March in Malawi

March 2, 2001

It’s hard to believe that we left the US 2 months ago yesterday; it has been a packed 2 months!

We hope to go to Mzuzu in 2 days, so I am sitting on our porch, looking out over lake Malawi and over to the mountains on the other side in Tanzania on a beautiful 70 degree or so day.  I can hear the hog grunting in his pen on the farm just to the right of us below the hill.  I can hear their radio playing too, with some happy sounding music, and there is the sound of kids playing in the distance as well, and one of the roosters crowing.  I’ll miss these sounds when we go back.  There has been a steady stream of the neighborhood dogs and chickens through our yard, and lots of people going by on the path, many of them carrying things on their heads.   We leave our doors open for fresh air and light, and yesterday I was working in the sitting room when I looked over at the doorway from the kitchen and saw a dog face turning to look inquisitively at me – “oh no” I said “ you can’t be in here” and as soon as I started to move she left.  We had some chickens wander in one day too, but they barely made in the door when then saw us and turned around.

The seeds we planted when we arrived are a foot or more tall, and some of the flowers have buds on them, so I’m hopeful that we will have flowers soon.  The plants that were cut and stuck into the dirt are all thriving, with some beautiful red leaved plants, geraniums, coleus, vinca, and some type of sedum I think all looking hale and hardy.  The house looks so much “softer” now with the gardens surrounding it.  As I look down the hill I can see the corn/maize is tasseling, the banana trees are heavy with fruit, and the whole valley is gloriously green, with the little angular plots of gardens making a colorful patchwork.  There are lots of colorful butterflies, including one large black one with white spots on it that is very pretty.  Sometimes the butterflies appear to be “dancing” with one another in the breeze.  I’m attaching a picture of exactly what I’m looking at, but you can’t really see the mountains on the other side of the lake very well.

 And the slow pace - delightful!  I was sitting here yesterday morning watching the roosters having an altercation over something, and keeping track of my favorite black and white hen and her 5 chicks that I have been watching since they were little puffballs a few weeks ago and now look like chickens (albeit small versions). The chickens are endlessly amusing and I will miss them very much at home. Makes me want have some at home, but since we live in the city, hardly a practical idea although I know that the laws allow you to do it.  It would take all the fun away to have to pen them up though, since part of the fun here is watching them wandering around doing their thing.  

Speaking of chickens, we ran out of time to buy frozen chicken when we were in Mzuzu last time, so when we got back asked Smelton if chicken was available up here as we had never seen it in the open air market or any of the small shops, and our Norwegian neighbors mentioned that they had sometimes gotten it up here.  He said he would check and came to tell us later that there was a man nearby who would sell us chicken and he was at the door needing payment.  I was busy doing something and John went to talk to the man, came back and got money to pay him – about $4.00 for a whole chicken, so not a bad price for us, but a lot of money for the Malawians who only average about $30 a month in salary.  So John comes back and says, “that is going to be some fresh chicken – he had them with him”.  I was so glad I didn’t go to the door, as I didn’t really want to meet my dinner face to face.  It was fabulous chicken, but when we went to our Norwegian neighbors later and their chickens were out in the yard, with their rooster looking at me, I said “I think Horace (their rooster) is giving me that look because he knows we are responsible for murdering one of his friends from down the hill.”   

We’ve had some periods of dry weather this past week or so, with low humidity and intensely blue skies.  It was a real treat.  It came on the heels of a big storm on Monday night, where the rain was coming down sideways in sheets, and the wind blew hard enough to blow off the roof of the little shack next door.  I have a picture of that too.

 Our big treat this past week was watching movies on my laptop computer.  Our Norwegian neighbors have a huge collection of DVDs that they watch on their laptops, and since they have been here for over a year already, with 2 more to go they have amassed a bunch of them.  The first night, we made popcorn with real butter that I splurged on at the market in Mzuzu last time, and propped ourselves up in bed with the laptop on a big pillow in between us.  What a treat, although I noticed we were a little speechless after if was over, I suppose because it was the first moving image we had seen in over 2 months. 

 The American Embassy announced that they were sending the movie Amistad to the College to be shown for Martin Luther King day and black history month (which seemed a little weird since we are in Africa).  It was to be quite an event, and the secondary school and college both closed down so people could attend.  I was pretty excited even though it was to be projected on the wall of the auditorium that still has “welcome” written in sticky tape on it.  Unfortunately, the vehicle carrying the movie, and undoubtedly driven by some wimpy city driver, got stuck at bend 20 on the escarpment road.  Bend 20 is the first one coming up the hill, and while there is some mud there, we told our University drivers that they should have hired them to drive up as they always make it somehow.  We said those city drivers probably just looked at that first bend and chickened out on the trying to make it up.  Our drivers got a kick out of it though, and we have been so impressed with their ability to drive and on that crazy road up the escarpment. 

 March 3, 2008

We hope to go to Mzuzu tomorrow or the next day so will be able to post this on the blog soon I think.  Today is a holiday here, and we are enjoying sleeping in since our “staff” (cook and gardener) is off.  It’s great to have an extra day to catch up on emails to be sent when we go to town, and to have leisurely time to write here. 

We are continuing to have nice days, although it has been raining at night, which is good for the crops and our garden.  Temperatures continue to be in the 70’s during the day when the sun is shining, and cooler at night – pretty much ideal weather, although on the rainy days it is quite cool.  I’m hoping this weather pattern will last for awhile although the rainy season doesn’t really end until April, we are told that the rains do come and go some during the season. 

We continue to struggle with “the money thing “ – that being the fact that we have money in the middle of one or the poorest countries in the world, and this past week we were bombarded by requests for money.  For example the “maize mill” project I mentioned in an earlier letter is something we are getting more deeply entrenched in. – it’s what we used to call at work “scope creep”.  We’ve made it very clear (in our minds anyway) that we are going to help them get the money, not give them the money, but it tends to become unclear in their minds.  Yesterday I was meeting with a 4^th year student to coach him on the writing and English in his Senior research paper (a fun thing we both volunteered to do in our spare time), so John was going alone to meet with a man from the Electric company in order to get a quotation to use in our the proposal we said we’d help create for hooking up power for the maize mill.  But when he got to the village, he found that Macdonald had assembled the chiefs and village leadership, along with nearly all 30 of the women from the cooperative.  After the introductions, where Macdonald tried to explain that we were not giving the money, but were helping to prepare the proposal to send to potential donors, the chiefs and women spoke and it was clear that they thought we were giving the money for the mill and it was a done deal.  John tried to clarify in the speech that he was asked to give, but with the language differences, and their expectations we wonder how much of it got through. 

Everything we have been asked for is to do good things that  like the maize mill will help them to be self sufficient, money to stock a store, money to buy an extra cow for the butcher to sell, money for tuition – but we don’t want to become bankers or microloan makers.  It opens the floodgates for the whole community to show up on our doorstep, and since we don’t have money for everyone, how does one fairly draw the line and decide who will get it and who won’t.  What bothers me the most about it though is that it perpetuates the mzungu as the giver of money, the one who has the power, and it continues to create an unequal relationship between the mzungu and the local people.  One thing is for sure, it creates ample opportunities for growth and learning as we try to make our way through what is the right thing, and most caring and helpful thing – and for 2 caretakers who would like to find a way to “fix it all” that is a very important lesson.  It is very difficult to see all this need, and to know what is the right thing to do to help – and it is something I’m sure we will continue to struggle with during our time here.