Water and Witchcraft: Three Years in Malawi

By T. Mullen

Water and Witchcraft recalls the travails and triumphs of providing drinking water to villagers in rural Malawi. In an African land where little goes as planned, gracious locals and quirky foreigners pit their wits against witchcraft, sickness and questionable managers to improve the lives of remote families. The results are rich and unusual. This story recalls years spent working throughout Malawi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Mullen
• Release date: Aug 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9780984956579

T. Mullen

T. Mullen was born in sunny St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and then moved to the suburbs north of Chicago, where he lived until he was seven. His family then moved to Ireland, which became home base for the next eighteen years. He studied architectural and civil engineering as well as business administration and spent fifteen years working outside the U.S. as a consultant regarding water resource and environmental projects in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Spending half his life in the U.S. and half outside influenced the topics Mullen writes about - including travel, history, and cultural clashes. He has written several magazine articles related to environmental issues and has also written a few books, including Wine and Work - People Loving Life, as well as Rivers of Change - Trailing the Waterways of Lewis and Clark. For more about T.Mullen and his books, check out www.RoundwoodPress.com.

Book preview

Chipuma

The builder stood and clapped his calloused hands. Barefoot and shirtless, he ran up to our Land Rover.

Father! he shouted. Good to see father! For you, chipuma!

I stepped onto the soil and shook his hand. His black face radiated joy. Because he was twice my size, I felt dwarfed besides this African titan. We then paced together over mud and sand to where the locals were holding a party outdoors.

Father, he said again and held up a clay pot. I looked inside at steaming brown gruel. A reed straw poked out of it. The builder cradled the dish in his two rough hands, smiled and nodded for me to suck on the straw.

I did. The liquid was warm and sweet and lumpy like a milkshake.

Chipuma! the builder yelped again.

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Filling a pot with water to carry home, while the local builder uses the water to brew chipuma beer

He put the pot down and danced a little jig to show off his glee. Twelve or fifteen other villagers sat on rocks and dirt and tufts of grass on the Malawian hillside. Lanky boys and hobbling grandmothers sucked on straws standing out of their own pots. I watched as they slurped and swallowed and passed these containers around in circles. The entire crowd was tipsy. A young man with biceps like lug bolts kicked away a rooster. He cranked up his dusty radio. Meanwhile, the builder passed around a dented tin pan to collect cash for serving his home brewed chipuma beer.

I next looked around at this builder’s construction site and saw uncut timber, sacks of unopened cement, loose PVC pipes and a half-built concrete water tank. The tank had no roof. The builder was far behind schedule. In just two weeks, a dozen government ministers along with a handful of United States donors and various other regional officials wearing jackets and black ties would drive up to this remote site in a fleet of shiny air-conditioned cars. The donors had paid for this development project and the Malawian government had approved the plans for this rural piped water scheme. They would come to watch water gush from village faucets, or ‘taps.’ But unless this tank was completed, no taps would work.

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Cool, clear water — or ‘madzi’ in the Chichewa language

Nearby, a stream of clear water shot out of one plastic pipe. The villagers had helped the contractor lay this temporary pipe to divert river water to this hill site. The builder needed the water to mix up cement with sand and stone to build the concrete tank. Instead, the water now provided him with a means to brew and sell chipuma beer.

Lord, I thought. The situation was a simmering stew of anarchy. The tank was incomplete. Pipes were not laid. The builder, dancing to the tune of chipuma profits, was oblivious to any need to finish the job.

I looked at him. He danced like a drunken banshee. He wiggled his rear and winked at his friends while he passed around the tin pan for locals to drop their coins into. Hearing the clink of money and the scratch of music from the band Makasu, I sat in a wheelbarrow and sprawled out, dumbfounded. Had I lost control? I had two weeks to change this man’s attitude toward time and work and accomplishment. But this was too short a time to rearrange anyone’s perspective on the universe. That realization irked me. Why had I volunteered to build this pipeline anyway?

Again, the huge and affable ogre wobbled toward my nose, offering the clay pot.

Father, he asked, affectionately. More?

Decision

The letter came on a hot Tuesday morning. Congratulations, it stated. My application had been accepted. In six weeks I could fly off to Malawi, East Africa, to work as a water supply engineer with the Peace Corps.

