on another bus headed to Jenda, and after I had brazenly refused to get on the bus going to Lundazi because, in addition to not knowing it went there, the driver had been so disagreeable (or at least in my damp and cranky state he had seemed so). I was about two hours down the road to Jenda when the bus eventually filled up and someone dared sit next to the mzungu – just as the brave soul asked where I was headed and I answered “Lundazi”, the bus to Zambia I had refused to get on happened to be passing us. Not surprisingly she turned to me with a look that oozed “you moronic mzungu!” and said “But that bus goes to Lundazi…” So, the next time the two buses stopped in the same place I hopped sheepishly off one and on to the other. And yes, everyone talked about the mzungu who had refused to get on just a few hours earlier.
The bus I had so hastily rejected turned out to be lots of fun – we passed some very interesting towns, full of markets and bustling with activity, and even the long, bumpy, dirt road from Jenda to the border was made very entertaining by the driver, who threw sweets to all the kids on the side of the road. It must have been a tradition, because kids were lining the road in anticipation, and when we came to stop to pick someone up or drop someone off, the driver ‘toot, toot’-ed his horn and all the little Malawian kids jumped up and down and shouted “Zambia! Zambia!” before they were rewarded with sweets! It was quite a hilarious scene, and it was made all that much better by the communal feel of the bus, where conversations always involved 5 or 6 strangers, and the whole bus reacted in chorus to a kid being hit in the head by a flying sweet or someone getting splashed by a mud puddle!
I spent one lovely evening in Lundazi with Irma, another VSO, and then we caught the 04:30 bus to Chipata for the Nc’wala ceremony. Fortunately, perhaps, by the time we arrived sleep deprivation had made us a bit giddy, so when the drunk man at the bus station promised he wasn’t the driver of the taxi we got into, and then promptly hopped in the driver’s seat and started the car, we both broke out in hysterical laughter as we opened the doors and tossed out both our bags and ourselves in front of a group of stunned onlookers. Eventually we found a driver who hadn’t been drinking Shake-Shake (thick maize beer sold in cartons, aptly named for its need to be shaken in order to be rendered drinkable) all night and made our way to the hostel.
Nc’wala is a ceremony of the Ngoni tribe, who descended from the Zulus of South Africa. Traditionally, it is in celebration of a good harvest, but these days it apparently happens every year, regardless. It lasts 2 days, so I was planning on seeing the ceremony on Friday and heading home on Saturday morning. I was informed, however, that the climax of the ceremony – the slaughter of a bull whose blood is drunk by the paramount chief – was on Saturday, and that I must stay to see it. So I hummed and hawed about whether or not to stay as we headed out to the ceremony grounds Friday morning with some Peace Corps we ran into (only because their taxi driver stopped when he saw us walking by, assuming all azungu must know each other!).
The ceremony grounds were completely empty, but some nice men told us where we could go to watch groups from all the different villages rehearse their dancing, in a field under a baobab tree. The place was abuzz with singing, dancing and Shake-Shake, and it definitely got abuzzier when we arrived. For the first time since I arrived in Zambia I had people asking to take pictures of me. I felt like I was back in Bangkok. It was ironic, really, because we had come to take pictures of them, and there we were posing in front of the camera for Zambians dressed from head to toe in leopard skin. Quite bizarre.
Eventually the novelty of taking photos of azungu faded and we were free to check out the festivities. The men were dressed in skirts made of strips of animal skin, and headdresses made of the same. Some had full leopard pelts hanging from their necks, and they all carried sticks. Around their feet they wore bells, which more often than not were substituted with squashed up cans or empty shoepolish tins. The women, who generally did not partake in the dance, wore their regular chitenges around their legs and nothing on top, and knelt in a line in front of the men, clapping the rhythm of the dance. The dancing involved a lot of foot-stamping, arm-flailing and stick-wa
ving, and was all accompanied by traditional singing. It was a very dry day, and each circle of dancers quickly transformed into a cloud of red dust.
