Malawi Dictation: Gule Wamkulu

I go with two nurses to drop off supplies to a small village lying in the dust next to railroad tracks. The red dust fields match the red brick houses match the rows of red mud bricks spread in the sun to dry. We drive haltingly down the dust paths, and if not for the window glass I could easily reach out and touch men scooping mud, women hacking branches, men grilling potatoes on sheets of tin propped above wood fires, children carrying staffs of sugar cane on their shoulders.

We are just starting to turn into the hollow of the village center when a man jumps in our path and crosses quickly, lurking off to the side. His body is covered with white powder, black smudged designs, and his ankles are tied with cuffs of rustling dry grass—but what makes him truly transformed is the huge skirt of dried grass tied above his eyes and shagging down past his neck. I don’t know how he can see. In one hand he holds a wide flat knife.

He circles around at the edges of our sight, appearing in the gaps between houses and bushes as we unload the supplies. He has a skill for finding the exact dynamic path that will allow him to take just one step backwards and vanish, though he chooses to be seen. Through his way of hovering at the edge, he creates an active tension that makes it impossible to forget about him. All the village women have come to watch us unload and help tally the goods. We’re waist deep in an ocean of children’s eyes that watch every movement, taking in whatever is going on. I don’t think anyone is too comfortable with me, and this provokes in me an acute hyper-sensitivity to the speech of my demeanor. My long skirt that grazes my toes, the twitches of my fingers by my side, the sun that collects as pools of white on my black shirt, the smallest movements of my lips and eyes. I’m thrown out of my mind, and into the surfaces of me that can be seen. I start to realize their unease has something to do with the dry grass man, who every so often hoists up his knife and yells “Arrrrgaaaah!” while he circles. People laugh a bit or glance at him nervously when he does this, then look at me.

I fold my skirt back into the car and we’re on to the next stop. I hear the driver chuckling and look out my window—and find myself staring into tiny round holes for eyes, cut out of cardboard that men wear for masks. The cardboard is smoothly curved around their faces, tapering down a few inches below their natural chins to make snouted shapes. The masks are painted white-green, white-blue, or grey. Otherwise they are blank, except for the tiny black holes for eyes. Their heads rotate to keep their eyes on my eyes as we pass.

“Have you ever seen them?” asks the driver.

“No!”

“Do not worry, they are actually people. Now they are not people, but tomorrow they will be people.”

A few feet down the road, I see the dry grass man sitting alone by a tree, his arms lying straight out on folded knees, head drooping. He looks like he’s sulking, or brooding. A person in a costume sitting alone is a compelling sight. The impression that strikes you is of unnatural loneliness, because a costume is for others to see. I can’t figure out why he is sitting outside the village, off on his own. It seems very strange, until I discover the assumption that is causing all the dissonance. Finally I understand that the only way it makes sense is if it is not a costume at all.

Malawi Dictation: Safari

Our guide drives the jeep out of the driveway and into evening magic hour. The sun is an hour above the horizon, and the world glows gold. It’s as if the entire landscape is flushed with pleasure. Our jeep rolls to our first stop in front of turquoise birds hopping in the long grass; their color comes from deep in their feathers in the same way that satin has an internal glow. As I become aware of what we look like, four noses and four pairs of eyes leaning over the side of an enormous jeep to peer at tiny birds, I’m suddenly charmed by the premise of our safari. We have driven or flown for hours, paid large sums, just to sit and watch the world and discover its details. It presupposes human curiosity and receptivity to beauty.

Our next stop is for an impala, still as a statue in front of a thick green tree that sits low on the horizon like an overturned bowl. His striped horns rise high above his head, curling once before their sharp tips point to the sky. He begins to send hoarse dry barks in the direction of the tree. The whisper “a leopard!” carries quickly through the car, swift from excitement. We stare at the immobile impala. We stare at the dense tree, commanding it to reveal its secrets. Will the leopard emerge? Will we see a kill? Why isn’t the impala escaping? The French woman in front of me is acutely anxious on behalf of the impala; little whimpers emerge from under her wide brimmed safari hat. “Tres bien, tres bien, mon cherie,” she urges tremulously into the binoculars, as the impala inches away. The tree will not reveal its secrets and we drive on.

The landscape observes the composition rule of unequal thirds. The grass makes a thick band of tawny yellow across the bottom two thirds, then meets a slender lime line of water plants, and finally the drab olive of the trees finishes up the set. We drive down the twisting road like we are walking through a labyrinth, immersing ourselves in the colors. A warm breeze passes my skin and adds the sensation of touch. Everything combines to create a mood of meditation.

