The home life

I look at my basket of food: rice, beans, half an onion, and a banana that over the last few days became something other than food. Wrapped in a faded blue towel, I stand over a pot of steaming hot water. Then I realize I have no cold water at the house and that I can’t bathe in scalding water. I realize too that the bore hole is a quarter mile away and I’m wearing a towel.

Yes, here, day to day living is work. I still manage to make home my refuge. I can create a semblance of American order inside my home. The rest of Malawi is free game for Malawi. The wobbly, mice-eaten bookcase—Yes, mice gnawed away at the wood before I brought them into the afterlife with my shoe—has familiar titles and magazines. The cana lilies, with their long shoots of ragged orange flowers, peak brightly above my window sill.

I often nestle into domestic bliss on Sunday mornings. Malawians wake early, between four and five, but I peacefully sleep through their morning chores. Around eight thirty, about the time I open my curtains to the world, through my windows I watch them march off in their finest market clothing. Drums and singing drift in the house from the nearby church, a promise that people will keep at their rituals and leave me to my own: an excessive amount of tea, five slices of bread doused in peanut butter and honey, a glass of powdered milk, the BBC quietly rattling about revolutions far north of me, China’s fears of inflation, and a place called America.

Looking at the table, I marvel at how I manage my breakfast. Any goods resembling western decadence—tea, powdered milk, peanut butter, honey, oh my!—I import from the nearest trading hub, a spaghetti western-looking place, about an hour’s bike away. Drunks stumble around there. Hassle me for money. And during raining season, the rivers swell so that I have to remove my shoes and socks, roll up the legs of my jeans, and wade across the rushing water. The water for tea was warmed by my kerosene stove, a crumby Chinese nightmare with which I’m often at odds. Tea, such a menial pleasure in the States, suddenly means much more.

In the back of the house, across my courtyard, stands a rectangular outbuilding. By the door in the umbayula, my charcoals are blazing hot after I dripped the burning remains of a plastic bag over them. They are locally-made briquettes. The process of creating charcoal unfortunately accelerates the problem of deforestation, but I cannot master cooking over firewood. I walk with half a slice of bread into the kitchen and put a pot of dried beans over the coals. They will need three hours to get soft, ready just in time for lunch. Breakfast has devolved into me multi-tasking.

I go inside and, drinking my tea, eye the reed basket overflowing with my underwear. Stan comes once a week to wash my clothes, but handling another’s intimates offends Malawian culture and my sense of decency. I will wash them by hand after this cup of tea, another slice of bread, another thirty minutes of BBC because “The Strand! Global arts and entertainment…” streams out of my small radio and bounces against the concrete walls. (The Coen Brothers remade “True Grit.” What new tricks do they have up their sleeves?)

A couple hours later, I walk out my back door in the courtyard. I do everything—dishwashing, cleaning clothes, hanging my clothes to dry—within the safe confines of the courtyard’s brick walls. My breakfast dishes sit next to two basins. Food particles and soap suds mar the water in one basin. Water in the other basin, used for rinsing, looks pristine apart for some cooking oil glistening on the surface. The underwear hang flapping in the sun on the clothes line. I empty yet another basin, the water grayish from clothing dye and dirt, and look at my hands, chapped from washing. I grab a dry pot from the drying rack. The rack is a reed creation of mine suspended to the wall with wire. I measure out my rice for lunch.

Then the drums die. My home quavers on the edge of a peaceful precipice as the rice quietly hits the pot. I add water and, after adding some more coals to the dwindling fire, swap the beans for the rice. People begin to drift past on the road. I hear them through the corn. There’s a loud yell at the front of my house: “Odi!” the Malawian equivalent of a doorbell.

Well. There is water to draw. “Yebo!” I shout back letting whoever it is know I’m coming. For drinking. For cooking. For bathing. For cleaning. I grab a bucket and open walk to the front door. Get back from bore hole, rice can get going. Tomorrow. Damn tomorrow. An hour’s bike ride to the market. Rivers flooded. Take off your shoes and roll up your jeans. What a mess. All the mud from this rain just tracked in and as soon as I mop I’ll track it all in again. Unlock the front door, so you can open it. And those rotton tomatoes. Just throw them out, just, this house. And it’s only a student visitin the hosue to chat.

(For Aunt Mary (Hardiman), who asked for an entry on this subject.)



Drawing water. There's a verb in Chitumbuka, kutwika, which means to carry something on your head.



This is Haakon, a volunteer near me, washing dishes. One basin for washing, one for rinsing.



Dishes drying on my well-crafted reed drying rack. Fascinating photo.



Chealsea is pounding almonds sent from home with a local mortar and pistil. We tried to make marzipan, which turned out delicious but not like marzipan.



Lighting up the charcoals.



Chelsea cooking over an umbayula.