Malawi via Hawaii

“I want to go to Hawaii” I said to a connected travel person last year. We were at a noisy cocktail party. “Malawi?” she shouted back. “I am going in March, come with me”. Sometimes there is opportunity in confusion. I just said yes and then through a complicated conspiracy of love, luck, hard work and hustling, I got a ticket to Hawaii too and somewhere in between dotting the i’s as it were, suddenly I was going to Malawi via Hawaii.

Sailing the bay in Waikiki in Hawaii

My flight went like this: Jozi, Dakar, New York, LA, Honolulu, Houston, New York, Jozi, Lilongwe, Blantyre, Jozi. At a critical leg, our national carrier lost my luggage and there was a desperate wardrobe crisis, but at the eleventh hour it was retrieved by a man called Gift and my Hawaiian wardrobe went straight into the Malawian suitcase, unwashed and reeking of coconut oil.

I have just returned from my extravaganza - some 45 00kms, ten aeroplanes, one microlight and countless subway, train, bus and boat trips later. It was an epic adventure, a complete spectacle at every level, from humanity to geography. I remain ever the bride of amazement and wonder. From the Pacific islands with ancient green volcanoes to the African rift valley with its glorious lake of stars; from the legendary Hawaiian North Shore, where global surfers  hang ten and pull chicks, to the wild shores of Lake Malawi where fishermen still go daily out in handmade wooden canoes, to catch fish to feed their families.

Likoma Island, northern Malawi

It was also an amazing exercise in the absurdity of global capitalist economics. Hawaii is an American state in the middle of the Pacific Ocean whose main employer is the US military, and second main revenue stream is tourism. Malawi, bordered by Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its main exports are tea coffee and tobacco, pretty much everything else is imported, with massive duties.

Hawaii is very expensive. According to my Whisky Index a regular bottle will cost about R300, which is about half the monthly wage of the average Malawian tea estate worker. But Malawi is also very expensive. A bottle of ordinary whisky imported from SA will set you back about R500 which is almost the entire wage of the average Malawian tea worker. A night in a luxury lodge on Likoma Island in Malawi will cost more than a night in an average Waikiki beachfront shag palace in Hawaii.

The obvious place for a beer in Malawi

Hawaii is sophisticated, culturally diverse and pretty much everything works. There are sporty people with six-pack stomachs, Kens and Barbies in surf gear, the wealthy and the tanned with yachts, loads of young grungy travellers. There’s a strong military culture (don’t mention Pearl Harbour ha ha), a fantastically outlandish nightlife and apart from the disaffected local Hawaiian meth-heads who live on the edges of beaches, everything’s pretty much tickety boo. There’s even toilet paper provided in the local campsites.  I found this detail astonishingly reassuring.

Malawi has the gentlest people out, is donor driven with loads of Aid workers from the First World, is dirt poor and pretty much nothing works. The cities are proverbial Africa-style chaos with some high-walled guarded wealthy suburbs and the rest an endless sprawls of taxis, markets, shacks, spaza shops, dilapidated squalor, ill-treated donkeys and an astonishment of hair salons and churches. And of course the government and the Chinese are spending trillions – there are a lot of noughts in the currency – on a conference centre and stadium that could probably send all the Malawian tea estate workers and their families on a trip to Hawaii, with whisky.