September 14th

Today is Wednesday, market day. The market travels up and down the road stopping in a different village each day of the week. Farmers and other vendors know the schedule and they bring their wares to those markets that are closest or otherwise convenient for them. They whole village comes out for the weekly kabwandire. The women who are not there selling their tomatoes and onions come to stock up on rice, beans or soap, the young girls browse the chitenjes and piles of clothes in what Peace Corps has coined the “Bend-Over Boutiques” (well I assume it was Peace Corps, maybe not), and everyone else just comes for the excitement and maybe some hot chips. Not every village has a kabwandire, there is generally one for a certain distance so people from other villages walk to the nearest one, so it is also a reunion of sorts. You spend as much time greeting neighbors as you do shopping. I like market day because of the bustle of people when I visit in the morning and then the quiet afternoons away from the crowd.

But today just as I was preparing to enjoy my calm midday hours I heard a voice outside my house. It was not the usual “Odi?” of a student or neighbor stopping by to greet me, but a mumble. I went outside and found a man wearing dirty and ragged clothes leaning against the short walls that enclose my porch. He had a piece of rope he was twisting in his hands and stared at the ground. I greeted him in Chitumbuka and he responded and then was silent. We stood for a moment in silence until he said something else in Chitumbuka. I didn’t recognize any of the words so I explained to him that I knew very little Tumbuka. He smiled and laughed slightly then didn’t say anything else. It is common that someone will want to talk to me but we lack the words.  I usually just wait for them to give up and leave. However as the minutes dragged on with neither of us saying anything except for him occasionally muttering something I could not understand I began to feel awkward. I started to make the small noises you make when you are uncomfortable and have nothing to say—a small “um,” a quiet “eh.” I noticed that he copied these sounds which I found strange and was relieved when he said “tiwonenenge” (see you later). I said the same and went inside.

I had barely walked to the end of the room before I realized that he had followed me in and was now standing against the wall just inside the door. I was alarmed. Malawians do not enter houses without an invitation, especially a man in a woman’s home. In Tumbuka I said “I’m sorry, but please leave now.” He smiled but did not answer. I said it again and this time he laughed and repeated the words back to me “I’m sorry but please leave now.” Now I was a little frightened and said more firmly, “Leave. Now.” He started to look around the room. I continued to tell him to leave, now raising my voice slightly, pointing at the door, and glaring at him. He ignored me completely. He saw a glass of water on the table, picked it up, and drank it. I kept telling him to leave while he looked around the room, occasionally making eye contact with me and then laughing. I was trying to decide if I should leave him in the house and go to the neighbor for help, if I should threaten him with something, or just wait to see what he would do next. I picked up my phone to call my deputy head teacher, who was at school, only fifty yards from me. The man picked up Friday’s water bowl and drank the water filled with ants and dirt. I reached a recording telling me the phone I was trying to reach was out of service. I called the math teacher—out of service. The man looked at a picture of my younger sister and me and laughed. He was still twisting the rope in his hands.

Finally, just as I was deciding I should risk leaving him in the house and go to the neighbor’s, he turned and walked out. I grabbed my keys, locked the house and went to the school. I told the first teacher I saw what had happened and he got up from his desk immediately. We went outside and found my deputy head among some students. The first teacher told him what had happened and he started to walk toward my house without hesitation. Even the students were staring and moving toward my house. Before we had walked even five yards my deputy head pointed at a man sitting on my neighbor’s porch and said “Is that the man?” He looked relieved. It was the man and they explained to me without delay that “He is not ok, in his mind.”

            They explained that everyone knew him. He is insane and lives with his family in a nearby village. They probably came for the market and he wandered. They told me a story of how he once ambled into my head teacher’s house and laid down on the bed. When they asked him what he was doing he answered that is was his house.

Now he was just sitting on my head teacher and neighbor’s front bench. The teacher forced him up and onto the path. Male students came from the school with large sticks. “They are trying to scare him,” the teacher said as the stick-brandishing students chased him away. “They are saying they will whip him. But they will not whip him, do not worry.”

