People are Strange- Exhibit A: malls and movie theaters

the other day I decided I wanted to go to the movies. So I walked 40 minutes to town, hopped in a minibus and 7 minutes later arrived at the Chichiri shopping center. It was 5:30 and the only movie that night started at 6:30. A hindi flick… weird, but i bought a ticket anyway.

tried to window shop, but forgot that everything closes at 5, so I headed to the food court to write, listen to bluegrass on my ipod and observe…. Interesting...

Surrounded by Indians, and a smattering of Non-Malawian Africans, all eating fried garbage and wearing high-heels. It felt like a Bollywood version of mallrats. Why would these people ignore their amazing culture to adopt the worst parts of mine- consumerism, pop-culture, transfats. its absurd

the movie was pretty good, but as usual, my whiteness attracted attention. . .the ticket guy insisted on holding my hand to escort me to my seat, saying that he didn’t want me to trip down the slanted aisle. again, absurdity.

Malawian Pop-Culture

Discovered that there is no Malawian Top 40, instead there is a Top 2 that are played on repeat at every possible opportunity. . .

(fast forward to about 27 secs)

Lakeside

Lake Malawi is nicknamed the lake of a thousand stars because at night the fishermen head out in log canoes with paraffin lamps to cast their nets, so the lake looks like a continuance of the night sky.

Haven’t seen that sight yet, but last Sunday I got to walk the shore of Mikono beach a few miles out of town and it might have been one of the best days of my life. The white girl wandering through the beached canoes attracted the attention of the local kids who had never seen a white person before. I quickly gained a following.

Little girls poked my arms and giggled and the little boys reached out and touched my hair and then dove into the sand. “Mzungu, mzungu.” This time I didn’t mind.

 All along the beach were beautiful, wet people enjoying the water. People really are the same everywhere. Black or white. African or American. Young or old, rich or poor, we all laugh when a wave sneaks up from behind. I got to sit in the sand at dusk, something I haven’t done since I left home. A little boy in hello kitty shorts attempted back flips off of a piece of driftwood, and it felt like all was well with the world.

I miss you all

On Minibuses

Of the trip up to Karonga, Pam (my travel partner) and I spent a majority of our waking time traveling via some means or another. For Malawians, the minibus is a primary mode of transport, so I thought it wise to inform my unenlightened readers- the following are the Seven Wonders of the Minibus…

1) Minibuses are surprisingly small: Envision a Volkswagen hippie bus, but replace the shag carpeting with rows of school bus seats.

2) Minibuses are not surprisingly uncomfortable: These miraculous vehicles have a Mary-Poppins-suitcase effect of being able to contain not 10, not 15, but on average from 17 to 20 full grown adults. Overcrowded is a vast understatement. Try clogged, teeming, sardine-stuffed…On the bright side, they would be exceptionally safe in an accident, as there is no need for seatbelts.

3) Minibuses are exceptionally hot. Not only do excess capacity and the African climate  contribute, but there is limited engine  insulation. So where the metal floor has not completely corroded away, it is very hot. One particular journey, I was seated straddling a cardboard box of yellow chicks that peeped relentlessly. The floor was so hot through my sandals that I had to continually shift my feet to avoid melting the robber soles. So two hours into the trip when the chicks stopped peeping I was sure they’d roasted to death. Yet the peeping began again in earnest before too long. This brings me to the fourth wonder of the minibus…

4) Minibuses are frequented not only by humans, but by various feathered customers as well. I have yet to ride for any extended amount of time without a live chicken onboard. Wait, no, there was one trip. But the lady next to me was carrying a string of fresh lake fish.

5) Minibuses break down with some frequency: It makes sense, they are old and over-burdened. But considering, they do manage quite well. 3 hours each way through the mountains to Chitipa on the dustiest, unpaved, basically naturally cobble-stone, road didn’t phase the bus either to or from. And the brakes are quite well maintained as I discovered when we lurched abruptly to halt on the way down a different mountain to avoid hitting the family of pink-butt baboons crossing the road.

