Em said his brother—that’s the second branch of the family that Ms. Vy referred to—also makes cao lau noodles but in much smaller quantities. Between the two sides of the family, he said, they supply all the restaurants in Hoi An with the precious noodles. He said there’s a guy just outside of Hoi An who figured out how to make them but he doesn’t produce much.
When I asked Em, the fourth generation of his family to make the noodles, where he thought cao lau originally came from, he shrugged and said, “China?” That’s how his family became the sole producers of the noodles, he explained. Someone from China taught his great-grandfather the recipe, and the family has kept it a closely guarded secret ever since.
How, I asked, do they transport the water from the Ba Le well in the center of town out to this house? Em stood up, took the cigarette from his mouth, and leaned against a pole. “We stopped doing that during my father’s time,” he said. “We dug our own well here”—he nodded to his right, toward the side of the house, where chickens were scratching in the dirt—“and it had properties similar to the Ba Le well.”
The main component, he said, was alum, a chemical compound that has been known to have medicinal and preservative properties (and is sometimes used in baking powders).
“What about the wood,” I asked, “the wood from the Cham Islands?”
Em laughed, shook his head, and said, “Cham is now protected, so we get all this wood from the surrounding area. It’s the same type of tree, though.”
Em added, “Sure, the water and the wood are essential to make cao lau, but our family has been making cao lau noodles for so long that we have a reputation now.” Translation: it’s not so much about the water or the wood; it’s the technique. Em has been doing this routine 364 days a year, taking a day off for the beginning of Tet, the lunar new year, since he was 12.
Just then his son turned up on a motorbike, returning from his first round of delivering noodles to various restaurants around town. Em nodded toward him and said, “He’s next. At least I hope so.”
“So you’re not sure he’ll take over your job?” I asked.
“We don’t want to push him. He has a good career as a tailor in the center of town,” Em said. “But if he doesn’t do it, then it could mean the end of our family making cao lau noodles.”
A silence fell over us for a moment. Then Em told us a story:
One day, about a year or so ago, a government official showed up and said the family had to be more open about the secret of the noodles—that if something happened to the family, there would be no one to make them. Now that Hoi An is thriving with tourism, city officials said it would be a disaster if cao lau, the city’s chief culinary attraction, disappeared.
“This is why,” Em said, “we decided it would be okay if you watched us make it.”
Everything was starting to make sense.
“Since we’re not sure what the future holds for cao lau noodles, I would teach someone how to make them,” Em said, pausing before adding: “For a price.” When I prompted him, he said he’d do it for 100 million dong (about $4,800). I was tempted to take him up on his offer but it felt like too much pressure to be the sole upholder of the cao lau legacy. So I passed.
Given the greater opportunities young Vietnamese have in Hoi An these days, and the laborious life of a cao lau maker, it’s hard to imagine someone would want to assume the cao lau–making mantle. The irony is that Hoi An’s rise as a prosperous tourist attraction is also threatening the existence of the town’s most iconic dish. Cao lau’s survival depended on the people I was standing with: Em, his son, and the various family members who help make cao lau noodles daily (as well as Madame Trai, who sells them at the market).
And with that, Em’s son, who makes his deliveries every day before going to his tailor job, wrapped a bungee cord around the packages of freshly made noodles on the back of his scooter and rode off. I stood there with Em and Thao, watching as Em’s son sped down the gravel road until we lost sight of him, and the buzz of his scooter faded away.
JESSE DUKES
Babu on the Bad Road
FROM Virginia Quarterly Review
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God.
—Revelation 22:1
ON JANUARY 10, 1991, Ambilikile Mwasapila dreamed a cure for AIDS. A woman appeared to him, a woman he knew to be infected with HIV, and God sent him into the bush for a cure. It was only a dream, and at the time, Mwasapila, a Lutheran pastor in the remote northern Tanzanian ward of Loliondo, was not sure what it meant. He continued to work in Wasso, an outpost town surrounded by dry and dusty plains occupied by the cattle-herding Masai, and earned a reputation as honest and upright, humble and kind. In 2001, he retired from the ministry and considered moving back to the more populous Babati, where he had lived as a young man. But he heard the same voice, God’s voice, in dreams, telling him to stay, for there was work for him in Loliondo.
