It's been 59 days, 5 hotels and 3 cities since I began this blog. It's incredible to me to think of what I have encountered, experienced, researched, and tasted in this time and even more incredible that it is coming to an end. I won't go so far as to say it has been life-changing, because frankly, what can or cannot be considered life-changing is too difficult to pinpoint. Rather, I will simply say it has been an experience, and one I will never forget.
As you can imagine, the final push over the last week has been an up-and-down roller coaster of emotions and work. This past weekend I: went to a football match with Julius; met a controversial painter and his mistress; played congas with a live band; shared multiple dinners with my various bosses and their families; prepared and presented a full data collection summary report to the Save the Children Country Directors; met a German doctor, a Belgian steel contractor, and a Mauritanian singer (all at separate times); and slept in the guest house of a rich British heiress. Every time I go to write about one of these moments, something else happens that demands my attention, and prevents me from sharing anything too detailed here in Nthano. But I assure you, all is being recorded in some fashion and will be (fingers crossed) materials for a forthcoming book.
What I will share today is a quick story about my travels to Lilongwe, good and bad, and perhaps one of the most shocking newspaper headlines I have ever read.
Air Malawi Grounded
It is Wednesday morning in Blantyre. Rain has soaked the countryside all night and the dreariness has spilled over into the early hours. I am sitting on the Chez Makay porch alone, waiting for the lone chef to bring me my coffee as I stare blankly at the front page of the Malawian Newspaper - The Nation. "Air Malawi Grounded" it reads, describing the sudden shutdown of the one domestic airline that operates within the country. On a normal day, such news would be important to read; both to be aware of what is happening in country and to give myself the opportunity to be conversant on the topic with my colleagues. Today however, is not a normal day. Today, I am flying on Air Malawi.
To be frank, the headline wasn't a total shock. The reason for this was due to what had happened just 12 hours prior to my first sip of coffee on that dreary morning. Originally, my flight was due to leave Blantyre from Lilongwe on Thursday, with my international flight through Ethiopia taking off Friday afternoon. While this gave plenty of time to make the connecting flights, it eliminated any possibility of meeting with Save the Children officials in Lilongwe and thus, sharing any update on what I had been working on over the past few months. Seeing this as an unacceptable consequence, SC officials quickly worked to move up my departure date from Blantyre to Tuesday, which would provide ample time to get settled in the capital, meet with the necessary officials, and comfortably make the flight home.
I never made that flight.
When Tuesday rolled around, after a final glorious weekend in Blantyre and one final workday in the Blantyre office, I was frantic. I hadn't really done a good job of packing (how is it nothing fits on the return trip? It's like the anti-Mrs. Poppins Suitcase effect) and I was racing against time and last minute errands. I had called my driver, Nelson, to pick me up earlier than one would usually need to get to the airport, just to ensure I had all the loose ends in town tied up and the proverbial ducks in a row. I said my goodbyes to Makay and The Madame, left a generous tip to share among the staff, and set off into town, four bags packed and with constant anxious glances at the dashboard clock.
I needn't have worried about the time, as Nelson (Julius was busy) navigated the back roads around Blantyre perfectly, avoiding all the usual traffic that had a tendency to make even the shortest of trips excruciatingly long. As we pulled up to the airport unloading zone, I sighed, thinking of how few hours I had left in the Warm Heart of Africa and what an amazing experience it had been. I immediately flashed back to my arrival at this very airport some five weeks ago, the drive into town, and the first impressions of one of the three cities I would be calling home. It all seemed like a blur, and I found myself wishing that somehow I had seen more, done more, experience more than I had in the short time available to me, but then quickly dismissed such notions as foolish. I wouldn't take back anything I did while here in Malawi and knew I was leaving with no regrets. A good feeling, needless to say.
I was snapped out of my mini-daze by Nelson's slamming of the trunk and quickly hopped out of the car to assist him in lifting my behemoth sets of luggage. The airport seemed empty and dark. The only people milling about were a few guards and airport workers, standing just inches from the front door, peering at both Nelson and I struggling with what could easily be the luggage equivalent of the Griswald's African Vacation. We nodded as we passed by them and they returned in kind, not moving out of their respective chairs or uttering a sound.
Once inside the airport doors, we were immediately greeted by Airport staff who directed me to put my bags on the x-ray conveyer belt to my right. Nelson went first, grunting under the combined weight of my largest bag and the force of gravity, surely silently cursing Julius for being busy at that moment. After all four bags were loaded into the x-ray machine, I was prompted to move to the other side to collect my bags and commit to further inspection. As I did, I looked around the airport and once again, noticed how few people there were. Clearly I was early, but was I the only one on the flight today? Odd.
"What's in the red bag?" I was suddenly asked by the gentleman behind the glowing computer monitor.