I was never in danger. The teachers assured me that he is never violent, just gets away and into trouble sometimes. If anything, I should feel reassured of my safety because of the lightening fast response and the evidence of how close the community is—able to identify even the unhinged wanderers from other villages. Yet despite this encouraging end to a somewhat frightening encounter, I felt unsettled. In the minutes facing the man I did not know his intentions, his strength, or his past. Though he never approached me or threatened me, and I was actually taller than he, during the minutes in my house I felt I faced a very distinct possibility of a dramatic life change. Such a sensation, I’m sure is common enough; a moment when we realize that we have no control over events that are already in motion. Like you have auditioned for a play and are waiting for the results—which role will I play.

It was the same in the moments before my big car accident. I remember as I was hydroplaning and after several seconds I lost all control of the car and was hurtling toward the oncoming traffic, I thought ‘You are going to be in a bad accident,’ and then I just closed my eyes and waited. The same once in high school when I still lived in Washington. I used to walk to school and my sophomore year I took chemistry as a ‘0’ period, meaning a class before school, so in the mornings when I walked it was still dark. There had been reportings of a man kidnapping or attempting to kidnap high school girls on the news so every morning I walked with a fear of coming across this man. One morning a man jogging came up behind me and I did not see him until he was beside me, running. I was so frightened I stopped completely in my tracks and when I saw Taylor at school she could not understand why I was almost crying at a jogger coming up behind me. But in each of these instances there was a moment when I thought something terrible was about to happen.

Logically, in these times, when I realize I am safe, the event should end. You are not cast in the role you desire and keep wondering, “what if?” But I think it is not the possibility of sinister events that keeps a jogger from eight years ago sharp in my mind. It is the reminder that our lives as they are can change drastically at any given time—vulnerability we are all aware of but forget, like the sensory whatsit that allows to stop feeling the socks on our feet.

Lately I have been thinking about the way we constantly change and grow as people. There are, occasionally, milestones that change us dramatically and almost instantly, but even in the absence of such happenings we are constantly moving away from one identity and growing into another. It is easy to leave an identity behind and assume another without even noticing. From time to time I like to sit down I recall where I was, what I was doing, and how I perceived myself a year before. Then a year before that. And a year before that, etc. I’m always so surprised at how differently I see myself now, in what a different place I am than I had anticipated, and at the means through which I have changed. Moments like the strange man following me into my house remind me to evaluate myself, not only to take stock of what I appreciate in my life and what I should change, but also because I don’t want to miss anything. When I was in early high school I started taking note of times when I was very happy. Usually it was something simple—all of my friends gathered together on a Friday night at Christine’s house, some of us gossiping about who was interested in whom while others played pool, the girls over for a slumber party, the boys going home to rest up before the Saturday afternoon football game. After I moved to Tennessee I was so grateful that I had thought to appreciate and archive such times that I made it a habit, collecting distinct memories of each apartment I have lived in, snow days, mornings spent with coffee and piles of books.

It is cliché, I know, to say that we should appreciate each day or tell the people we love that we love them because you might get hit by a bus. And that, like most clichés, is fairly true, but what I mean is something more constant. Don’t appreciate your days because they might end, but savor them because they will, and are, changing already. Even if it is just “pochoko, pochoko.”

Snapshots:

            --While still in homestay: my Host Mother, who I suspect was an insomniac, would occasionally listen to ringtones on her phone late into the night. Sharing a wall, I had to turn off my headphones as they were drowned out by the constant repetition of various melodical beepings.

            --Pets in Malawi are not friends, they are lower class citizens allowed in our presence. As such, the children have very little interaction with them except to shoo them away. Inspired by my friendliness toward Friday the children view her with curiosity. When the kitten approaches the children they run away, screaming.

