My name is Antoine – or more
recently M’bewe, as friends from the next village have decided to
nickname me. These days, I can hardly make my way to the market or
the fishing village without stumbling across a cheering crowd of
friendly yet noisy Malawians shouting out my new name all over the
place… Not to mention the soothing chance meeting with a quiet and
respected elder or the occasional encounter, not so soothing, with
countless hordes of exhilarated kids with marveling eyes and hearty
laughters.
This is Malawi, the ‘‘warm
heart of Africa’’ – and it’s been quite a ride so far.
It’s been one month since I
arrived in Kande Beach to meet with Justin, the happy owner of the
Maru Research Center, and start working with him as a research
intern. The ‘‘Maru’’, in the local language of Chitonga, is a
place where each and everyone can meet and exchange ideas. Over the
years, Justin has strived to make this place just what it’s
supposed to be. In collaboration with the fishing community that
relies on Lake Malawi and its resources, his ongoing goal is to
better understand and promote the lake’s tremendous – yet
understudied – biodiversity.
But let’s give you an idea!
Here is what a typical day as an intern at the Maru looks like:
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8 am, time for breakfast (on lucky days, there might a nice pile of pancakes in the kitchen just waiting for you). With a full belly, I can safely get on with my first mission of the day – the River Monitoring. Three times a week, we go and measure a variety of physico-chemical and biotic parameters in the nearby rivers. The objective is to assess a baseline for the quality of the water that ultimately flows into the lake, while keeping the Fisheries Department and Mzuzu University updated.
After
gathering my measuring instruments and my insect net, I start heading
for Mazembe river – a 40-minutes walk along the lake shore. On my
way, I will likely stumble across many people on the beach: locals
bathing, doing their laundry or simply having a walk, women carrying
fish to the next village, children playing with rusty bikes or flying
homemade kites.
I
finally get to the river mouth – time to get to work! I pull out my
instruments and start measuring the air and water temperature, the pH
and the amount of dissolved particles in the water. Then I grab my
net, plunge it into the river stream, pull it out, and start counting
and identifying the different varieties of insects I’ve been able
to catch. Following a methodology that is consistently used in
African countries, I take a look at the ‘‘ecological score’’
derived from the data I’ve just collected: the river this week is
almost in its unmodified, natural state. All good then – ‘‘Hakuna
Matata’’, as they like to put it here. I start packing up my
stuff, cruising past a herd of cows as I make my way back home.
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On the way back, I reach the fishing village of Masukuhunju, which we are working with. Fishermen are just coming back from their night hunt… About 60 of their fishing canoes are scattered onshore, some of them bursting with exotic, strangely named fishes – Gongo, Utaka, Chisawasawa, Kampango, Nkholokholo… In the distance, I can already catch a glimpse of the happy faces surrounding the boats – men and children together, helping to clear the fishing nets out of the boats. Now is the time for my next mission: the Fisheries Monitoring. The point of my daily trip to the fishing village is to monitor fish catches, the yield and species composition – again, as a baseline for the lake’s fish resources and the fishermen’s livelihoods.
Armed
with a bucket, a bowl and a scale, I get closer to one boat
surrounded by a team of workers and start engaging conversation –
quite surprisingly, ‘‘How is fishing?’’ is a hell of an
ice-breaker. Quite often, small talk can give you some precious
insight on the life in the village and its inhabitants. After a few
chitchats I ask, innocently enough, if I can put my bucket in their
boat and weight their fish. Virtually every fisherman here will be
glad to let you – Justin has been around for 8 years now and the
locals have learnt to know and appreciate him. Not to mention I’ve
been around for one month now and have learnt to know and appreciate
a bunch of them as well! I can start filling my bucket with bowls of
fish, weighting them and trying to estimate the catch composition and
the amount of net yet to be removed.
This
daily task is as much about keeping track of fishing activities as
maintening the link between the Maru and the fishing community. It
can be a pretty intense work, that gets you to engage with the locals
and leaves you with your hands dirty and smelly with fish. Certainly
beats the office.
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12 pm, time for a well-deserved lunch. As usual, we get to eat the local dish, the traditional greens, beans and sima – a dough of maize bran mixed with water. Basically the local version of bread for me, which I need at every meal in my home country – can you guess which? I share my meal with Justin and three Malawians working at the Maru: Joyce, Douglas and Chimbavi. A few words on them.
Joyce
is the
Center Manager and also our
cook – I should say chef, really, to give credit to her ability to
take a bunch of basic ingredients and somehow always turn it into
something tasteful. Dinner time is when she can express her full
creativity – ask her for her special burrito. She takes care of
every volunteer coming here, often gives wise advice and has some
great stories about local witchcraft… I insist though, ask her for
her special burrito.
