Let's see.
It took the weekend to calm everyone down, but for now Lilongwe seems to have gotten back to normal: the streetside brawls, throwing assorted objects etc have disappeared like the Deathstar. I even saw the President firsthand (who has a long name but refers to himself in the third person as "Bingu") as he bravely walked the streets of Salima on his way back to Lilongwe. Guy held up traffic for 40 minutes. When Bingu feels like stretching his legs, Bingu gets out of the car and walks. Bingu doesn't care. Bingu wants steak. I can't stop giggling as I write these. Apparently he is also very superstitious and is losing it over this Nigerian prophecy (by this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._B._Joshua) that an African dictator will die this year. Specifically, Bingu was very fond of Michael Jackson and considers them to be like brothers. Imagining him staying up at nights listening to Thriller and Bad and whispering, "Bingu will not die" brings a smile to my bearded face.
The weekend was a great deal of fun: Friday included a fancy happy hour at the British High Commission. I asked for a "pink gin," since that is what the queen drinks (according to my father, according to the Boston Police), but they didn't know what it was. Phonies. Then out on the town for live music etc. Saturday, I was lured up to Senga Bay for my first time in Malawi with promise of a braii. The braii got canceled because the initiator couldn't find the petrol to drive his car up to Senga Bay. Instead, I won't complain, I got a beautiful day by the beach with some friends, and a night out at the local Disco: 300 very intoxicated guys dancing like their pelvises were out of control centrifuges. Their reaction when a white guy and three pretty white girls wandered in was kind of like when Frodo destroyed the ring. Everyone paused in disbelief and then started screaming and hugging each other (that's how the audience reacted in my theater anyway). We stayed only so long.
Then Sunday, to top it all off, I went to see Malawi's most popular band "The Black Missionaries" at a nearby concert venue. The venue, Mungo Park, is a walled-in field with a huge sandpit below a stage. There were probably 2000 people there. The concert was awesome: it went on for probably 10 hours, everyone was doused by two intense thunderstorms, but the reggae, dancing and handshake-hug-fistbump-combos continued despite nature's appeals. It is a great site to see people so into the music that they ignore lightning and thunder crashing around them. (I'm omitting from the record the influence of drugs on many of the participants, for the record) There is one next weekend the night before my flight home, guess I'll be packing early.
After today, I am going on a walk: a little adventure from Lilongwe to Dzalanyama that should take a few days. Fingers crossed against rain. Time to do things the Livingstone way,
Foxy
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