Mountain Climbing!

Make shift manicotti.
Ingrediants:
Four tablespoons milk powder
One tablespoon vinegar
One bunch greens of choice
One cup macaroni
Any style tomato sauce.

Instructions
Mix milk powder with one cup of water. Put the water on a fire and almost boil it. Take it off the fire and add vinegar. Allow it to sit for five minutes (maybe start boiling the macaroni here, I usually do). After five minutes the milk should have separated into white flecks and water. Scoop out the white flecks. Add salt to taste. Congratulations! You've made PC Malawi style ricotta cheese!
Separately boil the macaroni and the greens (or you could sauté them). Mix the greens and cheese. Drain macaroni and add greens and cheese. Top with tomato sauce of your choice and parmesan.


The other week as I was talking to mom I mentioned that I really didn’t have anything to write about in my blog for this month. Things at site were going along pretty smoothly, and my last big vacation I made the parents guest blog (and didn’t they do a great job?!) so I was rather tapped out when it came to ideas. The irony Gods, as they always are, were listening.
The next week I went into Mzuzu (the city nearest me) to attend a GAD (Gender and Development) meeting. After the meeting our new boss, Jason Burns (yes, my boss is actually named Mr. Burns) conference called the Education volunteers to announce that due to the school calendar change we would be offered the opportunity to leave after this school year finished. In September. Suddenly I no longer had a problem trying to find something to write about for my blog this month.
As of now, about 90% of those in my group being offered this option (it’s only being offered to those being replaced) are thinking about taking it. This is not because they are sick of Peace Corps, or Malawi, or just really eager to get home. It’s because, in a lot of ways, leaving early just makes more sense. If one is getting replaced, it means you have to stop teaching in August, find new housing, find a new project to work on, and figure out how to balance being there for the new volunteer while still allowing them to craft their own path in the village. Or you could just leave in September. Travel a bit, but still be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, get a job, maybe apply to grad school, see friends and family you’ve been missing for two years. It’s tempting, but more than that, for a lot of volunteers it really is the best solution, not only for them, but for the community.
I, on the other hand, already live in a house away from the school, I was already planning out a new project, and since I’ve been living about 5 kilometers away from a volunteer my whole time here, having another one around really isn’t going to make much of a difference. So at least for now I’m 99.999999% sure I’m staying until December. Another witches’ airplane lands in my village and all bets are off, but that’s where I am right now.
Probably the biggest downside to this is that I’m going to miss another fall. Missing major holidays doesn’t bother me but so much, but every time October rolls around I get nostalgic for the Blueridge, and apples, and pumpkins with funny faces on them (pumpkins in Malawi being purely utilitarian, I’m not sure how my village would react if I carved one and stuck it out on my porch). I spent about an hour debating what would be the best way to import a huge pile of leaves to jump in. At first I thought having Dad or one of his co-workers come over with a carry-on full of leaves would be best, but then someone pointed out that leaves - being so light - would be really cheap to send.
Thoughts of fall aside, it really is strange to realize that it’s time to start seriously contemplating my future. Do I want to go home in December? Do I want to stay in my village for another few months? Do I want to leave my village in September and try to get a more serious job in Lilongwe? And those are just the choices for the next few months. Looking even more ahead I’ve been looking at Graduate schools for a while now, a task made difficult because 1) I’m in the middle of nowhere Africa and 2) They actually want you to pick a major before you apply.
I’m leaning towards some sort of International Development/Sustainable Development/Social Policy/Peace Studies/Coexistence (Seriously, they have entire programs dedicated to coexistence. I am really curious what those classes are like. Do we hold hands?) But those still leave a lot of choices open, and I like choices, but not necessarily choosing.
So, to get away from it all, I decided to actually physically get away from it and I went and climbed a mountain. Mount Mulanje is the third highest mountain in Africa. It is, as Dad pointed out to me very blasé on the phone only 10,000 feet high. Let me tell you, when you are heading straight uphill over boulder and brush with a pack on your back 10,000 feet sure doesn’t feel like only.
