Air Mail

Lunch with primates

2011-09-01T18:33:00.002Z

Esther and I sat on the terrace of a bourgeois hotel on top of Zomba plateau. There were trees, bushes. There was a manicured lawn and a chess set with pieces two feet tall on a large board. The pawns were squatting villagers. The bishops medicine men beating drums between their thighs. I asked Peter, so his nametag read, for some coffee and a salad.

My book on my lap, I heard Esther apologetically explain that she couldn’t paint. “Everything’s so green. It’s too monochrome,” she decided. I, on the other hand, couldn’t read because the grounds were so lovely and its inhabitants so strange.

A rowdy troop of baboons, playing tag up and down trees and getting into spats, arrived with the lunch crowd, a semiotic pairing of species. The humans were pleased with the exotic turn out, and the baboons, for all their blasé posturing, cast beady-eyed glances at the food.

On a limb above me a female sat flirtatiously bobbing her eyebrows and itching her chin with her foot. Finally, her right forearm casually draped over her bent knee as she leaned forward a touch, much like the man seated at a table on my right. He had a whopper of a tourist hat, one of those saucer-brimmed safari things with a mosquito net tucked in there somewhere, and a thick moustache that really stuck out when the middle part of his face was covered by his fancy SLR pointed at the baboons. Oh, cute! They’re eating bark! Click.

Peter finally arrived with the coffee. He placed a small pitcher of steamed milk and a dish with turbinado and white sugar packets and no calorie sweetener on the table. The salad apparently must wait. “Monkey. Sugar,” Peter pronounced mysteriously.

“You mean the monkeys like sugar?”

“Guard the sugar carefully,” Peter affirmed.

As I thanked him, I noticed my flirt of the afternoon moving up the tree with alarm. A watchman had come round from somewhere with a slingshot. He sent a pebble whizzing through the branches with expert aim through the tangle of branches. The other baboons gave way, their pink derrieres shamelessly on display. The guard strode across the grounds and disappeared somewhere in the verdure.

Things didn’t seem right, though, as my salad came out dripping in mustard vinaigrette. A bunch of palms near a balcony rustled. A male, human, screamed. A plate crashed to the floor. People sounded worried. Everyone looked up to see a baboon perched on the railing, eating what looked like chicken before a group of upset simians in formal wear.

“Do you think those people get a free meal?” Esther mused. “Or a discount?”

And in the meantime the flirt had moved closer, just at the edge of the terrace near my table. I covered the sugar dish with my hand and pierced a cube of chicken, not bad. Then suddenly with amazing speed, she quadrapedaled toward the table where the man with the hat and moustache had sat. She swiped his sugar dish off the table, sending the packets across the terrace.

The hat looked back from the steps leading to the exit and pressed his camera to his face. The baboon stuffed her mouth full of the turbinado packets (Click.) and, resigning to lesser pleasures, swiped at the less appealing white sugar, (Click.) which also went straight (Click.) into her mouth paper and all, before she ran for the hills with Peter and the guard in tow. (Click. Click. Click.) The cheery red packets of calorie-free sweetener lay sadly behind, unwanted by a baboon or any human with taste.

“Peter,” I said as he returned panting a bit to his tables, “maybe you should take the sugar? And could you bring the bill? Please.”

Unusual conversations

2011-08-13T14:15:00.007Z

1. A crowded office protected by mossy brick walls from the hum of traffic outside. The sun pours generously through the windows and burglar bars, casting shadows on a tall man hunched in front of a computer and another leaning casually back in a chair that squeaks.

Tall dude: "Wow. This internet is driving me nuts."
Dude: Confused by the idiom. "You want nuts?"
Tall: "No. I'm irritated."

2. Same crowded office but in the evening. The sun is low. It's cold. A tall man spreads himself along a couch. Another twenty-something man leans against a desk. He looks inquisitively at the clearly fatigued man on the couch.

Another dude: "Tell me about racism in the United States."
Tall dude: "Sure. Do you have a specific question?"
Another: "Yea, I do. Umm. Is it better now, you think?"

The tall man sits up from the couch and thoughtfully itches his facial hair. He then explains a massive history with only a few sentences and some perfunctory hand gestures.

Tall: "So it's better, but we can still make progress."
Another: "I was watching Oprah some months ago..."

3. A rural Malawian school. Classes are out. A tall teacher with a bag full of ungraded notebooks strides out of the library . Dust kicks up and laps at his faded Dockers with each step. He needs to wash them soon. A student still in full uniform, a blue v-neck sweater with a neat white collared shirt underneath, black trousers, and black close-toed shoes, stops him.

Student: Sirrah, can I ask you a question about geography?
Tall teacher: Sure. Do you have a specific question?
Student: Sirrah, we should sit down.

The tall teacher puts down his bag and gestures toward two chairs outside the library. They sit.

I know you are not a geographer, sirrah, but I have a geography question.
Tall: That's just fine. We'll see if I can answer it.
Student: Well sirrah, you know some nights the moon is very big, and sometimes it is very small. But sirrah, some nights you cannot see the moon at all. Sirrah, where does the moon go?

The tall teacher laughs and begins drawing funny pictures with circles and lines.

4. Night. Top of Mulanje plateau. A group of weary hikers, exhausted from the day's hike and excited to summit the next day, try to sleep on the cold floor. In the adjacent room, secondary school students chat, joke, and generally annoy the exhausted and excited hikers.

