Day 5: Aug 20, 2017. Sunday The whole country of Malawi takes Sunday as a true rest day, as over 90% of the population is some form of Christian and dresses in their Sunday best to observe the Sabbath. This was first noticed as Rory and I left at 6:30 this morning for our 6-mile training run and found the bus station overtly less hostile than in previous days. Most people were not in the habit of travelling on Sunday, and so it seemed business was slow, both in the many closed shops and the fallow bus station.
After a short breakfast, Naomi, Rory, Joseph, Liz, and I left for Chilaweni Village, about a 20-minute car ride East of Solomoni Village. The route was a taste of what suburban Blantyre must be, since we passed a paved road with modest, middle-class houses heading towards Chilaweni. After the dainty little houses were all passed the road quickly transformed to dirt, replete with holes in the uneven terrain that tested the strength of our van’s suspension. After another 10 minutes of concussions we made it to Chilaweni, where we were greeted by the head teacher Dennis. Dennis was beamingly proud to give us a tour of the recent complex completed by the Amica Charity group of UK, a stunning $700,000 clinic and water tower system. The building looked its age, a mere 8 months into its lifespan as the Chilaweni pharmacy and health clinic. The complex boasted over a dozen rooms concerned with nursing, dispensing medicine, meetings and even a garage for the ambulance (which Dennis said was used almost daily).
The real concern to us was the water distribution system, which can only be described as near-ethereal. After days taking photos of Solomoni’s dormant boreholes powered by hand pumps, Chilaweni’s solar-powered water tower and infiltration system was awe-inspiring. The solar panel pumped freshwater from a borehole into the tower constantly, with the spillover following another pipe across the street to a newly designed water distribution station. As long as the sun was out for over 3 days (which Dennis said it so far had been aside from a few stormy June and July days) the receptacle across the street was constantly flushing out water for the villagers. This would in turn overflow into a drainage system that poured out to the crops behind the water distribution receptacle downhill, which we saw was support a luscious garden of maize, mustard, pumpkin, and other plants.
After observing the direction the solar panel was pointed in, we finished taking photos of the complex and said goodbye to Dennis. He wished us farewell and we retraced our path back down to the main road, made even more nauseating this time by a large truck that spewed exhaust directly into our van the whole way back. Sufficiently fumigated, we rolled down the windows of the van as Joseph directed our driver John to a wildlife sanctuary for a short hike. We quickly veered into a busy slum through 20% gradient, past charcoal merchants and sugarcane-chewing children. Miraculously a paved road revealed itself, which quickly reverted to a shelled dirt path lined with locals walking to a funeral. Three solemn miles later we pulled into the wildlife headquarters, and for a mandatory $5 were escorted on a 4km walk by an M16 wielding ranger in cotton sweatpants and tee. The path snaked beneath the nearby mountains, and while we didn’t climb much wondering on the trails below proved to be equally as surreal as any altitude hike would have been. The trees ranged from msuku which yielded a fruit Joseph said he could not describe to us, but later recalled as tasting simply like dried apple, to dried-bean trees whose seeds littered the forest floor. Wispy tallgrass gave the whole scene an extra dimension of wonder, and although New Hampshire’s White Mountains had made me feel comfortable in the woods I still felt as though I truly was on a different continent. It continues to confuse me how a body of water can make a land feel so alien even if its characteristics line up nearly completely with my home.