            --One evening, cutting vegetables in my kitchen, I am surprised by loud noises coming from the next room. I walk into the living room to find two three year-old girls, the daughters of my head and deputy head teacher, on their hands and knees in my doorway growling, roaring, and barking at Friday. I laugh so hard the children are frightened and go home.

            --Hitching to town this morning I get a ride in a very old, battered car. I have to pull on some metal wires to open the door, beer bottles roll around at my feet. Police stop the car two kilometers from my destination. The driver gets out, they open my door for me to get out. Before I even have time to panic the officers greet and then pile into the vehicle--they were hitching too. 

1st Week of September

Back when I was just a wee young thing I had very specific ideas for my future. I wanted to grow up to be something of a mix between Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina and Mrs. Cosby of The Cosby Show. First, I would attend a prestigious law school and pass the bar. Then I would sweep off to Paris to study in a high caliber cooking school. I would return head-to-toe fabulous, ready to take on any man, lawsuit, or soufflé. After a brief spell of being envied and admired for my flattering haircut, stylish clothes, and Harvard degree, I would marry a Bill Cosby (he was much funnier than Humphrey Bogart) and cook him gourmet meals when I wasn’t busy winning impossibly difficult cases.

            Instead, I’m living in Africa, and today I played netball (it’s like basketball but with a smaller hoop, no backboard, no net and a ball that doesn’t bounce—we had to use a soccer ball) barefoot in the dirt with my bosses wives and their children. Then I came home, soaked my feet, read some Dickens, and ate gummy bears dipped in Nutella while I listened to classic country. I’m not sure where that puts me on the Sabrina-Huxtable Spectrum but I’m sure not bothered by it. I don’t think it’s so much that I didn’t achieve my goals as I adjusted them. Adjusting what I want is one of the greatest things I’m learning here in Malawi. Like everything it is “pochoko, pochoko” but it is a worthy lesson. For example, no, I am not learning to cook? bake? torch? the perfect crème brulee during my time abroad as Sabrina did, but I can make a mean bean burger from scratch now, and if you want some fireside banana pancakes, I’m your girl. And though Rusty would be horrified to see what has become of the layered bob he gave me, the ladies here think I have movie star hair. And though I’m not learning to defend cases in court, I am learning Chitumbuka, which, no, is not a widely spoken language like Mandarin that I can use in the business world. But it is precisely because of its rarity that the Northern Malawians are so delighted when they hear me speak it. All it takes is a “Muli uli?” and they at least know I’m trying. Also, I think they feel honored to hear their language spoken by a Westerner, it validates the vernacular. Like saying, I understand and appreciate that you are learning English, but your language is also legit.

            Well, that was a tangent. What I mean is, rarely, if ever, do I set out for something specific and get it. But if I work backward from a specific goal and find its root, that is usually achievable. For instance, at the root of this desire for a law degree is simply a desire for education. Behind the compulsion to be admired is a need for self-confidence. Hiding in my longing for lattes is my craving for sweets, caffeine, and a slight pampered feeling— the cure for that one is tea, mundazi, and reading time. People are a little more difficult to substitute; I can’t just use brown sugar instead of molasses when I want to talk to Jenn, but there is always company to be had and I don’t like my peeps replaceable anyway. 

Some more snapshots:

--A billboard reading: “Vasectomy—For Men Who Love Their Spouses”

            -that one is going right up there with my favorite billboard, it’s somewhere near Crossville, TN and advertises a vasectomy reversal. Really? On a billboard? How bad a job did the original doctor do that you are willing to call up a doctor that advertises for vasectomy reversals on a billboard? It must be a code for drugs.

--After finally admitting to myself that I’m afraid to go in my indoor kitchen after dark I decide to clean it. I arm myself with a broom, bug spray, and a stick. Before I even begin the cleaning I remove two enormous mortar and pestles, two hoes, two machetes, and an axe.

