by Aaron Barlow
I jump out of bed, thankful for the morning coolness flowing over me, knowing that, in three hours, the sun will beat down and I will have to take refuge from its rays. The mornings have always been my favorite, not only for the gracious breeze and cool air, but for the sounds and sights of my village coming to life.
My mornings are all the same. I lace up my shoes, take a gulp of water, and set off. I pass several of my neighbors, all of whom have been up for hours already, preparing breakfast and lunch, washing the children, cleaning the house, and preparing to set off to the fields—it is the rainy season, and everyone has a field to tend to. As I run, I wave hello and pass my morning greetings to my neighbors—“Aw ni Sogoma,” I shout as I jog by—“Good morning” in my village’s local language of Joula. We rush through the greeting ritual.
At this point the odd looks have subsided, and most people just know me as the crazy American girl that “faires le sport.” Running is never done unless one is trying to get away from something, or in playing soccer...and most certainly not done that often by a girl.
I continue on my path through the mango groves teeming with ripe fruit. Their scent fills the air, and I have to resist ripping one off a tree and eating it right there.
I don’t know if I will ever be able to buy fruits from a supermarket again.
I wave to the villagers and children who are already in the grove, picking mangos for sale in the market. I pass as the children make their way to school in the morning, carrying their little rice-sack backpacks as they bound along. I dodge the various cattle, goats, and pigs along my route. Passing the river, I can see the dark outlines of the hippos as they float lazily amongst the marsh grasses, and I continue on into the rice fields. The view is spectacular, and a far cry from nine months ago when I was staring at the New York skyline from my office window. Oh, how much my life has changed in such a short time.
As amazing as all of this is, it is the end of my run that I look forward to the most. As I crest the hill out of the mango grove, the familiar cry pierces the air. There is Brahim, my two-year-old neighbor.
“Madame! Madame!” he cries as he sees me come over the hill. He darts toward me from his courtyard, his little legs carrying him as fast as he can go. His eyes are lit up, and there is a smile on his face that could light the world. Normally we shake hands, high five, and I pat him on the head...but today is different. As he runs up I put my hands out and up he jumps giving me the biggest bear hug that he can muster. He has been so shy up to this point, and his affection surprises me. Most children—having never seen a white person—howl at the sight of a “fantasme” (ghost), but not Brahim.
“Bonjour,” he says, the only word of French he knows. He props on my hip and I jog him back to his mother. He pops down to the ground, gives me a hug and then runs back to his house.
I wave goodbye and finish up my run, just a little more energized than the moment before. Happy...content...his hug is one of the highlights of my day...and something to look forward to every time I crest that hill to make my way home.
Stephanie Gottlieb, who spent two years in Burkina Faso (2006-08), currently works as the Communications Director for a non-profit that serves the African Immigrant community, African Services Committee.
There Will Be Mud
Bruce Kahn
Getting from one place to another has always proven one of the centers of the Peace Corps experience.
Looking back forty years, I find the most vivid memories of our Peace Corps service in Malawi to be the times Pam and I spent traveling. Hitching rides from our town in the middle of the country to Blantyre, nearly sixty kilometers away; taking the day bus to visit other Volunteers; and sitting in the crowded night compost bus that carried the overnight mail (“cum post”), wedged in amongst the chickens and a variety of small and pungent livestock. And yes, the few times that we hitchhiked—me with a broken arm and Pam seven or eight months’ pregnant—to visit the Peace Corps doctor.
The ride from Ntcheu to Blanytre was dicey, kilometer after kilometer of bumpy dirt road (or wet road, depending on the season). Mix in one Volunteer with a broken arm and another within a mere month or two of giving birth—you get the idea. Such were the joys and travails of getting around in Malawi.
