Thanksgiving Weekend

Conclusion: Thanksgiving as we know it isn’t possible on a work day.

Nathaniel arrives home from Liberia two hours late, exhausted and bedraggled after a grueling overnight flight. Christin has an insane day at work. Word gets out that she’s hiring enumerators for a pilot study and people start showing up at her office in droves, waving C.V.s and demanding interviews on the spot. She rolls ups at 6:45 for a dinner planned at 7. I’ve home from school by mid-day but am feeling de-energized after being forced to teach grammar with no warning time to prepare or review. Not a total disaster, but I’m no Teresa Elsey.

Once home, Nathaniel crashes out for a few hours to try to drum up enough energy for dinner, so I sous chef for myself to keep busy. And I realize that beyond family and the traditional meal, it’s the shared leisure of the day – slow morning, cooking with friends, eating too many snacks so you’re already when stuffed when dinner arrives – that makes Turkey Day feel like you remember.

Eventually I roust Nathaniel out of bed to help cook and we whip up some delicious mashed potatoes and braised green beans. The frittata and sweet potatoes are passable, although the local yams are white and not as soft or sweet. Christin’s squash-carrot soup and Nathaniel’s “Big Daddy” biscuits round out the meal in a relatively satisfactory manner. And, not surprisingly, the mango-rum crumble is edible. ;)

It’s a nice meal with our one guest, Derrick [former Peace Corps volunteer who has been living in Zomba village for five years and needs friends now that he’s moved to Lilongwe], but it just doesn’t have the gravitas or the real feeling of celebration that the day achieves in the states. Ah well. Effort made. And people are already gearing up for Christmas and New Years here, so I don’t think we’ll have the same problem with the December holidays.

Luckily, Nathaniel’s got Friday off after working through the weekend in Liberia and we rally to head to the mountains. The Luwawa Forest Lodge is the perfect retreat – friendly staff, rustic atmosphere (including a fireplace to relax near and weather cool enough to enjoy doing so) and tasty food. Two night of sleeping in our cozy tent, hiking, kayaking, and reading on the khondie capture a bit of the rejuvenation we missed on Thursday. Check out pictures of the trip here!

PS. The mysterious bugs with the transparent wings were termites! Apparently if we were real Malawians, we would take off the wings and eat them.  

The Rains Arrive

For the first to months of our stay, Lilongwe is HOT and dry. Ninety degrees in the shade at midday hot.  Sleep without even a sheet, good thing for the bed net hot. Overnight, the rainy season arrives and the weather changes.

Benefits:

- Gorgeous, moist, seventy degree days with cloud cover and twice daily showers (mostly gentle, occasionally heavy)

- Lovely, cool nights (with even some blanket utilization!)

- Enthusiastically growing pumpkins (which I previously struggled to even keep alive until Nathaniel’s return from Liberia)

Drawbacks:

- Swarms of new bugs (ZIPPY stink bug looking guy, armies of one-inch almost-moths with transparent wings, flying ants and, of course, malaria bearing mosquitoes)

- Red clay mud (enough said)

Still, on the whole I vote “Yes!” for the rainy season. We’ll see how I feel three months in…

Teaching Technology

A few weeks ago, Phinious approaches me to ask if I will help him learn how to use a computer. He claims that he “doesn’t even know how to turn it on.” I’ve seen his facility navigating through the menus of a cell phone, so I tell him that I know he will pick it up quickly. And indeed he does.

A friend has told him about “Word, Excel and PowerPoint” and we agree that Word would be the most useful place to start. We spend two lessons practicing basic word processing and formatting. My work is made easier by the fact that he knows just how he wants things to look (“how do I make it go in the middle?”) and has a quick memory for processes. Creating new files, saving them to folders, no problem. I remember Nathaniel’s stories of trying to teach middle-aged Honduran women how to do similar things (in Spanish, of course) and give thanks for my quick study of a student.

During lesson three I introduce the internet. It’s refreshing to look at the internet through the eyes of someone who has never experienced it, and who is starting with the wonder of today’s World Wide Web, rather than back in the days of ugly pixilated icons and aol chat rooms. Even with our (sometimes excruciatingly) slow connection speed, we manage to do a basic google search, check out Wikipedia and google maps and send Nathaniel an email in Liberia: “I'm practicing sending an email. And it's so amaizing! By the way, how's Liberia? See you soon! phinious.”