"Uh, a number of things - curios (the term for small purchased handmade gifts/souvenirs), some clothes, a pair of shoes." I responded quickly, trying to remember what was in each of my massive suitcases.
"There seem to be some bottles?" said the glowing gentleman quzzically.
"Oh, right. And bottles of Nali. Five of them" I said, speaking of the painfully hot sauce I had purchased earlier that day.
"Ok, no problem" said the glow.
The first guard who had directed us was now standing next to Nelson and I, and turned to both of us. "Which of you are flying today?" He asked sternly.
I raised my hand and told him it was just me.
"You are not flying today?" The burly guard asked Nelson.
"No sir, I am just his driver" said Nelson, gesturing his thumb towards me.
"Well then you cannot be in here. This is for passengers only."
Nelson nodded, and turned to me extending his hand. He wished me a safe flight and a safe return to the US and asked me to promise to contact him if/when I ever returned to Malawi. I assured him I would, shook his hand and watched him exit the airport, get back into his car and drive away.
I looked at the bags in front of me, wishing that somehow I could find a way to dump one of them and not miss the contents inside. I took a deep breath, muttered something to myself that was both incoherent and most likely unprintable in a family-rated blog, and reached down to grab the first of the bags. As I was slinging it over my shoulder I began to look around and see where I needed to proceed to next.
"Where do I go now?" I asked the burly guard.
"For what?" he replied in his standard monotone.
"For the flight?" I responded, picking up the second bag and adding it to my already aching shoulder.
"What flight?" he responded, again with the inflection of an Apple Tandy computer.
Feeling as though I was standing at the precipice of an Abbot and Costello routine, I cut to the chase and explained I was flying to Lilongwe today on Air Malawi, taking off in just over an hour, and was looking to see where I go next to check my baggage.
"There are no flights today, sir" said Burly, remaining completely emotionless.
In retrospect, I cannot recall how long I stood there, bags slung over my shoulder staring in the face of a man a foot taller and what seemed like a foot wider than me. Realistically, it had to be no more than a few seconds, but, in flashback movie-time, it seems like it was a dozen or so minutes. The preceding events leading up to the statement "There are no flights today, sir" ran through my mind, complete with a dramatic orchestral soundtrack. Driving through dusty shortcuts, pulling up to the airport and reminiscing, jumping out to lift the luggage, the guards' nods, the x-ray machine, the Nali question, the sending away of my driver. It replayed in my head quickly, and confusingly.
"What do you mean there are no flights today?" I finally responded, never leaving the eyes of Burly.
"Air Malawi is grounded," he replied, deadpanned "we have no planes here today."
"Then why did we just do all this?!?" I replied, with a tone boarding on the hysterical as I made sweeping gestures indicating the x-ray machine. "And why did you send my driver away?!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
I continued: "And you, you, you asked me if I was flying today?!? WHY?!?"
He shrugged again, looked over my shoulder to the darkened counters behind me, and then asked, "Are you flying today?"
My actual response: "HUH?"
"Are you flying today?" he repeated, as though my confusion was auditory in nature.
"Am I flying today? Are you serious? On what? You said you have no planes?!" I responded emphatically, my arm motions causing one of the bags to slip off my shoulder and land on the ground in a thud.
"I thought maybe you brought your own plane" he responded matter-of-factly, with what was now becoming a trademark shoulder shrug.
(And now, I have to give myself credit for the next response. While this whole event was maddening, frustrating, confounding, and left me generally dazed, confused, and most importantly, stranded, I, for the first time ever, gave a proper movie line response to a new situation. In all my conversations, in all my encounters, I have never said anything that I felt was a proper movie-moment line, until this response. Typically my responses border on the dull and occasionally sneak up to the mildly entertaining, but this one had just the right mix of actual, Chandler Bing-style humor.)
"My own plane??" I responded incredulously "Well that's just....that's just....actually, that's pretty cool you thought that, but NO, I guess I ran out of room to pack a plane."
The rest of the story, I am afraid, will have to wait until you either see me in person, or I get around to writing more. Essentially, I returned to Chez Makay, whereupon I stayed in the guest house of the British heiress (long story short - Makay's place was now fully booked and the heiress lives next door), and awoke the next morning to coffee, a dreary sky and a slightly unsurprising headline. As a result of Air Malawi being shut down, a charter plane had been brought to Blantyre and was shuttling displaced travelers such as myself to and from Lilongwe, honoring the original Air Malawi ticket. Once at the airport, the lone plane was, of course, delayed multiple times for 'unknown' reasons (hint - a fuel tanker pulled up to the plane minutes before we finally boarded two hours after the flight was to originally take off), but I eventually made it to Lilongwe and am now writing this whole story from the porch of yet another beautiful hotel. Friday's flight home is on Ethiopian Air, so the grounding of Air Malawi should not affect my schedule, but let's keep our fingers crossed anyways.
Unless, of course, I find a way to bring my own plane before then.
Cheers.
