OCTOBER 14
When I tell people I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer here in Malawi, they always have the same questions, “So what’s a typical day like?” Well, I feel like I’ve been here long enough (it’s now over 7 months!!!!) to approach this question. There is no typical day. Basi.
However, today was one of those busy, productive, unpredictable days where everything just seemed to slip easily from one to thing to another. I woke up at half five this morning to go for a run before it got too hot and humid because man, that african sun during hot season is not something to mess with. On my run, I think I probably saw every primary and secondary (high school) school student in my village and the village adjacent to ours on their journeys to school. Most primary students were dressed in blue or purple uniforms and the secondary students wear black on bottom and white on top. The kids typically have track shoe bags for backpacks slung around their shoulders and in their hands they sling around a plastic grocery bag with their snack for the day in it (right now, those snacks are all mangoes). They walk to school in loose groups, typically divided up by age and gender. As I passed them all on my run back to my house, I felt like I was traveling the opposite way of a parade, yelling “bo bo!” every 2 seconds to greet them all. So is running here in the village.
I immediately grabbed my bright green, 20 liter, plastic bucket to go get some water from the shallow well behind our village grocery when I returned back to my house. Our piped water has been dry for almost three weeks. I can’t wait until the day comes when we have all the water in the world right outside our homes again. Especially considering the worst of hot season is apparently on its way. As the path from my house emptied out onto the main [dirt] road toward the tea shed outside of which all the amayis sell their breads, thobwa, and bananas, one shouted to me “madzi palibe!” No water. I conceded to the fact that I’d have to be super frugal with my morning bafa (bath) water.
After putting water to boil for oatmeal and tea on my (new!) paraffin stove, I took a nice cool bucket bath. That is one plus to hot season—no more needing to heat my bathing water over a fire! I then made some gourmet oatmeal with raisins, chia seeds, pistachios, cinnamon and sugar before I realized it was almost half eight and I needed to get going. As I rushed around my house gathering my things, I heard a knock at the door. My neighbor amayi stood sheepishly on my front porch then asked if I needed water. Ahaaaa, my savior. I handed her my bucket and thanked her profusely.
My first event of the day was meeting with two students and the head teacher with my counterpart at the secondary school. There is a health and environment peace corps-run camp (TIECH camp = Training to Improve Environment and Community Health) next week to which two of our students were qualified enough to go. We are in the process of working out details on travel and permission forms, but it’s a huge opportunity for them. They get to travel all the way up to northern Malawi and spend a week at Nyika National Park where they will learn about different health and environment issues that Malawi suffers from. They will then design a project to help their personal community and implement it upon return. The meeting went well, taking forever as most meetings do in Malawi because formalities are so incredibly important. As is going over the same information over and over again. The students seemed very excited though, as did their parents and the teachers, and I can’t wait to hear about their experiences.
When I returned home, I saw my green bucket, full of water and sitting on my porch. I thanked the amayi, trying to decide what I could give her in return. I decided on a bulb of garlic since she’d recently complained that she didn’t have garlic when I asked if she had made guacamole since I’d taught her and some of my other neighbors how last Thursday. When I walked up to give it to her, the grabbed her wooden stool and insisted that I sit down and kucheza or chat. She placed it right next to two amayis who were relaxing on the ground with a plate of boiled sweet potatoes between them, peeling the thin skin off with their teeth as Malawians do with practically anything that requires peeling. So, I sat there with them, following suit. The amayi closest to me put her arm on my knee and told me that I need to teach her how to make peanut butter. In broken Chichewa and exaggerated hand and body motions, I explained the simple process of roasting peanuts, shelling them and then pounding them before adding a little salt and sugar. Palibe vuto, no problem. Then she wanted to know how to make mkaka wa soya, soy milk. The two processes are almost identical actually which she found amusing. After detailing the steps, the surrounding people then discussed the prices of peanut and soy beans.
