And more thoughts from February....

7 February 2009

All those I know who consider nicotine one of their vices...today I aided in furthering your habit by helping my neighbors sew up their tobacco leaves. Four leaves back to back, poked through and tied together with grass then hung to dry. As this is the rainy season and the leaves can't dry directly in the sun, sheds of bamboo, grass and thin plastic tarp are constructed. So, for two hours, this afternoon we sat under drying leaves, out of the glare of the sun, shooing chickens, sorting yellow from green [as yellow will dry faster]. At one point in our conversation one of the family...my Form1 bioligy student...made a connection between sorting tobacco and relationships in biology. May have been one of the better moments of my day.
Another was on my way home from the market...walking precariously through a herd of grass munching cattle [why do I always feel like one is going to charge at me?]. What is it about Malawians that they think I can't hear them when they talk about me? Walking behind me was a group of women....only one of whom lived in Kalumbu. As I greeted a man walking by - this is what I heard behind me:
"Oooo...amati 'Mwaswera'?"
"Eya...amadziwa Chichewa."
"Amakhoza Chichewa?"
"Eti...emalunkula bwino bwino. Amakhala pa Land...amasesa, amatunga madzi, amaphika pa moto...."
"Amatunga madzi?????"
"Eya!"

OR:

"WHAT!?!?!She knows how to say 'how are you'?"
"Yeah, she knows Chichewa!"
"She knows how to speak Chichewa?!?!?!?!"
"Of course, she speaks well. She lives at the EPA...and sweeps, gets water, cooks on fire..."
"She gets water?!"
"Yes!"

And of course I can hear all this and am trying not to laugh! And in other good news, my compost is actually doing its job -- making SOIL!!!!


10 February 2009

I've always had this habit of writing lists [remember all my papers and postits Hopee!?]. I wrote to do lists and grocery lists and packing lists. But now they've expanded...it's how I spend my time at school when I'm waiting for teachers or students to show up. I've written lists about Places I want to Go, Things About Kalumbu, Things to Do in Swizterland If I Lived There....Clothes I Would Get If I Were Back in a Developed Country. Germany with Rebecca didn't help my clothes/shoes fetish :) So many nice - yet immpractical for Malawi - clothes. And I am missing witner coats and sleek jeans tucked into boots, and hats and mittens and scarves :(
Soemthing to make you all smile: As part of my daily exercise routine I've been shakin' it to my iPod every night...in my slip! I don't know how it started. Slips in Malawi are worn even on the hottest days under already OPAGUE skirts...I will never understand. But for my more questionable skirts I own a long black slip and that is my dancing costume. It's funny becuase -- after I got back to Malawi my Grandmother passed away...and one of my most vivid memories of my Grandmother is how she would walk around, our house in the states or her apartment in Switzerland, with a normal shirt, beige stockings and a knee length black slip. I don't remember he dancing...but I consider my evening ritual a tribute to her :)
It's strange to think that my life here all started back in Uganda trying to figure out a way to combine development with engineering. And then the crazy process it took to actually get here! I had to become a citizen...for which I spent many cellphone minutes chatting up the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Services -- which apparently are incapable of communicating directly with each other...or the FBI, in the small matter of fingerprint sharing! Then there was becoming an official American, going to Philly and then training in Malawi! That all seems so long ago and so very far away. Will I ever fit back into that life I left in Houston? Or should I try it somewhere else? I don't know if I could live the way I do right now..without being married or having a family...so that I would have that internal support structure that feels so distant right now. Rebecca has commanded that I be home for Christmas...so I will be...but after that I may be packing my bags again! But where? Doing what? I have ideas but those will be my little secret for now :) Happy guessing!