One year later...

…or six and a half, depending on how you slice it. Hard to believe that it’s already been a year since we tied the knot in Santa Fe!

After allowing Christmas, New Year’s, our “since getting together” anniversary, Nathaniel’s birthday and Valentine’s Day to be total non-events, we decide to actually mark the occasion of our first year as a married couple. There are plenty of gorgeous getaways in Malawi, but many are an unfortunate distance away in a country where driving is even more than normally stressful due to petrol shortages and pot-holed, pedestrian clogged roads. And, of course, there’s the fact that we traveled seven of the nine weekends in April and May. Solution? Staycation!

Kumbali Lodge is only about twenty minutes from our house on the outskirts of Lilongwe and, despite the fact that it’s the place where Madonna and Bill Clinton stay when they’re in town, it’s not too ridiculously priced. We arrive and are settled into a lovely room with soft cushioned chairs (we’re so tired of our uncomfortable wicker seating that we’ve already earmarked the dough for a big, cushy couch for our next place) on a private veranda overlooking a gorgeously landscaped garden. A sunset stroll, afternoon sundowners, a custom mini-mexican buffet (amazingly tasty), quiet country sleep, and delicious breakfast later, we’re back home on the khonde feeling totally noodle-like and quite pleased with our celebration-venue.

There’s something great about lodges. They’ve got the same family-run feel of B&Bs, but most are slightly larger and more spread out, combining the best of privacy and comfort. And here in Africa, we haven’t been to a lodge yet that doesn’t have amazing open indoor-outdoor spaces for lounging. Kumbali, for all its high powered guests, is refreshingly unpretentious. The tissue box in our room has a big 600 kwacha price scrawled on top in magic marker, and sits right next to the fancy mirrored tray full of mini-toiletries.

The proprietor, a chain-smoking South African with a huge beer gut wearing shorts and crocs, sits down and shares the story of the lodge’s founding. He bought it as a dairy farm when the government privatized. (I know from prior conversations that the farm was built by Canadians and gifted to the Malawi government who ran it into the ground. The Canadian legacy? A small Malawian village called “Canada” on the road to the lodge.) In any case, the dairy was going under when someone told him they needed a place for three Brazilians to live for five months. He and his wife gave up their own house and camped out in the fields, using overdrafts from the bank (official loans demanded 60% interest at the time) to finance the gradual construction of the current buildings. Is he worried about the current political situation?* Nope – they attract mostly business clientele, he claims, and more problems in the country just means more NGOs spending the big bucks.

And, as we take a stroll through the farm’s maize fields this morning, and consider, with awe, how many Malawian farmers it takes to plant all those stalks, it seems somewhat obvious that the unpredictably organic growth of this locally rooted business has probably had a much greater and more positive effect then all the NGOs. But then again, where would he be without donor dollars to pay for business trips and bills? Reading and many conversations have not helped us draw any final conclusions about aid work and money – harmful in some ways, definitely, but the root of all evil as some claim?

As for us, it feel equally tough to predict how this crazy first year of marriage will play out in the long run. How weird will it feel to get home, open the safe deposit box, and switch back to our “real” wedding rings, which we actually only wore for a summer before replacing with the simple silver ones we brought with us? Like stories we’ve heard from so many of the career expats we’ve met here, will the US feel a little (or a lot) stifling and disconnected or will we just appreciate the creature comforts of the developed world that much more? All questions aside, Nathaniel has made me promise this won’t be our last big adventure – it just makes it that much more of a challenge that we have to constantly balance desire for boldness with those type-A, multiple-contingency-planner personalities!

And now for a photo montage…

*A leaked internal email in which the British High Commissioner allegedly said that the President is becoming “increasingly autocratic” resulted in Bingu kicking the British ambassador out of the country. This, in turn, resulted in Britain freezing their direct budget support to Malawi’s government and a domino effect in which many other funders withdrew their money as well. Big deal? Well, direct budget support covered 40% of government expenses in 2010-2011 and the losses for the 2010-2011 fiscal year alone will be more than USD 100 million.