Tall hiker: What time is it?
Blonde hiker: One thirty.
Tall: *&#!

Tall hiker unzips his sleeping bag. Dons a head lamp. Enters adjacent room. The head lamp glares into the eyes of fifteen stunned students. This man is crazy.

Tall: Slow, measured, enraged special English Who can tell me what time it is now?

5. Bar in rural Malawi. Loud music--bad music like Dolly Parton and Kenny Rodgers. (Where is some Akon, you know?) Cheap menthol smoke. Drunken voices. A tall foreigner shoots the breeze with an aged local fellow. Gray hair. Bad eyes. Weird breath.

Aged local fellow: I have many daughters. They are not married. I can give you some.
Tall foreigner: Oh. I see.
Aged: How many cows do you have?

The elderly fellow eyes the outsider, surely rich with cattle. His glance shows a certain enterprising smugness. He can perhaps double the dowry to eight or even twelve cattle! Three daughters, twenty four to thirty six foreign cows!

Tall: I have zero cows.
Aged: Pause. Confused disappointment. You cannot have my daughters.

No comment

2011-08-13T10:40:00.002Z

Malawi was in international news last month and probably will be again next week. (Don't worry. I'm safe.) Check out headlines.

Malawi protests leave at least 10 dead

US suspends aid to Malawi after killings

Malawi activists plan new rally after recent deadly clashes

Juju

2011-07-07T15:39:00.001Z

I was listening to a BBC phone-in program and washing dishes. The program’s discussion had to do with cultural change in Africa, and one of the comments—the speaker angrily wrote off Africans as superstitious and uneducated—stunned me, almost made me drop my precious Nescafe coffee mug. Why the malice, yo? The comment was bitter. It lacked substance. It perpetuated the Africans-are-superstitious stereotype. It also came close to striking a nugget of truth. (But the caller is still pretty lame.)

CASE STUDY 1: I was going to buy eggs and bread to make French toast on Saturday morning, when I ran into a familiar face. He was a retired army officer. Curious about the Malawian military, I struck up a conversation on the subject. He listed qualifications, described their training, and finally mentioned combat. Apparently he had seen peace-keeping action in Somalia or Rwanda—I don’t remember.—and worked with Americans. He said, “I know you westerners don’t believe in witchcraft, but tfighting somehow disturbs you. That’s witchcraft disturbing you.”

Westerners would get the man a therapist. PTSD, much? For Malawians, though, PTSD, insanity, depression, even anxiety is witchcraft.

CASE STUDY 2: I was drinking beers with teachers. They were rattling away a mile a minute in Chitumbuka, so I just sat and sipped, sat and sipped. A teacher eventually turned to me to explain: “We were just saying how wives bewitch their husbands. They make them stay at home, help sweeping, cleaning, or what what.” Not wanting to be disagreeable, I sat and sipped.

To put this in context, men do not help around the house in Malawi. That is women’s work. Things that disrupt the flow of life, daily expectations, things that go against the grain are often pinned on witchcraft. Of course, westerners wouldn’t describe a helpful husband as bewitched.

CASE STUDY 3: A friend walked me to my home at night. I looked up to admire the Milky Way soupily laid out across the sky when an enormous meteorite whizzed into the atmosphere. “Wow! Did you see that?” I asked. “That was a witch’s plane,” said a friend. (WTF, right?)

Malawians updated the witch on a broom. They fly invisible airplanes nowadays.

I could give you more examples. The guy who told me to spit on my urine so witches couldn't use it to hex me. Another who told me I have nightmares because I’m bewitched.

The reality of witchcraft here runs deep. As the Puritans did, people here die when an angry mob confronts their sacrificial lamb, their explanation for the unexplained, their witch. Crying witchcraft is easy, very comfortable. No need to analyze the intricacies of battle, the personalities involved, the movement of matter through space, the concept of heat and friction, but then again my students have asked where Brazil is in the United States. They didn’t believe me when I told them man had walked on the moon. They didn’t not know about whales. How do you explain PTSD when “whale” is a new concept? How should I begin? How presume?

My question for the BBC caller: what do you expect? Witchcraft is the traditional cozy way to make sense of the new--and it wasn't all that long ago that hairy Europeans introduced their God and their science. I wonder if one day our Big Bang and atoms and behavioral psych will be just amusing.

New pad, new address

2011-06-28T13:20:00.003Z

Around early July my genie in a bottle grants three wishes: electricity, running water, hot water heater. I will leave the village for a Boma--That's a colonial remnant for British Overseas Military Area, but today it means kind of large dusty town playing host to the district's bureaucracy--and get all the perks of a large market, power lines, and pipes. I hope for only two things. 1) Readily available ginger to make ginger tea and ease digestion. 2) Predictable rolling blackouts so my sun-dried tomato fritatta doesn't get stranded in the toaster oven.

Of course, I'll have to work to earn my keep (A toaster oven is no small thing.)so I'll report to a local NGO during the nine to five. Their programming supports orphans and vulnerable children and tries to not support HIV/AIDS.

This pushes my homecoming back a little further. Probably by May 2012 I'll have all the news that's fit to print on some--What do you call them?--app, coffee, a crazy long NetFlix queue. Until then, I have a toaster oven.

I have a new address. That's the point of this entry, so if you want to pen a letter or stuff a box, use this:

Jerrod Dolenz, PCV
Peace Corps Malawi
P.O. Box 208
Lilongwe
MALAWI

Another plus. My monthly internet fix will soon be weekly, bi-daily, maybe daily! So, drop an electronic line. Be in touch. Let's get connected and stuff.

