Transportation

Thank you for the questions, I will write about transportation today and soon address the spoken word and tunes of Malawi questions.

Not many people have cars in Malawi, since it is still developing.  When people do make some money, automobiles are the best investment they can make towards more income, because once you have a car you can use it as a taxi and drive people around all day long, typically on a fixed route.

The cities have minibuses, otherwise called matolas, which are known as minivans in America.  These have one driver and anywhere between one and five people with the responsibilities of advertising by screaming at passerby’s, negotiating fees, and shoving and posturing with other taximen.  Speedometers and fuel gauges never work, the vehicles make heinous noises and spew nauseous fumes and are typically packed with up to fifteen passengers, goats and chickens.  They are the standard of transportation within and between cities.  You can get off anytime you want and be picked up on the side of the road very easily, but you can’t do a thing about the level of comfort or when you leave or how many times you stop en route.

Another option is biketaxis.  Over the back tire of a single speed bike is a seat, complete with handles and places for your feet, so at first you are surprised at how secure you feel.  Usually young men, the drivers are usually friendly and open to negotiate.  Sometimes they negotiate poorly.

Recently I was in a Southern Malawian city and with two friends, and we had to get across town quickly.  I found some bike taxis and asked them how much.  “One thousand.”  “Good bye.”  “Okay, fifty.”  This was a terrible price for the driver, so I jumped at it.

Outside of the urban areas and off of the main roads, back onto the dirt paths, many different forms of transportation will to take you into the main hub of an area and connect you to neighboring villages.  Bikes, walking, and the privately owned taxi-vehicles, giant flatbed trucks among them, will take you where you need to go most of the time.

My village is lucky to have a man that owns a Land Rover making three trips to the local city and back to the village every day.  I’m not sure how much money he makes, but I do know that he allows our village to function at a relatively high level—information, goods, and people move between the city and the village because of this man’s efforts.  And he has a son who has my name.

To go to the main city, I can ride a bicycle for two hours or talk to this man and pay two hundred kwatcha, a dollar and change, to go to town.  Though most people are cash strapped, if you have the reasons or the tastes to go into the city you can probably afford to pay this price.

Because of family ties, inherited rights to land, language barriers, and lack of exposure to the full array of options, many people do not leave their small network of villages and live similarly to their grandparents and next to their grandparents.  If you are lucky enough to be exposed to English as a child (even in educated families this is not assumed), to go to a school that is not besot with corruption or lack of resources, and have a desire to work hard and leave the village, you can pass the secondary school exit exams and usually find a job somewhere.  If these few things happen, you can illegally move to another country, become a taximan, or even grow your hair out and sell bad art to tourists on the beach.  More education, more options.

Those that do well on their exit exams have the opportunity to go to college, but almost no one can afford to.  College graduates become civil servants, and these people are placed all over the country without regard to preference or background.  Teachers, nurses, agricultural technicians are placed in rural areas throughout the country and constitute the majority of the middle class.  Though these professionals are not highly paid, they are educated, have traveled more widely, have a steady income and are more likely to speak a variety of languages.  You meet these people in every village, and especially on transportation.

Personally, there are some aspects of transportation that are wonderful and some that make me want to stab myself in the eye.  You can ride in the back of a truck on a beautiful day and watch the landscape roll by, or you can be in a position that slowly tears your tendons as someone sits on your knees and drives your feet in the other direction, a babies butt held in your face, and smelly drunkards sweating learing and talking about Jesus.

Always, it is surprising what truly gets your blood up.  The other day I paid for the premium busline, the one that leaves on time and guarantees you a comfortable seat all to yourself.  This one even had televisions playing music videos.  Unfortunately, they were playing a Celine Dion video collection.  Fourteen tracks.  All Celine.  People singing along.  One of the most painful moments of my experience here, so upset and completely unable to do anything about it.

It passed, but in the future I will opt for the truckbed.