by James Best
The town sits on the tip of a narrow peninsula jutting into the southern reaches of mighty Lake Malawi, a shiny cap on the toe of a pointed boot. A series of eateries, hostels, dive centres and tourist shops front the lake. Standing on the coarse-sand beach, you look across shimmering waters with crayon-coloured crafts bobbing here and there, and jungle-covered islands in the distance.
There were dugout canoes and catamarans dragged up onto the sand, segmenting the beach. Skinny dogs trotted this way and that; one of them drank from the waves on the lake. Children performed acrobatics on the sand, while others washed pans. A fish eagle glided across the windswept waters. Hawkers swarmed and wazungu pretended to ignore them, except for Sam, who didn’t need to pretend.
A man sidled up to Sam as we strolled down the beach. ‘Hello, how are you?’
‘Ha ha, the boy that lived!’ Sam replied, smiling. The man left, baffled. He had never heard that one before.
In the village, sandy lanes barely wide enough for the occasional vehicle were lined with concrete verandahs and frangipanis. Chickens darted from small garden plots, and African dance music echoed from a cafe up a hidden laneway.
That night it became clear why the early Scottish missionaries had moved their settlement from here north to Livingstonia. Outside my blue net mosquitoes hovered like planes on approach to Heathrow, all waiting for a chance to sink their proboscises into my blood-rich epidermis. The Scots, smashed by malaria, had headed for altitude, high on the escarpment.
The next day I was able to deploy my relief teacher, Juliette, into Sam’s education, neuroplasticity intervention and filming video interviews for the university. Benison had recently sent me an article outlining how ‘opportunistic teaching’—grabbing the educational moment, as it were—was a useful and effective way of assisting children with autism to learn. In this way, like the pool table in Windhoek and table tennis in Livingstone, the Scrabble box in the hostel’s common room was an opportunity to be grasped. A prolonged game of Scrabble, his first, ensued.
Then we did some maths, writing, throw and catch, boxing and chess. It was all underscored by the soft roll of the waves and backlit by the glistening lake. I got the impression Juliette was thinking this wasn’t too hard.
After I videoed Jules talking with Sam for one of his practice conversations, she turned to me. ‘Uncle James, I think Sam has definitely improved,’ she said, referring particularly to his speech and social interaction.
We’ll see, we’ll see, I thought.
Juliette played chess with Sam. He insisted she play with the black pieces, which he’d labelled Slytherin. He was the white Gryffindor, of course. Juliette didn’t mind; Slytherin were very good at Quidditch, after all. Not good enough; Gryffindor prevailed.
We booked a trip to nearby Thumbi West Island so Juliette could try an introductory scuba dive and Sam and I could go snorkelling. I offered Sam an automatic nine out of ten for the day if he managed to complete one minute of snorkelling. This already juicy offer was further sweetened when Juliette promised Sam a bonus GameCube video game of his choice from her collection back in Sydney if he managed the challenge. Boy, oh boy, the heat was on.
Our twenty-foot canopied river boat chugged across to the island. Once Juliette and the other scuba divers had tumbled backwards off the gunwale, four of us remained: a boat hand, an Englishwoman, and Sam and me. While they sat next to Sam, I lowered myself into the water. Together, the three of us worked on Sam for the next ten minutes to get him into the lake.
‘Come on, Sam, you can do it,’ I implored. ‘Just start by sitting on the edge.’
‘Just put your hand on your dad’s shoulder,’ the Englishwoman suggested.
‘Put your foot on the ladder,’ the boat hand said. ‘It’s okay.’
‘You’re doing well,’ I yelled from the water. ‘No, don’t go back up!’
Sam was on a roller-coaster ride of determination and then fear. ‘I don’t want to swim with the fish. They’ll bite me.’
‘No, they won’t, Sam,’ I shouted up. ‘They’ll swim away from you.’
He edged closer and closer to the water, rung by rung down the ladder, as we cheered and cajoled. Finally, with a nervous flurry he leapt off the ladder and splashed into the water next to me, flinging his arms around my neck and holding on for dear life. To finish the challenge all he had to do was look through the goggles underwater for a few seconds.
