Travel in space and culture

This week I traveled from Lilongwe, through Blantyre, Addis Ababa, Vienna and Stockholm to Oslo. As I moved from Southern Africa through Horn of Africa to Europe I realized that I was part of a cultural journey.

Human mobility has increased exponentially with new technology and improved economic power. Travel in air, belonging to the well-off in the Western world only a generation ago, is now commonplace around the world.  People converge from all kinds of directions and depart for different destinations.  Airplanes and airports have become cultural happenings.

At Lilongwe Kamuzu Airport the flavour of Africa was very present.  Women in colourful dresses and with fancy scarfs shaping their hairstyle walked around in high-healed shoes.  Young boys in suits were clearly expressing that the upcoming journey was a major event in their lives.  Luggage was brought in all kinds of shapes and forms; huge suitcases, over-sized plastic bags, cardboard boxes wrapped with rope...  Extended families crowded the departure area, winking farewell to their dear ones.  I was experiencing Malawian community-life. Asian and Western looking people blended in as a small minority.

As we landed in Addis, we entered the interface between Sub-Saharan Africa and Arabian sphere. We met turbans, jalabiyyahs, heavy perfumes and hijabs. Arab and Somali sound-bits mixed with African vernacular languages and English.  Addis airport is a hub for travels north, south, east and west.

On the plane through Vienna to Stockholm there were still a variety of skin-colours and languages.  Clothing and luggage were slightly less diverse, but rather more streamlined towards the "world traveler" style.  I was not anymore in an African community.  I was no more part of a minority of Europeans.  We were a mixed community - in between.  In Vienna a number of the Sub-Saharan Africans, Arabs and Somalis left the plane.

I now entered the last phase of my travel as representative of the mainstreamed majority.  Most of the colourfully dressed had left us.  Those who originated from Malawi, Ethiopia, Somalia... were mostly dressed in Western clothes, carried modern suitcases and roller bags.  Perfume smell was subdued and languages gradually shifted towards Swedish, and even Norwegian.  Swedes and Norwegians - white, brown or black - were obviously returning home.  Whether their origin was Blantyre, Mogadishu, Addis or Oslo they blended in.

I had been part of not only a travel in time and space, but certainly a travel in culture and identity.  Globalisation has many faces!

Burdens and innovation

We have certain images of what tools are built for.  Innovations can enhance their utility, or entirely transform their use.  Plastic bags are made to carry things.  If a number of plastic bags are tucked together and wrapped around in careful ways they can end up as footballs and be used by children in dusty spaces.  Small branches of certain trees can be cut and slightly split up in one end... and you have a tooth brush!  Beer cans can be split open and hammered into small cars or aeroplanes.

When I travel along roads in Malawi I see a lot of impressive use of tools.  For one, the use of heads, particularly women's heads is impressive.  This is obviously a tool as old as humankind, but not less

impresssive for that reason.  Sometimes the weight of things carried on heads is utterly unbelievable, at other times the balancing act is breathtaking, and many times a combination of the two makes a clumsy Norwegian quite humble.  Collecting wood and water are two main activities that are frequently involving heads.  These women south-east of Dedza are typical examples of the artists, although not displaying the most impressive acts.  What struck me with these women, and most women carrying things on their heads, is with which grace and down to earth posture they do it.  If I try, my entire body would be involved in the attempt, ... while look at the women!  They don't seem to notice that things are carried on their heads.

The greatest danger of traveling along Malawi roads at night is the number of people and animals walking along the roadside. With more than half of the population living in poverty, Malawi car park is somewhat limited.  Take into consideration that fuel prices are about 75% of Norwegian level!  Is it surprising that many people would have to think twice before investing in vehicles?  People therefore walk long distances, carry heavy burdens and establish their trading posts along the road.  Commodities will have to be brought from A to B.  Public transport, mostly minibuses, is an alternative.  There are, however limitations to what can be loaded on to minibuses.  Firewood for example does not fit into a minibus. Therefore other means need to be found, and the bicycle comes as a solution.  The notion "heavy duty vehicle" is well known, but I have not seen "heavy duty bicycles" being advertised in papers.  I have, nevertheless seen them along roads.  Just have a look at the specimen below!

