I wake up in the dead of the night to the ringing of my cell phone. When I put the phone to my ear, I hear “Brett, the counter-offer is in”. The drowsiness of sleep suddenly vanishes and I feel a flash of anticipation through my body. However, as the terms of the new offer are explained to me, the excitement dissipates and my heart drops to the floor. It is not enough, not nearly enough. I lay in bed, with my mind cycling through my various options and pondering the sequence of events that led me to this point.
You see my house in Newfoundland has been up for sale since October and the going has been pretty tough. We bought it just over a year ago now and the market has seen considerable decline since. I’m not particularly keen on getting into the details of my finances on such a public forum as the world WIDE web…but losses borne on the sale of the house will amount in the tens of thousands dollars and a good part of my life savings. When I was working as an engineer in the oil industry such a loss would have seemed manageable. But now this loss is compounded with the financial insecurity offered by my current “volunteer” position and unknown career path, and to be honest it scares the shit out of me.
After several minutes of mental hyperactivity, I decide there is no more sleeping for today and get out of bed. Its 3:30 AM, not really that far off from my usual 5AM wakeup. I go into the kitchen, pull out the small charcoal stove that we use to do all of our cooking and light a fire. This morning just like almost every other morning, the tap spurts and gurgles as the pipes have run dry. Thankfully, we keep storage drums in the kitchen for just such an occasion. I scoop some water out and transfer it to the pail that is on the charcoal stove.
“Should we take the offer?” I ask myself as I sit by the stove. My mind races as it calculates my future. “What if I want to go back to school?”, “What if I can’t find a job when I return to Canada?”. I put my hand in the water and it feels hot to the touch. I carry the pail to the bathing room, pour the water in the bathing bucket and just as I take off my clothes…the lights cut.
I have become used to this, as the power has been on and off (mostly off…) for the last 3 days. But today given my circumstances, it seems more difficult. I stand there, in absolute darkness, naked and discouraged. I lift my hand to touch the nearest wall and feel my way around to the corner where the matches and candle are kept (once again for just such an occasion). I laughingly call my self the “super-adaptor” because my selective observation skills and continuous flexibility make it easy for me to transition into new lifestyles without really being phased. This has been very useful in past travels as it allows me to implicitly accept the nature of things without continuously comparing them to what I already know.
But this time, as I light the candle, I am filled with a sense of wonder as I see my physical space and my life in a new light. Suddenly I focus on the cracks in the bare concrete walls and the unevenness of the bare concrete floor and it strikes me for almost the first time how different my surroundings are to a bathroom back home. I am amazed by the pure functionality of it, no decorations or paint on the walls, no soft bath mats to dry your feet, no mirror to check your hair.
I think back to a recent visit to the rural areas where I was sitting in a group of villagers. All of a sudden, the music started. My toe was tapping, my head was bobbing and…. I couldn’t help myself, I had to get up and dance. The women of the village start to sing. I sighed with contentment as my soul moved with the joyful rhythm and powerful African voices. It was a truly amazing experience.
Underneath the beauty of the music however the women were actually singing to educate their peers about important hygienic messages. These women were smiling and laughing, singing about how they now have a washroom and clean water to drink… All of a sudden it dawned on me to try and equate this to my past experiences. I tried to envision my own mother or my friends singing about washing their hands as if it were a wonderful gift. At home, these are considered part of the norm, things we are entitled too.
I live in parallel worlds and my day to day thoughts, life and love are invested in my Malawian reality. This is the world where the electricity goes out and the water runs dry almost every day… and we are always prepared because it is just a fact of life. This is a world where I make $11/day which by my Canadian standards would be nothing. Yet in this world, I pay $35/month in rent and I sleep in the same house with someone who makes $11/month.
my kitchen in newfoundland and my kitchen in Malawi
My bathroom in Canada and in Malawi
My house in Canada, my house in Malawi
My living room in Canada and in Malawi
So on a day like this when my Canadian world crashes into my Malawian one, I can’t help but feel the absurdity of life. The money I am risking to lose on my house, it is more money than my Malawian family can dream about… and they are by no means hurting by Malawian standards. I read in a Concern Universal report that 50% of Malawians are living below the poverty line of $0.11/day. Can you imagine what 1% of the amount of my losses would do a for rural Malawian?
To say that “this is just the way life is”, that’s unfair and it’s not good enough. I surround myself with these people everyday and am continuously amazed at their generosity and warmth. In the essence of life, these people are no different than my friends and family at home. How can I separate myself from them and say that I deserve this money and they don’t? So this morning as I stand in the middle of the candle lit bathing room, looking around once again at the cracks in the walls and the uneven concrete floor, I feel ashamed.
It has been 2 months since I first came to Malawi. Time passes so fast and my life here has become so familiar to me. Every once in awhile, while I am walking down the street on my way to or from work…letting my mind wander wherever it likes… I catch myself smiling unintentionally. This is when I realize how happy I am here.
Still there are times when I start to get a glimpse of what poverty really means and the understanding of what I am here for sinks deep into my being. I become burdened with sadness and question everything I know. Yet often as my eyes fill up with tears, I step back a little and a smile also starts to creep across my face. I realize that this is the start of my real, tangible and emotional connection with poverty. When it comes right down to the core; that is why I am Africa; to learn how to really care.
