Karonga to Mzuzu

One of my favourite groups in the early 1970s was an Afrobeat progenitor from Ghana called Osibisa. One of their tunes, Woyaya, off the album of the same title seemed to be emblematic of how Nellie and I were facing life. It was entitled: We are going.


WE are going. Heaven knows where we are going.
We know we will
We will get there. Heaven knows how we will get there.
We know we will.
It may be hard, we know and the road will be muddy and rough,
But we will get there.
Heaven knows how we will get there.
We know we will.


I still enjoy the song and here I sit in my 7^th decade of life still singing it with as much conviction as I did in the exciting times of the 1970s.
The beginning of this phase of our writing and research brought the song back to mind as we struggled to bring the Lion of Kasoba back to life and become our beast of burden. Unfortunately, it was a good idea in principle, but has since become a burden.
We have finally arrived in Mzuzu at the wonderful house of Makhumbira and Rachel Munthali and begun work on the research intensively. However, what should have been a four hour trip from Karonga to Mzuzu with a reliable car took 2 days in the Lion which in the end failed to make the distance and had to be abandoned at the South Rukuru bridge.
Nonetheless, we got a fair bit done and our adventure continues to unfold. The time together has proven invaluable to allow us to share and unveil new insights into why the project is so important to complete. More on that when the book comes out. Back to the trip.
By the time, Joseph and George had got the diesel switch up to speed it was mid afternoon on Monday. Rather than return to Kasoba to begin the trip next day from there, we decided to press on and get at least an hour down the road toward Mzuzu to Chitimba Camp, (www.chitimba.com) a backpacker haven on the lake. It is a beautiful setting just below the Nyika massive on the crest of which sits the other worldly Livingstonia Mission. I knew Kapote would be enchanted by its simplicity and the hospitality of the Dutch couple, Eddy and Helen who run it. The Lion got us there without a hitch and we let it have a well earned rest for the night.
That evening over supper we were talking with Eddy and he asked Kapote if he would like to have his eyes checked by an optician from Holland who had come to Malawi with her diagnostic kit of lenses and 700 eye glasses to dispense. Arrangements were made and the next morning, Chantal Huisman gave him a good examination and a pair of heavy duty glasses that allow him somewhat improved vision.

We set off to complete the trip to Mzuzu and the Lion immediately began to show its age. The first part of the trip is up about 20 kilometres up the Rift Valley escarpment rising over 1000 metres in that distance. Normally an exciting enough part of the trip, but even more eventful in the Lion. The brakes became more and more difficult to apply, but we were already on our way up and that could be sorted out in Mzuzu. Half way up is Mchenga coal mine, a blight on the geography, but just as we passed the mine entrance, we started to lose power, electricity and then finally with a clatter, the radiator began to overheat. The fan belt had jumped off the pulley. Fortunately, at the mine are the big flatbed coal trucks with their driver-mechanics and a pair who were waiting for theirs to be loaded. They came to the rescue and in no time we were back on the road. This time travelling very slowly to keep the revs down and avoid taxing the fan belt. Another 10 kilometres, we reached the brand new Japanese built bridge over the South Rukuru river, where we planned to top up the water in the radiator. But that was the Lion's last gasp.

It burst a water hose with an explosive sound and it would move no more. There we sat till the end of the day waiting for Berllings Sikanda, a friend, to pick us up on his way back to Mzuzu from Karonga in his nice new Mercedes RV. So when we did arrive, we arrived in style.
Our prolonged visit, to the tiny trading centre of South Rukuru gave us close up insight into the great difficulties facing Malawi's rural people and the complicated sociology of poverty. On one side of the road, there are a couple of tiny shops selling all the same things, and a tiny grass sheltered shebeen for Chibuku the local cheap millet beer. The other side of the highway has a long grass roofed shed providing shade for about 30 people. They are sitting with plates and basins of bananas and cassava roots for sale. The place is famous for this produce because of the proximity to the river and the cheap prices, so trucks, cars and minibuses all stop to allow the passengers to stock up with cheap produce as they travel between Karonga and Mzuzu. Each vehicle that stops raises a cloud of dust and is swarmed by women and a couple of men trying to get a few Kwacha for the next meal. Each buyer tries to beat the villagers' already low prices down even lower. In front of the shops, the young men, almost all school leavers, watch the show and fiddle with their cell phones. They are above the fray when it comes to working like the women and the older folks. That is what the perverse colonial education system has taught them.

The dusty little porch of Mrs Manda's Rukuru Shopping Centre gave us refuge from the sun and became our workplace as we waited for Mr Sikanda to collect us in the evening. We sketched out the chapters for the book and made notes about several people we wanted to include posthumously.