6) Its hard to sleep on minibuses: whether it’s the heat, the noise, the smell, somehow I generally can’t manage to use my time wisely and catch up on sleep. There was just one success. After nodding off, I fell forward somehow and woke up at my destination with my face comfortably nestled into the hen sitting on top of the luggage in front of me.  When I abruptly sat up to get my stuff together, the bird started clucking and then an old lady at the back of the bus started screaming that I was stealing her chicken. It took a while to explain myself.

7) Minibuses are absurdly fun and entertaining vehicles, if you have even the faintest glimmer of a sense of humor: see above.

the chicken that turned into my pillow

Back from the trip: Karonga and Chitipa

Got off the bus in Karonga to a swarm of sweaty men shouting “ Hey! Sister! Taxi? Where are you going? Let me take you” Then once it was clear that I didn’t need a ride, the shouts changed course. “Mzungu! Be my sweetie. Talk to me, Baby. Be my girlfriend. Auntie! Mzungu!”  Infuriating. I’m learning to master the art of the cold shoulder.

Karonga is a bustling trading center close to the Tanzanian border. A sort of frontier town, mostly men, rude, loud, aggressive. Its like the wild west of Malawi. The streets are teeming with bicycles that will carry you anywhere in the town for 50 kwacha, but will run you over if you’re not careful.

But its bursting with life as captivating as the patterns of chitenji cloth sold in the market stalls. New buildings are sprouting up like weeds. In a few months it will be a brand new town.  So excited to see this kind of growth and commerce. A breath of fresh air.

Got off the bus in Chiitipa to a deserted dirt street of derelict buildings and a severely bruised butt. Stark contrast to Karonga. The road to Chitipa has yet to be finished, and its completion is apparently a common political campaign promise. The road project is funded by China so the hills between the two cities are filled with Chinese road workers and Malawian miners who labor in the nearby uranium mines.

ndapita on an adventure!

Headed off tomorrow at 6am on a marketing trip up north to the towns of Karonga and Chitipa. Wikipedia them. . . yep, thats about all I know too, and 12hours on a minibus should be grand. No computer, email only when i can find an internet cafe. be gone for two weeks. I'll post if/when i can

Top-up

Went to a birthday 'top-up' this afternoon for one of our loan officer (KP)'s daughter. A birthday 'top-up' is a sort of public dance party where friends and well-wishers step one at a time into the circle of guests to dance and throw money at the birthday girl, ie. top her up with cash. 

So I boarded a minibus and headed to KP's home in Ndirande township. Compared to the houses I've seen, KP's house is quite comfortable, set back from the main path with a little front porch for watching passing neighbors and cooking on the charcoal stove. But considering it lacks indoor plumbing and is home to KP, her husbands and their six kids and grandson, I'm guessing it gets pretty cramped. 

But back to the party... It was fantastic! Haven't seen so many smiles since I've been here. The entire village showed up to dance in the dirt. Most wandered over from neighboring houses or followed the blasting music (congratulations Rihanna, you have saturated the Malawian market), up the path from the paved road. And as always, so many little kids- I never anticipated the low life expectancy to be so eerily apparent. Tiny creatures, probably only two or three, toddled around- live ragdolls with runny noses. Their independent ability to run around the neighborhood unaccompanied is mildly ironic given that in their lifetime, most wont ever make it out of Blantyre. But nevertheless we danced, and sang and drank Carlsburg and Fanta all afternoon. It was a good day

ps. turns out it was just a bad head-cold

Unfortunately, marshmallows dont exist in Malawi

Came down with a cold yesterday. Odd considering I spend my days drenched with sweat, trekking dusty hills and dodging minibuses. So, it can't possibly be a cold. . .its definitely malaria. Just spent a good hour researching early onset symptoms and its official. Taking my temperature now...waiting for the thermometer to beep...and...shit, the thermometer's in Celsius. Not quite sure of the conversion but 37 degrees seems high. Going to bed because that's probably what my grandmother would tell me to do. Dreaming of marshmallows and chocolate sauce

Gonna keep it brief from now on.. the last two posts were out of control. Besides, I’m tired and there are only two things of importance to report:

1. Malawi is great

2. This morning I passed a man in the street selling roasted fruit bats

village bankers and the road to Chilomoni village

                                     

Village Banking

On this first day in the field I went to meetings of two different village banks, ie. groups of 15-30 local entrepreneurs who have received a jointly-liable loan to fund their productive micro-businesses…. That definition sounds absurdly bland and clinical. What I mean to say is that I met the most unbelievably inspiring, industrious, resilient, joyful people.

