My First 3 Days as a PCV

2-28-2010

Wow it’s my first night in Malawi, day…3? Since I left home? It’s been too crazy to write…

Ok, sorry, I had to wrestle my mosquito net. But this is actually later so skrrrrrrt, Rewind.

Philadelphia, where I was flown to for my Pre-departure staging:

I was famished after getting to my hotel so on the desk attendants advice I hoofed it a few blocks to the Reading Time market. I walked in and thought it was an Amish themed indoor/outdoor market. Everything I could see was made and maintained by the Amish. Only it really wasn’t.  It turns out that was just where I happened to enter the market. The market is an outdoor food mart squished full of open places to eat. SO cool.

Anyway, back at the hotel training was boring and general but insightful. We were all jet lagged as we finished out paperwork, people on late flights occasionally trickling in. After the last of the formalities were finished, most of us went out for sushi. We were walking all around china town looking for Japanese…get the irony? So we finally find the place and have to sit 16 people. It was a long and fun night. When we got back to the hotel, me and my temporary roomie Joanna chilled out then crashed around 11:30. Too bad we had to get up at 1 am to be downstairs at 1:30 to drive a few hours to JFK.

Not only were we jet lagged from our flights to Philly, then super tired from being excited, exhausted from getting up early, but when we get to the airport, we can’t board our plane or pass through security. Why you might ask? Because no one is there yet. We putz around for like 5 hours before we got on our flight at 10:30 am. Which was interesting, a PCV named Collin had this monstrously full duffle bag that as too big/heavy. He was scrambling around throwing this and that into other people’s luggage. Our flight then did not take off until 11:30am.

Here comes the 15 hour nonstop flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. Which was cool cause (by the way we buddy system and my buddy was Collin, the one with the overstuffed bag, who I then found out was Nuts, in a fun (Strange way)) we were in a massive air bus with 74 rows and 8 seats across. I ended up on the inner left aisle and Collin the right. Even though I had 2 seats to sprawl on I only lightly slept for like 1 ½ hours, cumulative, through the plane ride. I ended up watching like 5 movies some of which were Toy Story 2, part of Daredevil, Dragon Ball Z Evolution and All About Steve. Flight attendants and people banging into my head did not help my sleep situation.

I changed my watch ahead seven hours to be ‘on time’. When we land in Joe burg we scurried through internal transit because our flight is supposed to leave in ½ hour so we were in a bit of a panic. But what is this? Surprise, it is delayed until 1030 (over an hour later). While we wait low and behold the fire alarm goes off. Lucky for us we did not have to evacuate.

Finally we board the itty bitty plane and it’s packed to the max in these tiny seats and I am sharing (aisle again thank goodness) the 3 seat row with 2 of our biggest guys, hilarious Texan Justin and remarkably shy Jeremy. We bonded to say the least. In fact we have all been bonding pretty much nonstop.

 Anyway we lower altitude and pull in to land and the landscape is so green and devoid of cities. It’s beautiful and we alternate our heads because only one person can see out the window at a time.

We can hear a dull roar as we sit in the plane. The doors open and we file down the steps to the bus. At this time we are assaulted by not only heat and humidity but at least 50 current PCVs cheering their heads off from the outdoor balcony at the airport. It was overwhelming. My excitement and adrenaline skyrocketed, leaving me jittery and nervous. We load the bus and drive the 300 feet to the airport. When we disembark and walk into the building, above us are the screaming PCVs.

In the terminal we get all our stuff and head out to meet the screamers. Except Justine and yet again Collin who are missing bags. Before us on either side is row upon row of PCVs, some are in traditional garb, and a few had been drinking. We were like celebrities and it was crazy. Volunteers are shoving mangos and porcupine quills into our hands, saying ‘Welcome!’ Finally we make it out of the airport.

After much confusion we get in a massive circle of new and old PCVs and say who we are. It was intensely strange lol. Then we loaded up a smaller bus for the 2 hour ride to Dedza where we were staying at the college of forestry. And whatever the word college brought up in your mind was wrong lol. Let’s just say it was rural, rustic, dirty, and a sensory overload, new place, language, food. To PCVs to a room, cold water, one giant unisex bathroom and multiple shower stalls. I remember a bunch of us that first night in the stalls, having random conversations including how the infamous Collin was going to have to ‘drip dry’ because he had no towels.

Dead Man?

We were on our way to our Swearing In ceremony at the American Ambassador’s house, 21 fresh new Peace Corps volunteers chomping at the bit to get to our sites after over a month of homestay. Not that most of us did not enjoy our families; we were just bored and restless with all the restriction and structured life of being an international student living in a host family’s house. 

