The Nyika Plateau

Back in June, when I was loitering in Ndola (Zambia), I got myself invited to a braii being put on by some of Arthur's friends. If I am not mistaken, the owner of the house was also named Markus, albeit 'Marcus.' It was after this carnivorous occasion that my friends and I were shepherded to the local precinct by machinegun-toting officers for being foolish enough to prowl the streets as defenseless wzungu after 11 at night, and then witnessed a bit of violence as the police allowed the victim of a screwdriver attack to avenge himself on his assailant--which you may recall reading about in this space at the time. I recall writing about the mood of that night at some length: Sheets of smoke wreathing the air, a pack of lean dogs lying in wait for us at the crossroads, an otherworldly gibbous moon like a orange skull leering at us through the smog.

There was something else of interest that happened that night that I did not write about at the time, and which only began to register much later. At some point during the braii I followed Arthur into the kitchen. I talked to him and Katie (whom he was making embarrassingly clumsy efforts to hit on), then to Arthur's wife, then to a little Indian fellow in a tracksuit called Dynamite, who liked to race cars. All the while people were piling into the kitchen for dibs on the appetizers being turned out by the women. The crowd eventually wedged me between the stove and the kitchen table, where I fell into conversation with a colored guy (this means 'mixed-race' in southern Africa) whose name may or may not have been Marvin. I don't remember what Marvin did, he was probably involved with mines or transport in keeping with most of the men in attendance. I do remember telling him about my novel set down in an African copper mine (Down in a Deep Dark Hole, we'll call it) and being nonplussed by his reaction. That does not sound like a good kind of novel, he said. A mine, eksay? That is no place for a novel.
So where was a good place for a novel then? Marvin's eyes glazed over with reverence as he told me: The Nyika Pleateau. The Nyika is a stunning region in neighboring Malawi with vegetation like you might find on a Scottish heath and elevations approaching 9,000 feet. This is what you should write, Marvin began, tippling for inspiration: The novel begins with your character looking out from atop the Nyika. He surveys the plains below as he might survey his life. Down there among the people and heat, he sees the scene of his failure, of the successive losses that make up his life. He is all alone on top of the plateau (the Nyika is almost unpopulated, and they say that the villages at the foot of it live in terror of it). He is stuck, he cannot descend. His life now is empty and cold, and he is doomed forever to contemplate what was by looking out over the plain furling out below...

Time and inexact recollection have forced me to embellish what Marvin said, but that was the gist of it. At the time I was eager to dismiss his vision, but that same intercession of time has made it seem compelling. It is a nice frame, don't you think? A few months after my conversation with Marvin I read a powerful book by Laurens van der Post about the Nyika and came away with the impression that it was replete (as of the time of writing in the 1950's at least) with the kind of magic that whites go poking about for in Africa. It is at the top of my list when I make my return.