Balaka

We’ve been in Balaka a couple weeks now, and I can’t believe my time here is almost over. These last weeks have been really busy and (as usual) filled with a variety of interesting and colorful experiences and I can’t possibly begin to get them all down on paper. I’ll just hit on a few of them, starting with the mundane and progressing to the spiritual.

So, on a mundane but still interesting (I think – especially if you are inclined to spend time abroad) note, I’ve adjusted to different standards of dress here in Balaka. In Rumphi I always felt comfortable wearing my tan cotton pants and button-down REI shirts. The standard of modesty in Malawi is to make sure you’re covered from shoulders to below the knees, especially the midriff. I’d asked Phil, our project manager who did Peace Corps here, if it’s necessary to have two layers of fabric covering the knees, as it was in west Africa, where it’s considered indecent for the silhouette of your legs to show when the sun shines through your skirt, but he’d never heard of that. So in Rumphi I wore my cotton pants all the time, and felt comfortable doing so. And I found the Malawian culture to be quite gentle and forgiving in terms of dress – as long as I dressed modestly, Malawians were perfectly accepting, and sometimes when other azungus didn’t dress modestly I noticed that even if Malawians looked a little uncomfortable, they were quiet and tolerant about it. Here in Balaka there is a heavier Islamic influence, and people reacted differently to the clothes I wore. After being here a few days, I went to the market in pants, and sensed that everyone around me felt very uncomfortable. Merchants harassed me more. I felt uncomfortable too, and shopped for chitenjes (2-meter lengths of cloth that you wrap twice around your waist over your skirt). More people were watching me than usual. I hate shopping alone; I don’t make good choices and feel I need advice, but when a merchant unfolded one intricate gold and blue pattern with leaves and some sort of mythical animals to display it to me, a bunch of older Malawian women looking on got all excited and gestured to me that this was the one! Although many fabrics here are imported from Tanzania, this particular print is an authentic Malawian style, and as soon as I bought it I wrapped it around my waist over my pants and could sense the relief and approval of people around me. They smiled and gave me thumbs up throughout the market. From then on I’ve worn Malawian dress when I go out, and to work as well, to the great delight of the data team staff, as well as Malawians on the other survey teams. The Malawian national style of dress for women is called Nationalwear: a high-waisted, long, curve-accentuating skirt worn with a top that hangs a few inches below the waist to make sure the midriff is completely concealed, and a headwrap of the same pattern of cloth. When I first wore this to the market I was treated completely differently. People smiled at me, as if they felt complimented by what I wore, and they now spoke to me in Chichewa assuming I’d understand them. So I’ve basically become hooked on Malawian wear, because of the way it makes them (and me) feel – validated, accepted, like I’m one of them. And because this way I’m treated less like a foreigner, and instead just like another person. It occurred to me that this is one advantage of being a woman here: I can create rapport instantly through what I wear. There is no particularly Malawian style of dress for men.



But there are also disadvantages to being a woman. One morning I went to find Smart (love that name!) who cleans our hotel rooms if we leave him our key. I went around to the backyard which is the kitchen/cleaning area – the place where the staff kill chickens, cook over small charcoal stoves, and wash clothes by hand. I didn’t find Smart, but handed my key to one of the other guys washing clothes. I hadn’t met him before. When he took it he said, in very clear English, “Sometimes I wish that instead of bringing me your key, you would have sex intercourse with me.” I speechlessly grabbed my key and walked away, and came to the data room where it was almost time to start the workday. I pulled aside Tony, our Malawian supervisor who got his masters degree in international development in Boston, and confided the experience to him, and he said I should report it to the management. So I went into the office, where Solomon, Yaum, Max, and Joyce sat, poised and ready to assist me in any way, and when I mentioned there was a problem Solomon directed me to sit and describe to Max, the manager. So I did, in front of all of them. And as I’ve mentioned, my Malawian friends speak in the most formal and polite way in general, but when I described this experience to Max, his jaw fell open and he said “Fuck!” Which was, of course, all there was to say. He asked when it happened and whether I could identify the person, so together we walked back and found the guy, still there washing clothes, although now at a different bucket. Max spoke to him in Chichewa, and I caught the English word “reception”, and I asked Max, “Did I misunderstand him? Did he really say, `Sometimes I wish that instead of bringing me your key, you’d bring it to the reception?’” Max just smiled and said that no, he thought I understood correctly, but we were going to the reception to have the guy confess what he did. When the guy sat down across from me back in the office, I felt bad for him; he looked very scared and also very guilty. Now my whole body relaxed, and I looked into his eyes and sent him forgiveness, and wordlessly pleaded with him to tell the truth. Amazingly he confessed the whole thing, even saying the offensive words in English. When he was done, Yaum told me not to worry; I am safe here and they will deal with it professionally, and that my part was done. I was really impressed at how professionally and how perfectly (right down to “Fuck!”) they dealt with this incident. But why did it happen? My Malawian friends found it bizarre - why would it occur to him to say that? Perhaps because of some strange ideas about how western women are about sex.

