Flora and Two Muzungu!
Flora is a typical young black Malawean. 25 years old, she works at the local cafe, making coffee, serving drinks, and baking cakes for loyal customers. When Chris and I sidled up to the counter, Flora served us homemade cake and a fresh pot of coffee. In the beautiful but rustic port town of Nkata Bay, population 10,000, on the shore of Lake Malawi, this amounts to luxury.
As Chris downloaded his emails over the wireless signal (the only one in town), I starting playing Mastermind at the counter with Flora - after all, there were no other customers. Six hours later, after many a Mastermind game and even a round of Trivial Pursuit, we were now invited to dinner at Flora's house.
After a trip to buy fresh fish (caught on the lake) the feast was on. Fried chumba fish, veggies, and plenty of enzima - an African cream of wheat-like substance that you use in place of cutlery, napkins, and probably also toilet paper. No forks, folks. Let me tell you, your hands smell like fish for days after a meal.
Flora lives in a very humble apartment block, one that appears more like a dormitory that has seen much better days. 17 one-room units were packed together haphazardly yet tightly on the propery. Dinner was cooked in the hallway; no kitchens here. Her neighbors were... well, interesting. They ranged from Flora to a DJ, from a family of 3 living in one room to a very friendly drunken woman who stumbled by about every five minutes. Despite it all, Flora maintains an even keel, giving away her extra enzima to the hungry ones and helping the lush to find her room.
As we ate dinner, however, Flora's story quickly became much more interesting. Married at 17, to a rich husband of 26. The rich fiancée, a Doctor, payed a lubola of many cows (lubola = wedding payment, see Report 8, previously). The happy couple soon had a baby boy. However, after increasing signs of problems and an ever more apparent wandering eye, Flora finally confronted her husband. Violence resulted. The couple soon parted ways.
His violent behavior would have resulted in jail time in the U.S.A. However, in Malawi, Africa, as a husband who had paid a handsome lubolo for his wife to become his property, he was granted full custody and guardianship of the child. Flora's son, now 6, lives 30 miles away with his father, who remarried his lover a month after the divorce was finalized. Flora was forced to start a new life minus her child, husband, and any finances from her former spouse. If she had not agreed to any of the conditions, the ex-husband could have demanded that her family pay him back the lubolo.
After dinner, it was time to see the town with Flora's friends, Malawi style. Before long, Chris and I were debating politics with David, playing pool with Sovier (what a name!) and on the dance floor in an informal Nkata Bay pub crawl. All without seeing another white person. The amazing thing is that Nkata Bay is a town with a large European and foreign communities. The coffee shops, dive shops, and internet cafes, catering to foreign tourists, are owned and frequented by white South Africans, Brits, and Germans. The same shops are staffed entirely by black locals. Economic colonisalism, Soviet called it.
The two groups mix like oil and water. They don't. They seem to interact for work, but not pleasure. When Chris and I walked through the streets in the black areas of town, we were such a novelty that every small child would yell out the word for white person: "Muzungu!"
Thanks to Flora, two Super Muzungu got to see a slice of real Malawi life, from tales of struggling to get by to enjoying a Friday night with friends. Something not all muzungu get a chance to experience.
Matthew-
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