Farewells

2011-06-28T10:10:00.015Z

I had two farewell parties recently. These first pictures are from a small gathering organized by my awesome neighbor, Mr. Banda. We had three chickens, rice, veggies, and a few drinks.

A group of neighbor girls killed three chickens and cooked them for the occasion. The bucket in the foreground had all the feathers and, well, other stuff.

Chelsea Mertz, a nearby volunteer and acquaintance pre-PC, and me.

Three teachers prepared a song plus original poem. My neighbor, who organized the party,is the soulful fellow on the right.

My neighbor's kid. She was window peeping during the dinner and eating an African horned cucumber.

Group photo!

The second farwell was combined with graduation. There was more chicken, rice, and veg and a round of speeches.

Students enter the room for our ceremony. I like those branches, buried end up in the ground, and decorated with pink toilet paper AKA streamers. I was drawing water when the student climbed the stand of pines near the tap and started hacking. "What are those for?" I asked. "We are decorating."

The life of the party!

Graduates.

Me and the grads.

The end was nigh

2011-06-28T08:37:00.001Z

Billboard in Lilongwe, Malawi

All the data we absorb sometimes comes together—like the apocalypse. My shortwave radio is one source of data. The radio and I ritualistically go round the horn. We are looking for eccentric personalities, languages whose sounds resemble death throes, music produced by beating together cow dung. While searching for something strange, I often came across an American voice. He was clearly an older man, talked like a stone-filled muffler. And he always took phone calls about Jesus or the apocalypse.

Another source of information: Malawi’s capital city, Lilongwe. There is a billboard that announces the apocalypse sometime end of May.

Letters provide more relevant data. A friend traveling around France said a group of Americans had set up camp near a mountain. The aliens would find them there during the apocalypse sometime end of May.

Then, sometime end of May I was listening to the BBC World Service and suddenly the old guy with the bad muffler voice came on. And it talked to a British guy! “Can we interview you the day after the apocalypse?” the British guy wanted to know. Unfortunately the muffler voice guy said he wouldn’t be around the day after the apocalypse. He said the British guy wouldn’t be around either.

I understood. These things were connected—the eccentric, the billboard, the alien mountain, and the BBC. Somehow the eccentric scared people in the States, who strangely gave the eccentric money and moved to France, so the eccentric bought billboard space in Lilongwe, Malawi and a whole bunch of other places, which of course roused the interest of the BBC’s Newshour, a program to which I often listen. I had no idea the clearly half-baked guy on my shortwave had a global following!

The week after the apocalypse, another volunteer and I were waving down cars on the side of the road. We needed to get into Lilongwe. A lovely old grandmother stopped for us. She was driving with her grandson. He was a college student on holiday. He asked if the Americans would arrest the clearly half-baked voice muffler guy for causing such a ruckus. I explained this idea, freedom of speech, and that the States digs such an idea.

I asked if he had been worried. “Yes,” he said turning seriously around to look at me in the back seat, “I prayed all Saturday.” What do you say to that? I mean, we had a free lift to the capital with Grandma. Do you laugh? That’d be rude. But, yes, I laughed—loudly. And I don’t know if the BBC did get that interview.

The icky finger

2011-05-26T12:27:00.001Z

I went to the strip of bars in my village. Groups of stumbling men lighting the filtered ends of cigarettes hooped and hollered outside. The brick shops have rickety shelves on which stand the grocer’s wares. Beer and soap. Cheap cane liquor and soap. Cheaper cane liquor and soap. I bought beers for my teacher friends. We sat outside on a wooden bench with a precarious ability to rock back and forth as we shifted our weight. Speakers played a song about Jesus. A tiny man danced inside a large plastic bag.

A fifty-something man called me over. His face commanded respect, had some sort of earnest solemnity that reflected a penetrating skepticism about the world. I approached him and, as men affectionately do in Malawi, held his hand. He asked about his child, and I happily launched into an assessment of the student when I felt him give me the icky finger.

I don’t know specifically what it means, the icky finger. This handshake with a maverick scratching the recipient’s palm. Do people bed down in the corn? At a house? Is there handiwork involved? Lubricant? I remember walking into a grassy thicket near the shops once. There was a circle of matted and broken grass about the size of a double bed. It could have been the amorous fruit of the icky finger.

The finger’s a proposition, a coded and confidential way to signal openness toward illicit desires. The Malawian penal code lists homosexuality as an offense worthy of fourteen years hard labor. That doesn’t stop anyone. This older fellow was icky finger number four. I’ve gotten a number of other questionably friendly invites and seen pairs of drinking buddies curiously stagger off together. A teacher explained to me that the finger is an invitation to “help your friend. It gives the wife a break.” It’s not being gay, bi, or anything else apart from being a good friend and husband.

I don’t understand either.

Anyway, there by the dancing plastic bag, I pulled my hand away, suddenly aware of the gray hairs coming out my prospective hook up’s nose. There must be proper protocol, a way toward a polite but sympathetic denial, in this situation. You could scratch forward twice and back four times. You could wink funny. You could say, “No, thank you, but I’m really quite flattered.” I felt a wave a pity for him. Him, stuck in a place without the Castro, drag queens, Freddy Mercury. Then he grabbed my hand again, gave my palm the treatment, molested my delicate well-moisturized right hand.

