Tuesday 22 November 2011

2nd and 3rd Week of November

            Last week a few of my friends met up here at Africa House on their way to Lilongwe. It was the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps and we were invited to the ambassador’s residence for a to-do. They stayed the night and then in the morning we embarked on our journey south. After only an hour of walking we secured rides in the back of a pick-up that was already carrying volunteers. Though it was not going the full distance it was fast, travelling maybe 100kph, the bed was fairly roomy, the wind, loud as it was, was a relief from the heat, and we had been assured the driver was not taking part in his friend’s gin flask.
            We stopped in a small town and each of us bought a cold Coke, a special treat as few of our villages have electricity. We set off again feeling something like a Peace Corps poster as we leaned our our giant packs and drank our Cokes from glass bottles with the sweeping plains of Africa as our backdrop. No sooner had we toasted our good fortune then we heard a loud pop and watched as the back tire ripped away from the rim.
They must have been telling the truth about the driver because he manages to keep the truck relatively straight despite the bucking created by the lost tire. We sailed to a stop just as the last piece of rubber jumped ship leaving the completely naked rim perched precariously yet undamaged on the tarmac.
           

            The last couple weeks I have been loving life, loving Africa, loving Peace Corps. I realized with surprise and delight that despite the many challenges I face here I am the happiest I have ever been. Teaching, which I had been so dreading is lowly getting better. Though the Form Ones talk incessantly and the Form Threes recently stopped me in my lesson to say, “We don’t get you. The way you teach, we don’t get it. Just give us notes like in Chichewa Literature, the words are too hard,” I am plodding along pochoko, pochoko. The Form Threes are now learning to find the subject and verb in difficult and wordy sentences. The Form Ones are beginning to understand the I mean business, and meaning business, does not, as the Form Threes guessed, mean prostitution. My debate club is really taking off. They have improved wildly since our first preposterous attempt. Although that one was proclaimed “much better then the last try!” Over the last few weeks the chair members themselves have suggested nearly every improvement I had in mind. They want logic to prevail and have asked me to help make that happen. They want more relevant topics, preferably, “from the books to encourage students to read and study.” They want enforced participation from each student. I have never been so impressed and proud—I hardly even had to hint at these improvements. My spinach, carrots, and cantaloupe are all growing splendidly and have exceeded all of my expectations, most importantly of all not boring me to death after a week as I feared they would. My house is clean and quaint; nestled on the edge of my plateau village which affords me some semblance of privacy as well as a view that stretches for miles across the rolling plains and just so happens to hold the sunset in dead center. My language is improving slowly, my charcoal skills are sharp.
            I spent a week or two basking in the approval of my community, the affection of my Peace Corps friends, the love of my family and friends back home. “Ah,” I thought, “this is just what I wanted.” But then Mother Malawi, as the national anthem calls her, got wind of my unchecked self-satisfaction and decided to show me what’s up Africa style.
            One of my neighbors stole 23 of my 30 cantaloupe plants, transplanting them to het side of the garden. A man I have been looking forward to working with to find work for the disabled attempted to corner me into helping with an extravagant church building project, and then spoke to me for an hour about how they should get foreign aid even if they are able to do the work themselves. No mention was made of the disabled who are sorely in need of help. One of my best friends in the village fell horribly ill, in danger of death, and no one told me until he was well.  I returned from Lilongwe to find the Form Threes laughing, shouting, and running around the classroom. Half of them walked out when they saw me. The remaining few admitted they had done none of the work I left and they had all failed to bring their notebooks to school that day. Friday, in true Malawian fashion, abandoned me for a family that cooks nsima. I broke my computer charger. Half my spinach died. Finally, last night as I was reduced to tears over my charcoal which refuses to light now that the rains have come I admitted defeat, “Ok Mother Malawi, I get it. I don’t know anything.”
           
            When the tire blew on the truck we all hopped out immediately, trying to keep weight off the rim. I pulled out my pack and started strapping it back on wondering how far we would have to walk before another vehicle stopped.
            “What are you doing?” one of my friends asked.
            “Yea, where are you going?” another seconded.
            “Don’t we need to try hitching again?” I asked blankly.
            “Girl! You don’t travel in Africa without a spare tire!” an older volunteer exclaimed.
            I looked around. No one else had even touched their bag. The not-drunk driver was pulling out tools and began lowering a tire that was suspended beneath the bed of the truck.

            Africa has a certain charming way of knocking you on your ass when things seem to be going great—that delicious meal you spent four hours preparing keeps you up vomiting all night, your good luck in finding a ride right away turns out to be bad lack as you realize the driver is drunk as are the other passengers who are all insisting you need an African boyfriend, the student you think is doing well labels an adjective a verb and writes “no idea” on the test section that instructs her to write a sentence using a vocabulary word. Moments like these are frustrating indeed but you take a moment to assess the situation and do what you can—whether that is telling a drunk driver to let you out, helping a seventeen-year old write a sentence, or just curling up on your bed until your body stops hating you.
            Here in the land of fire the problems are numerous and the struggle constant but most of us volunteers are fairly happy. I’m not a hundred percent sure why that is but in these moments of distress we remind ourselves why we came, think of how we have improved or just trust that we will be back on the road again soon.

Snapshots:

            --My head teacher asking me what my village in America is. When I explain I come from a big city called Seattle he asks if we have a chief.
            --One night as I am preparing my dinner I hear a knock on my door. I open it to find my deputy head’s wife with a bowl of flour on her head, “I came to learn pancakes,” she said.
            --Coming home from school the next day I find the frying pan, spatula, fork, and baking powder I loaned her on my dish rack. They are accompanied by cornbreadesque pancakes.
            --Feeling brave, I don trousers in my village where women do not wear trousers. Along with many shocked expressions, head shakes, and giggles, the trousers also bring Form One girls to my house to stare at them. “You look very nice and very beautiful,” one girls says, “I smired because of trousers.”

            *smired = smiled