Weirdest experience of my life... makes for good blog post!

Safe and sound in Malawi, where I'm planning to settle down for a bit and find some volunteer work. Of course safe and sound didn't prevent me from having by far the strangest experience of my trip so far. I'll get to that.

Out of Tanzania...

Let's see.. last I posted I was wasting away in 'Shit-es-Salaam', as Casey refers to it. I hopped on a 12 hour bus ride the next day to Mbeya, in South-West Tanzania. I ended up sitting beside an American doctor who was off to do some volunteer work and deliver $50,000 worth of antibiotics to a rural hospital. It was an uneventful ride (thank God for a full iPod charge) until we got dropped off. Doctor Danielle went first thing to book her onward transportation with another bus company, and 5 minutes later, when she got back, the bus had already taken off with her luggage. SHIT! Thankfully, it had only gone across town to get washed and a local guy jumped in a cab with us to rescue her precious cargo. In the end all was well and we found a decent (barely) hostel to have a much needed sleep and some dinner (rice and chicken).

The next day I managed to get my ass out of bed and barely communicate with the hostel staff to find a minibus taxi (English is not very common in S-W Tanz), which took me to the place where I was supposed to get... another minibus taxi. Already by this point I have no idea where on the planet I am. There was a very good likelihood that I was the first white person in history to be in this spot. When I stepped out of the first bus, I looked around and literally over a hundred people were staring at me and making no bones about their intrigue. I took a puff on my cigarette and stared right back until they again went about their business.

Although I've been in a fair number of minibus taxis over the last few months, these took chaos to a whole new level. Everywhere I went, TVs and radios and car stereos were turned up to full blast, so that the speakers were popping. Nobody seemed to mind, not even the fragile octogenarian sitting beside me on the bus to the Malawi border. I think we set a new world record for the amount of people you can squash into a bus. We had roughly 20 seats in the last one, with about 55 passengers, sitting on top of each other and standing in the vacant spaces. At one of the ubiquitous police checkpoints, they stopped the bus and had about 20 people get out. So what did our driver do? He drove 50 metres down the road and waited for the others to catch up on foot, who then got back on the bus and we continued on our way.

...and Into Malawi

Crossing the border into Malawi was fine. The bus dropped me about 1 km away. As usual, I was swarmed by locals trying to get money out of the stupid tourist. I didn't have any Malawi currency (Kwacha) so against my better judgment I decided to get rid of my Tanzanian Schillings and try my hand at the black market. At first, the 16 year old entrepreneur-slash-swindler I was dealing with tried to give me a rate that was at least 1/3 below what it should have been. Then, when I argued a better rate, he gave me the cash, and to his chagrin, I started counting it in front of him. Halfway through the first stack he took it back from me and told me "Oh sorry those are small notes," and replaced them with others from his pocket. What he had done was pre-package stacks of 500 Kwacha and tried to pass them off as 1000 Kwacha. What a little shit! Once we sorted that garbage out I settled on a price for the same guy (who knows why) to take me to the border. His 'taxi' turned out to be a bicycle. Picture me, with my massive backpack, sitting on the back of a bike that's being pedaled by a 16 year old. Wild times.

Across the border I found a real taxi that took me the 50 km or so to a place called Karonga, where I stayed for the night. Although we had settled on a price of 500 Kwacha, when I got out he tried to say it should be 700. Well, having been nearly ripped off far too many times in one day, I kind of flipped on this guy and went into a big lecture about how not all Mzungus are made of money and when you agree on a price, that's the price and so on. I think he was really sorry he even bothered.

On a completely different note, the hostel was in a beautiful spot where I got to catch my first glimpse of Lake Malawi, something I've been looking forward to for a long time. Unfortunately, because it had rained, the rice paddies between the hostel and the shore were completely flooded and I couldn't get close enough to swim. Instead I took a walk into town and hit the local dinosaur museum. On the way another kid adopted me in hopes that he could direct me to his craft shop. Surprisingly, he waited outside the museum for an hour and a half for me. Even more shocking, I actually bought something. Also on the way I remarked on a very significant difference between Malawian and Canadian police stations: ours don't have cows grazing within the fences.

Pushing on the next day, I arrive in another small and even more rural town called Chitimba, another 70 km south. What a gorgeous spot. The lake, with sandy beaches on one side, and the lush mountains of the Nyika Plateau on the other. It sucked, but I was dropped about 5 km from the campsite I wanted (I was told it had a bed in a tree!), so I decided to walk. It took me about an hour in the blazing sun with a 80 pound backpack on me. And every man, woman and child along the way decided to say 'Hi' to me and for good measure call me a Mzungu. Arriving there, the owner came rushing out into the road to greet me. At first I thought it was just some crazy guy trying to give me a hug. But he was very welcoming and hospitable and insisted that I peruse his guestbooks from the last 12 years. After this I was thankfully left to my own devices - for a time - to swim and suntan and read on the beach. And of course to joke around with Mdokera's nephew, Joni, who was mentally challenged but had the biggest smile I've even seen. But after a little while, Mr. Mdokera came by and asked me a question.