We spend lessons four and five learning PowerPoint (at Phinious’ request). He decides to make a presentation teaching his younger brother about gender disparity. Not sure anything else needs to be said about how much I’m coming to appreciate Phinious’ motivation to learn and thoughtful approach to life.

Today, I set out to take a photo of the amazing “flame trees” at the end of our street (which I’ve been meaning to do so I can send photos to my grandpa). It’s taken me a while because there are always a bunch of locals camped out under the trees and I feel awkward being the mzungu with the camera. Today being Sunday, I know I’d better not miss my chance or the flowers will be gone. As I head through the gate, I encounter Smith, who has been very shy up until now (Phinious claims I’m his first mzungu). We take a picture of the sunset together and I convince him to come along on my excursion. Soon he’s happily turning the camera on and off, and using the zoom to take picture of trees, flowers, his apartment and our yard. More lessons to come, I’m sure, given his enthusiasm.


(Here is a picture of Smith and the flame trees.)

Homesick... For Malawi

Friday night in Monrovia, alone in my windowless hotel room with a weekend of work to look forward to. Boo.

Find myself wishing I could wake up tomorrow at seven to sun streaming in the window, putter around the garden for a while then make Saturday pancakes (with extras, of course, for Phinious and Smith). I’m already missing out on things: Ariel’s first day at New Statehouse, volleyball practice, sundowners at Keith & Melody’s, the first real rains, opening day at Game Lilongwe, zucchinis sprouting in the garden…. It’s still a far cry from our well-worn groove in Boston, but being away makes me appreciate how quickly we’ve begun building routines, networks, friendships. And I find myself eager to get back.

First Day of School

I arrive at New State House a few minutes before 7:30 and triumphantly hand my crisp assignment letter to the Head Teacher, Mr. Masolola. He welcomes me (everyone here says, rather formally, “you are welcome”) and takes me to the teacher’s lunch room to get my assignments from the heads of department. I am assigned to a desk by the lunch room president and take my seat as he proceeds to introduce me to the other teachers present. The lunch room is loud and boisterous. Tables circle the room facing inward, and new arrivals tell stories in Chechewa that get the whole crowd rolling.

I’ve met Ann Ndigola, the head of the English department (which consists of herself and another part-time teacher) on a previous trip to the school and she vigorously welcomes me, says she is thrilled to have me take on Form 1 English Language and Literature and assures me that we’ll talk about books and curriculum once she gets back from teaching her first class of the day. Later on we commiserate about trying to get students to be excited about boring literature and her amazing maroon snake-skin pumps with pink metallic heels (this sounds totally tacky, but they’re actually great shoes). I’m excited that she may become a real friend and help me to get outside the expat bubble a little more.

Meanwhile, my table-neighbor takes me under his wing, gets me some social studies books and points me to the head of the humanities department to get my other assignments (Form 1 and Form 3 Social Studies). These books are filled with moralistic stories about men who are lured into town by evil cousins (who force them to become criminals) and young women who are deceived into becoming mistresses of rich men who turn out to have AIDS and dump them when they get sick. “What kind of entrepreneur was she? What was morally wrong with this kind of entrepreneurism?” What do you do if your brother hits and kills a man on the road while driving at night (while you’re in the car) and you don’t stop, but later see a MK20,000 reward for information about the death? Hmmm. Social Studies may be an adventure!

The current Form 1 English teacher peaces out when he learns I’ll be taking the class. (I think I’m only introducing myself and then he will come to teach so I can observe, but when I send a student to get him, he has gone to the bank.) The students and I get to know each other a little and practice reading comprehension. Thirty-eight kids in broken desks with only about 10 books among them, but we have a good time. Amazing how the same characters (class clown, know it all over-volunteerer, shy but smart, behind and afraid of failing so pretending to be zoned out) exist in classrooms the world over.

