Disclaimer

Nothing expressed here reflects the opinions of the Peace Corps or the U.S. government. I say this in part to protect them from getting blamed for anything I might say, but also to keep them from stealing my jokes.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Portraits


With the much-feared national exams looming just a few months away, the students in Forms 2 and 4 were in need of official IDs, and I was asked to take the photos. Over the space of several weeks, with a red cloth draped over a spare blackboard in the shadow of a mango tree, I took a portrait of every kid in Day School (the 7:15am-1:35pm regular sessions, which I teach) and every non-traditional student in Open School (the abbreviated afternoon sessions, which are dominated by middle-aged learners). And the results were kind of beautiful. Credit it to the magic of rainy-season-filtered natural light, or to the fact that I know these students well and see them everyday, but there was something pretty moving about putting a camera in front of people who don't get the chance to be photographed very often and watching them transform. Clowns suddenly affected a glassy-faced calm, smiles bloomed across shy girls' faces, and some hammed it up in a way that only Malawians seem to understand (with a forced far-off gaze and a pained expression).

Chalo also had an ID photo taken to add fuel to the village-wide running joke that he's enrolling next term, which is being taken more and more seriously with every new word he learns, and which is a joke that will never ever ever get old.



Thursday, January 24, 2013

The Seven-Month Itch


I recently celebrated my seven-month Malawiversary by spending the day sick in bed, which gave ample time to think about everything that feels so far away, but also to take stock of all the gifts that have been ushered in.

 [Inspired by the lovely Rita, whose blog can be found here: http://malawhee.tumblr.com/.  If you don’t know her that’s really a shame because she gives great hugs and her favorite song is “Ignition (Remix).”]

I ache for:
-       The easy, unapologetic intimacy that only comes with people you’ve known and loved for years.
-       Libraries. Bookstores.
-       Transport that does not feel like one of Dante’s nine layers of hell.
-       Knowing what is going on, exactly when it is going to happen, and being able to count on that.
-       Foods that are the subject of many lusty daydreams, including but not limited to: whole wheat bread, dark green spinach-based salads drizzled in balsamic vinaigrette and sprinkled with sunflower seeds and feta cheese, pineapple pizza, salmon, tofu stir fries, chocolate chip cookies, macaroni and cheese, asparagus, brownies, baked potato soup with cheddar and chives, grilled cheese, honey mustard, poppyseed muffins, burritos, yogurt, General Tso’s chicken, chocolate milkshakes.
-       Fast-paced banter. Wordplay that needs no translation.
-       Resources. Everything classrooms have that I always took for granted: posters, markers, crayons, books, paper, electricity, running water.
-       Anonymity.
-       Feeling truly head-to-toe clean.
-      The United States as an idea – what we’re about, where we’ve been, and what we can be.

I really appreciate what I’ve gained, though:
- a community.
- a belief that humans were meant to live in villages like this.
- a general laissez-faire joyousness.
- a work environment where people come in laughing and leave laughing.
- a fruit lover’s paradise, with pineapples, mangoes, papaya, and avocado galore depending on the season.
- a renewed conviction in the transformative power of education.
- a feeling of adventure that permeates even the mundane (e.g. riding the bus! ordering furniture! buying tomatoes! look at me, look at how integrated I am!).
- the ability to walk everywhere I need to go on a daily basis.
- 100 funny, sweet, generally hard-working students who are openly appreciative and (usually) a joy to be around
- prowess in a minority language that is spoken by few outsiders.
- a taste of what it feels like to be a local celebrity.
- the feeling that I have become someone that 10-year-old me would have wanted to meet: an independent woman doing interesting things while surrounded by animals in a small African country.
- an untouchable inner strength, getting steelier with every passing day. 

Saturday, January 5, 2013

ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes


Chalo is getting downright strapping. And you don’t have to take my word for it.

Two rave reviews from Mrs. Mbowe, who is one of my favorite teachers at my school for reasons that will be self-explanatory:
-                    “He is becoming as handsome as my late husband.”
-                    “I love his blackness. It inspires me.”

See? So handsome.

Annie is getting more beautiful.

Elsa is getting braver. So are the bats.

I'm getting tanner.

