Blomba Part 1

I’ve decided to call this series of posts (yes, a series) “Blomba”, because I’ve just returned to Lilongwe after spending 5 days between Blantyre and Zomba!

I was on another field trip with my colleagues from the Centre to interview households, and to be honest I was excited about seeing Blantyre especially as I’d heard a lot about it from others, and was anxious to see it. It’s a bit more of a “party town” than Lilongwe, and the architecture was supposed to be more cohesive with a sort of colonial style. I’m a real nerd for architecture – in fact, I’m a real nerd in general, I think it’s fair to say – so I was pretty excited about seeing the place, not to mention seeing more of Malawi than just Lilongwe... it was a 4-5 hour drive, though, so I stocked up on water and provisions and off we set.

There were 3 of us going – myself, the driver, and another lady from the office. We were going to meet the people who are generally responsible for the BNB project in Blantyre, because the project I'm working on is a national thing, when we got there. We would spend 3 days there, then head to Zomba – another major city in Malawi – for 2 days to do further work.

As I said, it was a long drive to Blantyre so about halfway there we decided to stop in a small town for petrol and snacks, and whatnot. (The whatnot especially was delicious, LOL! I love that phrase) I promptly hopped out of the back, but I was stopped by someone. I’m kind of used to this at this stage in time, though, so it didn’t bother me terribly. Especially in rural areas, you really stick out like a sore thumb as probably the only white person they’ve seen in a while. You get a lot of people trying to talk to you and shake your hand and stuff, and usually this is no problem. I got the sense, though, that this guy wasn’t exactly 100%. I’m not sure how best to put that, but he seemed definitely off-centre. I shook his hand, though, and gave him the usual niceties that I give to people I don’t know from Adam, LOL! Only problem was, he wouldn’t let go of my bloody hand...

*sigh*

I looked at the driver, as if to say “erm, help please” and he more or less had to pry my hand out of this guys'. Awkward wouldn’t quite cover it – I got my stuff in the shop though, and came out hoping to make a swift departure. I might have known this would not be the case. My friend was there again! This time, while the driver was very considerately engaging in an extended conversation with one of the petrol attendants, he decided to come over to stroke my face and tell me I was very beautiful. Cheers for the compliment, like, but hands off the face if you please... I was absolutely mortified. This went on for a few seconds, with me performing some sort of limbo, bending-backwards manoeuvre to avoid his hand.

I was just starting to wonder when the driver or someone else was going to intervene, when I got a response to this internal question, only not quite the one I was hoping for.

You see, this guy was quite clearly not right in the head. My colleague said he was probably drunk, but I didn’t get any smell of substances off him, and to be honest he seemed perfectly lucid and able to express himself. He just didn’t seem to have any notion of appropriate behaviour towards a woman you met 2 minutes ago. I know that this stuff is inherently different in Malawi anyway due to cultural issues, but not this much. His behaviour was odd and I suspected that maybe he had mild special needs or was disturbed or something. You know what I mean anyway – so I just kind of hoped for a diplomatic few words about keeping your hands off peoples’ faces. I was sure he didn’t mean any harm, I was just very uncomfortable.

What I got, on the other hand, was a local young fella physically dragging him away, and belting him across the face. Needless to say, I was more upset by this by far than I had been by the face-touching, etc. I was totally shocked, but the poor guy didn’t give up, he kept trying to approach me even after this, and he kept being dragged off. It was all very upsetting really. :-( We made a pretty swift exit after this, though – I for one felt that my presence wasn’t going to do much to help him, since he wouldn’t leave me alone while I was there, and the more he tried to approach me, the more annoyed the others got.

We drove off, at which point they had carried him off by the arms and legs and dropped him into some sort of gutter beside the shop. :-( I nearly cried. I just felt so awful for him – it was difficult to know what to do, but in retrospect things probably calmed down a lot more by my leaving, and I doubt my intervention would have helped much. It just upset me a lot, this guy obviously wasn’t the full shebang and hurting him really wasn’t necessary. I couldn’t stop wondering if he was ok for the rest of the journey, and feeling quite guilty that I’d gotten him into trouble. I wasn’t quite sure how I should have responded, I’m still not, but hopefully he’s ok now...