Consideraciones para el análisis de resultados

As the above makes clear, most Malawians adhere to ‘the grand narrative’ when talking about their home. But, as time went by, I became increasingly doubtful as I came to realize that most of the people that were telling me this story, did not necessarily adhere to it in practice. Lyotard sees this as a con- sequence of ‘the condition of knowledge’ in our times (1984 [1979]: xxiii). He termed this ‘postmodern’ because of the ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ (Ibid.: xxiii, xxiv). According to Lyotard, people no longer believe in these all-encompassing meta-, or grand narratives, which then – ironically – be- come the new grand narrative of our times. However, this incredulity should not be taken to mean that grand narratives no longer exist or are no longer used in our everyday thinking and communication: they do and they are. And although science was often in conflict with narrative – because they are based on different systems of legitimation – science is now widely regarded as a narrative too: crudely put, a story among other stories. This leaves space for contestation and, since I am a child of my times, this seems to me a pro- ductive way to ‘do’ science. Postmodern knowledge, in this sense, opens up possibilities, because ‘it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces

46 See also Harding’s conclusion that narratives that use narrative gaps tend to be extremely unstable (2000: 86).

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our ability to tolerate the incommensurable’ (Ibid.: xxv). Grand narratives obscure these differences by making them unintelligible (cf. Bauman 2015 [2004]: 17–19).

I thus decided to delve into Malawi’s history,48 _{since a grand narrative, like} the one about home, can be seen as a remnant of the past: a story that used to be true but which is now being surpassed by modernity, rapid urbanization and globalization. But this does not seem to be the case with regard to Mala- wi. Looking at Malawi’s ‘tribal composition’, movement clearly comes to the fore.49 _{The Ngoni, mostly portrayed as a warrior tribe, originate from South} Africa and ‘raided’ their way up to central Malawi. The Yao, also regarded as a warrior tribe, came up from Mozambique and subsequently participated in long distance (slave) trade, connecting them to (among other places) the Tanzanian coast. Both the Sena and Lomwe people arrived from Mozam- bique as well – having fled war or the harsh labour regimes – only to end up on plantations in Southern Malawi. The Tonga and Tumbuka tribes in the North of Malawi have always been closely associated with tribes found in present day Tanzania and the Congo. Finally, the Chewa people, descendants of the Maravi kingdom, can trace their origins back to parts of the Congo, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The ancient history of the current nation state of Malawi is thus riddled with movement (McCracken 2002, 2013 [2012]; Eng- lund 2002a, b; Van Blerk & Ansell 2006: 258; Verheijen 2014: 31; cf. Clifford 1997; Geschiere 2009: 28).

The early colonial administration went to great lengths in their attempts to curb the movements of the population of Malawi, then still called Nyasaland – a desire motivated by the onset of capitalism and their subsequent need for labourers on the plantation fields (McCracken 2013 [2012]: chapter 3, cf. Bauman 2012 [2000]). This turned out to be extremely difficult, because in- habitants were used to moving around, not least because of their agricultural activities and – especially in the Chikwawa region – the inhospitable natural environment (Ibid.).50 _{In 1891, this led to the introduction of ‘a six shilling hut}

48 Based on McCracken 2013 [2012] chapters 1–5, but also http://www.earth-cultures.com/ cultures/people-of-malawi (last accessed 14-11-2015).

49 I am aware of the problematic nature of the term ‘tribe’ and the shift in anthropology (in the late 1970s) towards the use of the (equally problematic) term ‘ethnicity’ (cf. Comaroff & Coma- roff 2009; Eriksen 2002 [1993]). I choose, however, to use ‘tribe’ here, because people in Malawi tend to use this word themselves when referring to their ‘ethnic identity’.

50 This would be an argument for the idea that labourers had already been ‘liquid’ before capitalism reached its liquid stage. This would refute Bauman’s theory (Bauman 2012 [2000]). I am grateful to Dr. Francio Guadeloupe for pointing this out to me during a conversation (Sint Maarten, 17-11-2015).

