Birthday Wishes + Chichewa + Marriage proposal + Hardcore Travel = Jan 6th

Nobody wants a rainy morning on their birthday. At least not many people I know, anyway.

This year, though, I didn't care. Somehow I didn't feel it was a special day for me at all.

I was turning 23, a number that had never been amidst my favourite. Yet 22 was an age I'd been hoping for and turned out to be one of the toughest and sadest (in balance, it had good stuff as well) years in my life.  So, what to expect? Nothing.

I was grateful that I was alive, being able to travel, to love my family the way I do and be thankful for everything, everything.

We started early, had bread and milk (it was so hard to find one) and headed to the bus station, right next door.

Rain fell light but steady, almost as if it didn't want us to get wet but couldn't help itself. After all, that's its nature.

Bus station clerks told us that the bus could go at any minute now (note that Malawian people are known for not having the so-called occidental impatience and don't get the point of losing one's temper to depart an hour/ two hours later…)

As far as we knew, we were stuck there. As it was raining harder, we made the bus ticket office our waiting room.

I'd received a Facebook Message from a College Teacher, saying that he couldn't find the Chichewa translation for 'Happy Birthday', so I asked a lady over there if she could help me with that. After some discussions with an old woman about spelling issues, they concluded it was 'Munabadwa Tsiku Liti'. But that was not the end of it. They started to write other useful sentences in Chichewa. Some of the curious ones were: I want to sleep/ How many are you in your family?

The lady said she had nothing to eat and that her shoes were old and torn (meaning can you get me something?).

When she said that, I couldn't help but notice that I hadn't seen people working and eating a snack. These people don't eat, I thought to myself. Miguel went to fetch our bags and we gave her some of our cookies.

So far I noticed three things: Malawi people are very badly nourished (most people just buy corn snacks and bread in the supermarkets), family is a big conversation topic and shoes show a working status (that's why they care about them so much).

So far so good, I had my 'English' - Chichewa Dictionary and was more than happy about it.

That was when a cleaning guy came into scene. He was saying in poor English that he could teach us Chichewa for 100 usd. WTF? He wasn't aggresive or anything so I replied with a joke. At that time, Miguel (mi fake husband) had gone outside to smoke and was all alone. This guy brought a big bucket and made me copy him. I was supposed to put it on my head as if I was a local woman carrying something and offer it to him. Instead of doing that, I put the bucket upside down and covered my head from the rain, while doing a funny step.

People just burst into laughter. The guy wasn't that pleased but tried once more. This time I had to kneel and offer him some sort of food platter (imaginary this time) and after that wear a khanga (typical woman's wear - I'll write more about this another day).

I grabbed my waist as if I had a terrible back pain and mimicking and old lady trying to crouch, took the imaginary platter/ basket and started eating the food. After I'd finished my act a woman started chasing me with a khanga and I didn't want to wear it because I'd come to realise (with the help of some women) I was performing a marriage ritual. Things one has to do to get some Chichewa translations. Men and women around couldn't stop laughing, I think they weren't expecting for a mzungu to be so ridiculous.

Shortly after that, our bus left. We -and our backpacks- got to back seats (thankfully, because the front part of the bus was really muddy) and shared the last row with 4 other people (+2 children). 

It was a hard ride: buses were full of people, we could barely move and my legs. Strangely enough, I wasn't in the worst place. Just beside me was a mother with her two little girls, and one of them was sound asleep assuming the Pisa Tower position. I grabbed her (with her mom's consent) by her arms and put her in my lap. She barely opened her eyes, gave me a puzzled look and kept on sleeping.

As the day went on, we saw children everywhere. Packs of white/blue dots on the side of the road going to school, boys selling stuff, some young girls with their new-born babies. It was amazing how powerful their gaze could be and how often I could feel it on me.

We arrived at Monkey Bay around 5pm, when light was already becoming scarse. One of these usual guys tried to offer us a very cheap ride to Cape Mac Lear for 4000 MWK (25 usd), which was at most 30km away. He started explaining why the price was so high: it was only two of us and fuel was going short (thus, prices spiked a lot) and it was getting dark.

I kept on making small talk while Miguel asked around the village for other means of transport. Long stroy short, we got a ride on a windowless van for 2000 MWK (for both of us) and got preferential rice-and-cement-sack seats. 

After a very long loop around a stunning scenery (green green lush green mount, are we going to the beach? where's the lake around here?) we got to Fat Monkey's. 

We bargained our nights there for 1000 MWK a night per person and made our way through the sand. Our dorm was right next to the beach. Sadly, there was almost no moon light and we couldn't make much of the view we had. Bought one of those HotSpot Internet Cards, logged in and went to bed.

The day of the year that was supposed to be mine (or whatever crap like that) was over.