‘I don’t want to look,’ he yelled.
‘That’s all you have to do, then it’s finished,’ I replied.
With the finish line in sight, he had a surge of confidence. He unclamped one arm, tentatively held the goggles to his face and, holding his breath, popped his face down into the water, snatching a glimpse of the submarine world before scurrying back up the ladder like a monkey up a tree. I punched the air and my two assistants cheered and applauded Sam as he climbed into the boat. Yay!
With the pressure off, I could relax. I rewarded myself with a snorkel around the boat while we waited for the divers to return. My favourite ink blue and amethyst cichlid friends were here, but also a larger purple-striped individual with orange blush cheeks, and a luminescent little fellow coloured the hazy pale blue of a summer sky.
That afternoon we hired some bikes and headed over to a local market. Sam did pretty well with the bike riding, dodging ducks, women with babies on their backs, and a large baobab in the centre of the sandy road. But he’d had a full day and was getting tired. At dinner, we discussed what the nine out of ten meant.
‘I think that counts for two eight out of tens,’ he said.
‘Hmm, okay, fair enough,’ I said. ‘Two eights it is.’
A beat. ‘How do I make it a ten out of ten?’
I thought about it. ‘How about you eat your entire dinner, no compromise?’
We had been served beef curry and rice, a challenging meal for Sam, and one he would normally only pick at, at best. He looked at the plate in front of him, pondering his options.
I whispered over his shoulder, ‘Remember, you get a ten out of ten.’
‘Ten out of ten is worth three eight out of tens,’ he said, staring at the food.
‘Oh, well, I suppose so.’
Juliette piped up. ‘Come on, Sam, you can do it! A ten out of ten, woo-hoo!’
‘Okay,’ he said, eyeing the meal in front of him nervously.
He started to tuck in. It was hard work for him, and he tried to force a compromise several times throughout the meal, requesting an exclusion contract on the peas and then the sauce, but I wouldn’t budge. This was for a ten.
When he finished the meal he was so happy with himself he ran out of the dining room and shouted to the world: ‘I got ten out of ten!’
That night, as mosquitoes buzzed outside the net, I wondered whether I was handing Sam eights, nines and tens so readily because I secretly wanted to go home too. Fantastic an experience as Africa was proving to be, I was tiring of having to do so much, concentrate so much, try so much. It was a twenty-four-hour job, seven days a week, and we had been on the road for over three months now. Another four months seemed an awfully long time. Would we—or more specifically I—last that long?
Early the next morning, Sam rolled towards me with his mosquito net tangled around his head, a beekeeper in blue. ‘Did I really get ten out of ten?’
‘Yes, Sam, you did.’
He was having trouble believing it was true.
And soon I was having trouble believing how lucky we’d been in scoring a lift to our next destination of Liwonde, a small city on the banks of the Shire River, south of the lake. The serendipitous offer came from three women staying at our hostel who were heading that way, and were kindly prepared to squeeze us and our bags into their Toyota Rav. They were a Scottish psychiatrist doing a six-month stint in the southern Malawian city of Blantyre, and two American microbiologists conducting research on malaria. Their ride saved us a full day of minibus travel and hassle, and meant we had another morn
ing to chill out on the beach of Cape Maclear. We took it easy, played some checkers and cards and did some drawing.
We left at lunchtime, chatting about malaria, mental health in Africa, autism, disability, and the impressive abdominal muscles of the African dive instructor in Cape Maclear. The psychiatrist mentioned that she’d heard that alcoholism was endemic among minibus drivers in Malawi. Not what I really wanted to hear.
Late that afternoon we arrived at our accommodation in Liwonde. Despite the fact I had booked ahead, they had no idea we were coming and seemed surprised—almost put out—that someone had actually turned up. Well, it was a hotel, or at least accommodation of some sort—having guests arriving should not have come as such a surprise. Eventually we figured out that the ‘reception’—a boarded-up thatch hut—was normally open but the woman in charge had gone up the road for ‘a while’. How long was a while? As Sam would often answer: ‘Unknown.’
