In the poster indicated by the detour put 10 km. We turned right and saw that it was a stone and sand track that seemed to climb a high mountain. Our Dodge, too big for that track, He began to fight with the way. Little by little we understood that this was a complicated path, Very complicated. The car is very large and in many closed curves we have to do up to four maneuvers to overcome them. Victor is a teacher behind the wheel and I dedicated myself to calculating how many centimeters we passed by a deep cliff. If the skating car we go to the most beautiful and deep fuck.
"A place that is reached after this track must be special", We talked Victor and me. That is a logic that never fails on a trip: If you see a hotel that is after a long difficult way in the middle of nowhere, go, Surely it is a unique site. We are going to Mushroom Farm, A lodging that have recommended us in the north of Malaui.
A site that is reached after this track must be special
The hotel is just before a city, Livestonia, that honors the Scottish explorer David Livingstone, "Discoverer" for the West of the wonderful Lake Malaui. The city was founded by British missionaries who had to climb to the top of the mountain to flee the ravages that malaria was causing in its mission attached to the waters. The respect that for the figure of Livingstone is in all of Africa always attracts my attention. His fight against slavery has earned it, eg, that in Zambia after independence that was the only city to which the name was not moved. In Tanzania and even in Zimbabue he is also paid tribute.
Finally, After sections of 20 kph, We reach the enigmatic Mushroom Farm. And what we found was a group of young people, of traveling aspect, who received us in a small parking lot in the middle of a forest. Two Australian young girls appear and another white young man, With your broken pants in pieces and mountain boots, He shakes his hand while a work is going to continue in a cabin. That was literally the end of the world. The, at least, one of the possible purposes of the world.
Victor and I decided to get to know the place and have a beer. They had fixed a road with some taste and details and on the sides there were cabins for backpackers. Finally we arrive at the bar and restaurant. In that traveling style, Everything was quite well placed. All made with your hands, With a lot of work and with a lot of effort. From there the distant lake between thousands of branches and leaves was seen with difficulty.
"I've been living here for six months. I collaborate with a community of women in Livingstonia and with this place ”, The young Australian explains. So we talk about routes and times. "I will stay more here and then I will return to my country". Did you want to retire from the world, Live this experience?, tell. She smiles. “Vine, I liked it and I stayed ". Simple.
Then another young woman appears. It is North American, de Minnesota. She and her brother are now the owners of this special place. “My brother worked with an NGO in Tanzania and I came to visit him. We travel, We met this site and decided to mount something ”, tells us. "When my mother came to see us she thought we were crazy".
When my mother came to see us he thought we were crazy
The Mushroom Farm was before an Australian who I suppose that the desire or the years of living out of everything was passed and decided to sell it now to these boys. They don't know, but I also suppose the same thing will happen to them. It is inevitable to see them and remember Wolfgang, the old german from Turkana, that he arrived with the same energy of these brothers to the end of the world and it was just that end of the world that has engulfed him for not finding an escape or a place in him. Maybe they don't happen to them but it seems difficult for them not to devour the routine one day, Because routine is what we do although no one else does. And then, In the midst of that wonderful nothing, What remains is nothing and in nothingness the routine is a punishment. It does, It has a huge merit to have the courage to go there to win and lose.
Then I ask about the bathroom and enter a wooden space, rudimentary, But done with imagination and grace. And everything has its place and is seen in each corner that they take care of the space and time to turn their secret into something shared. The site is a philosophy of young travelers who probably live life with intensity, With relaxed and crazy nights, in which everyone together with a bonfire to feel the privilege of not belonging to the planet that begins in the distance.
It is crazy has come the chief of the police to ask me money
And then the young American tells us that “she is crazy has come the police chief to ask me money. There was in the town the theft of a goat and they say that one of our workers ate from it. Now he asks me for money to pay the owner's goat ", She says in amazement. And Victor and I looked at each other and remember the old Wolfgang and ourselves and we talk about what no one who has not lived here a long season recognizes: "They will always be white and will have the stigma of being white and all those Africans who live next to them will see them as whites". And what does that mean? "That they will always see them as rich people to get money". That does not mean that there is no immense affection or closeness, But in more than four years of life on this earth it is something that I learned for overwhelming experience and with what I did not arrive. Something that makes you feel sometimes far. "I don't go out there because as soon as I put a foot on the door there are hundreds of people asking me money", what the old German who carries said 33 years living in Turkana.
And we pay the account of our rich food with guacamole, Wine and beer. And I left a good tip to the American girl to help this beautiful dream and she immediately sounded a bell and told the two local women who helped in the kitchen "they have left you this", While putting the tickets in a box. And their faces were illuminated. And you understand that there are values ??in these good guys.
And you understand that there are values ??in these good guys
And Victor met the brother, that loaded wood and tools, And he said "if you were my son, I would be proud of you". And the guy thanked him with an excited gesture and was lost through that mountain to continue raising another cabin.
And we left. And we lower that eternal mountain with vague ideas of who and what is the Mushroom Farm. Needless, It seems that it is a site of young travelers who decided to live another life, away from any. And the image that comes to both of us while we went down is a recognition of its value and a smile. The next day, After sleeping next to the lake, We cross Zambia.
