The inspirational 6

Wednesday 12th March

The past three mornings have been pretty fishy and today could have possibly been the fishiest. The fishermen are all up at the crack of dawn with their daily catch so by the time I'm cycling through the villages at 9, the fish have been laid outside on the market tables and filling the hot air with their scent for a good few hours.

I couldn't find anywhere for breakfast so had to make do with roadside doughnuts. This would prove an ingredient to add to a day of unhappy cycling. Today the begging was relentless. I've used that word alot with regards to Africa but today was especially hard. It was a tough reminder for me of the hard times Malawi is going through right now. I've tried to block it out with ear phones but that doesn't help Malawi and that's not what I've done for all the other countries.

One of the factors of my ride has been to give people a view/opinion from a cyclist enduring every part of a country via this blog. When I think of Malawi I can't just talk about and remember the two amazing days I've spent in "paradise" on the lake as that is merely a small luxury percentage of my time here. The majority of Malawi, especially in the north is unemployment and poverty. 90% of every village I've cycled through is shut down. Shops are there but none are open and the only things being sold are fish, rice and maize. How does this look for the future? I've struggled to buy water in every village I've been to and I've had to buy hot fanta or coke instead. Stocks are low and people are sat around doing nothing.

Today was a very hard day for me and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get out of the low. Calls of "Mazungo, GIVE ME MONEY" shouted from EVERY child and even some adults can only be deflected for so long and today they battered me more mentally than Ethiopia. It's not said with conviction or desperation but its said every 2 minutes and there's no easy way to handle it.

My motivation hadn't been that low since Ethiopia and despite being close to home, its not fair just to bypass the few countries I have left. Yes, Malawi is idyllic in some areas but as is so common on this continent, you can't ignore the poverty not just on the doorstep of paradise but on the front garden, the back garden and on the road leading up to the house. The people won't let you ignore it!

I stopped for a fizzy drink, I was clock watching and getting nowhere. As I sat outside the only shop open, a man came and sat next to me for a chat. He confirmed the problems that were evident from just cycling through. There were no jobs, and unlike in Kenya and Ethiopia where there was still opportunity to start their own businesses, there didn't seem to be that option in Malawi. I found that difficult to understand seeing as there was no variety. Everybody sold only fish, bananas, maize or maybe tomatoes, surely it would be easy to grow something new to sell and start your own business?!

It sounds easy doesn't it but with no money to start with, no idea of how to grow crops and therefore no sustainability, everyone that wants money has to get involved with a business that everybody else already knows about. The man wanted to be my pen pal, I had to be brutally honest and say no. Despite all this I think Malawi on a whole is developing and my ride has just taken me through some of the worst areas. The gap between rich and poor is still an African mile like the rest of Africa but i was filled with hope at the end of my horrible day by 6 individuals that were/are the inspiration I've been missing.

At 100kms I came to a T junction. There was an ok looking guest house right in front of me, Salima 7km to my left and Lilongwe (tomorrow's destination) 97km to my right. I initially started to cycle towards to Salima to find a place to stay then after a mile I turned around as I thought, its on one night, I'll just stay at the guest house on the junction. (plus I was too lazy and fed up to carry on cycling to Salima). I popped into the petrol station next door to the guest house to get some water and asked if there were any other places to stay towards Lilongwe. The guy at the counter said no and warned me away from the guest house next door. I then asked two security guards at the road block if there were any guest houses nearby and they recommended going toward Salima for 2 miles and both openly warned me away from the nearby guesthouse. 

Now I've stayed at some pretty grotty places and i would put this guest house nowhere near the bottom but seeing as 3 separate people had said so, I thought I should just suck up the extra two miles and find a place called Village Plaza Lodge on the road towards Salima. Little did I know that those extra two miles would turn out to be two of the most influential miles to my mood of possibly the whole trip.

When I arrived the lodge's looked far to expensive and so I met a lady on reception called Rose, who let me camp in between them. I asked if I could eat in the restaurant and Rose said I would rather go into town as the food on site was too expensive and so she recommended a good restaurant in Salima. Rose was clearly not working on commission and probably couldn't be bothered to cook so I jumped in a taxi and good old Rose had recommended a belter.

When I got back to the site I then met 6 guys from England that were working for a Christian Organisation called Tear that educated the local people about how to grow crops sustainably. How not to just input a water system but how to fix and maintain the system and how to do all the things I have recognised previously as problems in Malawi. David, Nia, Ben, Jonathan, Laurie and Lois were all inspiring to me because they were only 18-21 and instead of doing the standard gap year thing and travelling/partying with a bunch of friends, they were all using their knowledge to make a huge difference in a very poor area of Malawi. (I know I sounded very old just there) On top of this, they were 6 great individuals, 5 of them off to very good universities this year (Lois already graduated) and they had only been a group for just over month but had bonded like a real family. All of them made me feel unbelievably welcome, all of them much more intelligent than me and all kind enough to sit and listen to the old man's boring stories!!!

We sat and had dinner together and stayed up till well past my usual bedtime chatting. It was the best end to an extremely hard day and it didn't just improve my day but it helped me to regain focus for the rest of my ride. I may only have a month left but i know more than anyone that there's a lot that can happen in a month . I now also know that i have better armour to help me cope with the toughness of getting over the finish line and Zambia, Botswana and South Africa are not just a means to an end, they will be savoured and enjoyed probably more than any other country! 

All I can say is one big massive thankyou to the "6 mazungos" because I don't think they realised how much they influenced and inspired me in such a short space of time.