We were on our way to the ambassador’s house though the capital of Lilongwe when I saw him. I was still naïve and too shocked to really say anything to anyone else.  I had a window seat and was gazing out at the town. It was huge and dirty and busy, not at all like our rural village homestay.  We were passing a building with a high brick outer wall. There was a gutter separating two narrow strips of grass between the road and the wall.

What I remember most was thinking that I had never seen a Malawian lay out on their back in the mid-day sun. Then it flashed through my mind he might have been passed out drunk. But instinctively I knew better.  He was probably late 40s or 50s his hair, or what was left of it was greying. He was nearly skeletally gaunt. His pants were a torn, dirty, brown plaid and dirty plaid button up. He was on his back underneath the brick wall, his head tilted back so far that his mouth was opened wide. One of his legs was cocked out to the side funny. One arm rested over his chest.

He was gone in a flash as the bus load of cheery volunteers; all showered (a rare luxury at the College of Forestry) and dressed up in fancy clothes and even makeup headed towards the beginning of a new life.  A bit shaken and a bit confused I remember asking the volunteer just in front of me, “Um, did u see a dead man on the side of the road?”

How to make a Banana Mat

Tobacco leaves dry under the eaves of the roof.  I am sitting on a low stool, watching Mary, the banana mat lady work. As her hands move a litany of instruction in Chiwandia pours from her mouth. She wants to make sure I know how to make a banana mat. It was a blessing to have Jonathan there to translate, otherwise, I think she just might have continued to repeat herself over and over until even and English speaker understood her words.

First Mary explains the two types of mats, one comes from dried banana leaves and the other is made during the cold season from specific woven grasses. The grass mats are fancier and therefore more expensive, but only by fifty kwacha. This price increase comes from the dye they use to color the natural string made from local plants. Large coils of twisted string, the color of straw are divided into chunks for dipping. The string is died green or a reddish pink. The colors are added to about one liter of water. This is warmed over a fire then the string is dipped for several minutes.

Sitting in Mary’s cozy courtyard, surrounded by trees and scrub brush we sweat in the afternoon sun. But are lucky, there is no rain. It is rainy season and almost like clockwork, torrential rain comes in the afternoons.

Mary starts a mat by stripping what is left of the fronds off the stalk of the banana leaf. The leaves are so dry they crackle as she quickly sheds them. The stalks are Just as dry but fibrous on the inside, lending them a certain amount of flexibility. This is increased as the Mary slices it into smaller strips, the slightly rusty, curved knife moving swiftly through the stalk. For a while there is only the shhk shhk of the knife cutting strips. 

The three varieties of peri-peri pepper bushes blaze red in the sun, a sharp contrast to all the green around us. Next Mary rolls out a previously made mat that they work upon to keep the new mats clean from the swept dirt of their courtyard.  Mary pulls out lengths of string, and then begins to twist them tighter by rubbing it with one hand against her calf while the other holds the rest of the string out. This is then repeated after switching ends of the string. She explains as she does this that they measure how big too make the mats by height.  If a short person is weaving they make it as long as their toes to their skyward outstretched hands. A tall person merely marks it as tall as they are. This should give you some insight as to the height variations of Malawians.

Mary’s husband is de-cobbing maize into a large metal pot while she works. Mary herself is a short, round woman. She has a hearty laugh and a slight accent, a combination of a lisp or talking from the back of her throat. She has distinctive scars or birthmarks across her cheeks bone and forehead some presenting bumps others just patch of pink skin on her otherwise brown face. Her hair has grown out since the last time I saw her, woven into tight braids ending in small tufts of hair, almost like pigtails on the back of her head.

It is not until she stands to get more fronds strips before us and enthusiastically gestures before her at her children, literally jiggling her large un-brassiered breasts that I even realize her blue blouse has two huge rips in the left side causing her chest to be occasionally fully exposed. Even after noticing I am unfazed. You know you have lived in Africa a long time when the sight of a woman's breast or a skinned goat dangling by its slit throat in a market doesn't seem strange anymore.

As Mary works her elderly mother comes and sits with us. Her skin is wrinkled and eyes cataract. Her teeth are going so she has the characteristic toothless grandparent mouth. At one point I take her picture and offer her the camera. She turns it this way and that, squinting and moving it closer to her face.  Mary softly tells her it is a picture of her. She smiles and utters a faint, barely audible ‘oh’ and does the Malawian woman tongue warble to show her extreme happiness. However she is so old that her tongue goes from side to side without making any sound. Everyone joins in heartfelt laughter at Grandmother’s obvious excitement.