During the second week of fieldwork here in Balaka, I hit some sort of professional climax. Now fully responsible for managing the data team, and with a lot of support and good mentoring from Pete who is now project manager, I took on more and more responsibility, the team became happier and more inspired, and I found that others turned to me as some sort of point person or mediator. I felt that my people skills were finally being put to good use, and that my contribution was appreciated. Felix (now my best friend here) told me that I’m “not like the other whites” and that members of the data team told him how happy they are with me supervising and that the main survey supervisors appreciate my friendliness and cheerfulness. And Tony (the Malawian supervisor of the team) and I have built up a friendship, as well as a trusting professional relationship – something he didn’t experience with any of the other azungu managers. I just kept chipping in wherever I could, whenever I saw that I could be of help. For example, I saw Mike Saturday evening when he was wrapping up organization of the Sunday lake excursion. I asked how it was going, and he confided that after collecting 500 kwacha from everyone who wanted to go, we weren’t going to have enough money for fuel. One of the drivers estimated it would be 12,000 kwacha to go there and back, so if we took a minivan of 18 people, we’d only have 9,000. Another problem was that more than 18 people wanted to go – so how could we determine which ones to refuse? We sat down with Felix who came up with the solution: collect an extra 500 kwacha from everyone, recruit a few more people, and take 2 minibuses. I knew that members of the data team who’d signed up weren’t going go at that price, so I threw in 500 kwacha for each person on my team. Data team members make less than supervisors, and really watch their money, and have missed many trips and parties because of this. I also lent 500 kwacha for supervisors who hadn’t gotten their per diem yet. So the trip actually happened, and we had enough money for fuel, and the data team was grateful for what I did. Of course, Malawian style, all this planning took place from about 9-10 pm the night before the trip. Anyway that’s one example, but in general I just kept chipping in, in different ways, and I realized that my role was appreciated after a dinner crisis we had one night. The cook, appropriately named McDonald, came to me very worried one afternoon and asked if he was supposed to cook dinner that night for the main survey supervisors. I gave him my cell phone to call Pete, who instructed him to cook. But since the accountant Dave was out of town for the day, McDonald couldn’t get money for ingredients, so he didn’t cook (but didn’t notify anyone of this). In the evening Dave told me what happened and asked me to talk to McDonald. “Why me?” I said, teasingly, “My job is to manage the data!” He gave me a huge smile and said I’m a diplomatic person and maybe I could do a good job of it. I said I’d consider it – but McDonald was gone when I looked for him. The next time Davie was out though, McDonald asked me to lend him the money, which I did. So during week 2 here, I was completely engaged in the project, and took on more and more, and felt like I’d found my niche and that I was making a unique contribution. But I was also stretched really thin, since it took a lot longer than I anticipated to train the new azungu members of the data team (among azungus, we had complete turnover except for me), and I came down with a sore throat, a cough that got steadily worse, and pinkeye.

Saturday in spite of knowing it would make me sicker, I dragged myself to Felix’s graduation in Zomba. He’s my closest friend here and a brilliant and determined scholar. Although his father (who separated from his mom) gave him almost no material support as a child, he was determined to complete college with a credit (that means, I think something like magna cum laude). His mom supported the family by selling vegetables in the market. He got some help from his half brother (a doctor, now working on a PhD in epidemiology in Finland) to pay school fees, and he paid his final debt to the college with an advance on his salary from his first research job. At the age of 28, he completed his B.A. in political philosophy with credit just as he had always dreamed. On campus he was involved with conflict resolution and human rights groups, and everywhere we walked people greeted him. He was much loved there. During the graduation ceremony about 350 graduates received diplomas, their names called out one by one. People generally applauded, whooped, and cheered only for those they knew, so most students received a small amount of applause from 10 or so family members and friends. But when they called out Felix’s name, everyone cheered. He was known and loved by so many. He hopes to pursue a PhD in peace studies.

The graduation itself had much in common with what you see in the U.S.: a crowded assembly hall with graduates seated together in cap and gown, the formal procession of faculty in robes and the university mace, two speeches followed by the long and boring awarding of individual degrees. But of course there were typical Malawian variations. The graduation was scheduled to begin at 8. This actually meant that you had to arrive at 8 in order to get a space near one of the entrances (not a space in “line”, as there was no line, just a mass of people), so that you’d be able to get in before the seats all filled. As soon as the doors opened at 9, bodies started pushing from all directions to cram through the doorway. Now I understood how people get crushed and killed in mobs, and I wanted to step aside but realized that would result in me missing the event entirely. Instead I just tried to ride the crowd and not fall down. After taking my seat, I watched people funneling in through the other doorways, and one woman in a pink suit and pink heels and pink hat had a bad fall. She was okay though. After all the seats were filled, people continued to file in and fill all the stairways, and all the standing room everywhere in the hall. There was not one inch of walkable space left. Judging from the way we were crammed in there, and the style of cramming in and out of doorways, I reflected that if there were a fire we’d all be completely screwed.



The two speeches hit on the usual themes, congratulating the graduates for their hard work, their sleepless nights that had finally paid off, the professors who were so hard on them because they cared about their intellectual growth, how they can now contribute to the society and this is the beginning of the journey, etc. But there were a couple particularly Malawian parts of the speech: graduates were entreated to now give back to their extended families, and should expect to get a visit from an uncle or another relative after starting their first job, as a prompt for this. And development was a big theme, how academic development is crucial for the development of the country, and how the graduates are heroes in the effort to fight poverty, hunger, and disease. I joined Felix’s family dinner afterwards and many speeches and toasts were made in his honor (in Chichewa) and I made one in English (with translation by Felix’s cousin Edwin who’s in a Catholic seminary) about how intelligent and hardworking he is and how he has such good character, and concluded “I really hope he is able to continue his education.” I later realized that all the family members’ speeches probably concluded differently – something relating to how because of his success he now can be of more support to the family. He later told me that my presence increased his family’s confidence in what he’s doing – working away from home as he is, and I felt so glad that I went and could help him in this way. I think I mentioned previously that he’d been in the seminary where he loved the social science courses but got fed up with the lack of critical thinking in theology classes, and dropped out. His whole family was upset with him for doing this and reprimanded him since he was considered a talented preacher. But he’s very strong-willed, so he supported himself through farming (which he also loves) for a year while he applied to Chancellor’s College, even though he didn’t meet the pre-requisites for enrollment. Somehow he got in anyway (he’s REALLY SMART!) and went there to study political philosophy and prove to his family that he can be successful by following his heart, even when it contradicts the advice of everyone around him.