I realize in the afternoon that the reason there are so many teachers in the lunch room all the time is because there are actually only four people teaching at a time (one per form). The students from a given form stay in the same room all day and the teachers rotate. On the one hand, it seems incredibly wasteful compared to American teaching schedules and truthfully, if I were getting paid and were thus required to sit for five or six periods – out of nine – per day, I would probably go crazy. (As it is, I’ll probably just come and go for my own classes.) On the other hand, people get all their prep and marking done during the regular work day (what a crazy concept!) and seem to be having a great time doing it. Happy teachers means the school feels light and energetic even with the depressing lack of material resources.

At this point, the term is nearly over (only two weeks until exams), so I’m going to trade off teaching and observing with the current teachers for the next two weeks and then start in more seriously January 3^rd. Even still, it’s good to be back in the saddle!

My New...Venture?

We’ve officially warmed our house here (had about 15 people over last night for homemade pizza and sangria good times) so it’s clearly time to get back to Boston levels of busy life. I’ve been working more seriously on finding volunteer work/employment for the past few weeks, but was hampered by a nasty two week cold, Malawian bureaucracy, the lack of an established network and the distraction of other “getting settled” tasks. All of a sudden things started moving this past week.

A new friend [Keith -- American who lived for years in Kenya, Afghanistan and the Sudan before landing here with his wife Melody] hooks me up with some of his consulting contacts and I meet three times in a week with Hestern Banda, Managing Director of the local Saliphera Consulting Ltd.

In our first meeting, Hestern tells me he’s impressed with my C.V. and spends most of the rest of our hour-long meeting walking me through the company’s capability statement. Consulting firms here keep files of possible resumes with few full-time staff, and I’m figuring that maybe I’ll hear from him in a few months. At the end of the meeting, he reveals that he used to run leadership trainings/conferences, but that his partner on the project moved to Lusaka. Would I be interested in brainstorming some ideas with him?

During our second conversation, it becomes clear that my new potential employer is nothing if not a big-picture visionary. He’s talking about putting together executive level trainings, mid-level manager trainings, a train the trainer. Maybe a brochure? Can I go home and write things up? As Hestern Banda is amazingly well connected in Malawi, and has been working in the civil society sector here for more than 30 years, I figure it’s worth a few hours of time on spec.

My proposal receives a resounding “Well done!!!” and, only moments later, another email arrives in my inbox proposing names and a range of services (including grant management??) for “our new venture”. I’m still confused when I show up for our third conversation. Is this just a language thing? But no, he’s all about going big or going home. He wants to set up a whole new capacity development brand (he thinks there’s a big need and money from the major donors) with me as director, a website; the whole shebang. And he wonders what my availability will be to take on the work full time once we get off the ground (he’s that certain of success) as well as whether we might eventually be booking the country’s president to help us do trainings for local Members of Parliament. “This is Malaiw – it’s small enough that you can do that,” he tells me with a laugh.

Of course all of the initial work is pro bono on my end until we actually book some work – a very different model than in the US (at least while I was thinking of myself as a consultant rather than an entrepreneur). As I’ve really enjoyed our conversations so far, it doesn’t seem like it will hurt to put some time into materials and see what happens. Who woulda thunk.

At the same time, I finally got the paperwork to start teaching at New Statehouse CDSS and am planning to report on Monday morning! And yesterday got an email from another consulting firm I spoke with wondering if I’d like my name to be put forth for a three month program evaluation project that would involve field work in the Central African Republic, Burundi and here in Malawi.

Zero to sixty in three days flat.

More fun with food

Fortunately, not all our recent culinary undertakings have been quite so fraught. Witness the totally amazing nachos Ariel managed to conjure one day when I was feeling particularly homesick:

It took visiting four stores and the market (and this before we had wheels) but boy were they good! Salsa fresca, beans, veg, and cheddar that turns just a little brown and crunchy at the edges...mmm.... (The ubiquitous orange squash and the South African merlot aren't necessarily reminiscent of Boston meals, but you know what they say: when in Rome....)

On a slightly more "down-to-earth" note, there's my recent innovation in yogurt making:

Who needs a yogurtalator when the air is 100 F and there's all sorts of thermal mass lying around just waiting to be used? (For the record, the end result is edible but a bit on the runny side. May be down to too high a temperature, weak starter cultures, or perhaps a mismeasurement with the powdered milk.)

