8 Continents: Part 5
Africa, or, Sometimes You Just Gotta Trust
I’m sharing one chapter per week of my new memoirette, 8 Continents: A Love Story. Can’t wait to find out what happens next? It’s available as a paperback or ebook on Amazon!
africa, or, sometimes you just gotta trust
2015
“You must not move outside at night here in Malawi,” our trainer warned us in Peace Corps Pre-Service Training.
“Why not?”
“That is when the drunks and thieves come out,” she answered. And then, almost as an afterthought, “And the witches.”
I can’t speak to the witches, but I did once find myself on a minibus at dusk, and the driver, before setting out on the hour-long journey over a mountain range, downed a double shot of vodka from a plastic bag. What do you do in that situation? You accept that you have no control, and you give yourself over to trust.
Drunks, thieves, and witches: These are the people with whom I’ll share the road if I decide to bike home tonight. It’s sunset, and I’ve only just now arrived at the Ntaja bus depot — a two-hour bike ride over dirt roads and paths from my house in Chikweo.
I guess I could get a room here for the night. It can’t be more than 1,500 kwacha, and if I wake up at 5, I can make it back to Chikweo with enough time to take a bath before morning assembly. It’s not the end of the world, but I’d really rather sleep in my own bed tonight. Sucks to start the workweek feeling rushed.
Just then, I hear a familiar voice:
“Masho! Where to?”
“Daveson! Mwaswera bwanji?”
Daveson is my student Kamelon’s eldest brother, a fisherman on Lake Chiuta who randomly speaks good English. I ask where he’s headed, and he says, “Chikweo, same like you.”
“Oh, I will not go to Chikweo tonight. It’s too dark.”
He laughs. “Don’t worry Masho, we can go.”
“But… it’s dark. What if we meet a witch?”
He looks confused; guess the jury’s still out on witches.
At this point, the premonition is still fresh in my mind: I’ve accepted that I’m going to die in five years. Maybe that sounds defeatist, but to me it couldn’t be farther from it. It’s deciding to die that’s defeatist. Deciding is a box cutter; acceptance is the back of a pickup truck. Deciding is choosing death; accepting is what gives you permission to live. Ultimately, I conclude, if I’m going to die in five years, well hell, that means there’s no way I’m gonna die tonight. My hesitation breaks like an old rubber band, and I laugh and throw up my hands. “Tiyene! Let’s go!”
Imagine a hiking trail, a riverbed, and a sandtrap have a baby, and it’s raised by Hurricane Katrina. The end result is your average Malawian road. Cyclists zip along on a roughly two-inch wide path pounded to relative hardness by the rotations of all the bikes that came before them. On either side of those two inches: loose sand to send you into a fishtail, fist-sized rocks to throw you off-balance, yawning potholes to launch you over your handlebars. As the visibility gradually bleeds away with the dying embers of the sunset, I tense. How am I going to make it through the next hour and 45 minutes?
That’s when I realize that even though I can’t see the road, I can see Daveson — more specifically, his white t-shirt, which glows in the light of the almost-full moon. I don’t have to see the road I’m riding; I can read it through his movements. Just go exactly where he goes, do exactly what he does, and stay loose. I give myself over to trust.
I’ve often wondered if trust is a feeling or an action. Is it a plant you cultivate or a cliff you hurl yourself from? Can one arise out of the other in some beautiful mixing of metaphors? I don’t pretend to know the answer. What I can say for sure is that you can follow a white t-shirt through the darkness for two hours and make it home safe.