Journals

After all the effort and adventure involved in making it here, I wound up getting stuck in Blantyre for an extra few days because of an odd twist of fate--my motorbike was smashed, while chained to a tree, by a drunken member of Malawi's Supreme Court.  I was asleep when it happened, but, according to both the hostel's bartender and night watchman, at about 3:00 a.m., his honor staggered out of the bar with an attractive and equally inebriated "niece" in tow.  It's unclear who was actually driving, but by all accounts, the car started up and just attacked my bike's tree like it had a ring of fire and a ramp behind it.  The damage turned out to be minor, just a broken license plate, a few dents and a ruined bolt or two.  To his credit, the judge left his name and mobile number with the guard; I called him, and after first sending one of his minions to feel me out, he agreed to come back and meet me at the hostel.  Before seeing him, I Googled the name written on a scrap of paper he left, and began to get a sense of what an important man he was in Malawi.  His name popped up on a number of constitutional rulings, and more than one case involving the country's President.   We met the next morning at eleven, and the judge, quite frankly, was a nervous wreck.  The incident was big news with everyone at the local bus station, and more than one of them told me that I should try to extort a brand-new bike from him.  Sweating profusely in the balmy air, he described what happened as a "freak accident" while I searched for missing pieces of my license plate.  It was interesting to watch such a powerful man in his moment of humility, but I decided to let him off the hook right away.  I informed the judge that the circumstances surrounding the accident did not interest me, and that I only wanted what his actions took out of my pocket.  The estimate I passed on to him--not counting the license plate, which came from Mozambique--was 250 Kwatcha ($2.50).    The next day, a young man in a suit arrived to hand me an envelope and a signed note from the judge.  In elegant handwriting, he apologized again, regretted that we were not able to meet under better circumstances and wished me a safe journey.  The envelope contained 4,000 Kwatcha, which was more than enough to pay for repairs, by Malawian road insurance and pay the fine I got for not having said insurance.  While driving without coverage was a bit irresponsible, in my defense, I had been too broke to buy food when I entered the country, so collision protection wasn't really an option at the time.  Moreover, I only got written up because I ran into a spot checkpoint while on the way to the insurance company's office.  But in the end it didn't matter, because everything wound up balancing out: the bike got fixed, I ended up no worse for wear, and my faith in the give-and-take of the universe was restored.  And so, once again, it was time to start making my way north.