Everyone is learning to sit in one place for more than a few seconds.
(Or, in Chalo's case, for thirteen hours. He traveled to the lake
with me over Christmas and endured the hot sun, the confines
of my lap, a nightmarish bike taxi that literally almost killed him, and
drunk strangers kissing him on the mouth. What a champ.)
First step of my first bucket of homemade wine. That's mashed-up mango, yeast, and sugar.
And the second step, several weeks later. It tasted better than it looks.

r-e-s-p-e-c-t


A conversation I had this morning with my neighbor Luca:

Luca:    Madam, your chicken, she has been captured by a predator. A very big cat.
Me:       Oh. [surprised]
             Oh. [a little sad]
 Oh. [a little relieved because I see sweet, placid, quiet Diana Ross in the distance, which     means Aretha Franklin was the victim. Aretha was…difficult.]
Oh, that is sad. So now Diana is alone.
Luca:   Yes, you must eat her.

I’m not going to eat Diana Ross. But I am going to tell a story about Aretha Franklin, the big, brassy-voiced hen who (visually, at least) was everything I hoped my first chicken would be: quaintly scalloped feathers and sturdy, faintly prehistoric self-carriage, like a Saurischian-inspired teapot. Chickens can be beautiful. Chickens can be dangerous. Aretha was both.

I found her roosting on my roof once. I found her sleeping on my bed twice. I found her on my kitchen table too many times to count. I lost thousands of kwacha in precious food because of her. (Literally fives of dollars.) I was jolted from deep slumber at least a few times each week because I was certain I heard the telltale flap-and-squawk of a chicken leaping someplace she isn’t supposed to be. (She was actually innocent in this case because auditory hallucinations are a side effect of the anti-malarial medication I’m on – but it does paint a picture of the mental hold she had on me.)

Her magnum opus was fittingly presented to me in the most devastating way possible.

I came home one day in November to find my kitchen torn apart: bags of flour ripped open and flung across the cement; just-bought tomatoes partially eaten and thrown on the ground; a loaf of bread pecked apart lengthwise, so that half of it was gone but all of it was inedible; Aretha dozing on my hot plate amid a Jackson Pollock painting of her own feces. But then, lo! There on the floured floor, to complete the hellish scene: a single egg lain in the middle of it, like an offering.

She contributed absolutely nothing of any value after that.



R.I.P. Aretha Franklin (2012-2013)
We barely knew ye…and yet, we also kind of felt like we knew ye enough

Moments



Life in Malawi has mostly leveled into a cozy plateau of normalcy, but there are still little surprises – the best of which are the moments when all the joints pop into place, all the hinges swing open, and I’m left internally chanting, “I live here. I am doing this. I can handle anything.
One such moment: I’m waiting on the road for a lift to the post office. It’s a slow day, I’ve been standing in the midday sun for nearly 45 minutes, and a minibus finally appears.
“How much to Chikangawa?” I ask in Chitumbuka, feeling sixteen pairs of Malawian eyes swivel onto me (and up me, and down me, and back again).
“400 kwacha,” the conductor says, shamelessly giving me the mzungu price.
“Pssh. Ah-ah. 200.” I scoff, sunburned and impatient, feeling crisp in more ways than one.
The conductor nods in assent. I step aboard.
The entire minibus erupts in applause, accompanied by excited murmurs of “She knows it! The girl understands! She is Malawian!”
I get congratulatory high-fives from six people.

***

Experience and common sense have carved out a special category of exceptions to my “chat with anybody and everybody” rule: men yelling at me from bars. On one particular Sunday afternoon, when a slurring gentleman beckoned me to come closer, I pulled out all my signature moves. I avoided eye contact. I didn’t smile. I kept walking. I said, in the vernacular, that I was busy and going home.
But this one was persistent. He stumbled across the market and caught up to me. It had all the characteristic signs of a confession of love and/or commentary on my appearance and/or inquisition about my lack of a husband at the ripe old age of 23. I slowed down anyway (a little huffily, I’ll admit).
But this is why the benefit of the doubt is so great: people surprise you.
“Madam, you are teaching one of my children,” he said. “And I just wanted to tell you…thank you. You are doing a great job. Thank you so much.”
And then he shook my hand graciously – chastely, even – and staggered back to the bar.