Felix’s mom and Felix are the two in the center of this group of friends and relatives:



Me, Felix’s cousin Edwin, Felix, and another family member:



On the right are Felix’s mom and aunt; at the far end of the table are Felix, his brother John, and sister Ernestina:



Mike, Felix, and Martin:



Felix, Mike, and I were having dinner one day, and somehow we got on the topic of God (one of Felix’s favorites – he has several). “I cannot move the mind of God,” said Felix, “since God is existence itself, completely perfect in every way – so why should I pray?” Yet he appreciates that prayer can be therapeutic. He’s looked so deeply into the religion! And I said that the way he was talking about it, it sounds like he is separate from God, and asked if he considers himself separate from God or not. Mike looked at me and said that was a good question, and that when Felix preaches to the people, he doesn’t talk like this, about abstract stuff that they won’t be able to relate to. “No,” said Felix firmly, “I am not working to confuse the people. I am working to help the people!” Mike said that many Christians consider themselves separate, in some way, from God. But when Felix answered my question, he said that no – he’s not separate from God.

So that’s Felix, who I’ll miss very much after departure. And I will miss being here. I’m not interested in leaving; I feel sad and a little depressed at the thought of it, although I’m starting to think about it and prepare for it. I certainly accept it, because being here, and being friends with Felix, inspires acceptance – the unwanted events that come towards me in life are completely trivial compared to what he and my Malawian friends have faced. I had no idea I’d be so happy here. Africa will continue to be part of my life, after I leave, in some way I’ll have to make it so, and Malawi in particular, this warm and gentle country that healed so many of my fears.

Farewell Rumphi

Our last week in Rumphi included another farewell party – this one organized by the data team and the VCT team. Our data team members had been unhappy about the farewell party for the main survey team, because it included an extraordinary amount of alcohol and a cover charge of 1,000 kwacha (about $7, but a day’s salary for them is 1,500 kwacha), and most members of our team don’t drink. The custom in Malawi is that party guests pay a fixed price to cover the drinks, food, and music (equipment and DJ) for a party. Moses, the only big drinker on our team, had helped to organize the main survey farewell party, and the three women on our team loudly protested the amount of money that was going to alcohol. I admired their assertiveness and suggested that we organize our own cheaper party, with less alcohol, maybe a dinner party and/or talent show and get James Mkandawire to sing. He’s the singer I wrote about previously, a nurse and VCT supervisor who wrote the first Malawian song about Christmas, and when I tried to buy one of his CDs from him (not from the store – since they’re all bootlegged copies so would not support him as an artist) he downloaded the music for me and refused any payment. I couldn’t stand this, but we’re hoping to chip in and buy him a guitar before departing Malawi. So of course, when I asked him, he said he’d be happy to sing. We had a meeting between the two teams to organize, and Evelyn and Eric from our team volunteered. Evelyn wanted to have a dinner party, but most of the group thought that that, with a talent show, would be too much for one party, especially since the VCT team had to go into the field on Sunday – they depart around 6 a.m. Annie and I told Evelyn we’d make guacamole, the only interesting and foreign party food we could think of with locally available ingredients. By the time Saturday evening rolled around, I was completely exhausted, worn out from struggles with Ruben and the pressure of the last week of data cleaning. There was nothing I wanted more than to crawl into bed at 8 pm and stay there. People have been sick here; Amanda was in the early stages of giardia, and surely I was coming down with something. But Annie encouraged me and said the data team would be sad if I didn’t go and make guacamole, so I dragged myself there.

We whipped up a bunch of guacamole, and then entered a data room that had been transformed! They had rearranged the tables so the room looked like a banquet hall, and served a full dinner!! They set out plates of rice, and people helped themselves to beans, vegetables, and meat. I was so impressed with what they pulled off, and touched that they thought to include vegetarian food (which is not normal either, at Malawian parties). I hadn’t eaten prior to the party, since I felt like I was getting sick and wasn’t really hungry. But suddenly I was hungry, and the spirit of the occasion lifted me up. Already I was almost dancing, it’s impossible not to move to this music, and I grabbed two women from the data team, Agnes and Liness, who were sitting alone, and encouraged them to join me to eat with the men from the VCT team, to break up this segregation (both by team, and by gender) that had unconsciously occurred. Eric from data team was the MC. He’s a reserved, very thoughtful and considerate person, and although he has a shy nature, he was perfectly poised talking in front of the group. He did a beautiful job and I felt so proud. He’s a very conscientious member of the team, which I figured out after a couple of weeks with him – someone whose advice I can rely on.

Maisha and Chifuniro started the show off by singing a gospel song, and Kinke got up and did a rap which was a very sweet flirtatious tribute to Keshet, an inside joke about an experience they’d had in the field one day. Another guy got up and told a riddle, and Maisha also sang a gospel song alone. But none of us azungus had contributed anything! I felt at a loss: no piano there, and although I could conceivably sing a Nepali song, I didn’t think they would like it, since their musical tradition is so much more lively and spontaneous and interactive than the Nepali musical tradition. I just felt they’d find it boring. So we all sat uncomfortably, until finally Ruben saved the day. He got up and said that without his guitar, he had no talent, but just wanted to share a few words. And he spoke about how many Malawians feel that Malawi is a poor country, but he has observed that actually it is not poor, that life in Malawi is rich in some sense, and entreated our Malawian friends to appreciate the richness of their lives. As a Chilean he offered a unique perspective; he considers Chile to be halfway between Malawi and the U.S. in terms of development. He loved Malawi, as most of us here do, and he appreciated the spirit and earthiness of life here. He hopes to come back.

James contributed so much to the party. He sang for us, and the dancing was interrupted twice for a couple of hysterical skits by James and Azize. I saw him sit down with a plate of food in front of him around 10 p.m. The food had been served at 7:30, but he’d been absorbed in making sure the music equipment worked and the party was going smoothly. With his forearms on the table, he bowed his head, and his whole body relaxed in prayer. And he stayed there for a long time! When he finally lifted his head, he happened to look right at me, watching him from across the room. The look on his face was a little disoriented, as if he was re-entering the party environment after having been in a very quiet place. The other thing that struck me was that, he didn’t seem flattered by my admiration for him. He just continued to treat me in his usual kind and respectful way.