Being young and optimistic kept us going. Eager to find respite from our first term of secondary school teaching, we decided to venture out to two neighboring countries for a little rest and recreation. We’d meet up with another young married couple in Blantyre and set out on our first train ride. Our plans were ambitious. We were going to ride the train into Mozambique (still a Portuguese colony), spend a few days at the seaside resort of Estoril, aka Rhodesia-by-the-Sea. From there we’d hitchhike to Salisbury, Rhodesia (soon to be off-limits to Americans), and take the train back to Blantyre—all before school resumed in January.
Forty years ago, Blantyre was a bustling, cosmopolitan city serving as the de facto capital of the country. Nearby Zomba was the official capital then, but Blantyre was the hub of Malawi’s trade and finance. It had a number of good restaurants, two British-style bookshops, a supermarket, several better than average hotels, a lively old market with delectable street foods, and a drive-in theater. It even boasted a bohemian café with a rumbling, snorting cappuccino machine. I still remember the heady combination of coffee and spicy samosas—a unique blend of Europe and Asia in Africa
We stocked up on food to get us through our twenty-six-hour trip. Bread, cheese, nuts, cold drinks, and whatever fruit we could safely eat without having to wash them thoroughly, bananas always the safest choice. From Blantyre we made our way by bus to the nearby town of Limbe, which would be our starting-off point. Limbe, in sharp contrast to bustling Blantyre, was a sleepy little place.
Besides a smattering of government offices and schools, Limbe was home to Malawi Railways. The railway system, a relic of the British colonial era, was sturdy, somewhat slow, but usually reliable.
That day, it proved to be anything but reliable. While waiting, we heard disappointing news: trains were having trouble crossing the Malawi/Mozambique border. Now that the rainy season had begun, the dirt was turning to mud. The low-lying southern district bore the biggest brunt of the rains. “When will the train to Portuguese arrive?” I asked a conductor in my best Chichewa. “Soon, bambo,” he said. “Soon.”
Soon turned out to be six hours later. Meanwhile, we waited among our fellow passengers. The Malawians took the long wait in stride. The men squatted near the platform, smoking and chattering to pass the time. The women and children gathered in small groups, laughing and enjoying each other’s company, the children often glancing our way, not sure what to make of us. In time, the train chugged into view.
Settling into second-class seats, we were eager to set off on our journey.
The train ride to the border was unremarkable. The train stopped occasionally. As it did so, local vendors lined the platforms, selling their wares; children stood waving or holding their hands out in hopes of getting a few pennies from the azungu, these strange white people staring back at them; and women crowded around, many to bid farewell to husbands or brothers bound for the mines in South Africa.
In the heat of December, the farther south we traveled, the more exotic the vegetation became. Malawi has no jungles to speak of: the wildlife is mostly limited to the northern part of the country. Yet the low altitude and the verdant, tropical setting made it seem as if we had landed in an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. At the time, everything we were doing seemed like an adventure, but we were content to read, play cards, and nap while the rickety train rolled toward the border.
As we approached the border, things literally came to a halt. By this time the train had moved from the lush countryside to something resembling a muddy, overgrown swamp. Any minute, we thought, the train would start moving again and we’d be on our way. As time passed and the heat became more oppre
ssive, we saw our fellow passengers getting off the train, smoking their cigarettes, and talking to one another. Something was going on, but we didn’t know what it was.
In time, the conductor appeared. “Moni, bambo,” he greeted each of the men politely. And “Moni, mai,” he greeted the women. A bridge just across the border, he told us in British-inflected English with bits of Chichewa mixed in, had washed out. The train couldn’t go any further that night. We could sleep on the train, and the next morning another train would come up to meet us on the other side. We would need to leave the train in the morning, taking our katundu with us, walking across the bridge, and getting on the other train. No problem.
We asked the conductor about getting sheets and mosquito nets. And, oh yes, about food, as well. Sorry, he said, no sheets, no mosquito nets, and no food. The four of us looked at each other and settled in for a long night of stifling heat, high humidity, no food, flies, and what seemed like every mosquito in Southern Africa.
