The Colour of Frustration
on Me Talk Pretty One Day (Malawi), 06/Oct/2008 12:08, 34 days ago
For a country that’s supposed to be one of the world’s poorest, there are always a surprising number of people waiting to deposit money at the bank. There are also plenty of people who stand patiently in line just waiting to withdraw their money, and yet more people who are there simply because they have questions to ask, and the bank, though woefully slow, is the only place to get honest answers where finance is concerned. People move from place to place, line to line, window to window at a mere crawl, in slow motion, as if every step, every signature, every stamp and every note passed over the counter isachieved, at long last, with the utmost effort and exertion. To put it simply, the bank is a perpetual hive of inactivity.And so it was that today I spent my entire Saturday morning at the imposing bright blue building of National Bank inCapitalCity. I had a chequebook, a debit card and a security number to collect, and each one was waiting patiently at the end of a different line, all of them equally long and slow moving. If not for the air-conditioners and their cool breezes, and the television screens and their Premiership highlights, I might really grow to miss the world of instant-access cash machines and the convenience of internet banking. No, my visit to the bank, though long and wearying, was painless enough. The real frustration of the morning occurred when I attempted to depart.I had left my whiteToyota—a Hilux 4x4, the type driven by every development worker inMalawi—in the bank’s parking lot. Before now, I have seen parking lots filled with white Toyotas and have learned that the best way to tell one from another is to look for the logo festooned upon the driver’s door. Every whiteToyotahas a logo because every whiteToyotabelongs to a development charity, and they all want you to know that their people are here and working hard, though sometimes their people are here but not so much working hard as standing idly in a long queue at the bank.On returning to the parking lot after my exhausting morning’s waiting in line, I looked for the VSO logo which proudly decorates the whiteToyotathat I drive. And being a Saturday, my whiteToyotawas easy enough to find. It sat exactly where I left it, though now it was somewhat trapped in its place by another car—another car that at one time had seemingly been moving but which had now come to a complete stop and was refusing to start again.These types of cars are common. They are perhaps the only type of vehicle more common onMalawi’s roads than white Toyotas. Outside of the centre of Old Town, traffic jams are rarely caused by weight of traffic alone. Where cars stand in a queue like customers in a bank, somewhere along the road you are sure to find some decrepit vehicle quite happy where it is, refusing to go any further.And where you find such a belligerent car, you are sure to find a red warning triangle.I believe the car I drove back home inEnglandhad a red warning triangle, or something similar, though I never saw it nor knew where it was kept. While driving on the English roads, I occasionally saw a broken-down vehicle but I can never remember seeing a red warning triangle. Here inMalawi, police operate road-blocks and stop vehicles just to check they have their red warning triangles, such is the importance attached to this item. Trucks infested with people are stopped, as are cars without windscreens and motorbikes without headlights, but as long as these vehicles can produce a red warning triangle when asked, they are free to go.The red warning triangle is almost like a badge of honour or some perverse status symbol. Owning a wreck is still very much a sign of wealth and prosperity here in the Third World, and there is nothing to be ashamed of in having an immobile wreck, because it still shows its owner to be of a far higher social standing than the owner of a bicycle or an ox and cart.In fact, the red warning triangle plays such a prominent role on Malawi’s roads, and Malawi’s roads are such an important part of the development of the nation (or so I’m told by one of the President’s many advertising hoardings) that I believe it should replace the red sunset on Malawi’s national flag.The car trapping my whiteToyotathis morning displayed its red warning triangle but it was the number of people lost beneath its raised bonnet that really told you it was in trouble. None of these people noticed me as I rounded the wreck and unlocked the whiteToyotaas conspicuously as I could. After waiting longer than was absolutely polite, and while feeling myself turning red with both frustration and sunburn, I myself delved beneath the bonnet of the car and asked the gentlemen therein if they wouldn’t mind moving on just a little—I am nothing if not polite.But as is the way with some people, their problems take precedence, and those working on the engine of the dilapidated old car feigned ignorance of the English language. Fortunately, another Malawian motorist kindly made clear to the amateur mechanics what was immediately and starkly obvious to everybody else—namely, that their car had my whiteToyotatrapped, and I was tired and ready to leave. Much pushing and shoving ensued, but it was the productive pushing and shoving of a broken-down car and not the destructive pushing and shoving of people. Malawians are, at heart, a friendly and helpful people. And with a wave of the hand and a courteous“Zikomo,” I was at last on my wayIt was early afternoon by the time I finally arrived home. I have a bright blue chequebook and an even brighter red sunburn to show for my mornings efforts. Yet I also have a new and rather smart black bicycle, courtesy of VSO, collected with little fuss on the return journey (half-a-dozen phone calls and half-an-hour waiting counts as“little fuss” inMalawi). In future, wherever possible, I will prefer my black bicycle—though it has no logo—to my whiteToyota, as with it, I am confident that I have far less chance of being kept waiting by the dreaded and oh-so-common spectacle of the red warning triangle.