We stop for elephants, strolling through a land of stumps they have created with their trunks. Their skin is such a plush and chalky shade of grey, and I love the way they waggle their ears (so thin and crinkled and vulnerable looking) like the BFG. We watch them silently as they approach us, lumbering with a strange heavy grace. I notice that their feet are just big flat circles, which strikes me as both hilarious and bizarre.

“Ooh, what a smashing fellow,” sighs the French woman’s British husband. A young elephant has wandered into position in front of his gigantic camera lens.

The elephant spirals up his trunk.

“Oh, what a gentleman,” coos the man, as his camera works furiously.

The elephant daintily lifts a curvaceous leg.

“Look at this handsome chap,” exclaims the man above the snapping lens.

The elephant turns, stares into the camera, and dramatically flares out his ears.

“OH what a simply stunning fellow, he’s doing a routine for us!” The camera is clicking so fast it becomes a blur of sound.

We stop for gin and tonics with olives at sundown. The place is appropriately whimsical for such a purpose: we clamber out next to a puddle sized lagoon, which just enough water for one bathing hippo with one white stork on its back. A Baobab tree swelled huge and turgid with water oversees the scene. My cousin and I sip our drinks, lazily oohing and ahhing appropriately in response to the married couple’s stories of “danger in the bush”. Occasionally the hippo smiles a gaping smile, holding open the enormous hinge of his jaw until it seems to grow too heavy for him, and falls closed. I notice that the guide is restless with the conversation, kicking at the ground like he’s got something to say. Finally he comes out with it.

“All the visitors, they think I have the most dangerous job. But these animals are easy. If you respect them, they respect you. They are simple. A leopard will not cheat you. A lion will not tell you a lie. I will tell you about the most dangerous animal of all.”

He tells us that last year, he received an all expense paid trip to a city in the west as part of a conservation fundraiser. It was a week inflamed with threat and paranoia. There were pileups on the freeway. On the street no one would trust the sincerity of his greetings. He lay awake listening to sirens crossing the city. He didn’t know who was trying to sell him false information and who was trying to help. On the newspaper covers and tv screens, he read news of a shooting mere blocks away.

“And that,” he says, leering at us only a little, “is why the most dangerous animal of all is the human being.”

Silence falls. The story has done its job, and we glance a little uneasily at each other while making sure to avoid looking into anyone’s eyes directly. Someone with no stamina for such moments ends it all with a nervous laugh, and we spread out around the jeep in order to gaze privately for a while.

Sunset. The area where the sun is sinking begins to fill with an intensity of orange I have only seen buried in coals, but because this orange is laced with lavender, it’s a color I can’t claim to have seen before. Magic hour showed us the internal glow of color and texture buried in the objects of the external world; now sunset silhouettes everything to black and reveals to us the beauty of outline and form. Here, each angle of beauty has its turn.

We wait quietly for the nocturnal creatures to emerge. A cricket draws its legs together. A turtle dove sounds its musical scales. An owl whirrs, flutelike. A nightjar shrieks, sounding like an angry referee blowing his whistle. These dispersed murmurs distill the same anticipation as when hearing the warm-up sounds before a symphony. The bathing hippo coughs and submerges all but his nostrils; at last night has usurped the day, and it’s time to drive on.

The drive after dark is smooth and even, perfect for unspooling my thoughts in between animal sightings. The spotlight sways from side to side, looking for the green shine of animal eyes. The pendulum swing of the light works like hypnosis on us.

The spotlight finds and illuminates a section of elephant. I use my binoculars and get lost in the folds of skin revealed in microscopic detail. I am reminded of the lines and nets that I can find on my own palms, on my own feet. My binoculars land on a kind brown elephant eye; the small eye blinks slowly, and I see each tan hair of her wide mat of eyelashes as it descends to press against the gray wrinkles below.

At the end of the night we find a lion. There is the totally unhidden bulk of him, lying confidently out on the open sand. Our spotlight casts the shadow of his sphinx pose tall across the ground. We move close enough to see his back, the rigid bristles of his mohawk mane growing dense between his shoulder blades. Then we circle to his front, and we see the golden tufted halo of his mane, his enormous velvet nose, his cupped ears. His giant paddle paws. I imagine how it would feel to be in that body, to stretch those muscles, to roll and tilt and repose that glorious weighty head. I discover a brilliant trick—if you can love the details of something enough, if you are capable of imagining with your entire mind—shape shifting is easy magic.

The lion grows bored of us. He yawns his jaws, unrolling the full length of his tongue like the curve in a treble cleft. Then he lowers his head and pretends to be sleeping, waiting for us to drive away, so he can lope across the sand and disappear, unfollowed.