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tax’ (Ibid.: 79).51 _{In order to get the money for the hut tax, people were forced} to work on plantations and thus forced to settle and start leading a sedentary life. This policy had catastrophic effects when a famine struck the Southern region in 1900, instigating mass-migration to Blantyre in search of food, jobs and help (Ibid.: 80).52 _{Labour migration, with Malawi as the long term ‘suppli-} er of labor for the more developed economies of the south,’ is often thought of as ‘the single young man oscillating at relatively regular intervals between his rural village and urban place of employment’ (McCracken 2013 [2012]: 83, 183). But before the 1940s and 1950s, migrants would often take on sev- eral jobs in succession, which led them ‘ever further south before eventually returning home’ (Ibid.).53 _{‘The grand narrative about home’ thus seems to fit,} yet not as tightly as it has often been portrayed.

In the 1930s, cities began to slowly grow in Malawi, providing new challenges for those who migrated towards the towns. As McCracken describes (Ibid.: 233):

Confronted both by the uncertainties of urban living and also by the belief that ultimate security was most likely to be found back in one’s rural village, migrants sought refuge in a host of cultural associations, among them eth- nic, burial and mutual aid societies, linking them with their kinsfolk in the cities as well as with their rural homes.’

The insecurities of town-life were thus mediated by not severing the con- nections with those one had left behind in the village, making sure that one would always be able to return there. The village, however, remained the main residential place for most Malawians, with only a few living ‘in villages fringing the town’ (Ibid.: 288). These villages were called ‘peri-urban’ and, surprisingly, their population turned out to be ‘remarkably stable’ – especial- ly in cases where women could still work the land while the men went further into town to ‘fetch’ money (Ibid.: 289). In this way, it was possible to maintain a rural lifestyle while no longer residing in a rural area. Some of these now ur- ban people had ‘less to eat than rural villagers’; but, despite poverty, for some, these new habitats created immense opportunities (Ibid.). I agree, however, 51 See also, Meredith 2013 [2005] on how state formation on the African continent generally went hand in hand with a (violent) process of sedentarization.

52 In this sense, the current patterns of movement, both due to the aftermath of the floods and the endemic poverty, are nothing new.

53 There was also a large group of migrants who were named ‘machona’ or ‘lost ones’: they had ‘severed their connections with their homeland and were unlikely to return’ (McCracken 2013 [2012]: 184). They started new communities in, for example, present day Zimbabwe (Ibid.).

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with Englund that urbanization is a term that ‘long remained a misnomer for migration within Malawi’ (2001: 92). At independence in 1964, more than ‘95 percent of Malawi’s population lived in the countryside and the economy was almost entirely agricultural in character’ (McCracken 2013 [2012]: 282). It is in these circumstances that Dr. Banda entered the scene.

But even Dr. Banda, a keen believer in ‘the grand narrative about home’, can- not deny that his life was mainly based on movement and an anything but rural lifestyle. He had initially left Malawi as a migrant worker to head to the mines in South Africa and he subsequently spent most of his life abroad. Upon his return, it became clear that much about his appearance and behav- iour was no longer linked to the village life that he had lived when he was young. In fact, ‘to some observers, the new leader, clothed in his three-piece suit, wearing a black homburg hat, delivering his speeches in English and refusing to eat nsima, was an unconvincing nationalist […] to all intents and purposes a white man’ (McCracken 2013 [2012]: 346). Taking this into ac- count, Banda’s beloved ‘traditional’, African lifestyle narrative is present, yet for many, it does not reflect their lived reality.

Basically, ‘the grand narrative about home’ can never be an accurate re- flection of the history, present or future, of the place we now call Malawi. Englund came to a similar conclusion: ‘the fact of widespread migration in Malawi’s past and present makes the tenacity of mudzi as a moral notion somewhat counterintuitive’ (2002b: 138–139). This is when I realized that if I was going to try to understand my fieldwork experiences based on a grand narrative, people’s everyday practices would remain incomprehensible. Even when trying to explain the past or the future through the lens of this narra- tive, I would get myself stuck in a story that just did not seem to fit the daily praxis of those who were telling me this story. This is why I chose to focus on what Lyotard calls ‘micronarratives’ or ‘“new moves”: different stories, some- times challenging, sometimes affirming but always co-existing with grand narratives’ (Ibid.: 53).