I was in awe – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that even comes close to comparing. At the same time as being a very real experience, it was a very surreal experience; like witnessing a National Geographic documentary first hand (not to mention having front row seats). Eventually, we tired of the heat, the dust and the attention and dragged ourselves home. I decided that the death of a bull couldn’t add to what I had already seen, and chose to head to Lusaka the next morning, more than content with my Nc’wala ceremony experience.
~
In many ways it was a vacation I never wanted to end, but in others, returning to my daily life of Lusaka was just as exciting as all the things I had seen and done in my travels.
As always, apologies for my long-windedness.
~
So... Malawi. Malawi was great. I left from Chipata, after spending two days there helping out with a workshop on Proposal Writing for NZP+ Support Groups in Eastern Province (workshop was uneventful aside from the fact that, after being surprised at how well they all pronounced ‘chlorine’, the group whose project was on water purification put up a flip chart with the word ‘CHROLINE’ proudly written in big bold letters!) The day before I left Chipata I did a lot of asking around to get info on how to get to Nkhata Bay in Malawi, how long it would take, how much it would cost, etc. A la Zambian, every single person I asked gave me a different answer, so I was unsure what to expect as I headed out in a taxi from the hotel at 5:30 am. The taxi ride to the border was my first adventure: instead of getting dropped in town and getting a shared taxi, the driver and I negotiated that he would take me all the way to the border if he could pick up one other passenger. I figured this would save me time and hassle, but, of course, one passenger became three, and 'straight' to the border involved a massive detour through the compounds of Chipata. I let the colourful sunrise keep me calm and eventually I made it.
From the border it was a shared taxi (8 of us in total) to Mchinji, and then a minibus to Lilongwe. As we drove, I got to view the whole tobacco production process from my window: from the plants growing in the field, to the yellow leaves being hung outside the mud houses to dry, to women sitting among piles of dry brown leaves, sorting. I also got a piece of Wrestlemania bubblegum complete with rub-on tattoo from the women next to me, which made the whole journey worthwhile!
In Lilongwe things seemed calm. Until we reached the bus station, that is, and a crowd of boys surrounded the bus pressing their noses to the window to see what luggage we were carrying. But, I quickly managed to get my bag out safely, thwart an attempted pick-pocketing, and find my way to the gated station where long distance buses departed. I wandered until I found a bus with a sign that said Mzuzu, asked the driver if it went to Nkhata Bay, bought a ticket with the little change I had left, and the bus left 20 minutes later. Not bad!
The drive to Nkhata Bay was lovely. I sat next to Evance, a man studying at the Baptist Theological Seminary who, in addition to trying to convert me, was an excellent source of information on Malawi and all the sights we passed. There were lots of other friendly and interesting folks on the bus, and of course lots of adorable children that, once they got over their fear of my whiteness, were full of giggles. The only downside was that, given that my trip had been so perfectly timed, I never had a chance to eat. Roadside dining consisted of roasted or boiled maize, hardboiled eggs or cold fritters – nothing to scoff at, but I have to admit that for the first time in months I was having a very untimely craving for a cappuccino and a croissant! Evance, bought me a cob of roasted maize and I managed to get my hands on four of the smallest bananas on earth to tide me over on the 9 hour trip. It also rained about 5 times throughout the trip and the bus leaked, right above my head of all places, but everyone was very helpful in rearranging so that I could avoid an impromptu shower.
When I arrived in Nkhata Bay there were a few guys offering a free ride to Njaya, the lodge I was headed for, and it turned out they all knew the Lusaka VSOs that had visited over Christmas – it was like meeting long lost friends I didn’t know I had. Friends named Cheese on Toast and Happy Coconut, but friends nonetheless.
The next morning I was stunned as I awoke and opened the door of my beach banda to the the incredible view in front of me. I was also stunned by the monkey that jumped down into a tree right next to me! After a breakfast that more than made up for my lack of food on the previous day, I returned to my beach banda to read. I didn’t get far before Alex, one of the guys I had met the night before, came by to teach me how to play bawo, a board game named after the baobab trees it was traditionally played under (equivalent to Zambian nsolo). I had learned to play when Mel brought a board back from Malawi and I figured I was pretty good, but I was no match for anyone I came up against during my 4 days there. It’s bizarre, because simple multiplication proved difficult for some of them, and yet the math they did in their heads when playing this game and the speed at which they do it is astounding. It brought the ‘multiple literacies’ concept introduced to me in my Masters to a whole new light - these guys were definitely bawo-literate!