These opening remarks glowed with opportunity. As I read on though, the wording changed. The language turned formal. It slipped into a prophecy of hindrance:

Consider the frustrations. You must conform to government laws concerning dress, appearance and behavior. Long hair for men or wearing slacks for women is illegal. You will feel out of place and isolated. You will observe customs that seem strange. Your work will involve problems — intractable and insurmountable. Limited resources, different outlooks and other circumstances will test your commitment as a volunteer.

Yet what was there to lose? I considered my current situation. When the letter arrived, I was in a hotel room in Lander, Wyoming. For the past three summers I had worked with an outdoor leadership school based out of that town. My job was to help lead students into the Wind River Mountains for month long courses in mountaineering and wilderness education.

The work had been enjoyable. In the field, we instructors and students struck out over peaks and mountain passes in little troops. We hiked through granite valleys and sipped from glacial lakes. We traveled to places named Bull Lake, Angel Pass and Spider Basin where hundreds of rivers erupted from mountain glaciers and wild flowers — Indian Paintbrush and Elephant Bells — roared across high alpine meadows.

Our days were filled with motion. Whether we traversed Dinwoody Glacier or climbed the granite walls of Sacagawea Peak, the students thrived on open space and exercise. They learned to respect the silent but rugged wilderness. As their calf muscles toughened, their sense of independence soared. They devoured the field classes we provided daily as they learned to splint fractured limbs or forge flooded rivers. This progress gifted them all with a thrill of accomplishment.

Yet even the blood thumping, heart pumping exhilaration of this work left me hungry for something more. I yearned for some fresh education, for a new perspective. I wanted a hint, a clue, even the minutely elusive chance to view the surrounding world in a different way.

I read on.

Malawians are warm, friendly and gracious people who are serious about the development of their nation. Your life can be enriched by the experiences shared with them.

Outside the hotel room, the sight of the Wind River Mountains loomed large and inviting. But inside, imagery of Africa wafted up clean and bright in my imagination: eager children, tribal pride and quick rich sunsets over wide ochre plains. I thought of learning about Africa when growing up from Tarzan movies, Born Free books and seeing pictures of Masai and Bushmen. I recalled watching news footage from the Rhodesian war. Other images of topography from the past now boiled in memory: Mount Kilimanjaro, Fish River Canyon and the Olduvai Gorge. To a child, Africa seemed to be a vast land without rush, an open flow of unconstrained wilderness.

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Scenes from Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains–clockwise: ice climbing on Dinwoody Glacier, peaks and lake, cooking on a snowy Fourth of July, gazing at G-3 Peak, camping below Gannett Peak–Wyoming’s tallest mountain

These notions were naive and dangerous. Perhaps the reality of working in Africa would be harsh. There would be frustrations, certainly. Both the country and people of Malawi might be thoroughly bizarre.

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An added attraction — Mount Mulanje massif in southern Malawi

I slid the letter back into its envelope. I looked outside at the sidewalk in Lander and saw more students walking together. They were lean and rugged. They looked like those who had returned from a course two days before, and from another course two days before that. Most were young white males with whiskers sprouting from their chins. Each summer, while these students remained the same age, we instructors grew older. Yet I wondered whether I was growing any wiser.

Folded mountains stood in the distance outside the window. To leave those peaks for another continent would be to abandon that which was familiar. Malawi promised that which was new and unpredictable, an experience that guaranteed the unknown. To reject this chance now seemed too safe an option. Yet I had to decide, and quickly. In three days I was due to go into the mountains for a month, and following a week long break after that, for another month. If I decided to go to Malawi, I had to cancel working the second course, order a second passport (a requirement of the Peace Corps) and get medical and dental exams, all within the three days in which I needed to prepare to go to the field.

I walked away from the window. It was time to decide.

It was time to see Africa.

Packing

Tingling with adrenalin, I drove in quick spurts around the town of Lander. There was much to do before teaching this final mountaineering course. However, with an unexpected ease, all tasks fell serenely into place.

After explaining my rush to those I visited, the dentist juggled his appointments, the doctor stayed after hours and the photographer rushed his film processing. Coincidence also charmed our encounters. The dentist, as he prodded my molars, told me how he had spent several summers volunteering his services in Honduras. The doctor, young and curious, had just mailed in his own Peace Corps application. These meetings served to reinforce our mutual values. They also evinced what would later become clear: that when a mind is ready for change, events often align themselves to help realize it.

