Escape from Blantyre
on Me Talk Pretty One Day (Malawi), 19/Nov/2009 13:20, 34 days ago
Slowly, for I have eaten a little too much, I make my way back to the lodge and the warm bed that waits for me. I pass the Petroda filling station on Glyn Jones Road. This was the last place in town to run dry of diesel. Earlier in the evening, as motorists and men with large gas cans fought for supremacy of the pumps, the police moved in to control the mayhem here. Masterfully, police officers settled the dispute by helping themselves to the little diesel that remained. The pumps now sit idle. Abandoned vehicles clutter the forecourt and the surrounding roads. All is quiet.I quicken my pace as I walk beneath the railway bridge, holding my breath as the stench of human waste fills the air around me. Up the hill and left past the tranquil bus station I continue. It is dark now and all around there are cars and vans, trucks and buses, all sleeping peacefully. There is no fuel. There is nothing else they can do.“Good evening, sir!” says the guard, welcoming me back to the lodge. And before I can respond, the calm is abruptly broken by the roaring of an engine. Like a large and powerful predator, a blood-red Mustang pounces through the gate. The car pauses directly beneath the solitary security light and settles to a gentle, growling roar. The number plate reads ‘WILD 1’. The driver cuts the engine and quiet returns. An elderly gentleman with white skin and silver hair emerges from one side of the vehicle wearing camel-coloured shorts and a light brown shirt. From the other side strides a dark-skinned young beauty wearing a dress of bright yellow and vivid green. The two head towards the bar. “Good evening,” I reply.I wake early the next morning and begin to kill the useless hours with long walks around town interspersed with generous periods of poolside reading back at the lodge. I make a habit of visiting the fuel stations and quizzing the attendants on the likelihood of deliveries. Just like the day’s newspapers, they tell me nothing. I don’t know how long I will be stranded here. I begin to yearn for Sky News. I need my crises updated on a minute-by-minute basis, not day-by-day. But this is Africa, I remind myself, and things happen far more slowly here. I realise then that the national fuel shortage may well endure for a fair while yet. The unread pages of my book are diminishing at a great pace. I need to go grocery shopping and I need to find a bookstore.Thursday ends much as it began. There is no fuel in town but it is the shortage of information that proves most frustrating. I saw the blood-red Mustang again earlier in the day. The old man knows something. There is fuel somewhere.Friday. Dawn breaks upon another serene Blantyre day. Beneath faultless blue skies, I head out in search of breakfast. I walk out the gate and pass the station, noticing how the busses sparkle in the early morning sunlight. Not able to drive them, their owners console themselves with the fact that they can at least clean them. What else is there to do?I walk on to the BP station and repeat the question I have asked many, many times over the last two days. The attendant regards me carefully, looks around and whispers in a conspiratorial tone:“9 0’clock... Maybe.” I sense the excitement in his voice, though also fear, like a General who has just received orders of an impending battle. “Thank you,” I reply. “I won’t tell anyone.”The time is closing in on half-past seven. Though it struggles to start, the engine of my white Toyota eventually finds a little life and I manage to drive as far as the BP station on Chileka Road. I know I will be able to go no further than here, but I trust the words of the attendant. I have been starved of information and now that I have a little, I will not doubt it. There are no maybes today.9 o’clock comes and goes without any sign of a tanker. My bookmark continues to work its way through the pages, getting ever closer to the back cover. I didn’t manage to find a bookstore yesterday. It is now 10 ‘o’clock. In my time in Malawi, I have been lied to on a regular basis. People herewould sooner deceive you with false optimism than speak a disappointing truth. I should be used to it by now. There is still no mention of the fuel shortage in this morning’s newspapers and I begin to long for home where you are told the truth, nomatter how brutal or painful it might be.And then I look up at the bright sign above my head, the letters‘BP’ rendered in vibrant green. I remember what the letter ‘B’ stands for. I smile at the man in the navy shirt with the green shoulders, my faith instantly restored, because this man works for ‘British’ Petroleum, from the land of truth and efficiency! He smiles back, and right on cue alarge tanker bearing the same initials thunders down the road towards the station, and continues right on past. I look back at the man. He is still smiling and nods to me and I suddenly realise that the tanker is simply turning at the roundabout at the bottom of the hill so it can enter from the other side.I am in the van, the engine fires and I am first in line. Within minutes, the station is besieged with cars, trucks, busses, a fire engine, and men with fuel tanks, gas cans and empty bottles that at one time contained a large amount of vegetable oil. The fight is about to begin, but thanks to the General, I have the perfect position.I leave the tumult behind, the blaring horns and the manic shouts, and drive on with a full tank of diesel. I feel sorry for the BP attendant who helped me out. He now faces several stressful hours trying to manage the battle and limit the casualties.It is strange how something so ordinary and so mundane can leave you feeling so utterly ecstatic. I guess the lower you go, the more frustrated you become, the less you need to put you back on an upward trend. A small piece of good fortune is great news indeed for the unfortunate, while for those with everything, it is meaningless. And I think again of the old man with the silver hair and the blood-red Mustang.I drive on. Will Smith’s ‘Gettin’ Jiggy With It’ is playing on the radio. I roll down the windows of the old, dented Toyota, increase the volume, and drive right on out of Blantyre like a Wild One!