But first I had to clear Malawi immigration. The immigration guy called me in front of 4 or so other people, I think because I am white and looked confused and stupid white people are dangerous to leave wandering around all willy-nilly. He asked me why I couldn’t approximate how much I spent in Malawi. I said, “In the last two years?!?” Eventually he looked at my visa for the third time and saw that I’m a sorta-resident (I think that’s the legal term) and let me through.
I asked where I could legally change kwacha to meticais, and as there was nowhere, and a big sign said changing kwacha to metacais was illegal with any of the thirty money changers outside. But, either the immigration guy was really nice or corrupt because he arranged to have some moneychangers come and change enough money to get me to an atm. I figure corrupt, because the rate they gave me was poor—although it was nice not to be mobbed while dealing with money, and perhaps I was just paying for that pleasure.
Generally I find that the best people to get prices from, especially in tourist gouging situations, are the people who have nothing to benefit from giving you azungu-price. I asked Salady, one of the moneychangers, how much for the bike taxi, and he gave me a price significantly lower than the ones the bike taxi pedallers had been giving me when they and the moneychangers were mobbing me. Turned out he got me again, though, because the was just giving me the price to the border, and I had to pay his friend separately to actually take me to Mandimba.
I got on the back of the bike while other bike taxi pedallers tried to insist that no, I had agreed to go with them, some of them even trying to take my pack to cement their ownership of my custom, until I said, loudly and firmly, “Don’t touch me.” That’s the nice thing about Malawi, though: every single one of the people bugging me backed off and some of them even helped Salady.
I tried to trust Salady enough to keep my feet on the pegs, which is more difficult than it sounds, especially when you’re not moving yet and every instinct you’ve trained into yourself says bikes that don’t move forward fall over. I tried to keep my hands on the seat, off Salady’s butt, and unentangled in the seat springs, ‘coz I figured that would hurt. It added to the oddness of the situation when a friend of Salady’s, running behind us, pushed us up a few of the hills. Also, I’d never heard of that, although I had heard of walking up hills that are too steep for the bike taxi to continue up.
When I got to the border I had to stop and chat with the gate guards. One of them asked if I had brought him anything and I honestly couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or asking for a bribe. So I offered him a carrot. That started a whole discussion of what a carrot is, since the guard didn’t know the English word, and then when I showed him, a discussion of how the words are the same in Spanish and Portuguese. I asked him if he really wanted the carrot. He looked at me strangely, said yes, took the carrot, looked at it strangely, and then put it on the bench beside him.
The only trouble getting my visa at this crossing was waiting 10 minutes for the bwana in charge of stamping the visas to get back from tea. And then waiting for 20 minutes for him to place the stickers, stamp things, record other things in books, stamp more things, stare into space, and then stamp and write some more. There was a Mozambican little girl irritating the hell out of her brother or uncle, who was just trying to get their passports sorted, and that kept me entertained while I waited. The bwana handed back my passport with the visa in before he ever asked about money, and I sort of idly wondered what would happen if I just took off with a free visa. But saving $20 was not really worth being shot at, so I didn’t find out.