Throughout the night, we could hear babies crying, men walking through the train trying to get some relief from the heat, women talking just loud enough to hear, but too fast for us to understand. Did any of us get to sleep? Probably not. Were we sore, unhappy, hungry, and mosquito-bitten? No doubt. At the time it seemed that we would never survive, but we did, and have laughed about it many times since.
As I think back on it, this was just one night of discomfort for us. For many in Southern Malawi, the presence of flies and mosquitoes was a daily fact of life. Flies carried diseases that caused blindness, and mosquitoes, of course, malaria. (This was many years before HIV and AIDS decimated this country of extraordinary beauty and its equally beautiful people.)
The next morning, we carried our bags across the bridge and slogged through the mud, stopping only to swat flies and squish mosquitoes, for a good thirty minutes to reach the train that was waiting for us. We were anxious to move on. The train did just that after a while and then stopped again at the first town in Mozambique. Its name escapes me now, but we were there long enough to wash up as best we could, eat at a charming little Portuguese restaurant, walk around the town, and prepare for the rest of our trip.
When we finally arrived at our destination, we had spent fifty-two hours on the train. I was never so happy to see a clean bed and a bathroom with a shower. The mosquito bites finally disappeared, and we spent a few days relaxing in the sun. We felt alive and happy, and we were determined to enjoy the somewhat decadent lifestyle of the Rhodesian elite, even if only for a short time. These four young Peace Corps Volunteers had made it through the first leg of this trip.
The rest of that vacation was not quite so eventful. We hitchhiked to Salisbury, the four of us in two cars that were traveling together. The Rhodesians who picked us up took us to their home, gave us dinner, and took us to a hotel. With only weeks to go before the U.S. closed its consulate in Salisbury, we had little time for sightseeing. We were fortunate enough to visit one of the most beautiful sights in Africa, the awesome Victoria Falls, as well the ruins of Zimbabwe.
Except for those spectacular sights, Rhodesia proved to be an oppressive place. After living in an independent black African country, albeit one with a one-party dictatorship, the vileness of apartheid seemed all too real.
We opted to fly back to Blantyre on Air Rhodesia, wary of another train ride. When we returned to Malawi, Pam and I to Ntcheu, and our friends to Mulanje, it was like going back home.
Our students and fellow teachers wanted to know all about our trip. People in town greeted us with smiles, and the shopkeeper at the town store welcomed our return when we rode our bikes there to buy cold drinks.
And what of hitching rides to Blantyre, one of us with a broken arm and the other seven or eight months’ pregnant? My broken arm is another story for another time, but suffice it to say that our daughter Barbara was born about nine months after our train trip.
After his stint as a PCV in Malawi from 1969-71, Bruce Kahn went on to teach ESL in Malawi, American Samoa, Iran, and at Georgia Tech. He has been a technical editor at IBM in Atlanta since 1984. When not editing technical documents, Kahn is an avid crossword puzzler. He has attended the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament since 1997 and has played the on-air puzzle with Will Shortz and Lianne Hansen on NPR’s Morning Edition Sunday.
The Hammam in Rabat
Shauna Steadman
Getting down to basics in Morocco.
Rabat was only a few days old to me. I was working up the courage to leave the security of the training-site hotel and venture out alone into the streets of djellaba-clad men and veiled women in Morocco’s capital. I needed to call my children and grandchildren to let them know that I had arrived safely in the country that was to be my home base for the next twenty-seven months.
There was no phone at the house of my host family. There were, however, strange beds, loud prayer calls five times a day, several pastel-colored chickens, and lots of foods that I had never eaten before. The chicks were le Eid gifts. The food, it seemed, was for startling my palate. I was roommates with Jackie, a fellow PCVer from Puerto Rico who spoke French well. She was my language savior.
Around the corner, Kumi was in the same fix as I, an older Volunteer with minimal language skills. Our host families were related somehow, so we often spent time together. The second week in country, our “hosties” decided we needed to visit the hammam, since there was no way to adequately bathe in the houses.