Finally, we dined in style on Sunday at the "Goodbrai Finn" barbecue. Finn Magill, fiddler extraordinaire, is headed back stateside to work on final production and distribution plans for an album telling the stories of people living with HIV he's producing with Malawian pop star Peter Mwanga. This was both a celebratory gathering (he and several of the other attendees had completed the Lilongwe half marathon that morning) and a bit of a send-off. (For those who don't know, in Malawi brai = bbq). Can you spot the veggie burgers? Once again we were spoilt for choice when it came to faux-meat (I swear there were more options in the Shoprite cooler than they stock anywhere but at the biggest Whole Foods in Boston). Our verdict: tasty!

ANTS!!!

Weekend is off to a good start: Saturday morning pancakes (something of a tradition), running a few errands in our new wheels (huzzah!), then back in time to putter around the kitchen and finally put all those overripe bananas to good use. Had even persuaded Ariel to splash out for walnuts and chocolate (without which banana bread really just isn’t the same). The loaf bakes for an hour, we leave it cooling (covered, of course, in our fancy keep-the-flies-off beaded screen) and go for lunch at Barbara’s house, only to find, upon our return, this:

Aaargh! My first loaf in the new bread pan, and it's a total loss. I'm so heartbroken I make Ariel carry it out to its compost-pile grave while I crush out every last member of the thieving horde. Me and ants = not friends.

Vignettes

We Are the Chicken Bus

Sunday I travel with Phinious to his home village near Dedza (about an hour and a half south of Lilongwe by matola bus). We walk about 5K from the bus depot to the village and everyone is hugely impressed that the mzungu didn’t mind the walk. After greeting many aunts, brothers, sister-in-laws, cousins, the village chief and the parents of close friends, we collect Smith, Phinious’ ten year old brother who is coming to live in Lilongwe so Phinious can ensure he goes to school. Phinious’s older brother insists that we take a hen with us as a gift (I’ve given his mother a packet of seeds and a chitenze wrap). The hen is duly wrapped in a plastic grocery bag and Smith takes charge, gently holding the chicken as we are biked to the depot on the backs of a trio of the local tank-like bicycles, and squeeze into two different mini-buses on the way back home. Luckily a family gets on with a dove only a stop or two after us on the return trip, so we’re not the sole party to bring livestock on board. The hen has been doing laps around the house back in Area 12 and started laying eggs on her first morning in her new home!

The Li-Ma Noun Class

Tuesday night Sabrina [German girlfriend of a guy we met through Daniel] and her friend Christiani, plus Dave and Haley show up at our place for Chechewa lessons with Chrissie [Peace Corps trained language instructor]. This nice little class emerged out of a first-mover advantage in booking Chechewa lessons and now people gather in our sparsely furnished living room twice a week to stumble over unfamiliar sounds. In the first blush of learning the new language, things seem encouragingly simple. All nouns begin with “ku” and end with “a”. To modify a verb, you simply squash together a subject prefix, a tense modifier and the root of the verb together and voila, you’re speaking Chechewa. Also glorious news? There is no feminine and masculine in the language – something that is the death of me in my study of Spanish. Come lesson two, these hopes are dashed. Turns out there are no fewer than eight noun classes. Each noun has two different forms, the singular and the plural, and each noun class comes with different modifiers (again, separate for singular and plural) that must be applied to related question words and a whole host of other things. Groan. At least we’ve memorized enough to greet people, introduce ourselves and explain where we come from!

A Full Tank of Gas…

Wednesday evening, Nathaniel and I drive ourselves to volleyball in our own car, and are even able to bolster our car karma by giving someone else a ride home. Shockingly, we have triumphed over Malawian bureaucracy, the petrol shortage and Bank of America's online banking system and find ourselves in possession of a very mini Toyota Rav 4, a full tank of gas, a title, certificate of fitness, vehicle registration and comprehensive insurance. How long did this take us? A mere six weeks, you say? Imagine “Sufficiently Stamped” times five or six different government office visits, plus extensive time trying to find work-arounds to Bank of America’s safe-pass system using excruciatingly slow internet – you get the picture. Operation highlight? I manage to charm Joseph, a seemingly influential bureaucrat at the Road Traffic office who produces a certificate of fitness without ever seeing the car – no trip over the inspection pit for us. : ) Here’s a picture of our new friend – any name suggestions?