I took my hand away, grabbed my beer, and warned the teachers that I intended to sit. Felt bad. Thought about buying another beer. Asked myself if I needed soap.

Trash and treasure

2011-04-21T08:12:00.001Z

Strange the variety of movies and books whose images sometimes come to mind when looking at Malawi: The Terminator, The Postman, District 9. None of them are flattering comparisons, but their dusty shots of worn machines and people resemble this place. The Road, a post-apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy, also brings Malawian villagers to mind, not so much for its ashen world and life but for the resourcefulness of its characters. At one point in the novel, the protagonist goes through an abandoned gas station. He produces a half-quart of oil, useful for burning a hurricane lamp, from the dregs of several “empty” oil jugs thrown in the trash. He uses a spent pipe to repair a wheel. This trash-to-treasure mentality, so strange to Americans and westerners generally, permeates village life.

Rural Malawians have an incredible skill at hording spent goods—tires, plastic bags, bits of wire, bottles, jugs—and finding a use for them. When separated into their various layers, tires become bungees for strapping down transported goods, small ties for staking vines and tomatoes, and even shoes. Wire and plastic bags fix anything: broken fuel hoses, questionable door handles. Children use old bottles and a simple pump to create water guns. They take bits of wire and make elaborate toy cars whose wheels move by twisting a handle made of sticks.

It took time for me to see the sense of hording or, better put, making use of resources. After a bike tube of mine went to shreds some time ago, a student asked to have it and, wondering what possible use he could have for it, I thought to keep it and see. I learned shortly afterward to patch punctured tubes with it. The same tube bundled goods to my bike rack and eventually held together a split front tire. I began picking up junk around the village. A rusted metal basin here, a broken basket there, torn sacks. When the bottom to my charcoal cooker broke, I snip and hammered the metal basin, using the pieces to resurrect my simple stove. Two broken plastic buckets and a reed basket without a bottom now display a thriving vine on my front porch. My neighbors smile at what they believe is an oddly un-western habit: valuing rubbish.

Still, though, I fail to save everything. Some mornings I hear quiet voices outside my house, and when I open the back door, a couple women or kids’ heads bob happily above my trash pit. They take my old cartons, once holding powdered milk or cookies, my empty plastic peanut butter and honey jars. They also get a thrill out of the New York Times, I think for the photos. When I go to burn the trash, I rarely find much to burn apart from a few small plastic jars that once held rosemary or dried garlic, useless even to the most resourceful.

I imagine some readers appreciate the impulse of Malawi’s people to reuse, but this inclination stems from the force of necessity rather than any political or environmental awareness. Villagers cannot always afford a new basket, a few meters of wire, or a bicycle tube (a modest $3 USD). A passage of McCarthy’s speaks to the life many here face: “No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later.” For some, but certainly not all, life is a day-to-day affair as they search their gardens and the bush for edible greens and happily buy soap or clothes when money, for whatever reason, happens into their hands. They cannot, as many westerners can, afford the luxury of environmental values. I will take another step: Some Malawians can hardly afford to act on values at all. They rely on the whim of a day.

Ejucaytion

2011-04-05T13:15:00.002Z

I proctored a teacher’s exam and thought you should enjoy it too. Check it out! I didn’t change a single thing--grammatical, mechanical, or otherwise.

EHEHLENI CDSS
2011 FORM 2 MOCK EXAMS.
SOCIAL STUDIES TIME:
(100 MARKS)
SECTION A (20 MARKS)

Encircle the letter representing the right answers for each question.

1. Why do most of the students indulge in beer drinking? A. orphanage B. force from parents C. peer pressure D. frustration

2. In a democracy, the citizen: role is to… A. participate in elections B. complain to party leaders C. engage in bulglary behaviour D. trouble making with other parties.

3. What type of democracy is practiced in a country where citizens choose their president and members of parliament? A. direct B. presidential C. representative D. parliamentary

4. During adilocence, girls experience…(i) broadening of shoulders (ii) growth of pubic hair (iii) widening of hips (iv) deepening of voices. A. (i) and (ii) B. (ii) and (iii) C. (iii) and (iv) D. (i) and (iv)

5. Mr. and Mrs. Johns have eight children and other nephews and cousins to look after. Use this information to answer questions 5 and 6. What type of family is this? A. polygamous B. single parent C. nuclear D. extended

6. The disadvantages of having a family mentioned in question 5 are: (i) there is less care for children (ii) children don’t attain childhood (iii) children help parents (iv) family needs are difficult to find A. (i) and (iv) B. (ii) and (iii) C. (i) and (ii) D. (iii) and (iv)

7. Which of the following is not the responsibility of the civil society? A. monitoring and criticizing government activities B. promotes democracy C. promotes tolerance on some issues D. campaigns for riots.

8. Immigration requirements are important because they A. make life easier B. make travel easier C. find it hard to find a criminal D. help host country.

