Wait…how does the world work again?

As the holidays approach and the seasons change here in Malawi, we’ve been talking about we don’t realize how much our native geography impacts how we understand the world.

Some of the examples are relatively inane and silly – we make our own frozen fruit here because it’s so cheap that you can’t buy a reasonable amount. (11 large mangos for 100 kwacha / US$ 0.60 ?!) Then we make fruit smoothies that seem incredibly decadent from a northerner’s perspective, but are actually a cheap source of calories here.

Every calculation has to be translated. It takes us a good half an hour – maybe longer – to get from, “How many kilometers can we get on a full tank and how much kwacha does that cost?” to a miles per gallon and affiliated cost estimate in US dollars. And I definitely haven’t conquered Fahrenheit to Celsius. Luckily our Malawi cookbook has a conversion chart for the oven. For daily weather I’ve settled on “hot” or “not so hot” and left it at that.  

Other things seem weightier. We struggle to understand what is going on with the flora. We’re just coming out of the hot “summer” season, but trees are bare or harbor branches full of dead leaves. It seems like they may now leaf out now that it’s raining, but did the leaves die months ago in the “winter”? Was it so hot and dry that they died in the summer? It’s profoundly disorienting to not understand the broad scheme of changes to one’s environment.

On a related note, I can hear my night guard outside the house whistling Jingle Bells. How has this song pervaded sub-Saharan Africa where snow and therefore sleighs do not exist? Is it just that catchy a tune? Culture is a weird thing.

Even more broadly, why is the Irish government pouring millions of dollars into Malawi while things are falling apart at home? How did the Germans and the Dutch end up with such strong representation in local aid organizations? And what is the definition of “missionary” – do you have to be proselytizing? Or just motivated by god?

Becoming aware of these different paradigms – the ways other people see the world – is exactly why I wanted to live abroad, but struggling each day to create new understanding is certainly not an easy or relaxing way to live. Trade offs, right?