Mwasapila remained, and the voice returned many times in the next few years, sometimes when he slept and sometimes when he just closed his eyes. He saw a recurring vision of a multitude gathered under a ridge. He saw tents, cars, and even security guards. In 2006, he moved to a small house in the village of Samunge, at the base of the ridge he had envisioned. One night, he dreamed of a ladder stretching across the sky from the west to the east, colored red as blood. The ladder stopped directly above him. Then, in 2009, God’s voice returned with specific instructions. God told him to climb into the hills to find the bark and root of the tree the local Sonjo people call mugariga. There was a woman in the village whispered to be HIV positive, and on May 25, he gave her a cup of liquid made from boiling the bark. Three weeks later, God’s voice told him the woman was now cured. Later, doctors from the Wasso Hospital tested the woman—and she was shown to be HIV negative.
Mwasapila continued to give the cup of liquid to people with HIV/AIDS, telling them that, after seven days, God would seal the mouths of the viruses inside them. Unable to feed, the virus would die within weeks. In 2010, God told him to give the same medicine to patients with cancer, and later with diabetes, asthma, and epilepsy. In October, the word had spread so that Mwasapila had visitors nearly every day, some traveling a day or more to see him.
In November, a newspaper journalist named Charles Ngereza happened to be traveling from Lake Victoria to Arusha. In the small town of Mto wa Mbu, 200 kilometers south of Samunge on a major route, he saw crowds of people waiting for a bus to take them north, to the middle of the bush. He joined the crowd to see where they were going, met Mwasapila, and interviewed several people who claimed to have been healed by drinking the cup of liquid. The story ran in the national papers.
In January 2011, a contingent of church officials from the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mwasapila’s former employer, visited Samunge to satisfy themselves that he was not a witch doctor. They returned convinced, traveling to different congregations to bring the news of a new gift from God. More people came to drink a cup of the cure, and there was now a constant queue of vehicles in the road leading into the village.
By March, Mwasapila’s earlier vision had come true. The line of cars and buses to Samunge reached over 20 kilometers on a road that was usually rarely traveled. People waited for days to see Mwasapila and drink a cup of the liquid. Tanzanians took to calling him “Babu”—meaning “Grandfather”—an appellation of respect and affection for any old man. People with chronic illnesses spent small fortunes hiring transportation and traveled for days, using whatever conveyance they could afford. Anybody who owned a car or bus could earn money packing it full of pilgrims seeking Babu’s cure. Entrepreneurs brought trucks with supplies and sold them off the backs of motorcycles for three times their normal value. Travelers slept on the ground, washed in the river, and defecated in the bush. Dozens died waiting to see Mwasapila.
To many Tanzanians, Babu’s medicine was a miracle, a one-step cure. To expatriate tour o
perators or visitors, it presented a puzzle: how could the locals believe drinking a cup of liquid once would cure a slew of diseases? To many doctors and health professionals—expats and Tanzanians—it was a terrible setback. HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and high blood pressure could all be controlled effectively with modern medicine. Years of effort had gone into developing effective medications and soliciting aid for East Africa, and years more went into convincing Tanzanian patients to submit to HIV testing and maintain the proper regimen of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). Now many hundreds of people were abandoning ARV therapy, believing themselves cured. Some doctors, respectful of their patients’ beliefs, quietly advised them to continue taking medications, no matter what they were told at Samunge. A few openly predicted disaster.
