Portrait of the Artist as a Young Malawian

            I’ve decided there’s a reason why movies about idealistic young teachers in rough, undersupplied schools often hinge on the redemptive power of language. It’s because the cliché is true: the written word breaks down walls.

            I introduced a weekly journal ritual this term to address a few issues: to build up my students’ writing stamina, to push them to use the language more, to encourage creativity over regurgitation, to give me a better way of measuring progress, and really just to get to know them better (something I desperately wanted from the beginning).

            They’ve surpassed my expectations in wonderful ways. Kids who used to approach assignments with lackadaisical disinterest can now be found bowed over their desks, writing past the bell, and smiling shyly when they hand in their work. There are kids who use their journal as a chance to keep an ongoing dialogue with me, kids who spill secrets and share dreams, and kids who sign off every week with “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write about this” or “Thank you for listening, Madam.”

The first prompt I ever gave them was this: “Tell me about a memory from your childhood.” Their recollections were so distinctively African, so unintentionally humorous, and yet so touchingly universal – the smell of mangoes, the trauma of early loss, the freedom of playing in mud puddles, and the joy of hanging out with your dad. They made me laugh, they made me cry, and they paint a picture of life in this country better than I ever could.

I cannot resist sharing a few of them. So, behold, a sampling of the mingled sweetness and tragedy of a Malawian childhood.

Games

“When I was a child I liked playing different games, as well as crying and beating my friends. I was good at feeding my grandfather’s goats, cows, and sheeps [sic]. I was also good at running when my mother called me to get a bath.” – Nyuma

“I played football so I enjoy on that because I am a player man. Am have power energy.” – Jordan

“Firstly is that when I was young I was not respecting my parents because my mind was not yet ready to think about respect. Secondly is the type of playings. I and my friends we were playing in places where as I’m talking I can’t play in that places. These places are: in the stagnant water, in the rain, in the mud, etc.” –Jacob

“I played with toys like cow, farm cart, axe, hoe, and bridge.” – Benson

[I love this. An axe as a toy – how Malawian.]

“We were taking wires and making cars for playing with, as like the real car like Toyota.” – Jacob

“When I am watching things like basketball I fill happy and not only that but comfortable.” – Maxwell

“I was like playing bao game, draft, playing football very much. I also liked to go to the forest to pick natural fruits. I was also like swimming at Kasito dam.” – Benard

“When the rain were raining me and me friend we were dancing by the rain and we were very happy.” – Jacob

Food

“…also I was unforgiveness or glutton glumandaiser [???]. If someone have got snatched my food I was crying.” – Wellings

“It was very easy to get food without any problem.” – Jacob

“My favorite childhood memory I remember that when my mother come back to work every day she was take chips or a biscuit. So now she didn’t take chips or biscuit and everyday when I come back from school my sister first hugs me and she asks me Thoko today you are learning about what?” - Thoko

“In 1999 when I was young my mother was telling that I love so much eating bananas and up to now still I am loving bananas.” – Junior

Violence and Punishment

“I don’t want to slap my friend because am very happy when I have with many friends.” – Lontia

 “At first day at secondary school near Mzuzu, the headmaster told me to sweep in the staff room and around the classes. Because I was too late and he struck me. I was surprised.” – Peter C

“When I was starting my school in Standard 1, I was bothered so much with unkindful guys who were in high classes. They seized my notebooks, pencil, and other school material. They ran away from the school campus. I was started crying and when the teacher came it was when they have already gone, so I told the teacher about it. Later she asked me to show those guys. So I was helpless because I was not recognized them.

So this is one thing I remember in my life.” – Richard

“When I was childhood I like to beat my friend. Also I like to crying and I liked my mother to live together each and every time. […] If my father say I don’t have a money I start crying. I crying crying and my father give 20 kwacha and buying some sweets and biscuits then I stop crying. My mother was slap me because I was say my daughter if you grow up you have to be a thief because you love money so much. This is all.” – Maurice

“When I was a child I liked to cry and sleeping for many hours. The one day when I crying my mother she slap me with a stick and tell me don’t cry again. And that day may don’t eat anything with a whole day.