Here's a photo of James (center), with Wyson and Doreen:



So the party was a huge success, and as usual I danced contentedly, and stayed till midnight in spite of my exhaustion. Two days later we departed for Balaka district, our third and final survey region, and made it in good time with a single breakdown along the way. We got views of Lake Malawi, deep blue and lined with palms, and we drove through rubber plantations where Kinke bought a rubber ball, made by blowing up a condom, tying it, and wrapping strips of rubber around it. The drive was long, about 12 hours, and I asked Kinke to sing some Malawian songs for us, which he did, beautifully. He is a soccer player and a professional dancer, who is considering joining the army since it’s one of the few accessible careers here. He’s considering it even though his brother has had bad experiences in the army, and I pressed him about whether it’s what he really wants to do, himself, or is he just doing it because others like his soccer coach are pressuring him. We azungus tried to sing some American songs for him, but we weren’t very good with the words, and didn’t sing with quite the same spirit as he did, and I wished I were a little better educated about my own culture and proud of it. We dropped him off in his hometown, since the VCT team has a week off, and I put out my hand to shake his as is the custom, but he said “Ow!” and gave me a hug instead. Here “Ow!” is an expression of enthusiasm, not of pain, just like in “The #1 Ladies Detective Agency”.

Here's a photo of the rubber plantation, and one of Annie and Kinke with his rubber ball:





So here we are in the town of Liwonde, with a much better housing situation, closer together, in the same place as the main survey team, and I actually got my own chalet, which is a real luxury that I did not expect. There’s a lot to take in here, and it’s great to have my own space like this, to process things. Since Ruben is gone, I’m now managing the team, and Raul, a Spanish demography professor has joined us to help with the STATA programming. I met with him and described how things work on the team, and also gave him a Word document with our schedule and roles, and suggested we define our roles clearly, to the team and to each other, and also define our schedules and stick to them. He seemed fine with all that (but who knows; Ruben seemed fine with everything at the beginning too) but also mentioned he’d be spending about 6 days in Zambia before starting with us. Also Tony, the Malawian supervisor of the team, took several days off for a job interview, so I was alone managing the team. And, I think I’m not any better at managing than Ruben was, but I’m bad (and good) in completely different ways.

Management in the developing world poses unique challenges. For example, when we first arrived in Liwonde, we did not have a data room in our hotel. The conference room we hoped to use was occupied by an anti-corruption conference. Phil arranged for us to rent a small room in a nearby hotel - actually a bedroom which the hotel staff converted into a mini conference room by removing the bed and putting in some tables and chairs. It wasn’t big enough for our team, but we squeezed in anyway, as Malawians do. So we worked there, eagerly anticipating the departure of the anti-corruption advocates, which was supposedly going to happen on Thursday. Thursday morning Humphreys discussed the room availability with the manager in Chichewa, and told me there was an 80% chance it would be ready by 2. Later I got word it would definitely be ready by 1, then definitely by 2, then definitely between 2 and 3. This sounded pretty definite, even here, so I checked out of the other room before noon to save project money. For the afternoon, my plan was for our team to unload the equipment and set up the room, which could easily take a couple of hours. So I needed the key to the supply room, which is actually just the bedroom of Crystal, another graduate student here. But she had gone to the training center with the main survey team, where they were training interviewers, and took her key with her, not to return till the evening. So I called Pete (our new project manager since Phil’s time here is up) to get Crystal’s phone number, and since airtime is expensive here, around 50 cents a minute, he was brief and said he’d have her call me. But she didn’t call, so an hour later I called Augustine, who was at the training center, and talked to Crystal, who indeed had her key. The center was a 20-30 minute drive away, so I figured I could get a driver to take me there, if I could find one, and then I could bring back the key. It was by now about 12:30, and I was very hungry and realized I would not get to eat if I did it that way, since I needed to be ready to supervise our team at 2. Yael, a grad student from Berkeley, said she wanted to go with me to the training center, and when I mentioned my dilemma (and hunger) she said she could give the key to the driver and send it back with me. DUH! This she did, and we got in the room around 3, and the team was there, ready to unpack, but although the data room was at last available, we soon learned from the management that the key to the data room was not yet available. Which of course meant that, we could not yet move the supplies into the data room. The key to the data room was “lost”. There was no prediction, estimate, or probability regarding the timing of its return. With perfect irony, it became available at 6 p.m., just as our team was departing for the day. I felt I'd done a good day's work that day

Mpherembe

Last week (because of delayed internet access, I mean July 6-13) was busy!! I went into the field twice, attended another Malawian dance party, and visited Austin’s village, Mpherembe. I feel so full, so content here, however tumultuous my emotions may be at times. Back in Seattle something felt lacking but I couldn’t identify what it was – something was missing. But now that feeling, which I felt for so long, is completely gone.

