Separated: urban from the rural

I’m angry at the sharp divide I see between rural and urban Malawians. What first seemed mild complacency by urbanites now looks to me more like the wishing away of a rural life altogether.

Putting on airs, dismissive tones, avoided glances, casual dismissals: I’ve seen all this in Canada before, but I was never suitable well-heeled to see all that much of it. In Malawi, however, I’m in with the thin strata of Malawians with NGO or government jobs and privy to seeing all of these social status trademarks on display, and more.

Especially on the commute to and from work. These days I’ve found a place in Lilongwe, a small one-room rental, and the work bus picks me up each morning and drops me off each evening. As we make the circuit to collect the IITA staff it feels that we’re a silent spaceship lifting a dozen or so choice Malawians from anonymous dusty streets into the tinted-window confines of status.

This status struck hard when, one morning on the way into work, the bus pulled to the roadside for staffers to by fresh peanuts from a vendor lugging a 50kg sack around on the back of his bicycle. The patronizing tones in haggling, the hard-bargain struck, the flaunting of a few small bills before handing them over in payment all made it abundantly clear to me: the Malawians I’m with see themselves as separate from the barefooted labourers tracing paths in and out of cornfields.

And as always, I may have the sentiment wrong; I may have misjudged, misread the signs. I might be conjuring sentiment where there is none—but the palpable claim to status that has long since settled into the upholstery of that work bus nudges me to believe otherwise.