A funny thing happened this evening (Tuesday, August 19, the night I before I was suppose to go to Blantyre. I got lost. Since I’ve been living in Malawi I feel like I’ve lost a lot of my independence. At home I would take the bus to and from home often times late at night. There were times where I would leave work (downtown Toronto at the CBC) at 11pm at night and get home at almost one o’clock in the morning. Drive at night by myself. During the day I would venture to different corners of Toronto. And not once did I ever fear for my safety. While I was away at university in London, Ontario, I would walk to the store late at night. Walk to a night club or pub to meet my friends when I was living in downtown London, Ontario or sometimes I would roller blade at 12:00am at night. And still I wasn’t concerned.
But that’s not the case while I’m here in Malawi. I’ve been told time and again that it’s not safe to go out at night by yourself. Certain areas are not safe during the day. I’m constantly being picked up at my flat in the morning to go to work and dropped off there at night when work is finished. Staying late at work is difficult as people will often come up to me while I help a reporter with a story “are you almost ready? We’re waiting for you.” I have no control of what time I come and go. No afternoon stops at the corner store or when I was in Toronto I would stop at the Eaton Centre to buy a pair of shoes or check out the clothes on sale at my favourite store before hopping on the subway to go home.
Here I feel confined and at times annoyed that I cannot travel when and where I please. So today I stayed late to help a young reporter with her story. When I went downstairs the car was full and they told me to wait for the car to come back before I go home. While I was waiting two of my colleagues were walking down the stairs and out the door. I asked them if they were taking the minibus home. They said, yes. I turned to another co-worker waiting for the car and said, “I’m taking the minibus.” I waved goodbye and followed my colleagues a male and female to the bus stop. On our way to the bus stop I asked them if it was safe to be riding the minibus at night. The male colleague said yes. But the female colleague who’s English is not very good said, no. She said that in her opinion its not safe for a woman to be riding the minibus at night. But what could I do. I had already made up my mind to jump on the minibus with them so I kept walking.
Well, the time was around 5:30pm now, and the sun was setting. I was getting a bit nervous but I knew that I could be home just a little after 6pm. Ha. Maybe not. Considering just about five minutes after we were riding on the bus the minibus ran out of gas. Man I was shaking in my boots. Because while we were waiting for the operator to get more gas the sun was setting. When we finally got to the shoprite in old town, which is the area where I would be able to catch the correct minibus that would take me home it was dark. So I turned to my colleague and half jokingly said. I’m scared.” He laughed, thinking I was joking and said,”don’t worry,it’s safe.” Okay I said and hopped out of the mini-bus.
As I was crossing the street to catch my area 25 minibus I thought I would try using the little Chichewa I knew to make sure I caught the correct minibus. So I turned my attention to a man standing on a hill yelling, 25, 49 for the various buses leaving the area. I said, ndikupita Ku Riverside Hotel. Translation, “I’m going to Riverside Hotel.” He said yeah yeah hailed one of the buses that started pulling out of the minibus area and shuffled me into the bus. Now I just assumed it was the correct bus because he seemed so sure. Well turns out the bus I jumped on was going in the opposite direction. I couldn’t help it but I thought I was gonna get robbed. I had a laptop computer in my bag along with an expensive recorder and microphone, and 9000 kwacha (about USD 64). Apart from that I was lost.
Now when the various people around me on the bus realized I was lost and a foreigner they instructed me to stay on the bus and proceeded to negotiate with the minibus driver to take me home. So after stopping for gas the bus driver proceeded to take a deadly shortcut to get to my house. While en route on the dirt road, I thought the minibus was going to tip over thereby proceeding to kill all those travelling in the bus. As we were driving I prayed to God and asked him to keep the minibus from getting in an accident. I would have felt terrible if the bus had gotten in an accident all because they needed to drop one dumb ass foreigner home who thought it would be fun to take the minibus home in order to show her co-workers that she wasn’t that different from them.
All in all, I enjoyed the ride. Despite the fear of being out of my home by myself after dark. One thing that I was really happy about was how nice people were on the bus. They were genuinely concerned for my safety as I was also concerned. They didn’t want me to get off the bus to try and catch another minibus in the correct direction as it was pretty obvious by my accent and the fact that I didn’t speak Chichewa that I wasn’t from Malawi. So although the passengers were tired from their own day at work they didn’t want me to compromise my own safety. Still, despite the fact that everyone was very kind, 6l I will not venture on the minibus late at night but my ride on Tuesday was not only freeing and gave me a little piece of my independence back but it also showed me how kind and caring Malawians really are. This country truly is the warm heart of Africa.
When I returned home I called my co-worker. We proceeded to laugh on the phone together when I told him about my journey. The tale was funny to us both because I wasn’t injured. Still he proceeded to say to me, “next time you take the minibus, we’ll leave earlier.” And I happily obliged.
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