Another amayi brought me a giant, red cup of thobwa, a classic malawian corn drink that I’ve actually learned to enjoy. The women whose houses I was sitting outside of were hopping around between their smoky kitchens to their homes to sitting for a moment and talking with me. It was almost noon, aka NSIMA TIME. I wandered over to the kitchens to watch them cranking on their pots of nsima; cranking being the ideal word to describe the action of ferociously stirring the thick white corn flour and water mixture to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pot over their ridiculously hot three-stone, wood fires. ‘Ntchito kwambiri!’ I exclaimed; I’m legitimately the only woman in the village who thinks making nsima is too much work. After laying out a maize sack on her dirt floor porch, one amayi called me over to share nsima ndi ndiwo with her and her two year old daughter Jaqueline. We sat together, pinching ping pong ball-sized pieces off of the nsima patties and dipping them in beans and in a cooked cabbage, tomatoes, and onions—two ndiwos today! “Water amayi” rushed over with another bowl containing a few pieces of cooked potato and soy pieces that she’d made as her ndiwo and wanted to share with me.
Sitting there with the closest thing I have to a Malawian family in Mulanje made me feel so content and at home. This integration is exactly what I’d been looking for. Although I’m an awkward age—usually a girl my age would be married and probably have 3-4 kids by now—I like to pretend I’m a big sister to all the kids who live in this cluster of houses right at the top of the steps out of my yard as well as a friend to all the amayis. After eating, I continued to sit there on the porch stoop as all the kids gradually returned from school and ate their lunches. I simply sat and observed. Parents were eager to see the students’ books from school and to hear about what they’d learned—probably because most parents don't know how to read or write—but it reminded me of America. The girls next to me tried to steal food from each others’ plates. Jackie clutched her beanie baby cheetah and sat on my lap and played with it. My 12-year-old bff Elena plopped down with me, offering to share her lunch with me. Ah, family.
The next time I looked at my watch, it was almost 1:20. My meeting at the health center with my SOLID training group at 1:30 was obviously going to start late. And it did. The trainees showed up around 2:15 while we were in the midst of a mini-drama. My counterpart informed me when I arrived at the health center that the girl, Chrissy, who was supposed to be attending TEICH camp had collapsed on her walk home from school. My jaw dropped open. “Is she going to survive?!” was all I could manage. You really never know the severity of the situation I’ve discovered. Someone may come in complaining of malaria-like symptoms and die two hours later. He assured me that she received proper treatment for malaria and that she’ll be fine in a week or so, but he wasn’t sure if she would be able to attend the camp. Perfect. The OPT room where Chrissy was laying with her arm over her tear-coated eyes was full of her classmates, her family, the head teacher, our M.A. (my supervisor), my counterpart, and myself when the news was delivered to her and immediately after we began working on a plan B in case she ends up being too weak to travel. There are always new challenges being spontaneously thrown into the mix here in Malawi!
After we conjured up a plan B and my trainees were up to date on notes from meetings, my counterpart and I (along with another HSA) taught the three who attended to make hand-washing stations out of plastic bottles, string, and two poles. Wildly enough, there aren’t even hand-washing stations outside of our health center latrines. Hopefully we will change that soon!
My counterpart and I walked the mile-long, mostly uphill journey over to the primary school after our meeting because he wanted to attend our village’s soccer practice whilst I wanted to meet with a teacher about being my tutor. We sat on her porch as the blazing red sun slowly fell down out of the sky and disappeared behind some distant mountainous hills and thankfully, she seemed very willing to help me with my desire to be fluent in Chichewa. I was especially excited because she invited me over for lunch tomorrow to finalize our plans. She is probably about my age—married but with no children yet—and I could see us becoming friends. Who knows. We finally trekked back as dusk was fading into pure night darkness. It had been another full, and exhausting, day in Bondo. I managed another cool bucket bath to wash all the sweat and grime off of me before slicing up a few extra-ripe guavas and mangoes and collapsing in my bed to write this. Now, it is an hour and half past village bedtime (8 PM), and I’m feeling the effects of my long day. Gone are my days of staying up until 3 AM. That ended when I stepped on a scorpion last week…. but that’s a story for another day.
OCTOBER 15
Today I ate nsima and ndiwo for lunch and dinner, just like a Malawian.
This afternoon I had my first Chichewa tutoring session with my new teacher here in Bondo. She is a 24 year old girl who has finished university and can speak English very well. She is a teacher at our primary school along with her husband. I walked the mile path to their home for lunch, and we ate nsima, beans, and greens while sitting on a bamboo mat in their empty living room. Afterwards we studied for almost two hours; I already feel like I’m learning important and useful concepts in Chichewa.