It turned out they had plenty of rooms available and once they’d got over the shock they were quite happy for us to stay. The reception lady returned from up the road and we organised a river tour for the next morning and a safari drive for the day after that.
The next morning, Sam knocked our water filter—a top-of-the-range, two-hundred-dollar model—off the bathroom sink, smashing its seal and rendering it useless. I had a UV wand steriliser and some chlorine tablets as back-ups, but still I wasn’t happy. I added the filter to the long list of things Sam had broken: two toilet seats, a mosquito net, several plates, which had been knocked off tables, and about a dozen glass Sprite or Fanta bottles. Kids on the spectrum are frequently uncoordinated, and when you combine clumsiness with Sam’s attention issues you have a disaster waiting to happen.
Zomba Plateau towered in the distance as we boarded the boat for our river cruise, a small runabout with a plywood canopy and an outboard motor with a piece of string for a starter cord. It was tied to a rickety wooden pier on the banks of the river at the back of the hotel.
The Shire River was the drainage outlet for Lake Malawi, funnelling the overflow down to the Zambezi further south, which in turn ran east to west through southern Africa into the Indian Ocean. The Shire was a conduit from a great lake to a great river.
The section of the Shire north of Liwonde was at the centre of Liwonde National Park. This would be Juliette’s best chance to see some African fauna while she was with us so I hoped it would turn out well. It was also Malawi Independence Day, and so it felt appropriate to be seeing one of the country’s jewels on this day of celebration.
Local fishermen dotted the river, dangling handlines out of dugout canoes or nets out of small fishing boats. The river was more than a hundred metres wide and lined with papyrus, reed grass and floating flowering hyacinths. It flowed in a steady stream. On the banks baobabs, poisonous candelabra trees and the strangling snake trees sat under the nearby Chinguni Hills, home to so many of the animals in the park. Off in the distance behind the hills, the massif of the Zomba Plateau was adorned by a necklace of white cloud.
There were birds everywhere: hamerkops, pied and malachite kingfishers and goliath herons filled the reeds and glided over the silky waters. Fish eagles circled above. A saddle-billed stork tiptoed in some shallows near a large crocodile.
Hippos bobbed up and slid down on the river edges, their pink ears flicking and nostrils snorting. Their eyes were fixed on the noisy craft invading their patch.
Sam liked the hippos. Sam always liked the hippos. ‘Honk, honk.’ He followed his impersonation with blowing a raspberry. Hippos probably did fart a lot. Juliette and our guides laughed.
We reached the turnaround point, as far into the park as we would venture that day, and commenced our return journey. We were running out of time to see some elephants. But to Juliette’s delight, we soon spied two near the bank. As our boat approached, it became evident there was actually a herd of a dozen, which all proceeded to drink from the river right in front of us. They were decorated with cattle egrets, the birds’ white feathers contrasting with their deep grey hides. Sam giggled, Juliette gawked, and I smiled and watched and videoed Sam bond with his cousin in this beautiful corner of the world.
CHAPTER 22
The Shire
We needed some cash and the nearest ATM I could use was in a town a half-hour’s drive away so I left Sam and Jules at the hostel as I went in search of a minibus. I strolled up Liwonde’s main road, past a bedraggled market. A collection of roadside barbecues, serving charred corn and cassava chips, spilled smoked into nearby alleyways. Kiosks sold warm bottles of soft drink and water through wire-grilled windows. There was an op shop sponsored by a telco next to a God Is Wonderful–brand hardware store next to a concrete police checkpoint, replete with boom gate and road spikes. Officious policemen in snappy blue uniforms and shiny peaked caps halted vehicles to check whatever the hell they felt like, or lounged bored inside their concrete roadside hut.
I knew that if you caught a minibus near the police you were less likely to get ripped off. But standing near the police hut, waiting in hope for a minibus and looking unsure of myself, I attracted the police’s attention. They invited me in. I was quizzed about where I was from, what I thought of Malawi, how much it cost to fly to and live in Australia. They simply couldn’t comprehend the figures I was telling them. Australia must have seemed like another planet.
