A Personal Essay
By Boyd Lemon / Guest contributor
Not long ago I joined a small tour group to visit a village in Malawi, Africa, a small country east of Tanzania.
“I will be your tour guide,” Kea said. “The name of the village we will visit is Mbamba.” (The “M” is silent). In a flash a group of young men crowded around outside the gate of our campsite, then disbursed among us as we walked. Two of them walked on either side of me. One, a tall, chunky man with short hair introduced himself as Cisco and asked me my name. I told him, and we shook hands. The other said he was Bush Bebe (phonetically spelled) — unlikely, I thought, as I shook his outstretched hand. “Glad to meet you,” he said. His head was shaven, and compared to Cisco he looked about four feet tall. Cisco said he lived in the village with his grandmother.
“I live in the village too,” said Bush Bebe. I noticed that two young men flanked each of the other tour members. Everyone chatted as we walked.
We walked along the dusty path — it hadn’t rained in a few days — toward the village, surrounded by the lush foliage and red and yellow flowers sprinkled about the jungle-like terrain. I recognized mango trees, cassava and groves of banana plants. We began to see thatched roof huts near the path. In about a mile we reached a small outdoor market and a water pump surrounded by thirty or so mud huts with thatched roofs — the village center. Small wooden tables and brightly colored cloths draped on the ground were covered with fruits and vegetables — tomatoes, corn, potatoes, avocados, beans, bananas, fruit I didn’t recognize; and arts and crafts — paintings on animal skins of traditional dancers, animals, warriors; and wooden carvings of the wild animals of Africa — elephants, zebras, wildebeests, giraffes, monkeys, lions and leopards. There were handmade drums and local woodwind and string instruments of various shapes and sizes, and CD’s of African music. I doubt if anyone in the village had a CD player.
A line of women waited at the water pump chatting with each other and their children. As a child worked the pump handle, a woman filled a plastic tub. When it was full, she hoisted it up to her head, took the child’s hand and walked down a path with the heavy tub balanced on her head.
Kea asked us to gather around. The scene at the water pump continued. Kea said that most people in the village were subsistence farmers, growing cassava, tomatoes, beans, corn, rice, bananas and mangos. Some kept chickens. A few earned a living from tourism. There was no other work for the villagers. He told us that the well and pump had been provided by an international charitable foundation, that it was the only source of potable water for the village. People who lived on the outskirts had to walk miles for water.
Our individual guides left us. Cisco said they would rejoin us when we came back to the village. We followed Kea for 50 yards or so. He gestured toward a hut made of mud bricks and a thatched roof. “That’s my home, he said. He said that the thatched roof leaked. “I wake up with water dripping on me. Needs lots of maintenance,” he said in a non-complaining tone. He laughed.
The 13 of us couldn’t fit in the small home — a living room with a smoldering fire on the dirt floor, about eight feet square and two other tiny rooms with openings in the interior mud walls. We took turns, entering in two compact groups. He said they cooked over the fire. He pointed at a small table and two chairs. “This is where we eat,” he said, as he pushed them to the side to make more room. It was the only furniture; the house had no plumbing or appliances.
“Two bedrooms,” he said, pointing again, “mine and my grandmother’s.” The bedrooms were just large enough for a single bed sized pad on the dirt floor — nothing else.
He said one in five people in the village was infected with HIV, more women than men. He didn’t say, but it occurred to me that was why he and Cisco lived with their grandmothers. Probably, their mothers had died of AIDS. In answer to a question, he said that the average age for girls to marry was 15. Men, women and older children all worked on the farms.
As we left Kea’s home and headed up the dirt path, 25 to 30 children appeared from somewhere. They looked as young as 3 or 4 and probably as old as 10. A boy on my left and a girl on my right grabbed my hands. They chattered away, always smiling. I couldn’t understand a lot of what they were saying, but they asked where I was from. They smiled broadly and shook their heads up and down when I said the United States. The girl, about 10, wore a dirty beige dress that was too big for her. The skirt almost touched the ground. The top was torn and top buttons were missing, exposing most of her chest. Many of the children were dressed in near rags, likely hand me downs from long ago. Only a few had newer, brightly colored clothes. Most of the girls wore dresses. The boy who held my hand, about 7 or 8, dressed in red shorts and an oversized yellow t-shirt, had a mango partly in his mouth, covering most of his lips. His hand was sticky. Several of the children picked up ripe mangos that had fallen from the trees, split them open with their hands and shoved them in their mouths.
The children sang as we walked along, first together, then by themselves. Sometimes they skipped in the sweltering heat. They were almost always smiling, chattering or laughing when they weren’t singing. The older children looked after the youngest. No adults came along, except Kea.
The two children holding my hands pulled me up to the front next to Kea. He smiled and asked me where I was from. “United States,” I said. He smiled broadly. “Obama,” he shouted, raising his hand in a fist. I smiled back, nodding.
“Yes,” I said. I voted for him. “Good. He’s a good man,” said Kea.
I asked if the people of the village had enough to eat. “Yes, usually,” he said. “We take care of each other. If a family is in need, we help out. We look after each other.” I asked about crime in the village. “Crime? No, none,” he said. We kept walking. Most adults and children near the path waived at us with big smiles as we passed.
[To be continued in next week’s column]
— Boyd Lemon is a retired lawyer, who re-invented himself as a writer, living in Ventura. He recently returned from a year in France and Italy. His memoir, “Digging Deep: A Writer Uncovers His Marriages,” has just been published. It is about his journey to understand his role in the destruction of his three marriages. He believes it will help others to deal with their own relationship issues. Information, excerpts and reviews are on his website, http://www.BoydLemon-Writer.com