Here's where it starts to get weird...

Mdokera: "Would you like to visit my mother? She is very sick."
Me thinking: *umm... that's kind of a weird request*
Me: "Umm... are you sure she wants to be bothered?"

Of course he insisted and I didn't say no. So we went over to the hut where she was laid up in bed. This tiny lady was covered entirely by a blanket with 3 other ladies sitting on the bed beside her. I was given a chair and told to sit, and as soon as I did I was asked to get up and come over to the mother to say hi. Mdokera lifted the blanket briefly and I saw her hands. One of the ladies on the bed said something in a foreign language and Mdokera just got very silent. I immediately knew what happened from the way all the ladies had lowered their heads and avoided eye contact with everyone else. Mdokera turned to me, and I will never forget what he said:

"I'm sorry Mike, but my mother is dead."

What. The. Hell. Did this just happen? I didn't know what to do so I went over and gave the guy a hug and told him how sorry I was. ASAP I got out of the hut and sat down on the beach to process what might have been the strangest thing that's ever happened in my life. "Was this a scam to get money out of me," I wondered? "Oh don't be so cynical, Mike." Well one thing was clear, I couldn't stay there for the night. A) I didn't want to be a burden, and b) I personally didn't want to deal with this drama. So I started to pack up my gear with the plan to walk back to another campsite I passed.

Of course as I was walking over to tell Mdokera my plan, a friend of his brought my lunch, which I couldn't let go to waste. Long story short, the owner convinced me to stay with the argument that his sister, brother-in-law, father, etc. had passed away in recent years and business still goes on because his extended family takes care of the guests. Again, against my better judgment, I stayed. In another cultural intrigue, Mdokera asked me not to tell anyone that his mother had passed away. "In our culture, we need to first take the body to the chief and let other elders know before anyone else."

Despite assurances that I would be taken care of, for dinner I had only a piece of uncooked corn (plain corn, not sweet corn), and I didn't get to sleep in the tree because nobody prepared it. After 'dinner', Mdokera materialized again with a crisis. In his culture, when someone dies, you need to use perfume to perform whatever ritual it was that is performed when someone dies.

And the marathon walk of hell...

Next day, I climbed a mountain. What drew me to Chitimba in the first place was the possibility of walking from there up the mountains to Livingstonia, a town founded in honour of19th century explorer and missionary David Livingstone (where the term 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume' originated,) and to see a waterfall. Have to say that I was not truly prepared for what 50 kms, half uphill, half in torrential rain and mud, meant. My feet are blistered and my hips, quads and hamstrings are still killing me. About halfway up the mountain I caught up to a group of 7 travelers who were on an overland tour from Nairobi, Kenya, to Cape Town S. Africa. They turned out to be good fun and we had some laughs along the way. The town itself was interesting, as it looked like a very proper British Victorian village. At one point I thought I might be in a scene out of 'Anne of Green Gables'.

because I can't stop ramblin'!!!!

So where am I now? In another little piece of paradise and backpacker haven called Nkhata bay, another 100 km or so south of Chitimba. The view is stunning, but alas because the internet here is worthless, I'm going to have to wait until at least tomorrow to get pictures up. Last night I stayed in a dive that topped even the Youth Hostel in Casablanca and the Jambo Guest House in Zanzibar, which I didn't think was possible. The room and sheets were so musty and covered with sand that I couldn't sleep on my side, lest my head gets too close to the pillow and I start gagging. Thank God for a sleeping bag liner. Needless to say, I got out of there first thing this morning and am staying in a much nicer place!

Life is good. I've read some amazing books lately, including Richard Branson's (Head of the Virgin Group) autobiography. This guy is my new hero - he's a man of incredibly integrity, and who does what's right and not expedient, but who still makes mistakes and admits it. Someone who came from humble beginnings but who has had more experiences in his lifetime than most people have in 10. Someone who is incredibly successful because he was driven by a passion and wasn't afraid to take big risks. The man loves life and his family and hasn't lost sight of that by taking business too serious or becoming greedy. All qualities that I admire and desire and if I live my life half as well as him I will be happy. If you haven't figured it out, I highly recommend his book.

Finally, I'm getting very excited that Lesley will be on a plane to join me in about 11 days. I can't wait to see her...