10 July
Posted By Sika on July 13, 2007
I went for a hike up the path behind the house I’m staying in. Instead of going to the right, up the tall peak, I stayed straight—largely because I figured I would reduce the risk of getting lost despite my propensity for doing exactly that. Up the mountain I found a small village and a small ridge thingie that looked as though it would have a good view. I was impressed with myself both because I asked one of the villagers how to get up to the ridge, which is not easy for me to do, and I also asked in Chichewa, which didn’t help the difficulty rating. One young woman with her baby strapped to her back took me up. While I was scrambling up the granite and thanking my lucky stars for my sticky-soled hiking shoes, she slipped off her flip-flops and went up barefooted. She took me to where I could see the M1 (the main road in Malawi; commonly called “The Tarmac”). I tried to tell her that I could make it back down on my own, but she obviously believed that there was no way the crazy azungu could find her way back down and wouldn’t go down until I agreed to go down with her.
She finally believed my protests that I would be fine when I could see the corn fields that we cut through from her village to the hill (I did get a tiny bit misdirected in the corn fields later, but don’t tell her that). Since the big reason I had gone for the hike was to find a quiet spot to be alone for a bit; to be able to breathe and talk on the phone and just get rid of the feeling of constantly trespassing in someone else’s space.
Have I mentioned that Malawi is the most densely populated country in Africa? Just because I wanted space didn’t mean that it was available to me. Although nobody else came up to my rock, there were people gathering firewood and harvesting the corn and doing who knows what else. But still, that rock was the quietest and most alone that I’ve been able to get in quite some time. This is a beautiful area. I hope I get to stay.
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