It was an 80-degree day in late September, in Africa. We left our houses wrapped in American street clothes, Moroccan djellaba, veils, heavy coats, scarves, and we carried towels on our arms. We were told that we would catch cold after the bath if not well prepared. We carried baby-scaled plastic stools, plastic buckets, soaps, shampoos made out of some kind of tree sap, scrubbers and extra underwear. And trepidation.
A traditional Arabic hammam is a communal building with a dressing hall and three rooms. There are no dressing stalls. The rooms get progressively hotter as you slip and slide further into the abyss. Around the perimeter of each room there is an iron pipe with spigots that dispense cold water every two feet. The pipe is about twenty-four inches from the floor, so you have to sit. The hot water is poured from another spigot into the bucket that you bring with you.
You eliminate any unnecessary items in the dressing room, arriving at the first room naked. Genders are given opposing days for bathing, except for boys under the age of seven or so, who come with their mothers.
It didn’t take Kumi and me long to understand that this was going to be an adventure. Kumi is Korean: olive skin, brown eyes, and black hair. I am Scandinavian: ice white skin, blue eyes, and red hair everywhere. I definitely felt the brown eyes of every Arabic African upon me. There are not many Scandinavians in Morocco.
Turns out that there weren’t enough stools or buckets to go around for our group of four adults and several children. Kumi and I would have to sit directly on the cement floor. I envisioned all sorts of exotic infections in the making.
I ended up in the dunce seat, manning the filling of the bucket position near the one “hot” spigot. The room was packed and the buckets were coming at me like Lucy on the chocolate conveyor belt. Oooooh good.
I remembered gym class showers during junior high with little fondness. This, too, was turning out to be the mother of embarrassment. Our host families and their relatives were getting quite a kick out of this situation. Kumi was just trying to get herself washed up so we could get OUT of there. AND the buckets kept coming.
I have sailed a bit and I understand water dynamics a little, so I invented a game. I could use the hydroplane of the soaked floor to “sail” the filled, rounded-bottom buckets to the prospective bather, thus eliminating the line of inquiring eyes standing over me. I began a sort of ice curling technique that quickly caught on.
Kumi and I soon found that our new friends had forgotten
that we were strangers and were enjoying the game. In fact, our ranks had swollen, drawing from the population in the other rooms. Soon, the laughter was dispelling any myths about “them” and “us.”
I was able to get washed up and “spa-ed” back together. In the process, I learned some culture, broke some taboos, and lightened up a tense situation. Our bodies were steaming when we left the hammam, and our hearts were full. Still, I never visited the hammams much after that. I learned how to take sponge baths at home until I got an apartment at my site in Essaouira. My first month there, I made a shower out of plastic tubing and a plastic tablecloth material that rose in splendor over the outlet of my Turkish toilet.
Shauna Steadman served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco from 2003-05.
Straight Razors in Heaven
Paul Negley, Jr.
New experiences can also be small experiences—but that makes them no less satisfying.
Louis Armstrong says in a song that, when he dies, he wants to be buried in straight lace shoes and a Stetson hat, with a twenty-dollar gold piece in his watch chain. He did not ask to be shaved. What the Great Satchmo knew, and I just learned, is that there are straight razors in heaven. So put on your best clothes, get all pretty, and get shaved by the blessed.
I got a haircut yesterday, in what would be an old-fashioned barber shop back in the United States. Here, it is the only way to get one’s hair cut. The place has the feel of an all-guys sports bar with long black leather sofas and cigarettes.
A big jolly fellow with crooked eyes greeted me. He was polite and gave me an excellent haircut. He even complimented me on my hair, saying that no one in Morocco could know how to cut it except him. I believe him, too. This was the first good haircut I’ve gotten in Morocco! He said, “No trimmers, scissors only, is the way to make it look nice.”