***

During a listening exercise with my Form 1s, I read a passage about Nelson Mandela to my kids, asking them to write down the important details. They seemed confused.
“Madam, who?”
“Nelson Mandela,” I repeated, surprised that they hadn’t heard of him.
“Who?”
“Nelson Mandela – he was the president of South Africa.”
A wave of recognition passed. “Ooohhhhhh. Madam, you mean Nail-sohn Mahn-day-luh.”
“Right, Nell-sun Man-dell-uh.”
Uproarious laughter. “Nooooo, Madam! Nail-sohn Mahn-day-luh!”
“Nail-sohn Manh-day-luh,” I said in my best African accent.
And the class burst into a sort of half-laugh, half-cheer, which is one of my favorite Malawian idiosyncrasies, and which makes it impossible not to fall in love with this place a little more every time I hear it:
“AHahahaha [pause for breath] EEEEEEHHHHH!”

***

Near the end of the first term, news broke that several kids had dropped out of school to get married. A special assembly was held to address the issue, which is actually quite a widespread problem in Malawi.
Picture yours truly undermining that seriousness in front of the whole school. Tears pooled in my eyes from holding in the laughter as my headmaster announced in total earnestness, à la Mean Girls, “If you get married at an early age, you will die.”

***

I’m walking with purpose and a puppy, scanning a long mental to-do list. A man on the road calls out to me with a common question: “What is the name of your little dog?”
 “Chalo,” I say.
            “Madam, I could sue you!” he shouts in mock outrage. “You have stolen my nephew’s name!”
            I pause in the dust – here’s somebody with a set of jokes I’ve never heard before. “Oh, please don’t! I don’t have a lawyer!” I plead.
“You need to get one. How long has your dog had this name?”
“About four weeks,” I reply.
“Ah, my nephew has had his name for five years. You are sure to lose in court, Madam.”
The charade gains momentum and keeps rolling, building into several minutes of rapid-fire smack-talk about an imaginary lawsuit. But then it occurs to me that there has been a misunderstanding.
“Oh, but sir – do you mean Charles? This dog is a Tumbuka. His name is Chalo. You know…like chalo,” I explain, gesturing to the soil at our feet and the hills on the horizon.
            The man nods in understanding.
“Ah, I don’t have a case then,” he says dryly, tipping his hat to me and boarding a passing minibus.

****

I loaned a six-month-old copy of Scientific American to one of my best Malawian friends, Blessings – a security guard who also happens to be one of the most intellectually vibrant people I’ve met in a long time.
When he finished it he came to me breathless, in part from dashing to catch up with me, but also from the sheer thrill of what he had read. “Madam. MADAM. That book – I must tell you – I have loved it so very much.”
            Between gasps, he spouted a string of statistics from the article, and I was reminded why we are friends. For twenty minutes, we nerded out over neurons, evolution, and super-computers, talking about the scope of human potential, reveling in shared amazement at how far we can go and how much we can know – but also at how much we still don’t know – and feeling quite big in light of that smallness.
            When Blessings turned back to his post at the main compound, I spent the rest of the walk home in a misty-eyed haze for reasons that came from all directions:
-                    partially because mutual nerding-out in a completely noncompetitive, pure-hearted way is my absolute favorite way of bonding with another person
-                    partially because it’s a pretty rare thing to find in general
-                    partially because I don’t get enough of it here and I miss it terribly
-                    partially because, in a country where books are scarce and reading for pleasure is considered a bit odd, it’s truly extraordinary
-                    but mostly because of the sheer poignancy of finding such unassuming curiosity in a person who, for reasons beyond his control, never finished high school.

            Blessing’s story is, unfortunately, all too common in this country. Orphaned as a teenager, he moved in with grandparents; they could not afford to pay his school fees (equivalent to about $15 USD per term), so his education was put on hold for more than a decade. Just this year, at the age of 33, he took his secondary-level exams, but he is now dangling in a crucial limbo, waiting to hear about the national exam scores that will ultimately decide whether he can start pursuing the dream he won’t stop talking about: enrolling in university correspondence courses. In the meantime, he spends his days posted at the front gate, devouring every book he can find.
He just started reading A Brief History of Time. I can’t wait to hear what he’ll say about it.

Update, as of November 17, 2012:
The national exam scores have been posted.

….Blessings passed.