9. The improvement of one’s life and the community is called A. human rights B. democracy C. social service used D. development

10. The way males and females are expected to behave in a particular society is referred to as…A. gender equality B. responsibility C. gender D. sex

11. Which of the following is regarded as a male responsibility? A. cooking B. weeding fields C. ploughing D. collecting water

12. Who enforces laws made by parliament? A. civil society B. community police C. police D. army

13. Two ways in which people become citizens are: — (i) birth (ii) registration (iii) restoration (iv) migration A. (i) and (iv) B. (ii) and (iii) C. (iii) and (iv) D. (ii) and (iv)

14. A legal book of laws is a A. Hansard B. Bill C. Constitution D. Rules of Laws

15. Generally accepted principles of fairness and justice are A. Human Virtues B. Universal declaration C. Representative democracy D. Human rights

16. Examples of unlimited rights are… — (i) right to life (ii) freedom of expression (iii) freedom of assembly (iv) right of equality A. (i) and (ii) B. (ii) and (iii) C. (iii) and (iv) D. (i) and (iv)

17. When a person’s rights are not respected it is a …A. violation of human rights B. break of the law C. bad treatment of offenders D. security for laws

18. Which of the following is not a good health habit? A. having sex before marriage B. using toilet properly C. drinking clean water D. eating a balanced diet

19. The way we feel about ourselves is called…A. Self-esteem B. Self-assertiveness C. rudeness D. pride

20. A practice which is evil or immoral is a …A. Virtue B. maturity in thought C. good behaviour in society D. vice

SECTION B (50 MARKS)

Answer all the questions in this section.

21. State any two importance of (a) registering business ny government (b) birth registration

22. What are two ways of promoting equal participation among males and females.

23. Explain two ways that explain why males and females have different responsibilities.

24. Explain what each of the following terms mean: (a) gender bias (b) gender equality

25. State any two qualities of a voter in Malawi.

26. Give any two reasons for growth of population in Malawi.

27. What is (a) Democracy ? (b) Conflict ?

28. Give on example of an ethnic group in Malawi.

29. Name any one symbol of national identity in Malawi. (b) Mention one service provided by the Malawi government (c) Mention one corrupt practice done in hospitals.

30. State two causes of conflict in Africa.

SECTION C (30 MARKS)

There are FOUR questions in this section. Choose any two and write as essay on each question you select. Each question carries 15 marks.

31. Describe four dangers a husband may have when he has more than one sex partners.

32. Write all the words of the verse of Malawi’s National Anthem.

33. State any four bad effects of HIV/AIDS infections in the society.

34. Explain any four ways how a person can become a citizen of Malawi.

THE END
(A.C. BANDA)

The home life

2011-03-02T14:30:00.012Z

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.

Ants. They're what's for dinner.

2010-12-12T11:38:00.007Z

A series of insect photos revealed themselves to me, and considering the large part bugs play in my Malawian life--mosquitos and hallucination-inducing mephloquin, bed bugs, spiders, weevils, and termites--one post should be devoted to them. Be warned. These are large bugs. These photos are perhaps not for the faint of heart.

Large dragonfly thing.

Millipede nearly as long as my shoe. I'm a size twelve, by the way.

Yellow-spotted ant.

Weird, big thing that must remain unidentified.

In rainy season, flying ants come out of the ground like the walking dead. I hear them plowing into my tin roof once the sun goes down. Bing. Bing. Bing. Malawians find them less annoying. In fact, they find them delicious. They're harvested using a flashlight, two buckets, and water. They come to the light; you drown them in a bucket of water and then put them in another bucket for storage. Fry them in oil. Add some salt. Mmm mmm good. Kind of. It's kind of like eating a flavorless potato chip.

My students could see the disgust on my face when they yelled over, "Tikulya!" (We're eating!) and wanted to know if we eat ants in America. Well, no we don't. But they wanted to know why, and the best answer I could fish up was that we think it's uncivilized. In hindsight, I should have just said that we have a lot of chicken. Here they are:

Workshop, and cookies, and books! Oh my!

2010-10-29T08:02:00.005Z

Earlier this month, I collaborated with three other PCVs and hosted a workshop for surrounding schools. Sessions covered teaching of literature and reading. Ten teachers from four different schools attended.

A challenge of hosting workshops, I discovered, is the demand for per diem allowances, free sodas, and cookies. Some teachers seem to expect money and free goodies for showing up, rather than attending for the sake of developing their skills.

Still, those teachers who wanted to take something valuable back to their students had a great opportunity to do so, and I think many did. The Malawian Ministry of Education provides an enormously bureaucratic syllabus for English literature, which includes a Malawian novel, an anthology of African short stories, a book of poems, and (oddly) Romeo and Juliet. Many of the teachers analyzed texts together and, I think, for the first time handled lit.

The notion of using units to organize teaching was a big hit with teachers! Many Malawian teachers struggle to coherently order content, so hopefully units will give them a hand. They got a dose of teaching methods and had an opportunity to see them implemented. Below, a participant shares his work on the plot of Romeo and Juliet. Alexis Luckey, a good friend of mine based in Salima, holds his work.

My school planned to host a second part to discuss teaching of Chichewa, the majority language here. Those plans have unfortunately been halted because our facilitator has fallen ill, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can find another guy to step in and complete the project.

Home, home on the range

2010-10-28T14:39:00.007Z

Most PCVs do a look-at-my-home entry after they get to site. I didn't. I'll do that now. So, here's my house.

I endearingly refer to it as a tool shed with window treatments, which isn't exactly fair because it's quite a charming little place and only resembles a tool shed for its tin roof, exposed beams, and concrete floor. The last PCV raised funds to build it.

This is my bedroom. Austere.

Here is my sitting room. Note green plastic lawn chairs and zen lamps.

Kitchen of sorts. I chop vegetables and mix batters here, but cook in the open air when there's no rain.

This is a small courtyard attached to the back of my house. It's like an outdoor do-everything room: wash dishes, cook, hang laundry, read. The towels hide the door to the bathing room.

