I just wanted to write a quick note to say Happy New Year and to express what a wonderful time I had visiting all my friends and family in Canada.
I got alot of questions while i was back home regarding water and sanitation and I got in trouble for not writing enough… so I thought I would attached a link to an article that I wrote awhile back for the Canadian Water Network http://www.cwn-rce.ca/index.php?fa=Media.EWB4.
I hope you all have a healthy, happy and inspired 2008.
Brett
There are two big questions that I get when I talk to my friends and family:
“What is it like?”
and
“What are you doing anyway?”.
I want to focus on the first question for this time because I feel like my last blog post was misleading and entirely unrepresentative of my time here and of where my heart, mind and soul are really at. One of the things I find difficult here is that I want to reach out to my friends when I am sad and lonely but when I am happy and cruising, it doesn’t seem like such a necessity. I realize this is a terrible habit to get into…so its going to stop …………..right……about….now!
So what is my world? I think most of you read my first blog post about my home in Chilomoni which was written right after I first got here. I am still in love with my home and my life there. I have however started a second home in another district because of my work demands…I’ll get to that later though…
Chilomoni is a beautiful, beautiful place. A small township on the outskirts of the commercial center of Blantyre; it is real, it is natural, it is simple. It is nestled in the mountains and has a village feel despite its proximity to the city. It is a vibrant place full of activity. There are bars pumping music throughout the township 24 hours a day. Kids running around playing with toys made from random objects like old tires, wire, bags, plants…Always people moving up and down and every which way. There is a busy market, with local vegetables, food and miscellaneous items from all corners of Malawi. I love the local nature of everything and how easy it is to trace everything you eat back to its source. The market is also a place where the disparities of my Canadian and Malawian worlds are accentuated. Where women make a living selling packages of peanuts for 5 Kwacha a bag (there is 140 Kwacha to 1 Canadian dollar right now…you can do the math).
The houses in Chilomoni are simple, not more than anyone needs. The roads are dirt, warm and welcoming. Women wear brightly pattern pieces of cloth called “chitenges” (like a sarong), and walk barefoot with babies on their backs. Men cut the grass with big “panga” knives, women draw water from the communal water taps and carry it to their homes on their heads. Which actually when you think about is a pretty efficient way to carry a heavy load like that. Sometimes, however, I see people carrying really strange things on their heads too though, like a bar of soap or a pen or even a back pack. And sometimes I swear they are defying physics with what they can carry, like garbage bags from home full of tomatoes??? Its impressive.
Lovely Emma modelling a chitenge
Lovely Emma modeling the head carrying technique with her suitcase
As the only “mzungu” (white person) in the town, I naturally get a lot of attention and people always stop what they are doing when I come by. If I don’t verbally greet people, I make sure I acknowledge them with a nodding upwards of the head (not downwards….that was counter-intuitive for awhile…) and the lifting of my eyebrows. I am always careful to ration my smiles and delay until I greet a person so that I can make sure everyone gets their own. The kids from the neighborhood after seven months still get a real kick out of the mzungu visitor. They jump up and down, laugh and scream out “OW r YU?” repeatedly even after I have answered them 3 times each.
“HOW DID YOU GET A MZUNGU?, “I WANT A MZUNGU!” is something my host parents, Mr. and Mrs Soko often hear from their friend’s and family who are jealous of their visitor. From their perspective, I appeared out of thin air. Mr. Soko is fond of simplifying it down to “God’s will” that brought me here. This makes me laugh because my mind pictures the stork from the old fables that delivers babies to deserving parents.
The Sokos are lovely, lovely, lovely. They support me, laugh with me, dance with me. Try, the 10 year old daughter and I will often just lay on my bed, chat, listen to music, draw. Chizzy the 4 year old from next door likes to run around in her new earmuffs (yes, I said earmuffs) that came out of a second hand clothing bundle from Canada. Most of all I love the fact that we can just “be” together. I have found it difficult in the last few months because I have been traveling so much and I am not around very much. The Sokos appreciate the time that I can give them and I try to reciprocate by making that time my very best. Somehow I get stuck in this mental rut that friendships need time. But now I realize they really need thought and quality energy more than anything. Making sure people know how you feel when you are with them.
Chizzy Sporting her earmuffs
Try also sporting the earmuffs
Mrs Soko
Mr Soko
I recently moved to a village in a mountainous District called Dedza. The move was the result of an impulsive decision one day, as I was sitting in a hotel motivated partially by work necessity and partially by a need for me to get out of the city. I had been spending increasingly more time sitting in impersonal hotel rooms and less time with my family in Chilomoni. I went for a run into the mountains the next morning. I stopped and chatted with a lady on the road and in typical Malawian style, I had me a new place within an hour.
So I have my own little house all to myself in the middle of a village. The walls are made of earth, the floors of concrete. I basically have a living room and a bedroom. The landlady is the sweetest thing. I came home after a few days away and she gave me a running hug. it was pretty adorable. She tells me to consider her my mother, except she is 26 just like me.
