Together

Our days have settled into a monotonous rhythm of studying Chichewa, watching the Winter Olympics (which Malawians have no interest in), and going to the market, punctuated by bouts of heavy seasonal rain. I was caught in a downpour while buying produce the other day, so I waited for it to pass under the stall of Mr Pineapple (as I think of him). I went there because he is a big middle-aged man with zero interest in me beyond the pineapples he can sell. The great thrashing on the tin roofs prevented any conversation. I stood quietly surveying the scene around me. Everyone was relegated to the sidelines for cover and the busy market became weirdly suspended, with young men and old women alike lounging on wooden tabletops, huddled in small groups, all of us watching the rain. It streamed down the muddy footpath between us, bubbling.

I had my rain jacket on but I felt clammy from the wetness of the day, from walking and schlepping produce, and - if I'm being honest - from my unwashed hair. When the rain slowed, I hopped on the back of a motorbike taxi to go home. He handed me a large oversized helmet that just barely managed to stay atop my head as we raced and weaved through heavy traffic on slick roads. I was clutching a plastic bag of bananas, not wanting them to get bruised; so I could only steady myself by grasping the seat-rim behind me with my other hand. In fact, this is the local convention when riding a mototaxi; but it felt like an inadequate amount of holding on. "Fifty-fifty I die on this ride," I reflected, resigned. 

I didn't but the bananas got spoiled anyway. Also, the combination of the rain, the greasy hair, the high-speed ride, and the oversized helmet didn't do me any favors. When I sent a photo of myself to my sister, she told me I looked like "the guy from Space Balls." I tried not to have an existential crisis.

It was both gratifying and nervewracking to break up the monotony of the week with an overnight at our teacher's house on Saturday. "You're going to experience THE VIIIIILLAGE," Amess chortled gleefully. She's done this a million times with past students and makes it worth your while. She does not actually live in a village, just on the outskirts of Lilongwe where more-average people live (i.e., no swimming pools). It was raining and the electricity had been out for two days when we arrived by taxi. We learned how to cook nsima on a low outdoor charcoal stove (even though she herself normally uses a gas stove that she owns). I fetched water from a communal well to get that experience (though she has a spigot in her front yard). But the toilet was a proper squatty outside and that was genuine enough (with large cockroaches that Lev kept trying to catch). Poor Thea - as a mtsikana 'young girl', she had to play her proper role by washing all the previous night's dishes. Lev swept the yard. Matthew - as an adult dude - only had to pop down to the market to buy a few potatoes which was not difficult, and then sit and watch the women cook breakfast for an hour. (He felt weird and helped fry the potatoes anyway, which was appreciated.) 

We slept comfortably in Amess' spare bedroom, absented by her two sons who are away at secondary boarding schools. This is the view we woke up to, which reminded me of what babies must see when they are being born. We were being born into Malawian culture, maybe.

Amess is a lively and silly person; we get along well. I would not do well in a highly-prescribed culture, such as Japanese, but I deeply love African informality. At one point, Amess nestled her toes partly beneath my bum, as we all sat crowded together in the dark around a low fire, cooking and chatting, and I thought: "Yeah, sister, tili limodzi!" ('We're together!')

Malawi feels like a place with more possibility to make real friends, compared to Mozambique. I'm not sure why this is so. The widespread use of both basic English and the hybrid that is termed 'Chichinglish' helps. Being in the city right now likely makes a difference. I feel thankful to have kids this time around: there's a barely-perceptible shift in people by having them with us. It reminds me how once when we were traveling through Zimbabwe, a pair of shady taxi drivers tried to bait-and-switch us on the cost of the ride to the Mozambican border, claiming we had agreed on $20, not $10. They would not budge and I finally yelled at them in a very-African way, referencing shame, the eyes of God, etc. Thea & Lev started to cry in the backseat. A stony silence descended till we arrived, and to my utter surprise, they then quietly handed the change they owed us back to Matthew. These particular guys were cheating people all over the place, I'm sure, but they didn't like distressing children. (I myself had no issue doing that. Did I act rightly? Wrongly? Dunno.) 

I'm not at all saying people would be cheating us otherwise - this is not common - but I do think kids make us seem more normal, despite being foreigners.

(See, everyone recovered nicely.)

Friends are necessary for survival and overall happiness. Here's a goal: I pray that by the next Olympics, we'll be watching them with our good azanga in Mulanje (because even little Malawi can get excited about track and field). Tili limodzi!