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?