Lessons in Patience

9 July 2007

I’ve almost been here a month and over the last few weeks there have been a number of things that have taught me much more patience than I have at home. Never again (at least not in the first few weeks that I’m home) will I curse at my computer while waiting an extra 5 seconds for an internet page to load – here I’ll demurely wait 5 minutes for my inbox to load. I also have a new found respect for time and appointments. There seems to be two types of time. One is according to the clock and when someone says let’s meet at noon, you both arrive within 10 minutes of the arranged meeting time. The other type of time is AT or African Time, which means that the person you have arranged a meeting or pick-up with comes, as far as I can tell, whenever they feel good and ready or whenever the spirit moves them.

Evasiveness is also pervasive here and I am attempting to bring a sense of calm within when I encounter this – which is in many interactions. For example, in the market the price of things goes well beyond the friendly bargaining that is a part of most cultures, there are many types of prices: there is the price the seller has in mind for a fellow Malawian, there is the price he/she has in mind for the azungus, there is the price you arrive at together after bargaining, and then there is the price that the item should be but that you never arrive at because no one will ever tell you if there is indeed a set price, but he/she will look at you as if you utterly failed to read their mind.

The public transportation system (or lack thereof) has also instilled in me a sense of fortitude and serenity (albeit temporary) with which to approach my travels. When you know that the ride is going to entail:

• waiting at a bus depot for any amount of time (maybe 10 minutes maybe over an hour) until the bus fills up to the satisfaction of the 15 year old kid manning the door and taking tickets;
• being besieged with any number of good thrust into your face and pleas to buy things you have no desire for (although the stops in the rural areas are good as you can find great produce). For example yesterday I was offered a comb, a child’s mini toy electronic piano, a green belt, toothbrushes, very bad Jesus art, eggs, and fried frogs, in additional to the usual soda and breadgoods;
• cramming 20+ people, live chickens, bags of grain beans, dried fish, suitcases, buckets, sugarcane and extra fuel in a van designed to hold 15 max;
• you may end up holding someone’s coughing child, a live chicken in a plastic bag (this I did yesterday), a few pounds of groundnuts, or have someone who hasn’t had the luxury of bathing in the last couple of weeks fall asleep on your shoulder;
• enduring 2 or more hours or exhaust and fuel fumes filling the van because the fuel and exhaust lines are always broken;
• careening over “roads” with no guardrails, no shoulders, more potholes and bumps than continuous pavement, and crumbling tarmac at speeds so unsafe that all you can do is pray to a higher power and resign yourself to the fact that if its your time to go, its your time;
• stopping every half hour at a police roadblock so the Malawian police can pretend to look for drugs or something else on the bus ( I think this is so the police have something to do in the rural districts - Malawi’s version of the of the New Deal Public Works and the Civilian Conversation Corps;
• and entrusting your life to a driver who more often than not looks like he is twelve years old;

There is no reason to devote one ounce of energy to getting impatient with the process. Let’s just hope that when I return I can retain some sense of this tranquility. Here are a few pics, one of friends on a minibus that was fairly empty (I can never get a good picture of the insanely full ones because I can’t ever feel my feet or reach down to my bag to get my camera; a couple of the scene outside the windows as the swarm comes up to sell you things you don't need or want; and another of a sunset view that is helping me retain my patience.