Funny Stories

Posted in Overall, Ridiculous by Dom on June 1st, 2008

I remembered a funny story, and funny enough at the same time another funny story happened, to a lesser degree at least. First as I walked from a gas station there was a minibus filling up with fuel. It was empty of people but it was shaking. I didn’t know why. As I passed by the rear of the bus I saw the attendant with the nozzle in the bus and two guys beside him standing there heaving the bus back and forth. I didn’t even ask why, it’s almost normal. In a hitch once they used a piece of bamboo to hold open the little door so they could put gas in, I don’t know why. Alright so I can’t remember the story I started the post intending to tell. Sorry. I’ll try to think of some others then for compensation. Tonight was kind of a funny story I guess. I went to dinner with Danni and Ali and they ended up getting hit on. As we were leaving apparently they were talking about Danni so she said hello then they got to chatting. This super drunk British dude was like you look fantastic, staring right at Danni, then realized how awkward a statement he made and tacked on, all of you, you all look really great…I said thanks. I was flattered, haha. How preposterous. The drunk guy was explaining how his son has a phd in mech engineering but got a job as an electrical engineer. He thought that was funny. He bought us a round and had his driver bring us home, so it wasn’t all awkwardness. Though they’re trying to get us to go to Nkhata Bay tomorrow.

I traveled up to Mzuzu today. I got a ride with peace corps. It was nice. We stopped at a PTC grocery store on the way up and I bought some boiled eggs, three, from this kid outside. K30 a piece I gave him a hundred. He tried to tell me he didn’t have change. I was like no son, took his eggs, and made him find me change. That fool thought I didn’t care about K10. That’s a banana in Lilongwe, or a tomato at my site, or like 10 guava, or two small packs of biscuits, etc. Then I got in the care and the staff person I was riding with gave me an egg sandwich.

I was taken in a hitch once to his fiance’s house. Or at least his fiance-to-be’s house. He proposed while we were there and then took her with us. It involved a lot of discussion with the parents outside while we sat inside watching some Easter special mass on TV from Nigeria. That was ridiculous. There were these white people, missionaries maybe, doing interpretive dance with wands and stuff. The mom was the head nurse at the clinic at my old site too. I thought I recognized her. Fortunately the recognition wasn’t reciprocated.

Alright so another funny story, the story I started this post for actually. So I was riding back from Nkhata bay with Jessie in a minibus. We were sitting across from this Malawian with this piece of luggage clutched in his arms. It was this molded foam piece with a zipper and a plastic handle. Fairly standard, except that this man had put a lovely purple plastic padlock on his to keep his zippers together. The kind of lock that’s about the size of your thumb that you might buy at a dollar store and whose key’s you normally lose within 5 minutes. I asked Jessie what she thought about that lock, or more what she thought he thought about that lock. I wasn’t satisfied though so I asked what she thought he’d do if I seized it and acted like I was going to rip it off. She said she didn’t know but wanted me to. I was like yeah right…and then I did. I grabbed hold of it and just shook it with a wild look in my eye. That man was frozen in his place eyes wide, stunned, for a solid second or two before he started to move. Then I released it and laughed. Everyone laughed, Jessie almost died. From laughing. The man said something about a false sense of security or how it was just for looks. I concurred. He was wary the rest of the trip. Needless to say, I was amused.