And that's home.

Close Encounters with Me

2010-10-28T07:43:00.005Z

Mom called, as she usually does, on a Sunday evening and pestered me (as she had been for a while) about how my beard looked. I'm squeemish about flashing my SLR around the village lest it render me rich white man, and since I'm usually the man behind the camera, when I do take photos, I'm not in them.

That didn't deter Mother. "Riana (my kid sister)takes photos of herself all the time," which made me 1) think maybe I'll take a photo of myself and 2) worry about my sister. The inclination to self-document passed, though.

About five weeks later, I was preparing to come to Lilongwe and thinking about this neglected blog, and as I stroked my beard, I wondered how it looked. There isn't much of a mirror in my house, just a broken shard that I glance at to fix my hair in the morning. So I took a picture.

And then I understood I had gone mad. The date of this photo was after nearly nine consecutive weeks in the village, and you know, village life is strange because even though there are people all around, I sometimes feel alone. As I stared at the picture, I remembered all the conversations I'd had with Freckles, the lame, ugly dog that I've befriended and the mice I'd eaten and the aliens I'd seen--those last two are jokes, JOKES--and realized I'd gone mad.

I cut it off. Balls of girzzly, food stained hair fell off my face and with it, I hope, my madness. Now, Mom, I look like a real nice guy, don't you think?

Graduation day

2010-07-17T14:49:00.007Z

Yesterday was Graduation Day at Ehehleni C.D.S.S. I took a bucket bath--but didn't shave--and threw on a Goodwill tie for the occasion. It was my first Malawian graduation, and I wasn't sure what to expect. When I entered Form Three, where the to-do was to be done, I was pleasantly surprised by the students' drawings sprawled across the chalkboard and the pink toilet paper working as stand-in streamers.

Two nearby PCVs came to enjoy the festivities, which got kicked off with a batch of African music videos. The large speakers, much larger than the television screened, blared over the diesel generator. Once the screen flickered to life, we got a glimpse of...the latest music video from back home...no...Celine Dion...no...a Congolese music video of midgets playing soccer...YES. If that isn't bizarre, the completely sober, even melancholy, expression of all the students and guests was, but eventually the giggles between the PCVs (about the TP, the blaring music, the crazy drawings)gave an American casualness, even goofiness, to the event.

Food was about to come, but before we could dig in, a variety of soda was handed out, the music played low while people said jokes, and finally we washed our hands. The Form Three (AKA Junior) girls did all the cooking and dutifully (AKA sarcasm) knelt before men as they washed. Here, for example, you can see the head scrubbing his nails:

The grub was terrific: two types of meat, rice, and a bucket full--literally, we were served greens out of an 18 liter bucket--of greens!

Some kids did a few short plays, read poems, told some more jokes. We were regaled with speeches and more soda, before the group photos were take. Firstly all the Form Fours (AKA Seniors) and then the staff:

Afterward, about every student and his mom wanted a photo with the three bazungu, white people--what everyone in Malawi calls the white Volunteers. Keep your eyes peeled for some of those funny photos tomorrow. Tomorrow maybe.

Senga Bay holiday

2010-07-17T14:30:00.006Z

Somewhere in May over my last term break, a group of Volunteers decided on heading to Livingstonia Beach at Senga Bay, a beautiful place to relax among ammenities that make you forget exactly where you are. We couldn't afford the ammenities though, so we camped and cooked for ourselves instead.

A friendly--and enterprising--local hooked us up with delicious butterfish fillets and even gutted them, splitting them right down the middle for me to do the grilling.
Avoiding restaurants and tables clothes worked to our advantage. We found an empty gazebo right on the beach and ate with the moonlight pouring in. Romantically cliche, no?

We also had visitors in no short supply. Early each morning, a curious group of vervet monkeys swarmed near out tents looking for bananas and other food. Only one banana went MIA. Later in the morning, a large troupe of baboons scaled the brick walls to rummage through garbage cans, drink from the toilets, and--apparently mimicking us--take in the lake.

On our last day, the weather turned cold and the wind whipped the lake into a fury. The beach was shut down because of the rough waters, so leaving our paradise behind was sweet sorrow. We said good-bye to the island with monitor lizards and the hazy views of the distant southern coast of Lake Malawi and trudged home.

Camp SKY 2010

2010-07-02T12:54:00.003Z

Each year the Education Volunteers host a summer camp for Malawian students. It's a chance for them to be immersed in a ten-day, American-style summer camp with intensive classes to prepare them for exams. We teach standard content areas like English literature, mathematics, and biology but also have courses on more specialized topics like composition writing.

It's also an opportunity for the campers to explore Malawi. Most of our students never leave their village, but we sponsor field trips--this year we'd like to bus them to the capital city to tour the parliament building and maybe the airport! They will also connect with successful Malawians who deejay on national radio, start thriving businesses, or simply balance work and home, a great way to empower and motivate young Malawians.

If you'd like to support Camp SKY, you can donate by going to http://www.friendsofmalawi.org/grants/how_to_donate.html and making an easy and secure donation. Donations pay for students' transport, food, educational materials, and use of boarding facilities. Even small amounts help i.e. $20 could easily feed two students for ten days.

Mulanje photos

2010-05-24T07:37:00.007Z

Because of time, I wasn’t able to post any Mulanje photos in the post, so here’s to remedying the problem.