-- Playing netball with the Luviri women and children includes, but is not limited to:

-two women with toddlers tied to their backs with chitenjes (one toddler gets hit on the head with the soccer ball, the game is not paused)

-a small boy farting at the moment he shoots a basket (the game is paused)

-a boy who is simultaneously playing netball and herding goats (he disappears occasionally when they wander too far)

--Wanting a cat, I go to a house in the village to buy a kitten. After I have paid and received the kitten I am invited to eat some nsima. While eating a child brings in a small feed sack. An old man wearing a messenger cap featuring Ché Guavera’s face and name puts my cat, Friday (as in “my man Friday” from Robinson Crueso), in the bag and says “Leave it in there all night. This is an African black cat. It’s different from the English.”

--All the women of Luviri doing impressions of me because I am a crazy person that pets animals.

--While at homestay I play Michael Jackson for my family. The boys, aged seventeen to six, bounce and dance to “Smooth Criminal,” the little one even brushing off his shoulders. All, of course, to candlelight.

--I am now acquainted with a McFrancis, McFrance for short, a Scholastica, and a Fexter.

End of August

Good morning again! It’s ten thirty and a particularly chilly morning for Malawi. It’s windy and drizzly. Rain is rare outside of the rainy season but it reminds me of home so I am relishing it by putting off the painting I was intending to do in favor of some jazz and a cup of the India tea Gelby sent and the Rum & Raisin chocolate Haakon forgot when he moved out (thanks, and thanks).  I’ve been thinking a lot about my first day of school at good ole Beech. It’s a story I know I have told a disgusting number of times but I think it’s a good one so I think I will tell it now and then try to relate it to Malawi. Ok? ok.

My beautiful sisters and I grew up in that charming region of Washington state just north of Seattle where the population is both infused with an affinity for hiking mountains, swimming rivers, and scouring garage sales as well as the culture of a city preoccupied by books, coffee, and brunch. Seattlites called us redneck and although we did have some less sophisticated tendencies like rehabilitating injured turtles in the bathtub or caroling in trailer parks for the elderly, we were also close enough to the city to enjoy the occasional symphony or play and once we were old enough to take the bus Saturdays in the city were frequent. Also, thanks to a trust fund left by my great-grandmother the Dixon girls were also spared those lowly public schools and I spent ten years in well-respected Catholic schools. So, when during the summer following my sophomore year Papa Dixon announced that we would be moving to Goodlettsville, Tennessee and attending a local public school my shocked friends attempted to prepare me for the worst. Some of my friends had especial expertise having experienced public school –shudder-

“Oh gosh Becca, you’ll have to stop praying before you eat.”

“Oh yea, or at least stop crossing yourself, I can’t believe you actually still do that anyway.”

“Definitely, and you’ll also have to start swearing.”

“Hmm, you might want to start practicing now, it sounds really weird when you say swear words.”

“Yea, and you’re going to have to change the way you dress, no more of these tee-shirts with the cartoon characters on them.”

“Oh Becca, they’re going to eat you alive.”

With these encouraging words buzzing in my ears I set off for Tennessee and began my career at Beech High School expecting a special breed of cowboy hoodlums. I was shocked the first day by the sheer size of the school (around 300 per grade) and its extreme level of filth (people actually smoked in the bathrooms). I found myself jostled around in the crowd as I looked for the first class on my schedule. Due to an administrational mistake my schedule had teachers’ names but no classroom numbers so my map of the school was useless. Fortunately an older student noticed my disorientation and asked if she could help. Bowled over by the friendliness and evidence of “southern hospitality” I explained my predicament. She whisked the schedule out of my hand,

“Mrs. Word first. Oh she’s great, you’ll love her. She is so nice. Come on I’ll show you. My name’s Stacy. What did you say your name was? Oh, Rebecca? I have a friend named Rebecca. She’s the best, you’d love her, she’s so nice. Where do you go to church?”

I had noticed that she was carrying a bible with her, stacked neatly on top of her binder. I had assumed it was for some sort of summer reading. While I doubted Beech  offered Theology as Archbishop Murphy High School had, I thought perhaps it was for a literature class, or maybe sociology.