Last Sunday (July 13) the main survey supervisors made another trip to Nyika, and Phil paid for their gas this time since he felt bad about the previous, unsuccessful attempt. This time, thankfully, they made it and had a great time. I wanted to join them, but had arranged to visit my friend Austin in his village and meet his family that Sunday. I mentioned him in a previous post; he was orphaned and has lost all his siblings and volunteers for several CBOs (community-based organizations) on HIV prevention, education, and treatment. I couldn’t imagine turning down the invitation to see his home and get a real taste of life here in Malawi. The evening before our departure was a huge farewell party for the main survey team, which headed down to Balaka to start training interviewers for the next survey site. I intended to stay only till 10 p.m., but the music was so good, and the company was so wonderful, and there was so much good dancing that even though I was extremely tired, I just couldn’t leave early. I had become close with Felix and Hastings, more than I am with any of the azungus here, and I’d enjoyed sharing a hotel with the group. I felt their warmth, their energy and community, even when I was in my room and not hanging out with them. I felt safe with them there. The party came around the time of my halfway point here in Malawi, and the realization that I’d have only 3 weeks with these friends in Balaka made me even sadder that I’d miss them for a week. To compound all this, at the party they kept playing one of my absolute favorite Zambian songs (a popular one here), called “It’s Over, Over”, which is very upbeat and danceable, but the lyrics are about a man whose wife has died and he’s dreaming about her and wakes up and has to remind himself she’s gone. The music alone is compelling, but the contrasting lyrics make it poignant, painful, genuine, heartfelt. This song is so wildly popular here, that it’s actually playing right now as I write, outside my hotel room. So I stayed and stayed at the party and felt so full and appreciative of this unique and precious time. I went home around 12:30, energized from dancing and with all these different emotions swirling around in my mind, and fell asleep around 2, knowing that I had to get up at 5 the next day.

Austin had told me the trip to Mpherembe took 2-3 hours, which sounded like a reasonable day trip to me, considering how accustomed we are to travel. But as the weekend approached, he said it might be best to stay overnight since buses can be infrequent and irregular on Sundays. He assured me that we could get back by 7:30 a.m. Monday, plenty of time to be at work by 9. (We work Saturdays, so Sunday is our only day off.) We departed at 6 a.m. Sunday. The first bus took quite a while to depart since we had to wait for it to fill up, but the ride to Ekwendeni was smooth. In Ekwendeni, we waited an hour or so for our second “bus”, which turned out to be an open-back truck piled high with 50-kg bags of, what I thought was maize, but was actually dried fish. The idea was, people would pile on top of the fish bags, so we’d be riding about 10 feet above the ground on this already top-heavy vehicle. This didn’t look too safe, and I thought about how most Peace Corps deaths are due to car accidents, but I climbed up there with Austin to get a feel for it, since he said it might be 2-3 more hours before another vehicle departed. And the feeling I got was, this was not a good idea. So I explained that I didn’t feel safe on that, and I’m an only child and how horrible it would be for my parents if I died over here. He completely respected my wishes, and we climbed down and he actually got us seats in the cabin of the next truck that was in line. We waited and waited, for about 2 hours, but the truck wasn’t filling up. Finally Austin found another open back truck (but with no cargo) and we squeezed in the back with about 15 other people and I had a great seat on top of the spare tire. The road was unpaved, but the ride was smooth (by African standards), and we stopped only once to change a flat tire. We arrived at Austin’s home around 2:30, his daughter and niece running out to greet us. Tana (named after the Peace Corps Volunteer who funded Austin’s studies after he was orphaned) beamed at me and let me hug her, but Phirirani (Austin’s niece) looked scared of me. Austin’s very shy and sweet wife Mitness had a feast prepared, hot and ready as soon as we got there. Since he knew I’m vegetarian, he told her not to kill a chicken for me, which would be the proper way to receive a guest in this culture. For my part, I’d been culturally prepped by Felix and Hastings, and was prepared to eat the chicken so as not to be rude. But Austin knew me well enough. (Although I saw he felt bad about not killing a chicken!) Mitness set out rice, nsima, and three different vegetarian dishes: beans, greens cooked in a creamy sauce, and beans with greens. The only thing I’d consumed all day was about a half liter of water, since I was never sure when a pee break would come during our various bus travels, so I was dehydrated and hungry. The feast came just in time.

Here’s a photo of Mitness, Austin, and their daughter Ellen:

I was exhausted and headachy, and tried to drink a lot and sneaked some aspirin (not wanting to reveal my discomfort), and we went to a choir festival, a fundraiser for a local church. Austin was an excellent cultural interpreter. He warned me, before we went, that at the festival they might call out my name and ask me to make a specified donation while they were singing. The church-building was in-process, the walls almost done but no roof yet, and about 150-200 people were crammed in there, some on plastic chairs, many seated on the ground, sun beaming down on us, and a charismatic master of ceremonies dressed in black slacks and a bright pink button-down shirt held a microphone up on the stage. Different choir groups would get up and perform songs, and the MC would call out requesting donations, and at the end of the song he’d call out the total amount donated, which was the amount you’d have to give if you wanted to hear the same song again. They found a seat near the front for me and Austin, since I was a foreigner and so an honored guest (or was it white privilege?), and as we proceeded down the aisle I heard one of the old ladies say “azungu” (“foreigner”), and I turned and grinned at her. She and her friends burst out laughing, delighted that I understood at least that much. Not long after we were seated Austin explained that they called me to come up and dance on stage with them. Crap! “Really?” I asked, “Did they really say the azungu has to go up on stage?” and he said yes, and that the woman who’d just come over to us was there to take me. There was obviously no choice, so up I went, and the crowd whooped and laughed, so delighted that the azungu would do this, and I joined their dance that involved lots of skipping, and at one point one of the men grabbed my hand and we hopped on one foot all the way around the stage and the crowd got all excited again. It was a beautiful experience. I enjoyed the rest of the singing and dancing without anxiety. After the choir festival, a women came over to greet Austin, and he introduced us and explained that she has HIV, and he encouraged her to get on ART a couple years ago. Now whenever she sees him, she comes to greet him and thank him again. “He saved my life,” she told me.

Austin showed me around town, and back at his home, more family members kept trickling in. He’s supporting 6 children: two of his own, two of his wife’s siblings, his deceased brother’s daughter and his deceased sister’s son. Since Mitness is from a remote area, far from a school, Austin offered to take in her two siblings so that they can receive an education here. His sister died about 10 years ago, and her husband refused to care for his own child; apparently this is common here. And Austin’s brother and sister-in-law recently died of AIDS, so now he is caring for their son as well, and may take in their other 3 children (now with their grandmother). Austin is fed up with the social network structure in Malawi; his experience is that when you have money, your relatives want to be close to you, but when you are orphaned, they don’t want much to do with you. But he is obviously doing way more than his share. And he only about 25 years old!