“It’s just a little farther; we are almost to Digo Digo,” Simon softly calls from the back of the Land Rover. It’s 4 A.M. on June 29, very dark, and I’m driving over a dirt track with photographer Sarah Elliott and Simon, a Masai guide and translator. We woke up a little after midnight to travel from Ngare Sero village, hoping to make Samunge by dawn. The plan came together at the last minute, and without inquiring about the proper paperwork we gambled that if we just showed up at Samunge, I could talk my way into an interview with Mwasapila.2 We are taking a route the map calls merely “Bad Road,” ascending the Gregory Rift escarpment in a series of tight turns through hills and canyons. It’s the same road the government plans to turn into a highway that will cross the Serengeti National Park, joining the large city of Arusha with communities on Lake Victoria.
We’ve already been stopped twice in the small hours, and both times, Simon has had to crawl from the back of the overstuffed car and argue with armed police, who used our lack of papers as an excuse to shake him down for a “fine.”3 After the second shakedown, the newly appeased guards made the friendly suggestion that we take an alternate route to Samunge, through a nearby village called Digo Digo. That route stays clear for emergencies and allows supplies and VIPs to enter Samunge without waiting in the queue. Unfortunately, the way is not so well-worn, and we take a wrong turn—rumbling by small settlements and farms, and sliding in sand and fording rivers before Simon finally admits we’re lost.
He crawls out of his car to knock on the door of a mud house. By the light of a kerosene lantern, a woman gives him new directions and, now confident, we drive for another hour, joining better roads, and enter Samunge, just as the sun rises. Samunge is stark and beautiful; the soil is a red clay and, perhaps because it’s in a river valley, the vegetation seems more green and vital than the drier highlands nearby. The narrow Sanjan River flows southeast through the soda flats below, entering the alkaloid Lake Natron. Along the way, it crosses the rift where two great tectonic plates slammed together and have been pulling away from each other for the last 40 million years, forming the Great Rift highlands, volcanoes, and the African Great Lakes, and slowly revealing humanity’s origins in the nearby Olduvai Gorge. Mwasapila’s new Eden is less than a hundred kilometers from our most famous early ancestors.
Samunge lies at the base of a three-peaked range of hills that looks like the Southern California chaparral. Most of the houses are small, framed with sticks, and fleshed with mud. Dirt roads are lined with drab tents and makeshift tarps. The village slowly fills with people seeking medical help, brought by rickety vehicles. The whole scene strangely resembles the set for M*A*S*H. A disembodied, Swahili-speaking Radar O’Reilly shouts instructions through a tinny bullhorn somewhere. People are to gather in a half-hour to hear Babu speak.
Simon goes off to inform officials of our arrival. A crowd is forming at a widening in the main road. People are walking from their cars parked several hundred meters away. Some look obviously unwell, limping or shuffling, helped by relatives. One woman’s foot is twisted 180 degrees from her ankle. Simon returns with a bleary man in striped pajamas; he claims to be an immigration official and asks our business. I explain we are journalists who have come a long way to learn about Babu. “Do you have a permit?” he asks. This is the first I’ve heard of any such thing; I tell him no.
He nods and politely directs us to sit and wait at a small open-air café. A young soldier in green fatigues with a dinged-up assault rifle stands a few meters away. We begin to hear Swahili over the tinny speaker again, and Simon says it’s one of Babu’s assistants explaining how the medicine will be dispensed. Simon has brought other Westerners here before—Americans or Europeans on safari who wished to see the faith healer. He says they usually pay a small fee and then they get to see Mwasapila. But 10 minutes later, the formerly bleary man returns wearing an immigration uniform. Now significantly more imposing, he explains that I will have to “fulfill a process” to get permission to speak to Mwasapila. I ask if I can fulfill the process on the spot. He sighs regretfully and says it’s not within his power to help me. Simon pleads on my behalf, hinting we might pay an informal fee, but, to Simon’s surprise, this has no effect. Apparently, journalists are not as welcome as tourists.