Douglas
is my diving buddy, working his way to become a Dive Master. He’s
also my volley ball buddy, which we play every day or so, and might
quickly become my buddy for all kinds of other stuff. Not exactly the
talkative type – yet he’s a great deal of fun when you get to
know him.
Chimbavi
is the last, the caretaker of this place. The extent of his English
being somewhat limited to a few (short) sentences, we mostly
communicate by means of body langage, suggestive facial expressions
(lots of winks), Malawian interjections and a fair share of bursts of
laughter.
I
like the three of them very much.
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2 pm. Justin steps into the kitchen. ‘‘Ok, dude, get your gear together. Time for diving.’’ Oh boy, now we’re talking. I start heading towards the equipment storage room and, smiling with anticipation, I ‘‘get my gear together’’: BCD jacket, air tank, regulator, weighting belt, wet suit, mask and fins… This is the time for our Fish ID Survey. For eight years now, the Maru has been regularly monitoring a representative number of fish species in the northern part of the lake. As far as Justin knows, he is the only one to keep such track of the lake’s biodiversity – despite its countless endemic species and the growing threat of overfishing.
Once
our gear is all set up, we hop on Justin’s motor boat, start the
engine towards Kande Island – 800 m from the shore – and start
diving. As we reach the bottom, we start installing a 50 m transect
line, get our slates out and start swimming along, recording every
fish we see that we are keeping track of. Over the weeks, I’ve
started to grow familiar with them: I have learnt how to distinguish
them and to make sense of their distinctive shapes, features and
behaviours – and I have my own favorites. Once you are qualified to
dive and Justin is confident enough in your ability, he pretty much
leaves you to carry out all aspects of this research, which is quite
nice.
On
other days, we have been diving with kitchen knives to get rid of the
nets entangled in the rocks and release the occasional fish. It might
not be the proper technical term, but I like to call them ‘‘rescue
dives’’.
I
have learnt diving here in the first weeks after my arrival, with the
help of Justin as a dedicated diver and a benevolent teacher. Like
may others before me, I think I’m getting hooked to it.
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5 pm. Let’s call it a day… I meet up with Douglas, and we head for the beach to enjoy our customary game of volley ball. And what games they are… On a good day, few words can describe the effervescence of a volley ball game in this very specific part of the world – the cheering crowd, the electrified players, the clamors of indignation and the sincerely dishonest claims when it comes to decide if the ball was in or out this time… In the midst of all that agitation, I seem to be the only one to notice the peaceful view of the nearby lake – Kande Island in the sunset, and the fishermen sailing in the far distance.
Tonight,
I might stay here and play pool at the bar from the lodge next door –
or I might just get out in the village, have a game of bao
with Wise Man – a well-named local vendor – before meeting up
with Banjo and his family to share their dinner at home.
I’ve been in Malawi a month
already and every day still feels like fresh and new somehow,
bringing its own share of surprises, challenges and wonders. Justin
fully encourages you to integrate and immerse yourself in the local
community and culture whilst you’re interning, which is great. You
get the chance to live right next to the village and its people: just
get out there, and see what happens. Just
learn a few local greetings –
people here genuinely appreciate even the smallest effort to try,
and most of the time you
will be rewarded with king-sized smiles and cheerful answers.
Some other times you might feel the cultural gap to be somewhat
confusing or even unsettling. In any case, you will always learn a
great amount in the process and get something good out of it.
Recently we have been working
on a new project which I find very promising. Overfishing has become
a growing concern for the fishermen, and we want to address that
issue together with them. Our objective is to set up brush
parks in
the lake to enhance fish production. In our case, those are
structures made out of bamboo that could act as an artificial reef,
provide sources of food and refuge for fishes and be used as
breeding, spawning and nursery areas.
I
have just been through a literature review of the use of brush parks
around the world – in other African countries but also in
Bangladesh, in Mexico and in southern parts of the Lake Malawi. All
the methods developed so far require the structures to be removed
before harvesting, or to come up with new elaborate, intricated
fishing techniques. To try and do better, we want the fishermen we
are working with to be allowed to keep on using their traditional
gear and fishing techniques. As of now, we decided to experiment with
a new design – a series of rows of cylinders made out of bamboo,
whose shape was inspired by the local chiteti,
a large basket used to carry fish. We are just done with the
construction of our first experimental structure – with the help of
a villager I recruited last week on my way to the market. Time to try
it out! This afternoon we went underwater with Douglas and Justin to
put that thing in the lake, anchored at the bottom. Let’s wait and
see if the structure holds in place. If it does, it will be time to
start monitoring the growth of algae and, eventually, investigate the
impact on fish population. Until we can set up, hopefully, an
extensive brush park… To be continued?
