Malawi in the News

As you may or may not have heard, we recently acquired a new president here in Malawi.
And this week in the Guardian  (ok, so it was about 3 weeks ago, but its the paper WE received this week... haha), the only positive article in 18 pages of international news was a full page spread on Malawi's very own Joyce Banda!  :)
Check her out here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/29/malawi-president-joyce-banda-women-rights

Brown

“This table is brown. That much we can all agree on. But is the brown you see the same brown that I see?”

We all take in the same stimulus from the world around us, but is it all processed in the same fashion? Certainly, though the words we hear are the same, their meaning and weight differ as they rush through the unique neural pathways that have been built through our individual experiences. What about the events we witness? The scenes that occur around us?
Does our perception of the world’s palette of colours also differ based on our experience? On the connections that exist only for us?

One may see the world as coated in a layer of sparkles, another may see it as cloaked in gray. I perceive a world bathed in sunshine, hope, possibility.

What hue do you see?

Such are my thoughts as we bounce and bump our way down Livingstonia mountain, with P. singing hymns to the beauty of the world around us.
Bless her :)

TIA - Tuesday

　
Today the reality is impossible to ignore.
TIT.IA!
This is Tuesday. In Africa!

Sweat films my entire body as I race to the post office before teaching at Sangilo.
Being Malawi, I am not in a cool shorts/tank top combo, but stifling jeans and a T-shirt (no knees or shoulders aloud…).
Dripping, I arrive a the post office, 1:00pm on the dot! Just when it opens!
Should open anytime….
Anytime now…
20 min later, it does.
Now late for my lesson!
Race double time to school, arrive at 2:00pm on the dot.
No one around….
Hmmm….
Francisco comes to say hi and gives me the scoop the headmaster did not. They decided to take one extra day holiday.
Ahhh…. But of course!
Ok, no worries, back I go.
Dodge herd of cattle grazing/ loitering in the middle of the tarmac road.
Please don’t trample/stab meeeee!!
Legs aching, come up behind a girl my age, straining away on a decrepit one gear bicycle not seen in Europe since before WWI. Shoes worn through, baby hanging lopsided from her back.
My legs are fine, actually.
Arrive in Uliwa to Shania Twain blaring through the restaurant speakers. Swiftly this is changed to Akon’s ‘Africa’.
Carcasses dangling enticingly from roadside stalls.  Nothing in the dusty market but shrivelled old men of green peppers.
Children shout out Akon’s lyrics from the steps of the shop.

TIA.
Love it or hate it.
I choose to smile, have a nice warm and mushy mandazi (donut), and take it all in.
*Gaze at mandazi in my hand with a satisfied air, and take my first bite.
Hmmmm….
Or it could be a cold, 3 day old mandazi, mixed with clay rather than flour.
Hehehe

TIA!

PS. After I finished writing this I carried on my way home to Chilumba, and nearly had my arm sliced open by a woman carrying a knife on her head! Seriously! I have seen women carry all kinds of amazing things on their heads (they seem to defy the laws of balance and gravity quite regularly actually!), but a 10 inch Knife!? Poking out casually into the path for any old cyclist to trim their arms off on?
Pah hahahahaha

Do you Smell what I Smell?

Just when I was thinking that maybe in the village was too peaceful and pleasant to generate any good blog posts…. Payback! ;)

I have witnessed some interesting poop-related moments in my life, (the trail of dribble across the yr 1 carpet last year featured quite highly on my list of faves…), but this one may take the cake.

I began this pleasant Saturday morning by settling down with a bucket of washing while a couple of the neighbour’s children hung out in the shade drawing with crayons.

Well, things took quite a turn for the amusing when I got up to change my Ipod. Imagine my surprise at finding the smallest child standing innocently in J.’s doorway, shorts still on, over a pile of yellow, chunky goop as large as his belly.

“Where on earth did that come from?”, I asked myself, as I tried to determine the nature of the object at his feet. “Insulation??”

Barely gazing up form her colouring, his sister pointed causally at the thing, uttering a word I did not recognize, as the realization of what had happened donned on me.

“Ummm… is he sick?”, I asked, in my rudimentary Chitumbuka.

“Yayi.” (Nope), she replied dismissively.

“Ummm…. Maybe you go to your home now, yes?”

No response.

All the while Mr Poopy Pants was gazing up at me with those big innocent brown eyes, and mischievous smile.

I couldn’t contain it any longer. As I took in the scene before me, I just started snorting with laughter, and had to run to my room as the uncontrollable tears and giggles poured out.