The immigration officer disappears, and Simon tells me the voice we now hear over the speaker is Mwasapila. The voice is crisp, medium-pitched, and slightly nasal, and we hear him list the diseases the medicine will cure: diabetes (“sugar,” as Tanzanians say), hypertension (“blood”), cancer, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. The officer returns saying I need to travel to Wasso to speak to the district administrator, who will help me obtain the proper papers. “When you walk to your car, you may just peek at Babu over there.” A man in a tie standing nearby objects in Swahili, and Simon tells me not to peek at Babu after all. I obediently look away, hopeful that I will get a chance at a better look later.
Wasso is a 90-minute drive away, and the district administrator is much less patient than the immigration officer, and equally unbudgeable. I have to return to Arusha, the largest city in the north, immediately, and I may conduct no interviews. We leave at first light the next day, and after driving an hour, we spot a minivan from Kenya on the side of the road, its passengers milling around. I pull over and speak to a man who tells me he has just taken a cup of the medicine to cure his diabetes. His eyes are bright, and he says with excitement, “Already, my headache is completely gone.” He says he will stop taking insulin in a week if he continues to feel better.
Another slight man with pale skin approaches the Land Rover. He says, “Excuse me,” in formal English, his voice high and weak. “I have stomach cancer and diabetes.” His belly is distended to the size of a watermelon, and his feet are extraordinarily swollen. “This bus is very cramped, and I very uncomfortable. May I ride in your car to Arusha?” He says his doctor told him he has a month to live, but he is now hopeful the cancer will vanish. I explain our car is full, apologize, and wish him good luck.
After several hours, we descend from the highlands to Ngare Sero on the plain, where Simon makes his home. He introduces me to a man who says his stomach ulcers and indigestion have vastly improved since he visited Samunge last February. This man heard about Mwasapila when Lutheran bishop Thomas Laizer came to his remote village in the Ngorongoro Highlands with word of a miracle cure. As we talk, the young village chairman grabs Simon’s elbow. The Loliondo administrator has sent word by radio that an American journalist might come through the village, and he must not be allowed to conduct interviews. The chairman turns to me and says in English, “If you had come here first, there would be no problem, but now, we have heard the word from Loliondo.” We say a hasty goodbye to Simon and make the five-hour drive back to Arusha.
In 2006, Francis Tesha tested positive for HIV. He lived in Wasso, the outpost town where Ambilikile Mwasapila had been a Lutheran pastor before his retirement. Francis was about 40, married, and had a job at a local hunting lodge partly owned by the royal family of Abu Dhabi. His employers liked him so much that they brought him with them to Abu Dhabi to work for months at a time. When they heard about his diagnosis, he was fired and sent back to Wasso. His wife died a few months later—of malaria. Their neighb
ors believed the shock weakened her and that she may have also had HIV, but she refused to be tested or take medication.
Francis did accept ARV therapy and took the pills every day. He joined the HIV support group in Wasso and became its secretary. He was gregarious and well liked. In October 2010, he heard reports of a healer in Samunge who could cure HIV. Although Francis felt healthy, he figured if he killed the viruses in his body, he could be certified HIV negative, allowing him to get his old job back. On October 2, he took a bus from Wasso to Samunge, drank the liquid, and spoke with Mwasapila, who assured him that after 21 days, the virus would be gone from his body. Francis returned to Wasso in high spirits, telling his friends at the HIV support group that Babu could free them of the virus and the ARVs.
Francis stayed off the ARVs for three weeks as instructed, and then excitedly went to the hospital for an HIV test. To his dismay, he was still HIV positive, and in fact, his CD4 count had diminished.4 He reluctantly began taking ARVs again, but now he felt much more vulnerable to side effects, becoming dizzy and nauseated when he took the drugs. To settle his stomach, he occasionally skipped his ARVs. In February, he was hospitalized for a secondary infection and, when he got out a few days later, started saying he no longer believed in Mwasapila’s medicine. His neighbors whispered that Francis had a new girlfriend with whom he had sex with no condom. Babu had cured him, they reasoned, but he allowed himself to become reinfected.
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