Day 287 / 52

Date: 24 January 2023
Sleeping location: Mabuya Camp, Lilongwe, Malawi
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 0 / 17695 / 2858
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 0 / 152100 / 34100

White man hair: 50-200% more difficult

Day in three words: Anthony Bourdain-ing it

 

In the morning I moved Maggie and most of my stuff into a store cupboard and went out to find a minibus to Lilongwe. The first one that came was a total wreck with the passenger side front window (right next to me) seemingly disconnected from the rest of the vehicle, everything rattling and the speedometer stuck at zero*. I took it anyway because it was already quite full, so it "only" stopped in various places for about an hour in total (during one of which I was offered a live chicken) and I got off the bus on the outskirts of Lilongwe at about 11.30. The city initially seemed like an endless series of empty ring roads, and the bike shop that I’d got off to visit did not exist, so I quickly got a moto into town proper for some lunch. Over some very nice Korean food, in fact some of the best food I've had in Africa, I realised that there is so little to do in Lilongwe that one of the featured attractions on google maps is a joke entry called "the German Bush".

As such I decided to mainly eat, drink and buy provisions, so to cover the last of these I whizzed round three different supermarkets picking up a variety of snacks and flavoursome but light ingredients. I was finally able to find actual cheese and at one supermarket there was even a proper blue cheese reduced from $3.5 to $1. I attempted to buy three but at the till there was some confusion around the price and an employee walked off with one of them, which was probably for the best.

Outside the last supermarket I was set upon by three guys who made a beeline for me and were overly friendly in the way that people are when they want to extract money from you somehow. I wanted a haircut, said so and was led to a place and sat down. As the barber got his kit in order I noticed a price list which had at the top "Hair cut: 1000", but under a separate subsection entitled "white people" a haircut was 3000. When I enquired about this with maximum prejudice I was told that white hair is more difficult. Hmm. I got up to leave and a woman who had been watching this led me to another barbers next door. Here a haircut was 1000 and "English hair" was 2000. Hmm. Again I was told that white hair is more difficult.** I wandered over to a third place at random which did not have an ethnicity-based price list, but was still quoted 1500 Vs the usual 1000 "because white hair is more difficult". Clearly this is all straight up bullshit but I couldn't be arsed marching round every barber in Lilongwe and I could stomach a mzungu tax of 50%, just about.

After my (perhaps fifteen minute, clippers only, not remotely difficult) cut it was 4 so I went to check out a very highly rated cocktail bar nearby, but it was closed, which as with the cheese was probably for the best. After whiling away an hour I went for second lunch/first dinner at a South Indian place that I'd been recommended. This was also delicious and as a bonus I discovered a drink made of lime juice, water and salt, which was delicious, extremely isotonic and very easy to make here. 

Full and happy, I got a moto (which might actually have just been a random guy on a motorbike who wanted to make a dollar) to a hostel where I seemed to be the only guest. So nobody to chat to, but on the plus side I could get a dorm bed that was effectively a private room. To occupy myself I popped out to a cool little locals bar with nice food (second dinner was a sort of elevated rice and beans) and good vibes and spent a couple of hours clearing through my whatsapps and emails - one slightly sad advantage of being solo again is that my admin time is much bigger - every cloud. On the way back I bumped into Salim, a friend of Toz's, and we had a little chat on the street. Back at the hostel there was a big storm and a power cut whilst I was in bathroom with no light. I immediately stepped on something that stung my foot and panicked that it was a deadly snake or spider, before feeling my way back to the room in the pitch black, collecting my phone, returning and finding out that it was just a dead bee. 

Malawian Signs Corner

PA Road Block Stop Over [A hotel] 

Not a sign but a guy was wearing a t-shirt that said:

“An

badest

build bus lonely time

Au demande 

flowercrazys

happy.

Ryan Gosling”

*This is distressingly common here. The previous day I saw a bus whose front and back axles were so out of line that it looked like it was going diagonally

**Interestingly there was also "Indian hair" also priced at 2000. Presumably this is equally difficult to cut. I'd be interested to see what would happen if, say, a Scotsman or an Argentine went in and was told that they had "English hair".