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.