Unless, of course, you happen to be a Mulanje native. There’s nothing like huffing and puffing and panting on the slope of the mountain, fighting off the spots in front of your eyes, only to see someone in bare feet over-taking you at breakneck speed. With a tree on their head. I thought living village life was shaping me up pretty well. I guess I still have some catching up to do.
As hard as it was, the hike was unbelievably worth it. We spent two nights in a cabin just a bit short of the peak and the view was absolutely breath taking. It’s crazy to live in Malawi for a year and a half, to travel up and down the entire country and feel you know the topography pretty well, only to end up some place where the scenery is completely different and it’s as if you’ve been transferred, not to a different country, but to an entirely different world.
Where we were staying clouds rose off the ground and were constantly shifting around us, birds flew below us, and flowers seemed to grow straight out of the rocks. The day we went to the summit we literally had to jump from boulder to boulder (first time in a long time I’ve been afraid of death from something besides an automobile) and trek through passages of low growing trees that seemed straight out of The Wizard of Oz. It was tough, but incredibly fun too.
Once we finally reached the bottom we celebrated our inability to move by going out for pizza. After the feast (we had a large each) we got another welcome surprise at the local grocery store. Every paper declared the the Malawian gay couple had been pardoned.
In case you haven’t been following the saga, about six months back a gay couple was arrested in Malawi for trying to get married. Despite outcries from the International Community, Amnesty International and Madonna (every newspaper lists her separately, I figure I should too) the two men were sentenced to fourteen years in jail. Just to put the sentence in perspective, rape here gets you six years.
The couple was pardoned after a visit from the Secretary General of the UN, who made it pretty clear that International Aid would be pulled if they weren’t. Although the president claims this had nothing to do with his decision, (it’s just that he’s suddenly realized that - while he doesn’t condone being gay - imprisoning people for “buggering” (that’s what they were actually charged with! I’m totally serious, check the court records!) is inhumane) you pretty much know it did.
I don’t think I really need to state how in favor of this pardon I am. If you are reading this blog I assume you know me pretty well, and if you know me pretty well, you know my views on the subject. But I’ve talked with Malawians a lot on this subject since the pardon (everyone is pretty eager to hear my opinion, which works out nicely, because I’m usually pretty eager to give it) and the answer I get pretty much runs along these lines, “well, I know the rest of the world maybe feels this way, but you have to understand, here, that just isn’t done. It isn’t.”
It’s a bit difficult to explain how different the perspective here is. It’s not that people here think homosexuality doesn’t exist. They know it does. Just - and here’s the crucial part - somewhere else. In Malawi, it’s a crime. Until the outside world comes in and informs you it is not. Which I’m absolutely in favor of, but only because, being from the Western world, I share those values.
I can’t help but thinking what if the situation were reversed. What if, for example, America was dependent on Malawi for aid and Malawi (which is pretty anti-abortion) told America it couldn’t receive any money until it made abortion illegal? In that situation, I’d be much less ecstatic and much more ticked.
One other aspect that seems pretty strange is that America, legally speaking, isn’t all that supportive of homosexuals. Last time I checked, only five states actually allow gay marriage. So is what we’re saying to Malawi basically, “well no we don’t think homosexuality is right either but that still doesn’t mean you can arrest them”? Am I the only one who sees something a bit hypocritical about that message?
So while I think the pardon is great enough that I bought myself a souvenir newspaper announcing the event, there are still a few things about the pardon and how it came about that give me pause. What is overwhelmingly positive about the whole thing though (arrest, international attention and eventual pardon) is that it’s at least gotten people here thinking. Before this whole saga got splashed across the headlines I had very rarely talked about homosexuality and when it did come up, I was usually the instigator. Whereas in the past week alone 90% of Malawians I’ve talked to have asked me my views on homosexuality. So it seems that at the very least, a bit of a dialogue has started here.