One of the police waved his baton at me. ‘You know, man started here in Africa.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Civilisation started here too,’ he continued.
I nodded cautiously. I thought it had been in the Middle East, but I let that one go through to the keeper.
He stood and turned towards me. ‘So how come Europe and Australia are so far ahead of Africa?’
I scrambled for a response. ‘Well, because the Europeans stole from Africa when they colonised it.’
They all nodded approvingly. It was of course more complicated than that—there was this thing called the Industrial Revolution—but I was happy with my answer. My minibus arrived, emblazoned ARSENAL, and driven by someone who, reassuringly, didn’t look drunk.
One of the policeman asked me for my mobile number, which I couldn’t remember and I didn’t have my phone on me. He gave me his number, and sternly instructed me to call him when I got my phone. Somehow this didn’t feel like friendly camaraderie.
Another minibus, another chicken. This one was wrapped in green plastic as it sat on its owner’s lap. I had no idea why. Halfway through the trip, we were all instructed to move onto another bus. I had no idea why.
The man holding the plastic-wrapped chicken wore a Malawi Flames jumper, formal suit pants and runners, and carried a woman’s purse. His wife wore the same jumper with a traditional-print wrap skirt and a patterned bandana.
I’d noticed that across Africa, but especially in Zambia and Malawi, the dress code seemed to be: if you own it, wear it, and convention be damned. The exceptions to this sartorial anarchy were uniforms, religious garb, and the women’s traditional wrap dresses and bandanas. Oh yes, and of course any garment bearing a football motif was especially highly prized.
Most other clothing items seemed to have originated from a second-hand clothing bin in a First World country—it was a continent of hand-me-downs. This led to some unconventional looks. A heavy metal t-shirt on a small boy, a tie-on knitted beanie on a petrol station attendant, a young man peddling a bicycle-taxi wearing a three-piece suit and tie.
A man on the bus, wearing what I think was a woollen cricket vest, held a large plate of tiny cooked birds, their bodies no bigger than that of a mouse.
‘What kind of bird are they?’ I asked him.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
Some of the other passengers bought a few of the tiny fowl. Hey, what the heck. They smelled good and I was hungry. I handed the man some kwacha. ‘Can I have two, please?’
You ate them bones and all. I was worried about bone splinters sticking in m
y throat, but they went down okay. It tasted good. I could imagine the bones would be a fantastic source of calcium, as long as the birds weren’t also a source of dysentery. The chicken stared at me accusingly as I ate its distant cousin.
The man selling the small birds had a severe convergent squint. A teenage beggar we passed had a fixed flexion deformity of his elbow, which would severely limit its function and his work options. A man selling samosas through the window had a large burn scar on his parietal scalp, and another man struggled down a dirt walkway using forearm crutches for what I thought might by some kind of peripheral myopathy. The cross-eyed, the winged, the scarred and the crippled. Broken bodies in Africa, impeded, unrepaired and manifestly conspicuous.
It was good to have a reprieve from Sam, even if only for a few hours. In the back seat of the crowded minibus I felt a pressure valve release. I was able to let my thoughts flow elsewhere. I smiled to myself to think where I was—Malawi!—and what I was looking at through my dirty cracked window. After almost falling asleep in the soporific heat I was jolted awake by the thought that my stop was coming up. I thought. I hoped.
Yep, I had guessed correctly, this was the place. I hailed a pushbike taxi to peddle me a kilometre or so across town to the ATM.
It was closed.
My juvenile stomping and swearing amused the boys sitting in front of a mosque across the road. Maybe it was closed for the public holiday. I hoped so; I would have to try again tomorrow.
On the way back, a very attractive young African woman, dressed and preened to perfection, wanted to get onto the minibus, but didn’t want to sit next to the grimy-looking man sharing the back seat with me.
A heated discussion followed, as the conductor and other passengers implored her to just get on. The princess refused. Someone put a question to her containing the word mzungu. I think they were asking her if she would sit next to me. She refused again. Maybe I wasn’t looking too good either? Eventually an old woman sat next to the two rejects and the princess got her way, securing a prized position next to the sliding door.
