village life

So I am now officially a sworn in PCV. Swearing in was really cool, I would like to put up a copy of our speach and the oath we had to take, but I have to get ahold of them first. Our speach had kind of a "yes we can" theme, and so when we took our oath ambassador Bodie added on to the end of it "you bet you can." It was really sweet. We really like him, and he seems very fond of us.
Then we all set off for site. I love my site. When I say I have one of the most gorgeous sites in Malawi I am not bragging and I am not exaggerating. I live right outside of one of the chief tourist attractions here, the Nyika plateau, smack in the middle of cloud capped mountains. I am replacing a married couple, Pace and Laura, so Peace Corps volunteers know where I live and they always say “god your site is gorgeous.” Or one time, “Well, we know you’re not going to ET.” (Go home early). Unfortunately I’m 45 minutes off the main road, and that’s in a good car in good whether.
I’m living with a polygamous family, which, if you had asked me two years ago what I thought I would be doing after college, is probably not the answer I would have given. But, despite the fact that I get a lot of jokes from volunteers asking which number wife I am, I really like it. There are a lot of things that bother me about the way women are treated in this country that I really can’t stand. But this isn’t one of them. The wives (there used to be four, but two died) all get along very well. They are treated well by their husband, which is unfortunately rare up here, and the children are given very free reign. They are all in school, and the girls occasionally wear pants, which is a HUGE deal here. It was illegal just fifteen years ago. Because I live in the middle of a family compound (my house actually belongs to the village headman) I feel really safe at night, and know my house is watched when I’m not there. There are always children around, and they are really well behaved and fun. I love them all, especially the baby, Patrick. Not only does he not cry when he sees me, but he is one of the most smiley babies I have ever seen in my life. He loves playing peek-a-boo, loves it when I beep his nose, and thinks being tossed in the air is the best game ever.
Patrick's father died earlier this year of Malaria. It’s very possible he was HIV positive and that contributed, but I don’t know and it’s not something I will ever ask. I’m pretty good friends with Patrick’s mother, she showed me pictures of her husband. It’s very strange to see pictures of someone young and handsome, and realize they are gone. But that happens a lot here. The average life span in Malawi is 40. You learn pretty quickly that it’s not that most people live to 40. There are plenty of older people here. It’s just that a lot more people die a lot younger of pretty sudden things, Malaria, Meningitis, even Tuberculosis (although that last one might as well be AIDS). I remember at the beginning I thought that Malawians were much more adjusted to death, and then when my language trainer was writing the date on the board one day she remarked, “ah, and we buried my mother seven years ago today.” I don’t think anyone ever really adjusts to death. We deal with it because we have to because it’s part of the human experience, but we never really adjust. Anyways, onto more cheerful things.
Biking. I have an awesome 21 speed bike, it is red and silver and I have named him Henry. The plus side of being far away from the highway is you can just hop on a bike and go. And I do. First day I just started biking and was having a great time. The scenery was amazing, I was chatting with people, and at some point a group of women asked me if I was going to Livingstonia. I said I thought it was far and they replied, “no, no pafupi. Like five kilometers.” So I figured I might as well bike there. I forget about the Malawian concept of distance. An hour later it was still five kilometers away, and I turned back because we are not allowed to bike after six o’clock at night. As previously stated, I live in the mountains. This does not make for easy biking. An hour into my ride back I was staying on the bike until I got too tired to peddle, walking until I was too tired to do that, and remounting. I stopped at a small roadside shop and collapsed against the side. I was too tired to even stand up, so I just held my hand up to the counter with the appropriate amount of money and had them hand the food down. I ended up chugging down six bananas, a can of fruit juice, and a packet of cookies. I finally made it home, and was too tired to cook dinner (I have to cook everything over a fire I make myself) but the family saw that I wasn’t eating and so made me come over for dinner.
That weekend I decided to go to a Christmas party I had heard was going on in Karonga. I had heard about it from Tim (an environment volunteer) who told me the whole thing was being organized by Jim. So I called Jim. Jim said just show up at the house of this girl named Sabrina in Chitimba. Well okay. So the next day at 6:30 I hopped on the back of a pickup heading out of my village and headed up to Chitimba. It was really nice after three months of being carted to and fro, always being told where to go, what to do, when to be there, to be moving on my own. I talked with the people in the back in Chitumbuka, trying to practice my language skills. It was very difficult to understand, but anytime I messed up they just slowed down, or laughed and thought my bungling attempts at language were really cute.