My house is on the main road of the village but I have hedges surrounding it giving me a false semblance of privacy, since people can actually see in better from the outside than I can see them. I have a spacious back yard full of maize crops which looks out on to the mountains. There is no electricity, and alot of darkness… During the day, I sit on my back step and marvel at the beauty of the mountains and at night, I sit on my back step and marvel at the beauty of the sky. its all very romantic really.
My village is about a 30-40 minute walk from work, along a dusty dirt road that takes me into the mountains. I like the walk, it gets me outside in the sun, following the footprints made by bare feet of those who traveled along before me.
I counted on my way home the other day….I greeted 42 people and waved at least another two dozen. Greetings in a village setting are more formal than in Chilomoni and are fairly lengthy. They consist of the following:
Person 1: Mwa Sewera Bwanji?
Person 2: Nda Sewera Bwino. Kaya Inu?
Person 1: Nda Sewera Bwino. Zikomo/
Person 2: Zikomo Kwambiri.
These words are accompanied by a small curtsy and a clapping of the hands. Originally this was a source of stress for me, having to go through the whole ritual with each person individually. You can imagine how time consuming it is when a whole pack of Malawian women are coming my way, the 30 minute walk to work was easily turning into an hour as I stood there curtseying and clapping my hands. I am becoming more efficient though thanks to my good friend Danny here, the keeper of all useful knowledge, (another EWB volunteer) who told me how to greet multiple people at once and my commute is now back down to half an hour.
Living in the village has been excellent for learning the local language, Chichewa.
It is an easy language to learn to be bad at but I feel like it would take me a lifetime to become eloquent. There are over 6 classes of nouns, that each get treated differently. And the funnest part is that there isn’t really any hard and fast rules on what nouns go into what class. Native speakers just “know” what to do, I however, don’t, and am left to making it a guessing game. Chichewa is also a very implicit language, with the way people are saying things often being more important than the words they are using. This is partially because the language can be vague and open to interpretation with multiple-use words. For example, they have the same verb for sit, stand and stay and one for buy, tie and make. Confusing? Yes, indeed it is.
They also use a lot of English words but they “chichewasize” them and spell them according to their own vernacular tendencies. I find this to be an endless source of surprise and amusement when I am trying to read documents. Here, we’ll do a quiz and see if you can guess what words these are:
1. Puresidente.
2. Buledi
3. Fokolo
4. lipoti
5. Bletti
Give up?… Try President, Bread, Fork (?), report and you guessed it Brett). In fact in most of my Malawian circles, my name has officially changed to Betty because Bletti just didn’t seem that attractive or feminine…not that Brett ever was either.
So now that I am in the village, life consists of me waking up really early in the morning ~5. When you don’t have electricity, your life becomes ruled by the sun. I am now one of those women sporting a colorful chitenge and carrying water on my head from the communal tap. I light my charcoal stove, to heat water for a bath (and for coffee…mmm…). I have not kicked my love for coffee since I have come here. In fact, I think it may have deepened. Malawian coffee is fantastic. Though I find it hilarious because none of the locals drink it. They prefer instant coffee from South Africa…I haven’t really figured that one out yet.
Though my skill set is limited, I am learning some rudimentary techniques in Malawian cookery. I don’t think anyone other than me would ever want to eat what I create however. I am reveling in it because I have finally escaped the fat laden, meat driven meals that are common place at the Sokos. Here I can get back to my base nature of being a vegetarian.
Learning to Cook…
I have also gone through a few hair experiments since I have come here. I don’t know if you guys know this…it was news to me… but African women and all their fancy hair- dos…its not real! They have these wig deals that they sew into their hair. For fun, I tried one out one time. I looked pretty ridiculous but it was a lot of fun and made the people at work roar with laughter, so it was well worth it. I also learned through the experience that I like my hair dark…so when I took the extensions out I decided to go brown, which is new, fun and exciting or at least it was two months ago when I did it. Now its strangely normal.
The hair evolution
This ended up being a really long entry but I think it covers a lot of ground. I really really really want to start sharing my work experiences with you guys as well. I find it all very inspiring and very fun and I think that most of my close friends (and others) would be really interested. So… that will be what the next blog is focused on and hopefully it will be quite soon.
Well thanks for reading, you are probably a real close friend if you managed to make it this far through this epic novel. To all my friends and family at home, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your love and support. It is very difficult to be so far away when all kinds of exciting and important things are happening at home. I think of you every day and wish I was there during your big life events. I want to acknowledge that I am especially sad to have missed the following key key happenings:
the spreading of Grandpa’s ashes.
Vic, Curtis and Casey’s babies (they are BEAUTIFUL)
My dear friend Janini’s wedding (this coming weekend!!!!!!!!)
Steve and Jenny’s wedding (Congratulations!)
Candice’s engagement
Thanks guys.
Me
