Leaving Malawi

Recipe: Nsima

This is the first thing I ever ate in Malawi. Nsima is the staple food in Malawi. It is said that you have not eaten unless you have eaten nsima. There are three different types of nsima, cassava (condowole), finely ground corn (nwoyera, all the nutrients are removed in this one pretty much) and ground corn (mgaiwa). In their cultural commentary under "what have I learned from my volunteer" my village put "we have learned that nsima is not the only food."

Take ufu (corn flour, or cassava flour) and have it set beside your fire in your winnowing basket (chihengo). Boil a giant pot of water. Once it is boiling, add the ufu handful by handful and stirr with the lukheza (giant stirring stick) almost constantly. Nsima is ready when it changes from a liquid to a viscous material you have to basically flip to stir. At this point spoon it out with a traditional large wooden spoon into food warmers. Eat with your favorite dende (side dish) by balling the nsima up in your hands and dipping it in the food. Careful not to burn yourself!

For as long as I was there, it still feels very weird to have completed my Peace Corps service, to have actually left. Partly this is because it still feels as though my arrival in Malawi, my training, my homestay, all occurred sometime last week, instead of a couple of years ago now. Part of it is also that there were times (more than I’d like to admit) where I would look ahead, and see the rest of my service as a stretch that was absolutely unending. Most of it, however, is that throughout the last few years I’ve made a home for myself in Malawi - made friends, become part of a family - and the idea that I’ve left all of that seems almost inconceivable.
One of the best parts about how I finished my service though, was that I got to stay in Malawi for a month after I was finished, and mom and dad came over again for a visit. Having my parents at my village goodbye ceremony, especially, was wonderful. The nursery school children performed traditional dances, the women sang special goodbye songs, and it was clear that everyone really appreciated my parents being there.
After leaving my village we took a second, more southern-centric tour of Malawi. We celebrated Dad’s birthday with a beach bar-b-que in a remote harbor, and even had a cake (I won’t say how many candles, but I will say that he blew them all out). We were threatened by a black mamba, and then sat in front of a pack of elephants at Liwonde National Park. And we went on a tea tasting tour at Satemwa. (Tea tasting is really interesting, in that apparently it is taken almost as seriously as wine tasting, with one having to slurp the tea to circulate air, and then spit it out. If you are me, and the tea is black though, you’ll just skip step two and head to step three, the spit out, ASAP.) After the parents left, I spent another week in Malawi, before flying back home.
It’s strange being gone from Malawi, especially at a time when so many things are changing for the country. The president has been less and less subtly moving towards trying to secure a third (and possibly eternal) term in office. He has been paying civil servants extremely sporadically for the past few months. My teachers all had a two month stretch where they simply were not paid, and it was right in the middle of “hunger season” (post harvest, pre-rains). Recently he informed police officers they would not be paid at all, and would have to raise their own salaries. Which they have been doing by inserting road blocks every five kilometers and fining as many cars as they can.
A few months ago he kicked the vice president, Joyce Banda, out of his party, and then cut her budget because he was afraid that on official trips she would begin campaigning for the 2014 presidency (well what did he expect?) More recently he kicked the British High Commissioner out when an e-mail referring to the Malawi government as “corrupt” leaked out (ummmm), since then Germany and Norway have also withdrawn aid.
There are many interpretations for why all this is going on. Some people think that the president is an alcoholic who is now also sliding into idiocy. Some people postulate that he’s just turning into the same old African despot we’ve seen in other iterations in other geographical locations, but some people actually think this is a highly strategical move to see if the Chinese will pick up some of the slack, and if Malawi can actually do without donors, thus leaving the President free from international pressures re: human rights and democracy issues specifically. Honestly I’ve been right in the heart of it, talking to people from all different stratas of society and a few different nations and I still have no clue.
Peace Corps itself is also going through a few changes. Whether it’s motivated by congress wanting to see results for funding, or by the pervasive feeling the Peace Corps is being overrun by post-college immature party kids, there is a huge push throughout Peace Corps to recruit more highly-specialized individuals. Which I’m all for. However, there has been a corresponding failure to find highly-specialized positions for such individuals, leading to some extreme disillusionment, boredom, and apathy on the part of said volunteers, which really doesn’t make for the most productive service.
Ever since I joined Peace Corps there seems to be a stronger and stronger push towards making Peace Corps a highly functioning development organization. As it stands now the three goals of Peace Corps are: 1) Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women. 2) Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served. 3) Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. If you’re looking at that, only one of those goals is actually about development.
In terms of my own service, I’m not sure how much concrete measurable development I did. What I am confident of is that I became part of a community, that I met, and lived with, people who will never forget me, and whom I will never forget. I am confident that I made big and significant differences in small ways, both to my school and for individuals throughout my community.
It seems to me that wanting Peace Corps to become a strictly development organization is redundant, it doesn’t concur with the original reasons Peace Corps was formed, and besides, America already has a fairly influential and substantial development organization. Peace Corps is the only existing on-the-ground community oriented organization in the world. So either one believes that striving to make small changes in the lives of individual people is a worthwhile goal, or you don’t. As for me, after almost three years of service, I am convinced that endeavor will remain the most worthwhile and the most rewarding of my life.