Trafficking in Tobacco (Glimpse)

Walking into the vast tobacco auction room, my nostrils feel as if they have entered a hay maze. The smell emanating from the massive burlap sacks is pungent, straw-like, musty. It’s not the aroma of tobacco smoke (though the occasional buyer puffs a cigarette), but of the plant itself — brittle, thin, wrinkled leaves that resemble layers of coffee-stained parchment. The odor is overwhelming at first, as is the dust that puffs up from the bales, but my nose soon calms.



Welcome to the tobacco auction floors, just north of Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city. In a room double the size of an aircraft hangar, thousands of bales of tobacco sit in neat rows awaiting sale. On this Monday in September, 9,039 bales are up for sale. Tobacco is Malawi’s primary cash crop, responsible for 70 to 80 percent of the country’s export earnings —and for employing, either directly or indirectly, an equivalent percentage of the Malawian population.



These floors alone provide work for 3,000 people, my guide tells me, and the auctioneers are the undisputed stars. But they’re not the sort of auctioneers who stand at a podium and wave at demurely seated bidders. These auctioneers move at a rapid clip down the numbered aisles, calling out the prices for the six buyers walking alongside them. I follow one auctioneer, a tall man whose eyes bulge as he ululates. This is neither English nor Chichewa — it’s a language of its own, a kind of lilting singsong. His intonation rises and falls as buyers up the price. Each auctioneer has a distinct refrain, some shouting, some crooning, others nearly yodeling. Buyers have their own sign language: a thumbs up raises the price one cent, an open palm five cents, the thumb and forefinger joined in an a-OK sign 10 cents. The subtleties are mesmerizing. I have to remind myself to keep scuttling along to clear the path for the sellers and buyers. Yet for all their speed — a bale sells in two to three seconds – the exchanges are remarkably calm. The auctioneer’s eyes remain trained on the hand signals of the buyers, who keep their gaze on the tobacco leaves.



Ticket markers follow the auctioneers, recording the price of the tobacco (or tossing a blue card onto the bale if the leaves are moldy). Porters bring up the rear, heaving the 100-kilo sacks onto trolleys and racing them down the middle aisle. Most want their photo taken. “Picture, picture!” they call, posing with a trolley or leaping atop a bale.



Some, however, ask for a little more. “Muli pabanja?” they ask. “Are you married?” “Muli pabanja?” Not quite what I bargained for, but I chuckle and smile. I depart the floors at 10:30 a.m., three hours after the auction began. By 1 p.m., perhaps even by noon, all the tobacco will have sold, and porters will wheel in the next day’s bales.



I blow my nose after leaving. It tars the tissue black.