Karonga is hot but Monkey in the Republic of Mangochi is hotter. The heat reminded me of my boyhood days when we used to joke about a certain disc Jockey (DJ) who would shout ‘the dance is getting hotala and hotala” as the evening of unbridled dance and haram drink consumption reached the crescendo. Monkey Bay, brothers and sisters, friends and fiends, can get hot. Even cold drinks fail to quench human thirst. Sheikh Jean-Philippe suggested that we curtail the excursion and return to Blantyre because, he argued, there was nothing here to burn ourselves for. Money Bay offers fish, particularly chimbuzu or mbuna tourism. In the early morning, tourists can, and we did, watch the monkeys as they come down to pick and eat the crumbs left by tourists, passengers and those who can afford to drop anything worth eating. But the heat is a terrible let-down.
As we chatted and took our halaal drinks at a PTC or People’s or Metro store located near the fuel station near the jetty, a gaily dressed man in his late sixties or early seventies approached us. He greeted us in English and introduced himself and, unprompted, narrated to us his CV.
“But because of my hair and probably my age, people around here call me Mandela.”
“I am Sheikh Jean-Philippe LePoisson. Sheikh Jean-Philippe for short,” Jean-Philippe said.
“Do you know that Le Poisson, in most Malawian languages, means fish, Nsomba or Somba,” I said.
“That’s even better. So my full names are Sheikh Jean-Philippe Nsomba,” Jean-Philippe said laughingly. I laughed. Mandela, too, laughed.
“You know what?” Mandela jumped in, “you should just be called Che Nsomba. That way you can get married, get land, and stay, and in seven year’s time you can run for president, parliamentarian or ward councilor.”
“It is that easy?” Jean-Philippe asked, rather puzzled, “And you never told me about that?”
“The problem is that you never asked me about obtaining Malawian citizenship. One wise man told me that it is only fools who offer advice before they are consulted,” I smiled triumphantly like a child who has broken chinaware for the first time.
I went inside the shop and asked the female till operators if they knew Mandela. All of them claimed to know him. They described him as a nice and affable old man, a custodian of Monkey Bay port secrets. Since the colonial days, every administration has wanted to keep Mandela, the till operators said. He was once retired, one till operator said, but he had to be recalled because the ship captains could no longer navigate the ships out of the port. I asked the girls what Mandela normally took.
“Fantakoko,” one till operator said, smiling.
When I got out of the shop, I gave Fantakoko to Mandela. He thanked me profusely, describing me as a Sheikh. I protested saying that I could not be a Sheikh because I was not a Muslim.
“Sheikh is not a religious title. It is an honorific reserved for honourable, learned, respectable, and reasonable people such as yourself.”
“Thanks Mandela. I didn’t know,” I confessed.
“Many people don’t. Can I ask you both one question?”
“Yes,” Jean-Philippe answered.
“I recently heard an announcement on the radio that the government wants all young men to be circumcised so that they don’t catch HIV and avoid cancers. In Malawian languages they call this mdulidwe or mtheno. But does male genital mutilation really reduce the chances of catching HIV?”
“That’s what medical research has shown,” I said.
“But if it really worked, why did my two circumcised sons catch HIV and die?”
“Were they really circumcised?” Jean-Philippe asked mouth agape.
“Almost all men in this district are circumcised. Why has circumcision not resulted in reduced spread of HIV, here?” Mandela asked.