The ride up to Chitimba was probably the most beautiful I have ever taken in Malawi. We rode up through mountains that seemed covered in tropical forests, and I saw these flocks of tiny brightly colored birds – red, blue, and yellow – almost everywhere I turned. At the top the mountains parted, and spread out before me was lake Malawi. At first I thought it was clouds, it was that expansive. It had tendrils of mist rising off the surface meeting with clouds and these huge brown columns I later found were bugs. There was sunlight falling in shafts through the trees and it was absolutely gorgeous, like something out of a movie. Everyone on the motola was laughing at me because I was just gaping.
I got off at the road block, and almost as soon as I had alighted a woman selling mangoes on the side of the road asked me “Mukuwona Sabrina?” Why yes, I am looking for Sabrina. So they just kept pointing me along until finally I came to a row of houses. I went up to a group of men playing bowa (marble game) nearby and asked which house was hers. They responded “Apo.” (Over there). So I pointed to all the houses, one by one, it was like playing warmer colder. They made different sounds as I pointed to each house, it sounded kind of like “eh, eh, AHHH, eh.” All of the languages in Malawi are very tonal. They don’t actually have a word for dissaproval, there’s just this sound “Eh-AH” and it is universal across all the around 2 billion languages they speak here.
So I show up on Sabrina’s doorstep – literally – and without even blinking she says, “oh, you must be Margaret, let’s take you up to see Jenn." Jenn is in the group I came over with, and has a house on the lake in Chitimba, I had sent her a text the night before saying I was coming over. If she had actually received that text she would have been much less surprised to see me when I showed up at her house.
So the two of us hung out at the lake all day, which was really nice. You can see the mountains of Tanzania across the way, and the lake is really clear. It’s always suprising to me to have this body of water that seems like an ocean and then to be able to duck under water and open your eyes. I hadn’t brought a bathing suit, but I just jumped in fully clothed, even though everyone around us was swimming naked. Small cultural steps. It was a very strange feeling to be swimming around in what was essentially a tropical paradise. I was doing flips and handstands and just enjoying being in the water again. At some point I remarked to Jenn that this wasn’t exactly the life of self-sacrifice I had pictured when I thought of the peace corps. But that’s how it is. You sacrifice a lot day to day, so you live it up when you can.
We got a nice hitch up to Chilumba, where the party was happening. It was hosted by a British couple. I was so tired I fell asleep on the guy next to me. When we got to the house I was immediately hugged by a woman in reindeer antlers. There was soda and chips laid out, and a group of PCVs rolled in right after we arrived, having biked to the house, some from as far as 60k away. There were nine of us in total, and the x-pats had arranged several party games for us, including a race on wooden skis in pair and a three-legged race. They had Christmas carols playing and a Christmas tree and a house that was decorated in a manner that gave us a glimpse of what we could do if we actually earned a salary. Their house overlooked the lake, and they had a tree chock-full of these yellow bird that build hanging straw nests.
Dinner was turkey, grilled veggies, stuffing and cranberry sauce. There was white and red wine, and I actually had half a glass. I was feeling all proud of myself for finishing it and actually enjoying it when our host, Don, refilled my glass. So I leaned over to the guy sitting next to me and told him to switch our glasses when he finished his wine. Still not that big into alcohol. Then for desert we pulled open Christmas crackers, had a flaming Christmas pudding and each of us received a present and recycled paper stationary home-made out of elephant dung. I had M&Ms for breakfast. My stomach did not thank me, but the rest of me did. I ended up spending another night at Jenn’s house, because getting transport back to my site on Sunday is really difficult, and it was really nice to just have time to sit and talk.
Returning to site was really nice. It was great to see “my” family again, to talk with people in the village. I basically spent the whole week hanging out on my porch, writing Christmas cards, playing host to the various children that like to hang with me and making sure I got into the main market at least once a day to buy tomatoes, greens, onions, eggs and, more importantly play bowa and draft (a game like checkers) at the local hang-outs.
One night I went over to the store next door to my house, which has a DVD player and TV and watched old music videos with a lot of men from the community. The music videos floored me. I suddenly understood why Malawians have such a skewed view of America. Sean Paul doesn’t exactly highlight homelessness in his songs. Even so, I was shocked when I saw a panorama view of Miami in one shot. It seemed so extravagant, like some fairy tale land, and I know that I’ve been on the very highway that was being filmed. It just seemed unreal to me. It’s crazy to think that after just three months my home seems like something you would dream up.