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.