Encounters: Travelling light proves impossible when pressed into service for friends

By SUSAN BUCKLAND

Not for the first time I'm about to set off overseas feeling like a de facto courier. Friends with family in places I will visit popped the question. Would I mind taking Claire's dictionary? She can't afford to buy another and it would help with her studies. It won't take much room.

But what about the weight? We are talking The Shorter Oxford here. Then there's the request to take a suit. Geoff left New Zealand with just a backpack, jeans and T-shirts and now he is going for his first serious job interview. Could you fit the suit? And perhaps his black shoes?

So where am I going to jam these bovver boots? Let alone the suit. I like to travel light, having long ago developed an intense loathing for lugging heavy suitcases. But I'm also loathe to disappoint friends even though I wish they would use Her Majesty's postal service.

It doesn't seem to matter how far-flung your destination. The minute you mention Malawi someone is bound to have a friend there. Sure enough the call came on the eve of my departure. Could I take a birthday cake to a friend in Malawi? The friend was working in difficult conditions in Blantyre Hospital, bringing help to patients suffering from Aids. Was I going to Blantyre? Oh what luck. It's just a small cake and it would make his day.

I packed the cake, which made up for its size in weight and proceeded to permeate my clothes with the smell of golden syrup and glace cherries. It was going to travel half way round Malawi before being delivered in Blantyre. I flirted with the idea of feeding it to lions when I reached a game park in northern Malawi. However, another moment did arrive when losing the cake became a distinct possibility.

Our mini-bus got stuck in a muddy riverbed, light years from a towing service. Water began flooding inside and, as we extracted our suitcases, muscular villagers arrived with poles to lever the bus. Marmite-eyed children at their heels stood about, riveted by the sight of aliens slopping helplessly round the bus with suitcases on their heads. I propped mine on the river bank and photographed the children while they shrieked with delight. I recorded their laughter and when I played it back to them they were fascinated. They had never seen such a device.

These children and their parents, like most Malawians, live in agrarian subsistence sharing a village well. They share verandas of their one-room, dirt floor houses with goats and chickens. They grapple with disease. Hospitals are overcrowded. Yet their natural charm, warmth and spontaneity captured us. Whether or not it is because of their relative lack of exposure to the outside world, they seem to be delightfully devoid of opportunism.

When the bus finally succumbed to Malawi manpower and was shunted on to dry ground, I reluctantly climbed back on board. The bus pulled away as the men divided the cash we had offered as thanks. From the window I tossed pens, soap, hats, chocolate to children, mothers and grandmothers. I contemplated throwing them the cake. The maker of the cake and its intended recipient - the doctor in Blantyre - might have approved. As they say, one good turn deserves another.