I did some meditation in a spacious shack (made of hay) that Austin uses to store tobacco and maize, which gave him time with his family without having to translate into English all the time. And after dinner I went to sleep around 8 p.m., which gave him more time to get errands done and have some quality Tumbuka-speaking family time. We rose at 4 a.m. the next day, and like he said, we were back in Rumphi by 7:30, and made it to work on time. I was pretty tired but I was happy. The team appreciated that I went; the Malawians appreciate that I want to really understand their life and relate to them. This is important to me. I appreciated how Austin and I were able to communicate and respect each others’ needs: I got my meditation time, he got time with his family, and we compromised on transportation without conflict.

There were a lot of other adventures last week, and I can’t write about all of them, but I’ll tell you about my first foray into the field. All of the students on this project can go with the interviewers into the field to get a taste of village life and an understanding of how fieldwork is done, and help the supervisors with checking questionnaires. Last week included my first two ventures out into the field. First I went with Keshet, a Penn student who recently arrived. She’s British but of Israeli descent, a microbiologist who is working on the HIV virus, here on the same scholarship as Amanda. Like me, she is struggling to find a career path that will satisfy her passion for socially engaged work and also make use of her scientific training. She told me about the background of the virus and why it’s so hard to combat, and why it’s so hard to develop a vaccine for it. The virus infects cells, and it’s programmed so that whenever those cells reproduce, they are also infected, so a person is never rid of it. Since no HIV patient has ever mounted a completely successful immune response against it, it doesn’t fit into our traditional conception of how a vaccine should work: the immune system’s response is always inadequate. While we were alone in the vehicle chatting, a group of children gathered around, in awe of this strange sight: a vehicle with two white people in it. We look bizarre to them, like no one they’ve ever seen. Our pale skin, our flat cheekbones, our long and pointy noses, our smooth hair that won’t go along with the cool kinky braids they wear; everything is foreign. They stared for quite a while, some smiling back when we smiled, but the little ones taking shelter behind the legs of the older ones, not sure whether these foreign beings were trustworthy. Although Keshet and I weren’t doing much, some of the kids eventually plopped down and took a seat to watch us as if we were the most interesting movie they’d ever seen. We were in a remote village, and these kids lived a very simple life. Their clothes were torn and un-mended, but their faces were radiant. There was one boy (around 9 or 10?) in particular whose smile seemed very wise and gentle. One of the older children (around 12 or 13), was the leader among them, and she was fearless. She held a long axe that she swung around while she talked, and at one point while the kids were standing around I noticed she was unconsciously chewing on the edge of the blade. She clearly called all the shots: she ordered the kids around, ran fast to get sugarcane, and ran with a stalk of it in her mouth, which seemed hazardous. She was the only child brave enough to respond when I asked “muli uli?” (how are you?) in Tumbuka, though even she was too shy to look at me when she replied. The others just continued to stare radiantly (or shyly), especially that one boy. I pulled out my sheet of 25 Tumbuka-English phrases that Austin had so carefully printed out for me, and asked him what his name was. He didn’t answer, but beamed at me beatifically. He, in this impoverished setting, didn’t seem to think at all of the inequality or injustice of our different situations, instead he appeared to experience only the purest delight at encountering such a foreign and interesting creature. Eventually the leader got brave enough to come right up to our car and pointed her stalk of sugarcane through an open window in the back, right at me as if it were a gun. She looked excited and afraid and aggressive (which was her nature), and I wasn’t sure if this was an offering or an attack! I decided it was probably a gift and that her aggressive manner was only to cover her fear, so I fished an orange out of my bag and passed it to her. She whooped and took off – with both the orange and the sugarcane! We felt duped as the kids ran up the hill with her to examine this treasure. Our audience was gone; the show was over. But a while later, another of the older girls walked by our vehicle with two 4-foot long stalks of sugarcane and laid them sweetly against one of our open windows. “Oh thank you!” I exclaimed, but she only smiled sweetly, without looking at me, and walked away. So we still weren’t sure if it was a gift for us, but when our Malawian counselors returned we told them the story and they said yes, it was “the reciprocal gift”, and we all divided it up and enjoyed it. The next evening Jonathan (one of the counselors) told me they had returned to that village, and that the boy had told him he wanted to learn English so that he could communicate with me. I was so touched. We didn’t exchange a single word, but I felt very connected to that boy. People are very open-hearted here.

So those were some of the highlights of last week. It’s a very special time, being here. After the departure of main survey team, time stood still again for me. It’s been still for the past several days. No worries about the upcoming transitions. Just being here, being alive, completely and deeply alive.

Nyika

A week ago Sunday (July 6), I went on a trip to Nyika Park with a bunch of our Malawian staff. Nyika is about 60 km from here, which is 2.5 hours since the road is unpaved, and it’s a huge forest reserve with lots of zebras, some elephants and antelopes, as well as a unique landscape unlike other parts of Malawi. Phil, our project manager, who did Peace Corps here in Malawi, had organized the Nyika trip in previous years, but this year wanted the Malawians to take charge for organizing it. I think the idea was at least in part to empower them and discourage the parental relationship that can happen so easily in development work. (Amanda and I talk about this all the time and had a huge prolonged drama about whether or not to organize our data team to chip in for tea, which Kayesa provided for free in Mchinji, but is not provided here by the neon purple Hotel Pokani.) So the main survey team organized the Nyika trip, and a few of us from the data team went as well. We departed at 6 a.m. “Malawian time”, which is anywhere between 6 and 9 a.m. and turned out to be 7:15 a.m. Eighteen of us squeezed into a white minibus, which comfortably seats fourteen. Orange dust billowed behind us as we bounced along the unpaved road. Since it is now the dry season, the orange dust coats the grass and foliage, as well as your skin, hair, and nostrils. After an hour or so of bouncing, the minibus overheated, and we pulled over and ate some sugarcane, and some of the guys added water to the radiator, which was clearly leaking. We took off again, and made it to the entrance gate to Nyika in decent time, with another overheating or two along the way. We found a mechanic at Nyika and we all sat on a stoop while he replaced the radiator cap. I spotted a 2-inch long blue wasp on the floor. The Malawians told us its Chichewa name translates literally as “cow-killer”. If it stings a cow, it releases some poison and the cow dies. Ernest told me that they rarely sting people, but the sting can kill. The Malawians seemed unperturbed by it, on the floor right next to where they were sitting, but Amanda stomped on it with her Keen sandal and killed it. Those Uzbekistan Peace Corps Volunteers are really tough!