“Um, well, you see I just moved here on Thursday so I haven’t been to Church yet,” I was still very religious and embarrassed that I had missed mass the day before, but also afraid of giving the wrong impression that I was too religious as my friends had warned me against. Religion at my other school had been considered very private so I thought maybe she was asking because she wanted to know where exactly I lived. In the Catholic school systems of Seattle proper you might ask where someone goes to church because unlike the school, which you chose, churches were divided by district so you went to the nearest one.

“Oh. Well I go to Long Hollow Baptist. It’s just right down the road and I love it. You should come see it sometime, I’m sure you’d love it too. It’s really a great church, the people are all so nice and everyone would love to see you there.”

Presently we arrived at Mrs. Word’s room for Anatomy and Physiology.

“Rebecca!” Stacy greeted another girl who was already in the classroom. “I was just talking about you, this is Rebecca too! She just moved here. How are you, girl?”

“I’m great,” Rebecca answered. “And guess what.”

“What?”

“This morning, I witnessed to,” dramatic pause, “thaareee people!”

“Oh. My. Gosh. That is incredible. Way to go Rebecca.”

And then there was a high five.

“Thanks girl. It was amazing, I wasn’t nervous at all. I just went right up to them and I said, ‘Have you heard about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?’”

“Wow, you are so brave. Way to go.”

Thankfully they were excited enough they had stopped paying attention to me because if they had looked they would have seen me gaping at them in astonishment, waiting for the cowboy thugs to jump out from behind desks and bookshelves and say ‘Gotcha!’ But that never happened. Not then, not when a teacher invited me to bible study, not when friends expressed their concern that I would find myself eternally damned, not ever. And the thing was that although I was overwhelmed, confused, and often offended they were unfailingly sincere. They just wanted to share what, in their minds, was the best they had to offer.

It took me a long time, too long to accept Tennessee. I still cringe when I reflect on my poor attitude. I viewed Seattle as a golden wonderland and Tennessee as a miserable exile I had done nothing to deserve. It’s a gleaming reflection, really, on the many people that were still willing to be friends with me despite my ungracious demeanor. In a way I was doing the exact same thing I complained they were doing to me—insisting that my point of view was correct, instead of accepting that it was just my point of view—but I was doing so without any of the generosity that was behind the many attempts to “show me the way.”

By the end of my years in Tennessee I felt almost as at home there as in Seattle. When, without knowing my circumstances, Lindsey Smith called me a little Southern lady, my surrounding friends smiled into their beers knowing I would give her a snappy response, and indeed I forced a smile and answered that, “I was not from the South.” Unphased, she shrugged, said “Well you are now,” and took another sip of her beer. Everyone laughed, and I did too because by then I was, and I finally realized that’s it was not an insult, but actually an honor to be claimed.

Once again I am faced with a culture that it would be easy to dismiss as somehow inferior to my own. Yes, it is labor-intensive to start a fire and grind beans with a mortar and pestle if I want coffee, and sadly vegetables do not stay fresh as long without refrigeration, and true it can be frustrating to have little to no idea when you will be able to get transport, and maddening that vendors will always try to charge you more because they assume white people are rich. But that just makes it all the more moving when a woman with five kids cooks for you, when children wait with you at the bus stage for the two hours it takes to get a bus, when a neighbor searches the village for competitive prices on your behalf because they are just as bothered as you that you would be overcharged.

Like in Tennessee, I know I will reach a certain level of exasperation living in a new culture. It is certainly difficult to affix a sunny disposition when the neighborhood children start calling your name outside your window at six am (my name which they pronounce Lebek) but they are just children and want to welcome me to the neighborhood. And use my bao board. And when my new friend Judith comes over and says, “Let’s go to the garden,” then drags me off to weed and till her onions for three hours it’s ok to think wistfully of afternoons in Seattle where Taylor would say “Let’s go to the movies,” but it’s crucial I remember an invitation to the garden is just as friendly as an invite to the movies and though not as…obviously fun, it is certainly a worthwhile cultural experience, and also horticulturally educational.