Mary begins weaving. She wraps the string around her toes on the stalk to hold it down. Then she selects another stalk and places it on one end of the string. She crosses the strings and pulls tight. It is not knotted but holds firm. She then picks the next stalk and proceeds to weave the mat. After the string line is done it is up to the weaver to decide how far in she want to place the next line of string to go up the mat.  The mat Mary was working on had 5, 5 vertical rows of string to hold the horizontal woven banana stalks in place.

Before I go she sends me off with 2 seedling piri piri peppers and several small spiky topped eggplants. It was her way of compensating for not feeding me during our instructional time. Though I demurred, she insisted, and that night I had fried eggplant spiced with piri piri that made my week.

Crazy Zambian Woman

I had biked into the boma to run some errands, buy some bread and hop on the internet (If there was electricity available that day).Well there was no internet that day so I ended up at Yotham’s, my good Friend, and cracked open a Carlesberg  beer. He and I sat around watching brazillian soap operas in the empty bar.

Then she came in.

She was outspoken and clearly drunk.  Her black robe dress was torn down the right side, exposing her brazier and significantly lighter skin. She bought a beer and offered to buy me one. I shrugged and wasn’t about to turn down a free beer. She said she was a mother from Zambia she had married an Englishman and had white babies just like me. I was feeling a bit confused and overwhelmed but decided it was funny. The bar was empty save the three of us.

The Zambian woman brought me a Safari, a stronger, and I shall say it better Tanzanian beer. I prefer Safari’s to Carelsberg but Carlesberg is cheaper and on my stipend, you can’t be choosey. And I will clarify; it’s not all Carlesberg that’s not so great, it’s Carlesberg Green and then Special and works its way up to Elephant and so on. Price directly correlates with flavor with the Carlesberg!

 After the Zambian woman went outside to wander Yotham leaned in and told me that she had shown up earlier. She said she was here to confront relatives who had stolen her car. They beat her up and stole her money and clothes. The police were trying to investigate and while that was happening she was hanging out at Yothams. 

She came back in and perched on a stool at the far end of the bar, saying to me, “you need another beer? Get her another beer!” To Yotham. He is such an amiable and quiet fellow, that he has the perfect temperament to run a bar with all the crazy personalities that sweep in. However, let us just say he has a flip side that you do not want to cross, also perfect for owning and running a bar. Anyway, back to the story.

Needless to say this was the only the beginning. As the soap operas droned on I aimlessly watched people drift into the bar. I sat in a plastic chair and propped my feet on a bar stool. The day wore on slowly. Through it all, the Zambian woman stayed, ranting about getting beaten and about her ‘white’ family. She bought me beer after beer as her hair became more disheveled, a beer and lit cigarette perpetually in her hands. Her eyes were bloodshot and glazed. She repeated pulled up the torn sleeve of her dress in an absent motion. She begged Yotham to call a rest house and tell them she was booking a room. So he did, amiable and connected fellow that he is. Countless beers later the police walked in and questioned her again.

At this point the sun was setting and I had had my dose of strange interactions for the day. I gave Yotham a Big Squeeze and went out back to roll my bike out of his house. I biked home in a pleasant daze just before dark.

A few days later I returned to the boma and Yotham  told me the Zambian woman had left the rest house without paying saying Yotham would pay her room for her. Of course he didn't, he thought the rest house owners were ridiculous for not making her pay. Since no one ever wanted to see the flip side of Yotham, the rest house owner left it at that. Yotham shook his head, flipped a hand dismissively, smiled so his dimples showed and told me, “She was just some crazy Zambian lady.” 

Kwiba (Thief)

I was sitting on Adam’s porch, Adam was off somewhere, wandering as usual. I was entertaining myself by sitting in the blue plastic lawn chair reading a book.  As I am reading I hear a laugh and the crunch of stones that indicates someone coming up the path.

I’d know that beard anywhere.

“Johnathan!” I greet him enthusiastically. He comes to chisenga once or twice a week rain or shine night or day to do business.  For him, that means selling the metal tubs he makes as a tinsmith. Adam refers to Jonathan as superman, partly because of the sheer distances Jonathan bikes on his single speed, metal frame bicycle, and partly for his undaunted enthusiasm.

As we are chatting Jonathan informs me that they caught a woman stealing from my house in Mubanga.  I was saddened as well as angered by the news. Jonathan said they were waiting until I came home to deal with it. I decided it was best if I let it cool a little.

Two days later I was home. I talked to my next door neighbor; a chitumbuka woman who had moved into Mubanga several months ago. She told me in a mixture of English and chitumbuka what had happened. She told me all about it in detail because since she is the closest neighbor to me, she was afraid I would think she was the thief as often happens in Malawian society. The story goes as follows:

I pay Jonathan’s younger wife Tabiya, or Nya Kawonga (daughter of her family name) to get water and do some laundry once a month. Recently, I have added watering my garden on the days it does not rain. All in all her job is cushy and not very demanding. Anyway, she came into my yard when I was away to water the garden. She also took a container full of pumpkin leaves to use as dende (side dish) from my garden. This I don’t mind because I told them Kalibu (welcome) to my abundant greens since it is much more than I could ever eat at once. Tabiya also took some tomatoes to keep for me since they were starting to ‘yellow’ and that is when people pick them.