I went to Nyika because I wanted to spend time with my Malawian colleagues. Seeing some wildlife would be an added bonus, but hanging out with them was my first aim. And it felt great, completely right, to do that. A few other azungus (foreigners) joined the trip, but mostly I really wanted to hang out with the Malawians, and so I did. I felt content and comfortable sitting with them, listening to their Chichewa banter, enjoying their company even though I understood little. I picked out the English word “toothpaste” and asked what they were talking about. Apparently some religion in Malawi forbids its members to use toothpaste. Then we went around and shared our religions, and when Evans, who was wearing a pendant of Africa around his neck, said he practices the “bona” religion, Ernest burst out laughing. “Why is that funny?” I asked. Bona is a pagan religion that predates Christianity (at least here) and he told me a little bit about it, and I think he really appreciated that I was respectful of it. Somehow then about 10 of us, some Malawian, some azungu, got into this very interesting and fruitful discussion that touched on globalization, genetically modified crops, abusive corporations, and development in Malawi. “I don’t want to complain to the WTO or the UN,” said Andrews, preferring for Malawians to focus on self-development. The Malawians in our group expressed frustration at the American government’s response to 9/11 and lack of leadership on environmental issues. We were really cooking, but then the car got repaired and we all squeezed in again and started bouncing, and the discussion was over.

The scenic area of interest was another 60 km inside the park, and the dirt road was now a lot steeper and rockier – and many of the rocks in the road looked like white quartz (coated, of course, with orange dust). We bounced uncomfortably, rocks and dust flying around us, and overheated several more times. At one point a pipe burst and steam spewed into the vehicle. Each time three of the Malawians patiently looked at the engine, diagnosed the problem, and repaired it. At one point the entire group pushed the vehicle to the side of the road so the three amateur mechanics could lie underneath the bus and do some more proper fixing.



(Not sure what Azize is doing in the above photo!)

After about 10 breakdowns, it was time to head back, even though we had not made it to the scenic part of the park. The Malawians – for whom such opportunities are rare – were very disappointed and frustrated. The azungus set out walking back because at least we wanted a (however un-scenic) hike out of it, and after this last breakdown was fixed, the others picked us up on the way back. The way back was mostly downhill, but we got out and walked for a few of the up-hills to reduce the load (at the insistence of the azungus), and we ironically made it back to the gate, and in fact all the way back to Rumphi, without another breakdown. The trouble had been the combination of steep up-hills, the over-packed bus, and the rocky terrain, combined with that particular minibus’s tendency to overheat. The Malawians were furious at the head driver who is in charge of all the project vehicles and gave them this one for the day, insisting it would be fine, instead of the larger and more reliable one they’d requested.

One of our three determined minibus fixers was Felix, whose room is next to mine in Country Accommodations. They call him “the philosopher”, a name he completely deserves. He attended a seminary school for 3 years, where he studied sociology, psychology, and cultural anthropology, since pastors need to be able to understand the people they are serving in order to best help them. He also studied theology, but disliked it because critical thinking and skepticism were discouraged in those classes. So he transferred to Chancellor’s College of Malawi where he earned his degree in political philosophy. He wants to earn a PhD in Peace Studies and has looked into programs – he plans to apply to the University of Notre Dame and the European Peace University in Austria. “We need peace in Africa,” he told me. He feels that corruption and other problems can be solved with conflict resolution and meditation. I was so impressed with his forward-looking thought. When he first told me all this I felt very inspired and ran to my room gave him my Life magazine photo-biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., which I bought in Atlanta and devoured on the 18-hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg. I hope he can achieve his aim.

While Felix and I were talking one evening about these things, Hastings popped in and joined the discussion. He looked like he was tired or cynical of the topic, but when he saw how engaged and curious I was, he joined in. “I hate politics,” he said. He used to work for the Center for Social Research, affiliated with Chancellor College. He helped with monitoring the elections in 2004, and observed widespread fraud. First, the register came out very late, so that people in opposition strongholds were required to vote far from their homes and were not notified till the day of the election. When they showed up at the nearest polling station, they were told they were not registered there, but needed to go to another one, 15 or 18 km away, which is impossible since few people have cars here. Illiterate people were told to vote for the current regime. Election results were tallied in each district, but when he and foreign observers watched opposition candidates clearly winning in the data, the government-sponsored radio claimed the opposite. When district results were supposed to be faxed to the capital, representatives claimed the fax machine was broken. The numbers (both the phone number, and the election data) received in the central office did not match what was supposedly faxed from the different regions. The press is controlled by the government here. The two main radio stations are government-sponsored, and the one alternative station was given a (government-issued, obviously) permit to operate only in a small region of the country. All this is very frustrating to these intelligent, forward-thinking young people.

Here’s a photo of Felix and Hastings:

When we departed for Nyika early Sunday morning, Felix asked me what my expectations were for the trip. I told him I had none, having no idea what to expect, but just hoped to spend time with friends. This attitude served me well, and at the end of the day, I felt content with the day’s experiences. If only I could approach life that way!