Mulanje is actually a plateau with several peaks. In the first photo, you can see one of the peaks, Chambe Peak about 500m shy of the tallest peak, rising out of the top of the pleateau. We are looking at it from the south, but the northern cliff face is supposedly the longest one in Africa.

The second photo shows us on the summit, a peak called Osapitwa; the name means do not go in older Chichewa. You can see that we’re surrounded by fog/a rain cloud.

The last photo just shows an agreeable stream running over the plateau. Streams are a common sight, and when it rains, turbulent waterfalls come crashing off the peaks. In the right corner, you can see the plateau dropping off and perhaps get a vague sense of the elevation.

End of term

2010-05-24T06:58:00.004Z

Second term finished up this past Friday, which left me a little sad. I only have about six more weeks with my favorite class, the seniors. It’s fully of sassy girls and jocular guys, and since their quips don’t give me any discipline problems, I enjoy the life they bring to class.

All in all, though, its been a great term, the first when I’ve seen results from my students. When I first arrived, students couldn’t summarize stories for a variety of reasons. Some would copy the entire story verbatim. One even copied the short paragraph about the author’s life, but they’re now able to more or less write about the main events of a story with an understanding of cause and effect.

I’ve only begun grading exams, but I’ve already found a prize-winning misplaced modifier: “I want to tell you about a common disease in southern Africa which is diarrhea.” Like the students, teachers also aren’t really familiar with idiomatic English. For example, the Bible Knowledge exam asked why did “”Herod want to kill Jesus?” Do you think it’s C: “because Jesus called Herod a fox.”

Now, photos. This shows all the school blocks. Each building has two classrooms, making four classes total. Teachers move in and out the classes.

You can see an example of a typical Malawian classroom in the other photo. While the freshmen either sit on benches or the floor, our other classes have desks which usually seat two students. The chalkboard is actually a somewhat flat piece of cement painted black.

Malawian kids also say the darndest things

2010-03-26T06:10:00.000Z

A student came into the library and left, saying he forgot something. He returned and left again. He came a third time. “Where is your head?” I teased, but as an English language learner, he pointed at his head and said quite sincerely, “It is right here.”

I asked students to write about a difficult choice they made, and one girl surprisingly explained how she smoked pot because “Grandpa said it makes you intelligent.” She writes: “When I smoked this chamba (Indian hemp) I understood finally that the earth is round and then I began jumping over and over for a very long time.” Grandpa lied.

Malawians also wear really great shirts in addition to saying great things. A tall, lanky senior boy showed up at my house one day wearing a faded purple shirt with large neon letters sprawled across the front: “And people say I’m scary without my makeup.”

We are studying Romeo and Juliet with my seniors, and their essays have turned up some zingers:

Nsima, the national food, is a beloved staple of Malawians. Meat is a rare delicacy: “Romeo loves Juliet more than a plate of nisma with meat.”

This needs no explanation: “We are able to see with our naked ears that Juliet is young.”

Finally, “The time of the party came, and Juliet just drank poison.”

All in the family

2010-03-26T06:02:00.001Z

After a couple months of dirt scratching and mindless wandering, the chickens succumbed to Newcastle—not the beer unfortunately—and slowly croaked, but a new life form keeps the house interesting. The chores became overwhelming, so I began kicking around the ides of having a student board with me to cut down on housework and loneliness. I approached my most adult senior, Moses Banda, and since he’s take up the spare bedroom, having daily company has transformed my service. The best medication for occasional Peace Corps woes: someone to tell you good morning and to share meals with.

Living with a Malawian, especially on my own turf where I can dictate domestic order, also allows me to look even more closely into the cultural kaleidoscope. Any attempts to shift the colors, even with just Moses, haven’t been terribly successful, but we wind ourselves into ridiculous observations. One nigh after dinner, he timidly mentioned that I needed to buy some more sugar. “Well, Moses,” I joked, thinking of the heaps of sugar Malawians add to their tea and porridge, “I haven’t been eating any.” He then mentioned how strange it is that I don’t drink tea, a comment that baffled me. We drink tea at breakfast every morning. “But, sir, you do not add sugar to your water.” “But, Moses, I add tea to my water.” “But, sir, hot water is tea when you add sugar. Don’t we agree?” “Well, no, Moses. We do not agree on tea, it seems, but don’t you like the fish?”

His beverage philosophy became more perplexing when he worriedly mentioned that my two-ish liters of water per day might jeopardize my health. I assured him that, other than my peaceful night’s rest (my anti-malarial med decreases bladder capacity, so I’m up three times a night visiting the corn rows), nothing was put at risk. Eventually I wondered how much he thought was normal. “Sometimes I don’t drink anything for a day.” I try to force five-hundred ml down his throat at dinner each night, but he either takes one, maybe two sips or, to spite me, says he spilt it while I was out of the room. He is clearly irked by treat water, but believing that I’ll surely “not make at,” he at least blatantly refuses to eat uncooked greens.

(On a larger scale, his attitudes are distressing. Because it can cause diarrhea, untreated water is the largest killer of children under five here, and the kids that do make it often have orange hair for lack of proper nutrition found in greens and fruit.)

My efforts to endow the gift—or curse—of western time-consciousness in my surrogate younger brother has been more successful, perhaps too successful. We had agreed to have cassava, a starchy root vegetable that you peel and then boil, for breakfast the next morning. As I was heading back to bed from the corn rows, I noticed Moses awake peeling cassava by candlelight. “Moses, what time do you think it is?” I remembered croaking sleepily. “Around four o’clock.” I dragged my wrist watch toward my face and looked at the glowing hands. “It’s eleven thirty.” The next day, I asked him if I had dreamed the cassava episode or not, and he giggled no, saying that he wondered why he had “trouble with closing eyes.”