Along the path to the first meeting, I met Sayari. She’s five. She also has shoes, goes to school, and lives next door to Cecelia the chairwoman of the Atpatsa village bank. Broken conversation regressed to hand signs due to the constant interruption by passing chickens and goats. Then she reached home, and I reached the meeting. The Atpatsa ladies are all amazing; gathering each week to compile their loan payments and collective savings, and simultaneously  commiserating about the slow market today, passing around babies, and chattering about new investment ideas- Chisomo wants a hanging scale for her fruit stand.

 To the market for meeting number 2… Loved the paths through the stalls and the collective bustle about the place. But the best part of all is how the market smells!  Roasting peanuts and corn still in the husk, chili powder and spices, dried fish, chips frying in oil with some other interesting fried-doughnut-cakes, ripe bananas, and the usual kitchen fire. Incredible.

Another good village bank. While laughing along at my silly, infantile Chichewa as I helped them with their calculations its was easy to forget how truly poor and neglected these people are. But one look around and I realized we were lounging on bales of straw bundled as broom brushes in a market storeroom, and that my pocket money for lunch and the minibus ride back to town was three times the weekly payment of the man smiling next to me. People, this is microfinance.

Left in the Dark

Blackout. Writing by candlelight, which is cool and soothing after a hot day.  The blackouts are government issued power cuts  that happen every week right after dark. There’s only one electric company, ESCOM (Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi), and it’s government run…so because ESCOM can’t produce enough electricity to go around,  there’s escaping the blackouts.

This morning we went Limbe-  a bustling, commercial area with extensive outdoor markets where you can buy anything from shoe polish to roast goat (mbuzi) - to check on the progress of the new branch office there.

On the way back to the head office we heard sirens and Gerald, who was driving, pulled over to let a convoy of hummers, and black Mercedes’ pass. Camo-ed soldiers with AK-47s shouted out of the windows for everyone to get out of the way. Bingu is in town! The president roared to his Presidential Palace past blind widows and heaps of burning trash. The irony is absurd- probably would have laughed if I’d seen it in a movie.

The blatant poverty in this country is unreal. The number of children running around abandoned by parents too poor to feed them anymore, or orphaned by HIV and AIDS or malaria, which kills 1 million people per year in Malawi, most of them children. Idle people sit along the street: day laborers (waganyu) roam about looking for piecework, women sit together nursing babies and selling bananas and roasted peanuts to passersby, and the old, crippled and homeless merely lie around. The need is overwhelming.

Choking on the dust from Bingu’s convoy, I had to think: this is why I’m here. 

Muli bwanji, Malawi?

I’m here, finally! Not the most perfect welcome.. sat between two missionaries from West Virginia on the flight up from Johannesburg. Not quite the cultural experience I was looking for. And the airline left my luggage in South Africa.

But I’m here! Last night I took a walk around Namiwawa the neighborhood or township where I am living. On the clay dirt sidewalks nearly everyone I passed smiled or said hello miss. The children and the young men are the boldest. Shoeless orphans of AIDS – Malawi has the highest infection rates in all of Africa- travel in packs and shout, Mzungu! (trans. Whitey) and laugh. A man on a corner waiting for a minibus amid heaps of discarded sugarcane and maize shucks took up his guitar. Stopped to listen. A flock of girls came running down a side street, and the smallest one waved to me and shouted “Muli bwanji?” “Ndili bwino, kaya inu?”  “Ndili bwino” She was grinning ear to ear as I waved again and we exchanged thumbs up. This is a magical land.