After losing one too many times at bawo, Alex, his 13 year old brother Khaiba and I went to the market in town to get some groceries and then went back to their place for a lunch of nshima and relish. After lunch I went for a swim and chilled on my own, and then went back to theirs for a lovely fish dinner, which they invited me to because I had paid for lunch. That night they accompanied me to another lodge and we sipped cokes while we listened to a great band and watched some amazing dancers shake every last inch of their bodies.
The next day was spent between the porch of my beach banda, Alex and Khaiba’s house, town, and the beautiful cool water of the lake. I can’t even remember what happened at this point (at the time it seems to me I had a million things I ‘had to write about’ on my mind) but I know it was a great day.
The following day I had arranged with David, one of the waiters at Njaya, to go visit Simon. Simon was a legendary man I had heard about from everyone that had been at Njaya over Christmas and I was instructed by all to greet him. Only he wasn’t there. He had had malaria and was back in his village, two hours away. I had promised myself I was in Malawi to relax, but when David offered to take me out to visit him I couldn’t resist the opportunity for an adventure. So there I was the next morning, in the back of a pick up truck on the first leg of our journey to Simon’s village. The second leg involved another pickup that required ambidextrocity (sp?) and otherworldly coordination to keep running. From where a vehicle could go no further, we walked for about an hour until we reached Simon’s house, with gaggles of wide-eyed children trailing behind the whole way. We weren’t actually sure we would find him there, since he is the chief of the village and they were celebrating the opening of a new clinic, but we found him in the field working. All 4 grinning feet of him. We had a nice visit and left him grinning, with the bread, sugar and tea we had brought, and headed on our way. We were fortunate to be shown a short cut, and managed to make it all the way back to where we originally began our second leg in just 1 hour and 20 minutes. It was a hot day, but a beautiful walk, so I was happy. And with a gorgeous lake waiting for me when I got back, I couldn’t have been happier.
The next day was my last day and I tried my best to just relax and enjoy it, but with all the lovely people I had met around, it was hard to do. I had lunch with Alex and Khaiba and spent some time in town with them, but declared the afternoon to be A-time and spent the last daylight hours of sweet vacation under the sun and in the waves of Lake Malawi. The day bid farewell with a spectacular sunset – a perfect goodbye from a perfect place.
That night I joined a group of guys at Njaya to watch Barca play it’s first round game against Chelsea in the Champions league. Their victory really was the perfect end to a perfect day.
The morning of my departure I awoke at dawn to see the rains thundering down on the far side of the lake. It was a beautiful sight, but I was pleased to see them at such a distance. I thought too soon. Alex – who insisted on meeting me at 5:30am and carrying my bag – and I were about five minutes down the 25-minute road to town when the rains began to fall. By the time we reached town I was absolutely and completely drenched. Soaked. Sodden. Sopping. Just plain wet. I tried to remember that each raindrop that fell upon was watering the land with the moist promise of sufficient food for the coming months, but I still hated each and every drop.
The rains also made all the Malawians, who, much like Zambians, wouldn’t dream of getting wet, stay inside and so the bus I finally reached was virtually empty and I had to wait out the rains until any more passengers arrived. I needed to make it across the border to Lundazi that day, which I had been advised was not easy, so I was quite anxious that precious hours were slipping by. Eventually the bus filled up and we were on our way. We reached Mzuzu in an hour, and I headed into the bus station asking for a bus to Jenda, where I would then hitch a ride into Zambia. It turns out, however, there is a bus straight from Mzuzu to Lundazi. Of course I only found this out once I was already on another bus headed to Jenda, and after I had brazenly refused to get on the bus going to Lundazi because, in addition to not knowing it went there, the driver had been so disagreeable (or at least in my damp and cranky state he had seemed so). I was about two hours down the road to Jenda when the bus eventually filled up and someone dared sit next to the mzungu – just as the brave soul asked where I was headed and I answered “Lundazi”, the bus to Zambia I had refused to get on happened to be passing us. Not surprisingly she turned to me with a look that oozed “you moronic mzungu!” and said “But that bus goes to Lundazi…” So, the next time the two buses stopped in the same place I hopped sheepishly off one and on to the other. And yes, everyone talked about the mzungu who had refused to get on just a few hours earlier.
