“If you had told me in advanced where you were going, I would have bought gas in Mzuzu and it would have been cheaper,” Febias, our taxi driver, told us this morning. It is Tuesday, June 24th, and at around a quarter to nine we were on our way to conduct our third focus group. Minutes into our trip we were already pulling off the Tarmac onto a parallel dirt road; we stopped in front of a man sitting on a short stool next to a cardboard box. Five liters, Febias told him, at which the stool-sitter reached his hands into the box and extracted two large plastic containers of deep yellow liquid. The local gas station.

We had spoken to Febias the day before to arrange the transport, but were still unsure at the time which of the three villages scrawled in Emily’s notebook was our actual destination: Enyazini, Kabwanda, or Embombeni. Ultimately, after consulting with a local health worker from this useful source and revisiting a hand drawn map tacked to the office wall, we were heading to Embombeni. And 5,700 kwacha of gasoline later, we were off.

Look, they run on empty, Emily had told me when we first arrived in Malawi. She had gestured towards the gas meter on the taxi’s dashboard, and sure enough the needle was hovering in line with E. Since then, reflexively, my eyes always hone in on the dial when I enter a car. And since then, reliably, the needle is always in the same general location: at or below E.

It’s like food; you buy what you’re going to eat and that’s it, Febias explained, fueled and back on the road. With gas, we buy what we need because usually you are borrowing someone’s car, so you only pay for what you will use. Again, as needed.

Take “flashing,” another example: you call someone, let it ring once, and then hang up. The person you are trying to reach will call you back, using their minutes to finance the call. You buy these minutes on barcode-sized plastic scratch-off cards. Under the metallic silver is a 12-digit number that you type into your cell phone to reload. No long-term service plans, no monthly bundles: Minutes, time really, is bought as needed.

When we make plans with people — to sit for tea, to meet children and wives, to visit health centers — calendars are always wide open, tomorrows always empty and free. And I don’t know yet if this is a sign of survival, a society that focuses solely on the day ahead, because that’s all there is. Or if it’s a sign of a culture wise beyond its years, one that realizes tomorrow doesn’t necessarily matter, that the point is to be here, now.

In Malawi, beyond the stagnant lines and the moneyless ATMs, the broken clocks and the watchless wrists, is a society gritting its teeth and stomping its feet to the tune of what’s actually important. Keeping track of days and time, planning ahead, just may not be. Malawi and its people reminded me of a quote from the poet Brian Andreas: “If you hold onto the handle, she said, it’s easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it’s more fun if you let the wind carry you.”

Home now in New York City, the wind these days has been biting hard, reddening cheeks and chapping lips. The grid suggests structure, pleads for format. Crisscrossing through the streets, the Malawi in me will run.

Header photo by Skip Russell.