Back in Norway we have a Toyota station wagon, but I doubt I would be able to pile more wood into our car than this man carries on his bicycle!  His engine is probably comfortable on flat road, but I am sure he is challenged when he approaches uphill stretches.  Pushing this weight uphill is quite hard work, and holding back the same load going downhill is similarly challenging.  The two wheels and the frame does however make all the difference!  The bicycle is transformed to a heavy duty tool!

The examples and photos above are only two expressions of adaptation and resilience. Daily I see a lot of adaptation and resilience around me along the roads in Lilongwe and beyond.  Would I survive if I was forced to use the same survival techniques?  I am not sure.  Somewhere along the history my affluent life left some basic life skills by the wayside.  While I certainly hope people who currently have to make extreme adaptations and have to stretch their resilience will have improved lives, I should make efforts to regain some of those forgotten life skills.

In a later reflection I will return to another tool that is transforming peoples' lives in Malawi: the mobile phone.

A straw hut for a start

All stories have a start, although they do not need to start with Adam and Eve.  My blog story starts in a straw hut in the very southern part of Malawi.  Moving to Malawi in March prompted the idea to finally open my own blog.  Here I am, this time writing in English... and at other times probably writing in Norwegian.

Back to the straw hut in Bangula, the consultation room for the water and sanitation team of Norwegian Church Aid that was deployed during the devastating floods that hit parts of Malawi in January and February this year.  Thousands of people had to evacuate their homes, witness destruction of their houses and drowning of their crops.  In the middle of plenty of water, clean water was a scarce commodity. A system of bladder tanks and water taps were established.  People were without shelter, and NCA provided 450 family tents.  Sanitation facilities, including slabs for pit latrines were also made available.  Birgit and I visited the team just after Easter, eager to see how they were doing, and how the displaced population survived.

For Ulrik and Alexander, seen in the photo, provision of water and sanitation were now routine.  Maria, the third member of the team, was busy with hygiene training in the camp when this picture was taken.  For people in the camp, routine was another day lost in their desire to go back to their villages.  For some families uncertainties surrounded their return, since the government has indicated that they need to be moved to new homes.Water dries up, but lives have been upset.  Livelihoods have been put to a test.  The camp population live off the fields, and the fields were devastated.

The NCA team is back in Europe by now, and the government has told people to go back home by end of May.  Food rations will not be handed out in the camps, ... but perhaps a ration "for the road" may be provided.  Some seeds have been handed out to some of the farmers, in the hope that it was not too late to make a second planting.

The question we obviously ask is:  when is the next time the floods hit Lower Shire Valley, causing Shire River to go way beyond its banks and cause another disaster?  It is clear that natural disasters do not hit with any sense of fairness and justice.  Those people living in insecure and volatile situations at the outset are the ones that are mostly hit.  Where access has been difficult, access will be even more difficult after the floods.  Together with colleagues I visited a health clinic NCA is renovating and providing with new buildings.  In order to get there we had to follow a road that passes along a mountain ridge, with numerous rivers and streams to be crossed.  The photo below shows only one crossing.  There used to be a road with a so-called "Irish bridge" crossing the river.  As you will see, there is not much left of the road or the bridge.

One reflection has come to mind when talking with people affected by a combination of natural disasters, difficult access to education and health, many obstacles for food production and not least cumbersome access to local market.  Would I have given up, living and working against all odds?  Malawians may be experienced as phlegmatic, ... but no wonder!  Their resilience is just admirable.

While I maintain the conviction that what I am part of, as part of NCA and partner efforts, I remain with a deep sense of humility.  Few people in this part of the world, as in any part of the world, are saints.  They are, however survivors!

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I hope my blog can bring out reflections, observations, questions and opinions that you would like to comment on.  Let us see what might come out with some regularity.  In the meantime, keep smiling!