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.