Malawians are opportunistic thieves. This means, most crime people will not premeditate a crime but when something tempting presents, they will not hesitate to capitalize on the situation. Malawians are used to just taking what they want of someone’s things because it is there, particularly from an Azungu (white person) because in their minds, I can just go buy another of whatever I want.

The thief was a woman named Nya Kayizi. She lives one compound away from me. We were on friendly terms when I first moved in. She loaned me a water bucket for months and gave me a bamboo matt. We greeted one another all the time. But after I heard she had stolen from me, I soon discovered she that she is what we would refer to in the states as a ‘Klepto.’ Nya Kayizi stole fire wood from one neighbor. She went to another’s fields and stole food. She is a serial thief and the rest of my neighbors are passive serial forgivers. Not me. If I let one person steal from me, everyone would steal from me. Anyway….

Nya Kawanga left my yard and Nya Kayizi saw. She figured that meant Karibu (Welcome) to her too. She walked straight into my yard which is completely fenced in with a tin gate. She did not even try to see if I was home but went straight to the back yard. She helped herself to about ½ a bundle of my firewood and a basket full of pumpkin leaves. My Chitumbuka neighbor confronted her saying, “This is Colleen’s house and Colleen’s things.” Nya Kayizi made some lame excuse that she thought it was Kayange’s wood (My landlord). My neighbor reiterated that it was not. Nya Kayizi ignored her. As she turned to go she saw my plump fat tomatoes growing along my house and helped herself to these too. Outside my gate she dropped the wood and went back for more. Several neighbors saw her including Nya Kawanga.  Nya Kayizi asked Nya Kawanga if she could have these things of mine. Nya Kawonga said she was not able to give Nya Kayizi permission. On that Note, Nya Kayizi took it anyway.

The next morning after I arrived home, we had a trail.

Basically witnesses to the crime gather with the victim and accused. We discuss what happened, assess guilt and charge a fine. A time period is given to pay this fine and if the guilty party fails then the village authority is involved. So this is how two men, Jonathan as translator, and about seven women including his Jonathan’s wife (Nya Kawanga), all of whom are my neighbors and the thief were gathered on my porch. After one or two women spoke it was obvious a case of blatant thievery. Nya Kayizi admitted to making a mistake. I charged her 1 full bundle of firewood to replace my stolen wood and produce. Then as a penalty for thieving I charged her a chicken. Everyone nodded that it was a fair deal. Nya Kayizi accepted.  It was set that she would deliver the goods through Jonathan.

I intend on killing and eating the chicken, or possibly giving it to Adam to keep for me if it was an egg layer. The last two chickens I had were stolen but no thief had been caught. Likely that fate will befall this chicken as well. I am not very concerned with what had been taken; it was all outdoor, natural and replaceable things. I was however, very concerned with the principle of the matter. I was concerned with the “I want, I take” attitude of the villagers. They never quite understood or believed that as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was paid to live as villagers do, at the poverty level of the country. I was not rich before Malawi, and certainly not in Malawi. I planted my own garden, pedaled my own bike, and before the closest bore hole dried up, hauled my own water.  Jealousy and greed are so poorly veiled in the village.

Texture Trials

I would just like to share with you the extreme difference in texture that is available for consumptions here in Malawi. First there is a dish called telele or delele, depending on where you are in the country. It is made primarily from okra and baking soda. There is a myth in Malawi that before store bought baking soda was available, locals used to make baking soda from the ashes of their fires. 

But back to telele. They cook the okra and baking soda until it is a slimy soup. You have to eat it with nsima, nothing else will do. If you put it on rice like a sauce, you will just lose your appetite. So how you eat this particularly slimy dende (side dish) goes as follows. You grab a chuck of nsima, ball it with your fingers a few times and then scoop up some telele with it. The problem is that telele is so slimy. It leaves a gooey string from your nsima to the telele bowl. To eat it you have to expertly flick the struggling slime string up onto your ball of nsima. For a Malawian, only one or two swings gets the slime trail up on the nsmia. I have seen volunteers try to politely remove the ridiculously slimy textured telele tail and their fingers just slid down its length futilely. Sometimes, they get a good enough grip and pull all the telele off the nsima. 

I have tried telele and if you can get over the texture, it is not bad. However, a word of warning, if you allow your telele to cool down… well, let us just say the appeal factor lessens with the temperature.