The bus I had so hastily rejected turned out to be lots of fun – we passed some very interesting towns, full of markets and bustling with activity, and even the long, bumpy, dirt road from Jenda to the border was made very entertaining by the driver, who threw sweets to all the kids on the side of the road. It must have been a tradition, because kids were lining the road in anticipation, and when we came to stop to pick someone up or drop someone off, the driver ‘toot, toot’-ed his horn and all the little Malawian kids jumped up and down and shouted “Zambia! Zambia!” before they were rewarded with sweets! It was quite a hilarious scene, and it was made all that much better by the communal feel of the bus, where conversations always involved 5 or 6 strangers, and the whole bus reacted in chorus to a kid being hit in the head by a flying sweet or someone getting splashed by a mud puddle!
I spent one lovely evening in Lundazi with Irma, another VSO, and then we caught the 04:30 bus to Chipata for the Nc’wala ceremony. Fortunately, perhaps, by the time we arrived sleep deprivation had made us a bit giddy, so when the drunk man at the bus station promised he wasn’t the driver of the taxi we got into, and then promptly hopped in the driver’s seat and started the car, we both broke out in hysterical laughter as we opened the doors and tossed out both our bags and ourselves in front of a group of stunned onlookers. Eventually we found a driver who hadn’t been drinking Shake-Shake (thick maize beer sold in cartons, aptly named for its need to be shaken in order to be rendered drinkable) all night and made our way to the hostel.
Nc’wala is a ceremony of the Ngoni tribe, who descended from the Zulus of South Africa. Traditionally, it is in celebration of a good harvest, but these days it apparently happens every year, regardless. It lasts 2 days, so I was planning on seeing the ceremony on Friday and heading home on Saturday morning. I was informed, however, that the climax of the ceremony – the slaughter of a bull whose blood is drunk by the paramount chief – was on Saturday, and that I must stay to see it. So I hummed and hawed about whether or not to stay as we headed out to the ceremony grounds Friday morning with some Peace Corps we ran into (only because their taxi driver stopped when he saw us walking by, assuming all azungu must know each other!).
The ceremony grounds were completely empty, but some nice men told us where we could go to watch groups from all the different villages rehearse their dancing, in a field under a baobab tree. The place was abuzz with singing, dancing and Shake-Shake, and it definitely got abuzzier when we arrived. For the first time since I arrived in Zambia I had people asking to take pictures of me. I felt like I was back in Bangkok. It was ironic, really, because we had come to take pictures of them, and there we were posing in front of the camera for Zambians dressed from head to toe in leopard skin. Quite bizarre.
Eventually the novelty of taking photos of azungu faded and we were free to check out the festivities. The men were dressed in skirts made of strips of animal skin, and headdresses made of the same. Some had full leopard pelts hanging from their necks, and they all carried sticks. Around their feet they wore bells, which more often than not were substituted with squashed up cans or empty shoepolish tins. The women, who generally did not partake in the dance, wore their regular chitenges around their legs and nothing on top, and knelt in a line in front of the men, clapping the rhythm of the dance. The dancing involved a lot of foot-stamping, arm-flailing and stick-wa
ving, and was all accompanied by traditional singing. It was a very dry day, and each circle of dancers quickly transformed into a cloud of red dust.I was in awe – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that even comes close to comparing. At the same time as being a very real experience, it was a very surreal experience; like witnessing a National Geographic documentary first hand (not to mention having front row seats). Eventually, we tired of the heat, the dust and the attention and dragged ourselves home. I decided that the death of a bull couldn’t add to what I had already seen, and chose to head to Lusaka the next morning, more than content with my Nc’wala ceremony experience.
~
In many ways it was a vacation I never wanted to end, but in others, returning to my daily life of Lusaka was just as exciting as all the things I had seen and done in my travels.
posted by ash at 8:28 AM
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