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Farewell to Wyoming’s rivers and mountains

After teaching the final month long course in the Wind River Mountains, I returned to Lander, waved goodbye to students and rushed to the public library.

In the cool of an air conditioned room, I pored through written material on Malawi (this was before the internet was available). The information was scant. Due to strict censorship laws, little news had filtered out about the country since it gained independence in 1964. Only the demography was simple to grasp: Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) is a small, spine shaped nation the size of Connecticut and the length of Great Britain. Landlocked in East Central Africa, it is tucked tightly between Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. Malawi, at that time, had eight million people and, I soon discovered, only two traffic lights.

Because of its size and censorship, the nation had remained cloaked in obscurity for decades. With few natural resources and a high population density, most Malawians eked out livings through subsistence agriculture. Industries in the country were few.

Photo

Tea fields below Mount Mulanje, Malawi’s tallest peak

In pictures, the country’s geography looked splendid. There were high rolling hills, several wildlife parks and Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa and the twelfth largest in the world. One photograph showed a lone soul ambling down a deserted dirt road. His naked feet aimed toward a cluster of hills. The scene, showing sandy foreign soil and a pinch of tranquility, was strangely mesmerizing.

I found newspaper clippings from the past that told of the country’s government. Malawi was apparently a political tinder box, ruled by His Excellency, the Life President Doctor Hastings Kamuzu Banda. This enigmatic octogenarian was an unabashed dictator who had squeezed his grip of obedience on the population for the past twenty-six years. Though he had maintained stability between Malawi’s diverse tribes, his tactics were lawless. He crushed opposition and suppressed dissent with quiet, strong armed vigor. As long as he lived, a forced peace would reign in Malawi. Few people, however, dared to guess how long this leader would last.

I scribbled down notes about Malawi and then returned to my room in Lander. The Peace Corps had sent a cassette which included a lesson in Chichewa (chich-AYE-wa), Malawi’s national language (English was the language of the government and of official business, while Chichewa remained the vernacular spoken throughout the countryside). I popped the cassette into a player and listened to a slow bass voice drone out exotic syllables. ‘Bwanji’ appeared to be a pivotal term. ‘Bwanji bwanji mati mati?’ was used to ask the price of a tomato, while ‘Muli bwanji?’ meant ‘how are things?’ Though these phrases squeaked with outlandish novelty, I memorized them in anticipation of getting to know the Malawian people.

Repeating these Chichewa phrases made me curious. Just how hospitable would these Malawians be?

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Sable antelope roams across Malawi’s highland Nyika Plateau

Roles

Our Peace Corps training group met at a hotel in Philadelphia. Thirty of us formed an eclectic soup of inspiration and opinion, awed at the reality of moving to Africa. As engineers, doctors, accountants, physical therapists and librarians we would render two years of service to try prodding Malawi toward economic independence. Altruism was not our chief motivation. We were going to Africa for novelty and change. For adventure. Malawi was a mystery. Before reading our acceptance letters, few of us had ever heard of the country (when I first learned on the telephone that I would be sent to Malawi, I said thank you, acted as though I was familiar with the country, then hung up and drove to the library to find out which continent I was moving to).

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Laundry blows in sleepy Kangwere Village — where we lived for days during training

After two days of training in Philadelphia, we flew to Malawi. On the way, we had a twelve-hour layover in London, where I went to a secondhand bookstore and bought Venture to the Interior, by Laurens Van Der Post – a book written decades earlier about exploring Malawi. After another flight, our group stepped off the airplane into hot wafts of morning air in Malawi. We were jaded from travel and dizzy with jet lag as we walked across the tarmac to enter small Kamuzu International Airport. Neatly groomed flower beds lay between the runway and the terminal building. Though Malawian officials ushered our group through customs without any hassle, the security staff censured a volunteer who tried snapping a photo; photography at the airport was strictly prohibited. The incident mirrored the government’s attitude toward foreigners’ curiosity. Malawi was clean and tidy and strangers were welcome, so long as they kept from peeking too closely at the politics that held the place together.

A derelict blue school bus whisked us off to our training site. Our five weeks of training would cover language and social customs with enough depth to ensure that our cultural ignorance kept us from turning into political embarrassments for the United States government. The instructors’ hope was that after training, volunteers could plod into a village and refrain from making social blunders such as winking at a chief’s wife, or wincing when a host decided to slaughter chickens before them for dinner.

