"Dr. Chocolate, Where Are Your Pants?"

After seven days in the paradise that is Mayoka Village, I’ve just decided to set off with two Kiwis, Mark and Rick, for Zanzibar, Tanzania by way of the ferry up Lake Malawi.

It was quite hard to leave Mayoka. After a week here it’s started to feel like home. In contrast to the frequent solitude of traveling, I have made lots of friends here, I’ve fallen in love only to get left two days later, and have collected quite a few interesting experiences.

For example, the first night we arrived was the 8th anniversary for Mayoka. The owners threw a big party for the tourists and locals alike, and through it I was introduced to two unwavering maxims of Malawians: they are incredibly friendly and gregarious; and, they can dance. My god can they dance. From the moment the music starts the entire crowd is moving, and it stays moving until the music stops, which in this case was about 4am.

At about the midpoint in the evening the crowd formed into a dance circle. Now, you see, I really hate dance circles, namely because my moves require the anonymity of darkly lit and tightly packed rooms to be properly appreciated. These giant circles throw off my game, especially when filled with athletic Africans casually performing feats of dance and physical coordination normally reserved for the shows of Vegas. The men were taking turns in the middle doing flips, break-dancing, and just generally moving in a very coordinated way. The women would strut their stuff by balancing their drinks on their head while they spun and gyrated and just looked generally coordinated on the dance floor.

I was appreciating watching this spectacle, standing just close enough to watch but not so close as to be at risk of getting pulled in. My calculations did not take into account getting pushed into the circle from behind, which is, of course, exactly what happened. Suddenly I found myself in the spotlight, knowing full well that I couldn’t balance my drink on my head under the best of circumstances, let alone while I danced around the floor. What could I possibly do to best the dancer before me, I thought. What could I do that would really impress them? Then it came to me like a ray of shining light gleaming off of the bottle of Kuche Kuche (local beer) in my hand: don’t beat them by playing their game, Alex, beat them at your game. And what’s the one dance that I can do better than almost anyone else? The old white man’s (OWM) dance, that’s what.

So into the circle I plunged, knees rigid and bumping against each other, back stiff and moving in an abrupt jerking motion, arms at my sides with elbows pinned against hips, fingers forming the shape of a gun and firing imaginary bullets into the crowd, just off beat with the music and often times followed by a wink and a crooked smile. That’s right, my friends, I brought it, and they bought what I was selling. I was the emissary sent from the land where old white men dance, and my fellow OWM brothers, our dance has arrived in Africa.

Then there’s the story of Dr. Chocolate, and old man (OBM, not OWM) that comes in to the lounge area of Mayoka every evening without fail. Dr. Chocolate can usually be counted on to wear the same outfit every day: black trousers; pink dress shirt; black cowboy hat; and a Mickey Mouse tie to bring the outfit together like Lebowski’s rug did his room. Dr. Chocolate arrives at the lounge area just after dinner, and promptly—but not quickly—takes the chocolate bars off the shelf where they are normally sold and meticulously lays them out on a bench in front of his usual chair according to some soft of chocolate taxonomy that is beyond the grasp of most mortals without doctoral degrees in the stuff. By 8:00 in the evening he is available for private or group consultations, doling out chocolate alongside advice in broken English. As you can imagine, with such a connoisseur of chocolate readily available, and such distinguished brands as Nestle Crunch, Snickers, and Mars Bars on offer, I quickly developed an after-dinner chocolate habit.

One evening, as was my usual custom, I pulled up a chair opposite Dr. Chocolate, seated beneath his height so that my eye level was about at his chest. The first thing I noticed was that in lieu of the black cowboy hat, Dr. Chocolate had selected a purple floral hat, like something an upper class British woman would wear to a garden party. In place of the pink dress shirt and Mickey tie was a partially-matching purple frock, almost like the scrubs you see doctors (AND DENTISTS!! Congrats, Bethie, on passing your Boards) wear. And, importantly, in place of his normal black trousers were, well, nothing. “Dr. Chocolate, where are your pants?” I asked on sitting down next to him, and noticing that what I was looking at was a hand covering his private parts.

Assuming that I had come to him with another problem in need of chocolate and advice, Dr. Chocolate immediately began to point to various bars. Said Dr. Chocolate, pointing to the chocolate as he spoke, “This one is good, and this one is nice, and this one is also very good, and this one is aalso very nice.” In about 30 seconds Dr. Chocolate could get through each bar in his stash, recommending each as his favorite. 30 seconds was about all I could tolerate before erupting in laughter and excusing myself. But not, of course, before purchasing a chocolate bar.

My days at Mayoka basically consisted of waking up around 8am, putting on my swimsuit, going for a swim, then dragging myself down to the restaurant for breakfast and 1-2 hours of bullshitting. Then perhaps another swim, sometimes across to the other side of the bay if we were feeling ambitious, and at other times we would try our luck paddling around in local dugout canoes, or if all else failed I would just chill out and read my book. Then lunch, a similar set of activities in the afternoon, and then dinner followed by some sort of social activity in the evening. The food is really, really good here, there’s often live local music, and just generally a pleasant atmosphere to chill out in. After the stress of the last year with business school applications and all of that, this week has been positively idyllic.

I would also get out to the nearby town and villages occasionally as well. I became good friends with a Malawian guy, Gabriel, and one day he took me to his house for the afternoon. He’s into weightlifting and martial arts and has shown an incredible amount of ingeminate in constructing an entire gym in his backyard out of old car parts, coffee canisters full of cement and the like. He’s a really sweet guy with a big heart and an even bigger scent of body odor. One afternoon he and I and my new Kiwi friends who I am now traveling with (I am now in Mbeya, Tanzania with them but more on that later) went on a walk to a nearby village. There we met Mary, a teacher in the village school who has one of these personalities that seem larger than life. She needs personality, patience and more to run the village primary school: 700 children attend, spread across nine classes with only seven teachers between all of them. There’s no electricity, not enough seats for all of the children, and not a single poster or other sort of educational supplement in any of the classrooms. They just don’t have the money for it—they only get about $200 per year for the whole school from the Malawi Gov’t. It was really sad to see the environment that kids learn in here, and we vowed to support them however we could once we were back home. (Fair warning: you may be hit up for a donation).

But the harsh conditions didn’t dampen Mary’s enthusiasm or the optimism of the children one bit. She was an incredible character and invited us back the next day for lunch at her home and a walk back to the village where she grew up. Everyone was so incredibly friendly, so genuinely happy to make our acquaintance, and so generous with what little they had that I was incredibly humbled by the experience.

I think I could have easily spent another month here, but it’s time to get moving again. I’ll miss this place and all of the wonderful people I’ve met here (most of whom have Haight-Ashbury names like Hope, Precious, Gift, Love, Special). I won’t miss the ants, which are crawling over this page as I’m writing this, nor will I miss the roving bands of chickens that at times surrounded my chalet for a 5am wake-up call. I’m excited for the next part of the journey though.

We’re off to Chilumba in the north by way of the MV Ilala up Lake Malawi. We’ll spend a couple of nights there, go on a few hikes, then make our way across the Tanzanian border where we’re hoping to catch a train to Dar es Salaam.