Walking well: the social landscape of the Bakili Muluzi highway, Malawi

Throughout much of the world road building is viewed as a neutral development tool favorable for rural farmers to have increased access to urban markets. The notion that roads have a uni-directional and beneficial flow from rural to urban omits other considerations. Recent research indicates additional outcomes: city vendors have the potential to out-compete rural merchants, lives dominated by walking may be altered, and compared with villagers living “off-road” those living “on-road” reap substantial benefits (Fairhead 1992; Porter 1995, 2002; Wilson 2004). Highway construction sym- bolizes development projects that have the potential to be powerful transformers not only of the physical landscape they traverse, but of the social landscape as well. 1 This paper will explore the social and moral consequences of laying a highway where foot- paths once defined the movements of people from one village to the next. Investigating the social and environmental implications of a road building proj- ect in sub-Saharan Africa, I present research conducted in Malawi along the recently paved Bakili Muluzi Highway, a major transportation route for the country’s Eastern Corridor. This paper addresses current social and environmental impacts of the high- way based on research conducted in two Amachinga Yao villages that border the new highway. 2 The study of an independent variable, the paved highway, provides a useful lens with which to understand current trends concerning the unintended side effects of road building. James Fairhead finds that in Zaire, “roads link the village with the out- side world in a way which is qualitatively different from the links implied by the flow of goods and people along local pathways” (1992:21). I argue that varying local percep- tions and inferred trends create a comple x social landscape when a road building proj- ect initially transforms the physical landscape of a rural region. The social landscape is defined through an analysis of perceptions regarding the body and the forest accord- ing to the Yao people who live at the side of the new highway. I suggest that the road provides a place for exploration of spatial narratives. Local Yao perceptions of the Bakili Muluzi Highway in southern Malawi reveal a broader social landscape defined through narratives regarding the body and the moral behavior associated with move- ment. The paved highway landscape is transforming the Yao worldview as those who live both off- and on-road come to “know tarmac”

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5716/WP14686.PDF

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