4th Week of August

At nine ten this morning, having finished my breakfast, I sat down to write a small ‘to-do’ list. Somewhere between “draw water” and “chat” it struck me yet again how odd it is to be here. When I first arrived in country I was amazed and delighted how Africa looked just as it was portrayed on TV—the mud huts with their thatch roofs looked just as I had imagined and the barefoot children running after the Peace Corps vehicles seemed almost kitsch. It was like when you read a highly descriptive book and are apprehensive about seeing the film version but find yourself pleasantly surprised at its accuracy.

            “Well now that was much better than I expected. To tell you the truth I was afraid it would ruin the book.”

            “I know just what you mean, when you asked me to come along I must admit I almost said no. But did you see how elaborate the costumes were? All those brightly colored chitenjes the women wore as skirts? Beautifully done.”

            “Oh yes, I agree. And the variety of items they carried on their heads? I was so impressed by their expansion beyond the stereotypical. I mean, they could have just had them carry water like it was the ‘Jungle Book’ or something, but to add firewood and folded blankets and even those women that just put something small up there like a book, as if it were habit, really creative.

           From there I continued to follow the Peace Corps outlined emotion-waves as I slowly adjusted to the culture. After what our text book described as Initial Enthusiasm (The Honeymoon) I experienced Initial Country & Culture Shock. One day I found myself crouched on a small wooden stool beside the fire in my host family’s outdoor kitchen. Thanks very much to the smoke billowing in my face, my burning eyes were streaming tears and my nose was running uncontrollably. As I fumbled to find the tissue I have grown accustomed to carrying on my person at all times I realized that I was furious with myself. Just weeks before I was spending my mornings lounging in a soft and warm bed, my afternoons were filled with hand-crafted lattes, lush yet manicured parks, and a world of beautifully penned novels. My great tragedy was the evening hours which I spent serving martinis, wine, and steak to the too-wealthy. Fortunately even in that hardship I was surrounded by intelligent, interesting English speakers and I was well compensated. I don’t know what kind of profound stupidity I must have been suffering from to think it was a good idea to leave such comfort and opportunity to go live off in the bush without running water or electricity, enormous spiders everywhere I looked, and a harsh lack of bookstores.

I struggled for a time with the frustration that I had brought these trying circumstances on myself because I was foolish enough to think I wouldn’t mind any sort of physical deprivation for the sake of loftier goals like self-improvement and foreign aid. I couldn’t stop thinking about all that I had left behind in the U.S. and the frequently stated “but you are giving up so much” kept drifting back to me with disheartening clarity. I had dismissed such proclamations while I was still home enjoying my friends, family, and top-shelf cocktails, but during Initial Country & Culture Shock they haunted me. After all, your early twenties only come around once and I had decided to spend two invaluable years of mine in a country where I cannot even expose my knees with any decency. I had wanted to eat local organic foods, to bike, walk, and hike everywhere. I wanted to help people that needed and wanted me to help. I wanted to gain patience and perspective, to apply all the skills of human understanding I had acquired in my English major to concrete situations. Instead I was eating margarine and white bread for breakfast, and nsima (a sun-bleached, twice-milled, nutrition-less corn flour cooked with water into something similar in consistency to Gak or silly putty) and boiled greens for every other meal. I was learning that women often gain a whole lot of carb-weight here, that with the language barrier intellectual conversations are nearly impossible, that most of my students won’t graduate high school anyway, and that there is more than a slight possibility you will have enough alone time to make you a little cray-cray.  