Another day when I sleep under a tree the snake was fallen down from tree and my brother came to pull me, so that snake was ascending in that tree again. From that days when these two kind of bad behavior I was change because I knows that this is a childish behavior.” – Milliam

Memories

“There was a lot of things which I was following when I was young. I cannot forget some of it. And also I already forgot some of it. I remember that when it is Sunday day I always going to church to pray. And during the school day I didn’t want to go to school without any food in my bag. Also I didn’t want to miss any period in the classroom. If a period has gone to tell us that it is time to go to our home, I was not going home directly but I was going to the bush with my friend to pick some masuku [a small sour reddish fruit that grows wild here. It defies description and I have no idea what it is in English]. And I’m arriving late in the home. My mother always she is chatting to me day and day.” – Maggie

“My parents were living in village therefore my life is of village. My parents brought me up in the spiritual life and this made me to grow honest and kind. Firstly, the most interesting thing is that when I was 3 years old my parents commanded me that there is God, the creator of the universe. When I was 5 years old I had several question in my heart about God. If God created everything include a man, now who created God?” – Samson

“I like my mother because I was living with my mother for a long time. My father was die in 1998. I am growing up with my mother start reading with my mother this is a reason I like my mother.” – Isobel

“I was young in 1997. My father buy me something like shoes, caps, fishnet, not books. And those day my father encouraged me to school and gave structure when complained school. A money is not problem because next you can be educated man it’s easy to find jobs.” –Dan

“In 2006 when I was in Blantyre I saw a person who his name was Bololo. He was a very good grand. He was loving babies.” – Junior

“I remember that my mother was liked to buy a pair of shoes for me because I disliked to walk barefooted. When the time come I was six years old my mother sent me to start reading. I was working hard although I was young I remember in standard one, term one, I was pass number two. My mother gives me a drink and biscuit. I was happy and my mother was happy too.” - Isobel

[The 2002 famine was a common motif in the journal entries, made especially striking on a personal level because I remember that year so clearly in my own childhood. This student, who wrote about it with unusual introspection and maturity, impresses me on a regular basis.)

“If I can remember in my childhood, I was enjoying without knowing that there are problems. It was in 2002 when there was starvation. My parents and sisters could complain about hunger but to me it was nothing. […] Indeed childhood is very interesting because one can enjoy even if one can face difficulties. But to child does not take matter.” – Samson

Southern African Living Magazine

I have shelves now, and I don’t live out of a suitcase anymore! …six months after moving in.

If Southern African Living were a real publication, it would probably have recipes for ant-and-avocado salads and articles about decorating your pit latrine (1^st step: remove spiders, 2^nd step: add potpourri). And my house might be in it. So wallow in visions of my domestic bliss and feast your eyes on all this TALULAR chic.* Mostly this is an excuse to show you pictures of my dog.

*TALULAR = Teaching and Learning Using Locally Available Resources. It’s not just a catchy acronym or a means of making do in an African classroom; it’s a way of life.

Sometimes there are idyllic sun-soaked afternoons.

And sometimes there are Old Testament-style disasters. These are flying ants (harmless, delicious, but annoying and messy for the way they crawl under doors, fling themselves at lights, and then proceed to die all over your floor).

changing lives with David Attenborough

Best moments from the first meeting of Wildlife Club, which featured the experience of watching BBC’s Planet Earth with a roomful of Malawian teenagers, many of whom had never seen a nature documentary before:

- a collective cringe of “Eeeeeeeeeeee” in response to shots of windswept, snow-laden Arctic landscapes

- a collective “Ahhh, pepa, pepa” (sorry, sorry!) in response to my explanation that my homeland usually has at least three to four months of winter, followed by amazement that humans can even survive in places where it snows.

- explaining the lifestyle of the Inuit to kids who think 50-degree weather is worthy of fur-trimmed coats.

- explaining that the taiga is not the same as a tiger.

- David Attenborough states that all living things depend on the sun for their energy. A hearty round of “Yes! Yes yes! The man is right!” hums through the room.

- utter astonishment at the news that many Northern Hemisphere birds travel south when winter comes.

- another collective “Ahhh, pepa pepa,” this time at a male bird of paradise’s failed attempts to woo a pretty lady. (One Form 4 boy knew he was doomed before anyone else: “I can already see that he is not really impressing her.”)

- At the sight of a pack of short-haired, black-faced African wild dogs, the entire room shouts, “Chalo!” My dog hears his name and comes crashing out of the forest, peels across the school grounds, tears into the classroom, and collapses happily in the crowd.

- As that same pack of African wild dogs chases down an impala, the room takes on the the feel of a football game, full of shouts (in Chitumbuka) of “RUN! FASTER!” and “INTO THE WATER.” The impala leaps into a lake, leaving the dogs waiting at the shore. A roar of applause.

- A troop of baboons wades through the Okavango Delta. “Hey, those are our relatives!”

- A whole smorgasbord of moments of communal awe, shared with people seeing many of these things for the first time, which served as a good reminder of several things I already know but need to get booster shots for every now and then: the waxing and waning of the seasons IS incredible, animals ARE awesome, and the world we live in IS staggering.

And I walked home that day with that Antoine de Saint Exupéry quote playing on repeat in my brain: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

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.

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. 

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