Maketa

It always rains in Maketa. Maketa is a neighborhood located on the outskirts of Blantyre, the main commercial city that should be the capital of Malawi but isn’t. I confess to having a morbid fascination with this place, which only increased the evening that Clifford, my driver, and I were late driving back from the deep south. While stuck in traffic going up the steep hill to the plateau on which Blantyre is located, he suddenly turned to me with an anxious look (extremely atypical for this very laid back man) and said “Quick, lock the doors.” Our doors are never locked. He has never again made the same request.

Ok, I exaggerate when I say that it always rains, but even when it doesn’t, it is a dark, densely populated area with no trees, the existing ones having been chopped down for firewood long ago. Maketa is marked by the abject poverty of the hopeful who have moved here from around the country in search of a better life. Urbanization and slum sprawl is new to this country where 80% of the population is farmers living in rural areas. Incorporating large numbers of the poor into rapidly expanding cities is about as successful here as it is elsewhere in the developing world.

On one side of the street are all of the major businesses: the Hip-Hop bottle store where they sell greens (Carlsberg beer—how did Denmark corner this market?), several Rasta themed shops with diverse services that range from barber and beauty shops to cell phone ‘top up’card centers (where you can buy credits for cell phone service for as little as 50 kwacha, I usually buy 1500 kwachas worth of credits when I buy) to the inevitable woodworkers shops, whose major source of income is from the niche market of coffin sales. I monitor one particular vendor of coffins quite closely because it is shocking the turnover of stock. They always seem to have new coffins for sale, elegant in style and unique in design.

Then there is the other side of the street in the half mile or so that comprises the street front of the neighborhood, which radiates both up and down the hill in hand made brick and corrugated tin roofed splendor. God is present in quick flashes beginning with a traditional Christian church, which is flanked by a good sized mosque, which is adjacent to an off-shoot, loosely Christian church of the more humble that has branches throughout the south.

There is hope here, but it is a hope against the odds. I feel like witness to a traffic accident every time I drive through the place, yet I cannot seem to take my eyes away.