The bus zoomed along asphalt, past empty fields and mud huts. It passed black men in shredded trousers who pedaled ancient bicycles. The only other developing world nation I had visited was Guatemala. In contrast to the squalor of that nation, I was shocked at the contrast that Malawi provided. Looking out the bus window, I saw that grounds surrounding each hut looked swept and immaculately clean. An air of pride breathed from each village.

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Part of our training group in Ludzi

Our training site was at Ludzi secondary school. This sat one hundred kilometers west of Malawi’s capital city of Lilongwe (Lil-ONG-way). Here, red brick buildings unfurled over a handsome compound with lawns. Though the showers were cold and the dormitory stalls were small, we did not expect comfort. On our first night at Ludzi, after eating rice and beans, many of us stepped outside to peek at a sky stuffed with alien constellations in the southern hemisphere. This sight tested our senses and jostled our awareness. For the next two years, we realized, this new land would be home.

During the next five weeks, our eyes and tongues read and regurgitated phrases in Chichewa. We bared our arms for inoculations: tetanus, typhoid, yellow fever, mumps, rubella, rabies, polio and hepatitis. In cross cultural classes we debated the roots of witchcraft, sang the Malawian anthem and bantered over social customs. For example, was it better for societies to eat their enemies or to raze them with nuclear bombs? These academic debates eventually grew nonsensical, and we all looked forward to finishing training.

The Malawian trainers were a musical crew, and spiked many lessons with songs. I noticed how their overall body movements appeared fluid and relaxed. Yet these appearances were deceptive. Not all things swirled for Malawians. With the mention of politics, many personalities froze up and voices grew curt. The trainers either spouted superlatives or switched the topic. This was our first glimpse at the mysterious power of President Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

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Scenes from Kangwere — bath time, my host Simeon Njovu and his home

Ironically, our training environment insulated us from the people we came to live amongst. Classroom lessons lost value without having a cultural context to place them into. It was not until we roamed through villages outside the training site on weekends that Malawi sprouted limbs and twitched alive. It screamed with life and color.

During late afternoons, many volunteers went running outside the training compound. Bands of us, little reality patrols, walked or ran along dirt roads that shot away from our compound. The rural bush was impregnated with dozens of villages. We passed these mud huts with elevated porches and thatch roofs. They looked like toys. Outside the houses, dusty goats — thin around the ribs — chewed leaves and bleated, while naked children crawled across the earth and women hauled firewood or buckets of water on their heads. The men, in contrast, sat on hut porches and whittled wood or drank the local homemade beer. Yet a pervasive family glue bound these villagers together. The grounds outside each hut throbbed with a constant murmur of social interactions.

Seeing this, my impression was that I had no impression. Coming to Africa was like picking up an unknown book and reading chapter twenty-two. It involved strange geography and foreign characters embroiled in a plot we knew nothing about.

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Girls pound maize (corn) kernels to make flour for the staple food ‘nsima’

During these forays outside the training site, we greeted locals with Chichewa words. Each of these strangers was colored a deep rich black. Many of them were thin, barefoot and dressed in rags, but eagerly paced from their huts to shake our hands. Most laughed with abandon as we assaulted them with our meager Chichewa, spouting out ‘zikomo’ (thanks) or ‘zina lanu ndani?’ (what’s your name?). Hearing this, they buckled over in bliss at our stabs at their language, while the children shouted ‘mzungu!’ — white person. If we went running, many youths joined us, sprinting short distances before cackling aloud and falling behind.

The contrast was surreal. We were exposed to glimpses of hunger, poverty and disease associated with people who waved, laughed, greeted and smiled at us while we tried to jog excess fat away. Though most of these villagers had no shoes or electricity, their faces shone with mysterious strength. Their moods seemed recklessly festive and they shared their delight without fear. There seemed to be something pivotal we could learn from their attitude. This unexpected truth caused me to consider the confusion of roles. Just who would be teaching whom?

Balaka

During our first days of training, I learned of my engineering assignment. The job sounded intriguing.

