Travel for a Reason

           A Remote Village… It is one thing to go to Africa for a vacation. It is a very, very different thing when you go in order to help other people. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Even when you go to help others you will see the spectacular countryside, experience life in a remote village, be immersed in the sights and sounds of a major city, and taste the local food. But when you go to help other people there is an element of the trip that sticks with you, and with them, in a much different way. Nothing ever matches going into someone’s home, and finding you are quickly and deeply intertwined in his or her life. That’s the way it was that warm day when Wilson led us west and south of the Namikango Mission in order to meet one of the people who had received one of the wheelchairs we had sent to Malawi a few weeks earlier.

Not Very Far

          “It’s not far,” he says, after we have picked up a representative of the tribal chief in the area. It is repeated again, probably to try to reassure us, just as we turn off the tarmac road and start south on a twisting, tiny dirt path. We bounce along, often having to navigate over on the edge of the partially cultivated fields so we can avoid the sinkholes that cluster together in the ever-narrowing road. More twists and turns, and finally we actually come to the end of the path. The way forward looks like a menacing pile of rocks that have been laced with threads of dirt. We have reached the end of the road. “What happened to, ‘It’s not far,’ I wondered? We can’t drive any farther. From here we’ll have to walk. With the car safely locked, and an aged woman who lives nearby posted as a “guard”, we start out on foot. I take one glance back at her and wonder if she is really a guard, or just an interested spectator wondering what the white faces are doing going down over the mountain. 

           In front of us the vastness of the regal mountains and the breathtaking, sweep of the valleys stretch out in front of us in a magnificent presentation of the creative workmanship of our Creator. Cresting a rise we find ourselves looking down in a valley where people walking at just tiny dots in the distance. Leading to them are the paths, looking like tiny tan threads twisting their way down the mountain.

          “There is where we are going,” our guide indicates. He is pointing to a spot beyond the valley floor where the mountain starts its gradual rise toward a summit bathing itself in the sunlit clouds. Almost in slow motion they glide in from the east, and disappear to the west.

 


          The women travel with us part of the way, but eventually we reach the place where the slope drops off into the valley. Leaving the women behind on the crest of the mountain we men start down the ever-sloping edge of a massive granite dome. Beyond the rock we reach a footpath that winds its way in crisscross fashion in order not to fall off of the mountain. Near the bottom we do a little dance across a water-filled creek, hopping carefully from rock to rock. Then, having safely reached the other side without stopping to catch our breath we begin the gradual ascent toward the huts that grow ever larger in front of us as we move slowly up the mountain.

         

          Finally we reach a tiny village of 6 or 8 huts and are introduced to Maggie. She is quite shy, and at the age of 48 has never been outside these few huts that form an oblong ring around a tiny clearing. She is sitting on the ground where she has been pounding grain, the only staple for her family, nsima. She does not want pictures taken until a family member gets the new wheelchair she received two weeks ago from the Namikango Mission. She is very excited with it, and reports how the church has been meeting only about 200 meters away from her home for years, but she has never been able to attend. She could only sit and watch them walk past her hut. But now because of the wheelchair she can attend. She is pleased that she can get around, and both her and her husband are quick to express their deep appreciation to those people who made this possible.

          We visit for a little while longer, then make our way back down the slope, across the creek and up and over the big dome of granite at the top. Wilson Tembo, from the Namikango Mission, tells us this woman and another person in a nearby village were carried in wheelbarrows all the way from their houses to the top of the mountain so they could be at the receiving ceremony for the wheelchairs.

      Back in the car that had been safely guarded by the old woman while we were away, we carefully turn around by the big rock, and begin the trip back to the mission for the night. I could not help being glad I was here for the purpose of bringing aid to the people, and not simply and solely on a vacation to another exotic location. There is so much that is lost when travel is focused only on going someplace to gain another view, see another place, and experience another culture from inside a tour bus.