Tough trek in a malachai just to put food on the table
“Wait and see for yourself: the sky is the limit,” said the man halfway up the trailer.
He was loading more and more goods on what already appeared to be a mountain of luggage. We were about to set off for a journey to Rusape, a town about 250km west of Harare in Zimbabwe.
Some of the malaichas, as the minibus taxis towing the heavy trailers are known, start their arduous journey in Cape Town. Along the route they pick up more passengers, more luggage – and they inevitably break down.
The word malaicha comes from the Ndebele language and means “transporting goods to and from”. There is also a version that says it is derived from the Swahili language where it means “angel or messenger” – and without a stackload of belief you will not tackle such journeys with such vehicles over such distances.
A couple of months ago the urge to put a “face” to these malaichas developed. Who drives these taxis? Where do they go and why are there always empty containers, a little bicycle and bags of blankets to be found somewhere in the stack on the trailer?
Determined to find out how the malaicha operators work, or rather survive, I planned to go to the small town of Rusape which, according to Google Maps, is 574km from the Beit Bridge border post. Google reckoned it should take seven hours and 22 minutes. I found out that Google definitely has not encountered a malaicha.
Carrying my two bags, I went through customs and crossed the border. A few metres into the Zimbabwean side there is an open area where I was told to look out for a malaicha driver. An army of taxi drivers quickly approached me. I had to fight to stop the drivers from grabbing my bags. Luckily, a Zimbabwean policeman came to my rescue, guiding me to the correct taxi rank.
At the Dulibadzimu rank, I rushed straight to a taxi destined for Rusape. “We have to load everything quickly, so that we leave Beit Bridge earlier,” said one of the helpers loading the trailer. I stood watching while the pile simply got higher and higher.
The stack contained building material, empty 25-litre containers (lots of them), blankets, boxes of soap, cooking oil, bicycles, disposable nappies and large bags full of chips packages (commonly known as masimba).
Why such a strange collection of luggage? “We have to buy these empty 25l containers. The taps are dry most of days, so we need to store water,” said one of the passengers, whom the others call “Senior”, because she has been a cross-border trader since 2000. She buys groceries for resale in Rusape.
I asked her about the other products on the trailer, like the masimba (small packets of flavoured chips). “Those are for the children,” she said, explaining that it is the cheapest “lunch pack” parents can give when sending the children off to school.
As far as the loading of the trailer is concerned, there seems to be some sort of strategy. Boxes of soap form the first layer, followed by boxes of cooking oil. On the sides will be either packets of masimba, disposable nappies, or blankets.
It is not only the trailer that has to carry the burden. On the front seat of the 26-seater taxi, the bags containing packets of bread and biscuits are loaded. The passengers go towards the rear.
“Why do you use the Ivecos?” I ask the driver. “They pull very well and our passengers are comfortable all the way,” he says.
Behind the taxi, at the trailer, the wall goes up until every item is loaded. The load is covered with a plastic sheet and wrapped with a spider’s net of ropes. The last items to be loaded are the tyres and the building material, some of which stick out of the back and the front of the trailer.
We departed from Beit Bridge at around 6pm.
After travelling for about 100km, the first two tyres burst. Two spare wheels later we were on the road again.
A further 150km we stopped again. Another tyre was flat, but this time it was fixed and pumped up again. From there on every 100km we stopped to check and replace tyres. I realised why so many tyres had to be loaded.
For the rest of the night and most of the following day, we slowly made our way to the north.
Fuel gets bought on what is known as the “parallel market”. This means spotting a person standing next to the road who will flag you down and then quickly collect a container full of fuel from the bush.
Is it really worth it? I paid R150 for my ticket to Rusape. The profit margins cannot be big, if any.
But in a country where people have become so used to economic hardships, it is something to cling on to. It puts food on the table.
Republished from groundup.org.za