The minutia of daily home life here has shifted from a series of burdens to a string of unexpected treats. In some ways, I feel like a young father, constantly concerned about providing some spare money, good foods, happiness, and even water to my fledgling—who is actually just four years younger than I. It’s a nourishing thought, though, to wake up knowing you have someone else to care for.

Packages

2010-03-01T07:37:00.000Z

I finally got all the packages sent to the Lilongwe address! Thanks to all of you—Siv, Erin, Davone, Aunt Rita, Reagan and Jeremy, Mom and Dad, and Sheridan and Justin (who are PCVs in Vanuatu)—for all of the goodies, seasonings, magazines, books, and letters. Rita, I especially liked getting drawings from the boys. Look for letters coming your way within the next two months! Lots of love!

P.S. Happy belated birthday, Mom!

Times, they're a changin'

2010-03-01T07:32:00.000Z

The American nine to five, getting up to sit in a cubicle and check e-mail all day, partly explains why I joined Peace Corps. I have two years here to let my restless early twenties pass away before I marry myself to predictable office life, but that’s not to say that work always leads to one climactic event or understanding after another. At the end of my first term of teaching though, I have figured some things out: cultural issues that I can address, needs at the school, and what makes working here great.

We have daily morning chores at school, which the boys hardly participate in. Instead the girls submissively take care of everything. I felt inspired to write ODE to the SWEEPING GIRLS:

Oh, how your daily sweeping
so soon sets me a weeping.
As you work off your ass,
the boys only study for class
and heehaw loudly about
their low-rise girl pants and drought,
yet for all my stomping and shouting,
the students change absolutely nothing.
Alas, do not despair of halcyon days;
One day boys will stop their idle ways!

I’m in charge of daily chores twice a term. Those weeks I battle with the boys to create some semblance of gender equality at school. The smirks on girls’ faces make it worthwhile, but I wish they’d speak up for themselves.

While I’ve taken some action in regard to gender, I’ve spent most of my first term observing. Now that I’m headed back fresh from meetings, it’s time to take on the conception of a library. We have some helpful books, but students only have one day a week to check them out. If they come when it’s not “their day”, teachers harangue them, even—yes, I’ve seen it—slap at them. We also do not have a complete inventory of books, many of which are carelessly piled in boxes. My to do list: take stock of our meager collection, organize it properly, and open the library to all students five days a week.

Mondays my Edzi Toto (No AIDS) Club gathers under the pine trees outside. They get my sex education spiels or play games. Sometime I rival Dear Abby—like the time we discussed break-ups. These are my best days. Malawians tend to speak evasively or disseminate misinformation about sex, STIs, and HIV/AIDS, but as a westerner, I don’t mind speaking frankly and truthfully about sex. I can see students thinking deeply about these questions—at least more deeply than my English reading assignments. There are few moments when I’m absolutely certain that my work leaves an impression, but these Mondays, I know.

Meetings and dancing

2010-03-01T07:28:00.000Z

I had my first legit sickness, nothing like malarial brain hemorrhaging, just food poisoning from a restaurant in the Lilongwe market. When you eat native fare, you must use your hands, and mine were unfortunately unwashed by yours truly. I lay shivering then burning then shivering in bed (conveniently located near a restroom) for about two days before feeling remotely normal, but the worst part was worrying about the dotor’s feelings—he seemed truly hurt that I forgot his hand-washing advice during rainy season, when food poisoning and diarrhea are pretty common—while I was shivering under six blankets and certain the grim reap was coming. An antibiotics regimen and lots of water have restored me to ship shape.

Recovery came just in time for a day of good meetings! I picked up great ideas and resource materials for AIDS education, perfect for Edzi Toto, (nerd factor, I know) but we also had a cultural adventure to a Mua Mission, a Catholic mission constructed in the early 20th century near Lake Malawi. We saw a display of Malawian dances, and I got some great shots and information; it was strange being tourists for a day when we live so closely with Malawians, but the dancers preserve parts of Malawian culture that are disappearing.

The photos below give you an idea of the more spectacular and spiritualized dances in Malawi, especially among the Chewa tribe. These dances are not part of regular village life, but come from a small spiritual cult which frightens, rather than attracts, most Malawians. Dancers wear masks to conceal their identities and believe that a spirit inspires their movements.

In the first dancing photo, the dancer wears a full body costume made from colorful scraps of cloth and a large red mask, symbolizing danger. He depicts a convict, someone who disrupts the social and moral order, and serves as a warning to the community to obey social norms.

The second photo shows a man despairing over HIV/AIDS. The dancer wears a burlap mask and shorts. His skin is covered in wet mud. He carries two bundles of flaming reeds that he passes over the thick mud as if curing himself from the virus. Usually at the end, the dancer falls to the ground and burns his genitals.

There are dancers inside the large black and white structure in the third photo. In a circular fashion, they move around the dance floor and spin wildly. The black and white costume represents the womb, a symbol common at ceremonies at initiations into adolescence and adulthood. Chewas emphasize that entrance into a new stage of life also connotes rebirth and therefore celebrates the womb.

The rest of the photos come from Mua Mission. Enjoy!