For three decades, the Malawi Water Department had built dozens of gravity fed water projects throughout the country. Each of these projects diverted water from mountain rivers into villages through plastic pipes. Because these projects had been successful, the United States government agreed to give Malawi five million dollars to build fifteen similar new schemes. The Peace Corps had agreed to contribute three engineers to help design and build these projects. I was one engineer. Other engineers were Carl, from our same training group, and Claudia, who was associated with a different volunteer organization but would be working with us.

After five weeks of learning Chichewa, we volunteers were eager to quit training and move out to the bush. We were ready for work. Instead, a small group of us packed up and moved to Lilongwe’s Golden Peacock hotel. We had one final week of training left — on how to ride motorcycles.

Lilongwe was then a quiet, disjointed city. Its planners designed it for an urban explosion that never even popped. Lilongwe had two centers. The City Center had sparse and vapid high rise government offices, whereas Old Town throbbed with commerce from Indian stores and an open air market. These two centers stood miles apart. Between them lay open meadows, woodlands and a few housing projects. Though new office parks, industries and thriving boutiques were supposed to have filled in this stretch of connecting greenery, the planned economic boom for Lilongwe never materialized. Instead, a stretch of asphalt road linked the two city centers together while an overtaxed bus system ferried cramped workers between them.

Because Lilongwe had no suburbs, the main roads leading away from it poked on for miles with only skinny goats and bottle stores clinging along the roadsides. Each morning during our training session, we mounted our Peace Corps-issued motorcycles and blasted along these empty highways. We careened along stretches of impeccable asphalt, past nibbling cows and shepherd boys. During afternoon lessons, we traced figures of eight over an abandoned soccer field and practiced our hill starts. Felix, our Malawian instructor, showed us how to fix flat tires and change gummed up spark plugs. The Malawians who walked by our training site stopped to watch. They were curious about why we knelt in dirt and twiddled our hands against oily engines. It was rare for them to see white people doing such work.

We devoured these motorcycle lessons. Cocky and sure, we ripped off the asphalt and drove onto dirt roads. We slammed our brakes before errant goats and took pride in how much dust spewed from beneath our wheels.

Only Claudia, the withdrawn engineer we would work with, had difficulties in learning to ride. She refused to drive over forty kilometers an hour. She chose wrong roundabout exits and got lost whenever we maneuvered through the back streets of the city. Though one of us always trailed behind the group to watch her, she ignored our assistance. In fact, she ignored us. Claudia seemed oblivious to the fact that she was part of a group. Carl and I looked at each other. If she was going to be our work partner, was her behavior a foretaste of how we would get along?

Despite Claudia’s stubbornness, after five days of training we were deemed capable of riding alone. It was time. We were weary of training and anxious to move out of the city to our work sites.

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Typical roadside advertisement

However, the Malawi Water Department had not told us, the three water supply engineers, where we would live. Even during our final morning of motorcycle training, thin rumors circulated that the water department still had no homes for us. That afternoon, the Peace Corps assistant director called the three of us together. We stood on grass outside the Golden Peacock, listening.

We found you a home, he said as he slapped car keys against his thigh.

Temporary, he added. It’s at a place down south. Called Balaka. You three will move there for one week of training.

This news did little to allay our growing insecurities. We had spent weeks living in temporary dwellings during training, squeezed into dormitories and cramped into overcrowded hotel rooms. We wanted to be settled. The news of another move to yet another temporary site flustered us.

The next morning, disheartened, the three of us sat next to our luggage outside of the rest house. I inspected the other engineers. Carl wore a straw hat with a red bandanna wrapped around it. Claudia was moping. Both stayed silent. Both sat apart. It was as though a hidden tension repelled their bodies from each other.

An engine revved. We looked up. A clean white four wheel drive vehicle — a Mitsubishi Pajero — pulled into the rest house parking lot. The passenger door swung open. A young Malawian man wearing a black suit and a tie stepped outside. He was short and sprouted a plump belly.

Yes! he said in an affable way as he waddled toward us. How are you today?

His smile was huge.

I am Gerald Gause (GOW-see), project engineer for Mpira-Balaka project. You are going to join us!

His eyelids fluttered as he mumbled this title. The size of his stomach stretched his shirt fabric, and it looked as though a button might pop. Mr. Gause stood before us and planted a cigarette between his lips. He then spread his legs apart, heaved his belly even further out and exhaled a veil of smoke. He then told us to pile our luggage into the Pajero and climb in. Inside, Gause sat next