“Talla?”, I heard a little voice call from the sitting room.

“Yes?”

Oh. God.

He had added a hefty dose of wee to the pile, which was spreading across the sitting room floor. His eyes we also filling with tears, as I imagine the wad of chunky processed beans stuck to his inner thigh could hardly be comfortable.

“Pepani pepani!” (Sorry sorry), I murmured as we all scuttled outside to be wiped up and returned home to our mommas.

As I settled back down with my washing, a herd of cattle was driven past our front garden, swirling dust up towards the bright blue sky. And I couldn’t help but gaze up through that haze and give thanks to the series of events that landed me here today.

(As a side note, Momma was tracked down, and came merrily to clean up after her son, giggling the whole way, and allowing me to heave a sigh of relief at having escaped that messy job!)

Book of the Month

A new book; a new author; a new style of writing, set of perspectives and collection of images - like opening a treasure chest, or discovering a new land!

Exhilarating and refreshing as a morning rain moving across the lake.

“I am forced to render some order to the events of my life, to say it began here, and then because of this, that happened, and this is how the end connects to the beginning, and so here I am.”
                                                                         -Verghese

Something to Consider...

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.
Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.
All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”
                                 -George Bernard Shaw

Take a look at the world, at all that is wrong and cruel and unfair about it. Now ask yourself: Is being a little unreasonable really so unreasonable? If it is going to make the world just a teensy bit happier?

Pretty New Chitenjes in the Sunshine

Cooking on a Fire Fun! :)

Voila my first attempt at cooking at the new place! 
Big thanks to:
a) Mama for lighting the fire for me, and
b)  lovely friends for helping me chop, stir, and making me laugh!
(So basically, I did nothing.... bahahaha)

Scared of Snakes? Unfortunately NOT!

　
I discovered today I clearly have ZERO survival instincts when it comes to our slithery, cold-blooded friends.

I always assumed that if I saw a snake I would:
a) die of fright
b) stay calm and call for help
Or c) scream and panic and be killed in the process.
(In Malawi, land of poisonous snakes, any of the above reactions would be fair and justified.)

As it turns out, when I saw my first snake, fright didn’t even register as part of my thought process, raised as I was on the West Coast of British Columbia - land of friendly little garden snakes.

So when I walked past the kitchen table and saw the cat wrestling with a writhing, skinny little snake, my only reaction was to glance at it casually, saunter on by without missing a beat, and casually mention to the housekeeper that it looked like Joy had brought in a snake.

“Anyways, that little thing isn’t poisonous is it?”, I inquired nonchalantly, just as F. froze, and the girls scrambled up onto their desktops.

Next thing I knew the gardener was arriving with a long stick to remove the COBRA from the dining room!

When it had been safely been placed back in the out of doors, the gardener looked at my shocked face and laughed.

“Snake! You were afraid?”

Unfortunately not!
Oops.

Bears I can do. Wolves? No worries. The west coast instilled a healthy fear of “cuddly” creatures in me.

Today’s lesson?
Never rely on the survival instincts of a child who grew up in an environment blissfully free of snakes, spiders and scorpions, when one finds oneself in… Africa!

The First 24

It feels impossibly natural to be sitting here typing this up by candlelight, dosed in mozzie repellent, listening to the sounds of evening in the village.

Yesterday, I moved into a friends place across 'town', as a band-aid for some of the feelings of…. Well, I suppose guilt is the only word for it!
She is a dear for letting me share in this little life of hers for the month of May, and it should be a good learning experience for me as well! (Cooking over a fire?? Let’s hope I don’t end up cooking myself!)
Here are some notes from my first 24hrs outside of our little ex-pat bubble of electrified wonder:

May 1^st - pm
“I reach out to turn on the fan, to ease the discomfort of this muggy evening heat.
Oh wait.
There is no fan.
Welcome to the first 5 min in the village.”

May 2^nd - am
“I survived night one! And I feel sooooo comfy cozy and well rested! But now…. I have to pee!
Duh duh duhhhhh…..
First excursion to the pit latrine… Wish me luck!”

5min later…
“Muah hahahah No problemo!
However it is a good thing I honed my aim in China last year - that hole is TINY!”

May 2^nd - lunch
“For the first time, I just walked away from a refreshing shower, to carry my bar of soap down to the lake.
In some ways I feel like an impostor (and a little bit gritty, it must be said!)
In other ways I have never felt so clean.”