Now from such a murky depth you might ask, but how, Rebecca, did you climb back out? And the answer is the same as my constant response to my neighbors when their Chitumbuka careens out of my supposed Intermediate High level—“Nkhusambira pochoko, pochoko.” I am learning little by little. I am so fortunate to have been apart of what must be the best training class Peace Corps has ever seen; sixteen people who from day one let down their defenses and made the conscious decision to be a support group for each other. Our trainers constantly amazed us not only with their diligence but their investment in our well-being, two of them even going so far as to play Sardines (a reversed version of hide-and-seek) with us Chitumbuka speakers during our language intensive week. And the Malawians themselves have surpassed their reputation as the “warm heart of Africa.” I have never seen a community so willing to embrace an outsider and so immediately helpful. If I want a paintbrush, I mention it and the next day someone will show up with one to loan me. If I can’t find cell phone units at the trading center, I mention it and someone will show up to inform me when some have arrived. If my deputy head’s wife comes over and my fire is not started yet she will start it and also sweep my courtyard and cook me breakfast.

There may not be the variety of foods here I am accustomed to, but at least my cabbage is fresh and my chicken almost too free range. Maybe there is no running water, but the children are more then happy to carry it for me when I don’t want to if I give them a piece of candy. And yes, my conversations are less complex but learning a new language and allowing myself to look ridiculous in attempts to communicate have value of their own. So little by little I am learning to live here. I realize I was a bit idyllic in my motives for coming, and probably also inspired by vanity but I think I will achieve at least a version of all my goals while I am here. If I remember correctly, one of my goals was to change my perspective and priorities and that has been the hardest one but it’s coming along. I’m learning that I am not here for a special African diet or workout plan and maybe the point is not so much to look a certain way as it is to be as healthy as you can manage. Maybe the point is not to be the benevolent educated white person with all the answers but just to be the white person that’s trying. And maybe the point is not to understand everyone’s perspective but to see that it is different and that, as they say here, is “just ok.” I’m not going to change the world and I’m not going to be transformed into Super Woman just because I lived in Africa for two years. But little by little Malawi will change me and I, in turn, will change small things. I already taught my deputy head teacher (vice principal) that one doesn’t have to beat a kitten repeatedly on the head when it annoys you but that a little water on the face is an even stronger deterrent and a little more humane (that one was for you Juniper). And I have already learned that although spiders can and will cause nightmares, I have now met a poisonous one and learned that a phobia is a kind of indulgence and there is no room for it when there are practical things to be feared. But this concept, like everything else, I am learning pochoko, pochoko (I still bug spray the hell out of the big ones).  

In addition to my own silly reflections I would like to include some snapshots into my life here as I know that some of you are curious about the differences between life in America and life in Malawi.

--Sitting around a fire with a woman named Judith and her many children. She has asked me to pound peanuts into flour so I can “learn.” As I sweat over the hefty mortar and pestle I wonder when it will be acceptable for me to take a break. Just then Judith motions for me to stop. Then she holds up a barbequed mouse, fur, head, and tail still intact, breaks off a piece and hands it to me. Yum.

--Having decided to paint myself an accent wall I borrow a paintbrush from a neighbor. The bristles are less than an inch long and the wall is probably 12ft at its height. I stand on the table and paint while the little girls of the village lay on the floor coloring pictures for me. We listen to the “Sound of Music” soundtrack.

--While still in training and living with my host family they decide I can come to the “garden”: walking back from the fields at dusk, a basket of maize on my head, a truck with a bed full of people passes slowly. Every passenger giving me a wide-eyed double take as they realize it is a white girl under the basket.
            --First day at my new home my head teacher approaches me with a chicken in each hand and I am asks, “Which shall we kill?”

--Me killing the chicken in my backyard with a kitchen knife

--Hitchhiking to town for supplies I secure a ride in the back of an armored car

An Introduction

Pochoko, pochoko

Well hello you all. I know that some of you asked that I would write while I’m here so I will suppose I’ll try that out and see how it goes. If nothing else, at least you can check up on me if you so desire. Because my nearest internet connection is an hour bus or hitchhike away updates will probably be sporadic at best so I ask for your patience. Also, I’ll probably post multiple entries at one time as I’ll just write them as I bumble along and then post them all when I have internet. Anyway, I miss you all more than I can say and I think about you all the time.

XOXO,

                                                                          Becca