The second nsima of my day was this evening. When I returned home from doing some around-the-village shopping (buying eggs, tomatoes, onions, sugar, a warm fanta), a bunch of the kids were parading down the path in front of my house singing. Some of the girls had what looked like dirt and charcoal on their faces like what you’d imagine in an african tribe, and they carried “umbrellas” made of banana leaves stuck to sticks. I ran inside to get my camera to snap a quick picture of them. After I showed the pictures I took to them and to their amayis who were sitting close by, I excused myself by saying I was going to cook. The amayis quizzically asked if I was going to cook nsima. I replied that I didn't know yet because I was secretly just planning on having a salad for dinner. When I said I would just eat vegetables for dinner, they insisted that they teach me how to make nsima. So I went and fetched my bag of oofa wa mgaiwa (corn flour), the chinese cabbage I’d just bought, a tomato, an onion, and some cooking oil. They set up a three stone fire and put a tiny pot on it. The kids and a few amayis gathered around to watch. I don’t think I did a terrible job, but at a certain point in the process, you have to stir the thick porridge-like mixture really intensely and the pot always falls off of the three stones. Malawian amayis are able to hold onto the burning hot pots with their fingers while they stir, somehow not getting burned. I, on the other hand, still have “soft hands” and cannot. The other problem is the smoke from the fire! It’s all up in your face when you’re cranking the crap out of the pot of nsima. Then your eyes start watering profusely and sting, and you cant see anymore. Besides those two things, cooking nsima isn’t that bad, especially when it’s just enough for one person.
I sat down on the dirt porch with another amayi to eat. When I was completely stuffed (nsima expands in your stomach, I swear), I continued to sit there watching complete darkness fall upon the mud huts. No lights were turned on. The men sat in chairs discussing business and chuckling loudly occasionally. The amayis washed dishes and cleaned up in the darkness. The kids polished off all of the leftover plates of nsima or ndiwo. Stars popped out of the dark night sky, and the only things visible anymore were shadows and outlines of figures. My twelve-year-old bff still hadn’t returned home. When I asked her amayi where she was, her response was simply, ‘she hasn’t come.’ I imagined what my life would be like if I’d grown up in this environment. A rural village where you know everybody. Half of your neighbors are your family or close family friends. The walk to school is over a mile, and your parents don't accompany you. Every child does what their parents tell them to, and that usually involves a lot of chores. The entertainment options are chatting with friends, listening to the radio, or fixing your hair. You eat almost the same thing every day for lunch and dinner. You don't wear or have shoes most of the time. Anything you need can be found at the local mini-shop or roadside stand: batteries, nails, laundry soap, small mirrors, packaged cookies, tiny suckers, pens, zitenge, razor blades, cigarettes, wire, packets of tea, baby oil, lotions, hair gel, ibuprofen, small notebooks, etc. Fresh vegetables and greens are picked within an hour of when they are cooked and eaten. Walking to the maize mill with a 20-30 pound bag on your head is a normal chore. Clothes and dishes are washed in the streams/rivers when water isn’t flowing through the taps. There’s no light to see where you’re going or what you're doing once the sun goes down. A bamboo mat laid out on the dirt floor of your mud hut qualifies as a bed. Your day starts when it is light enough to see outside. A bucket of cold water is what you use to bathe yourself. You have maybe two or three outfits to choose from when getting dressed each morning. Whether it’s a book, a pile of leaves, or an old rubber tire, it can entertain you for hours. The majority of the day is consumed with chores around the house like sweeping inside and outside, washing clothes and dishes, preparing food, pounding corn or cassava, etc. The idea of leaving the village rarely crosses your mind because it is outside of your family’s budget, as is dreaming about traveling outside of your district, eating at a restaurant, or buying new clothes for the whole family. Your whole life is consumed with pinching kwatcha and making ends meet the best you can for your family. You can’t afford furniture or electricity or a television, but you do what you can to live a comfortable lifestyle where time to sit around and chat with friends or to listen to the radio is an option.
Putting myself in their shoes, as I’ve been trying to do, really changes my perspective. I can afford to travel to the city and stay for the weekend. I can afford to stay in touch with my friends and family who are 9,000 miles away. I can have high hopes and dreams of doing and being anything I want. I have options….something that can easily be forgotten in the scramble of our lifestyle and perspective.