The Accidental Matola

I was on a matola today, the only one out of Mwazisi at the time, filled to the brim, along with a pile of poorly packed logs in the back. I managed to find a spot hanging over the edge of the truck bed, squeezed in between the logs and three amayis breast feeding their babies. Any matola ride is dangerous, each journey a matter of life and death. However, this time I was extra-aware of this fact because one of the large logs knocked loose, inching closer to me and to the edge with each new bump and turn in the road. People hollered warnings to the driver, but he paid no attention and matola kept on going. Luckily, just as the log was on its last straw and I was hanging on for dear life, the shocks on the back tire busted. We pulled into Bolero and waited for repairs. Growing impatient and uncomfortable I hitched another matola to Rumphi.

Africa has a way of toying with your mind. Stretching it, pounding it, testing its limits and its aptitude under duress. It's a strange land, unsparing, harsh, yet beautiful and forgiving in it's own way. Memories I thought I had long forgotten, secrets I had tucked away in some far corner, have blown back into my consciousness like a gale. These dead memories I thought were long buried under heaps of time seem to rise from the grave. Their ghosts drift through my house, haunting my days and sleepless nights with the pangs of missing. They taunt me with their wonderful apparitions of people, places, and emotions, beckoning me home. Even my dreams have been infiltrated, falling victim to these relentless spirits of memory.

Life and death take on a new meaning here. Death is prevalent on every corner. Yet unlike our death, which hides around the corner eagerly awaiting to ambush us uninvited and unwelcome, death here is welcomed, it is expected and, to a certain extent, embraced. Death is not feared as an unexpected guest but as a part of existence that will spirit us away to an afterlife without a moment's notice. I understand I could die on this matola, crushed under a pile of logs, or I could die of some other fate, but it would not surprise me. Death isn't hiding around the corner, it is simply watching passively, reminding us that we all have an expiry date, whenever that maybe.

When I'm on matolas, when I face the possibility of my ultimate demise peering over the edge of the truck bed, I think of her. She has been the most persistent of specters, haunting both reality and dreams. Pain courses through my veins emanating from my core and in my being. I don't understand why she still has this profound effect on me, why her memory can still haunt me across the world, across a sea of time. In bouts of sadness I wonder if she knows. I wonder if she is aware of her doppelganger that traverses through the fields of Africa. Probably not. The sea of time and space that separates is a door way to another world. I am in the land of dreams, the land of spirits, where death, life, and afterlife all coexist in a place that defies logic and reasoning. She resides on the other side, in the land of logic, where the mind rules all, where only present life is acknowledged and starkly segregated from other existence.

Beyond the sea, through the doorway, is that world I can only recall through the looking glass of my mind. Three of my friends are getting married, perhaps even found the meaning of their lives reflecting in this same sea. I wish them all the best and I wish I could be there for this momentous occasion. I miss everyone back home. My family, friends, and even those I considered my foes (though few in number). As 2 Kwacha put it best: “Home: it's better than you imagined.”