Last Sunday (July 13) the Malawian supervisors made another Nyika attempt – but instead of joining them I went to visit one member of the data team, Austin, in his village, Mperembe. I haven’t yet heard how the Nyika return went. I’m hoping they made it, and I’ll tell you about both these adventures in my next post!

Rumphi

On June 25, we departed Mchinji for Rumphi, our second survey site. The main survey team had left a week earlier, so we (the data team) and the Voluntary Testing and Counseling (VCT) team traveled together. We set off in a caravan of 6 white minibuses, with sprigs of pink azalea-like flowers stuck under the windshields by the staff of the Kayesa Inn. All of the Kayesa staff came out and followed us down the road a ways, waving and calling and sending good wishes. It was a warm farewell.

We rode, and I passed around m&ms, which the Malawians (this is disturbing) first thought were ART pills (ante-retroviral therapy for HIV). The driving was smooth, until at some point we realized we were no longer in a caravan! We pulled over, and a Malawian in an old Japanese truck pulled up and explained to our driver that one of our vans had some trouble. I just love how easily they depend on others, and how quickly others offer to help. All the vans in front made u-turns, keeping with our caravan pact, and regrouped where one van had overheated. The driver fixed the problem in 45 minutes, and we were off again. We left the flatland and drove through rolling but oddly-shaped hills, with different vegetation: various kinds of pine trees which we’d never seen in the central region. Some of them had really long trunks but with branches and needles starting only above about 10 feet. We saw lots of logging companies at work, and men with logs stacked 6-8 feet high on the backs of their bicycles: most walking the bicycles uphill but one pedaling very slowly. The deforested areas looked strange and unfriendly, but I was glad to see reforestation efforts: rows of neatly planted small pine trees.

Here in Rumphi we’re spread between several different hotels, with the data room and most of the Malawians on the data team at Hotel Pokani, which is painted a neon shade of purple that nicely complements the rosey purply brown hills behind it. I initially shared an inviting chalet with Amanda at Matunkha lodge, which is in the hills outside the town and is run by a Dutch organization that also runs an orphanage on premises. It was so quiet there, and I slept very soundly. A few days later I was moved into town, and I really appreciate being a 20-minute walk instead of a 45-minute walk from work. Sun sets at 6 here, and there are no streetlights. When I work late, I can get one of our minibus drivers to take me home, but since they are driving in the field 10-12 hours a day, I hate to make them work extra. We all miss the community feel of Kayesa, but we are adapting to our new situation. Below are Agnes, Austin, and Eric, and Moses, in Hotel Pokani

Amanda joined the data team before departing Mchinji. She just completed her MSW at Penn, and did Peace Corps in Uzbekistan, which is one of the roughest places to do Peace Corps. She was constantly harassed by men there, and responding to it often made it worse, so she had to try to contain her anger, which grew inside her. Sometimes it would burst out in spite of her efforts to control it. Once she was at a bus stop with a friend, and a man kept harassing them to follow him to his bus (or taxi?) and wouldn’t leave them alone, no matter how much they said they weren’t interested. Finally Amanda couldn’t stand it and just gave him a huge shove. Everyone turned and looked at her, completely stunned, and there was a long moment of silent suspense. Then one of the male onlookers said in Uzbek, “She’s American. They hit men there.”

Soon after arriving in Rumphi, a member of the data team, Humphreys, invited the entire team to his wedding in Lilongwe set for July 7. We were all so excited about this possibility! A Malawian wedding – with dancing, music, good food, and instead of staying in hotels the way Americans do, arrangements would be made for all of us to stay with friends and family members. However, we realized that attending would require 2 unpaid days off work since Lilongwe is an eight hour drive from here. Time passed and it was unclear whether the team would be going or part of the team or none of the team. And this is so typical of my experience here; it’s completely uncertain whether something – a trip, a party, whatever – is actually going to happen. In the uncertain period approaching Humphreys’ wedding, a farewell party for Jessie did occur, Malawian style, which means that everyone pays a fixed amount to cover the beer, soda, and the beef that they cooked over a grill. They brought in these huge speakers and started off with some hip hop music and progressed to African pop. There was lots of great dancing. There was this one guy wearing a long, brightly colored Guatemalan poncho and a camouflage army cap, whose nickname (which suits him perfectly) is Kinke. He and another very drunk guy had a creative, uninhibited style of dancing involving lots of butt wiggling, sometimes clearly directed at certain people. At the other end of the spectrum was James, who doesn’t drink, and seemed introspective and spiritual when he danced. He appeared completely immune to the drunkenness and flirtation going on around him. I found out that he’s actually a talented musician. He supports himself as a nurse and by taking temporary research jobs like the one he has with our project, supervising the counselors who give HIV tests in the field. During the last round of the survey he was somehow able to record a song he wrote on some borrowed equipment and eventually got it produced. It’s the first Malawian song about Christmas, in this 50% Christian country, and it was a nationwide hit! He has been unable to record another song, and doesn’t have the opportunity to go to music school.

More time passed and I realized we were not going to attend Humphreys’ wedding. It was too expensive for our staff to take that time off, and to pay for the bus ticket. So I asked Chifuniro (a leader in the group) if he’d ask the group if they want to organize a group gift and told him I didn’t want to pressure them but if they want to organize I’d put in 1500 kwacha (around $11, but a day’s salary for them). I like encouraging a sense of community in our team the same way that the leaders of our social network group do back at UW, but it’s a delicate thing to do here with the cultural differences and the extreme differences in disposable income among our team members. But this way it turned out just right. The group organized quickly, they all put in 500 kwacha, and their excitement and generosity were so contagious that people from other teams also contributed. I felt ecstatic and connected to them and inspired by their generosity. We picked out a set of 5 high-quality pots and had a good chunk of leftover money to give him as cash, which is the custom.

Chifuniro and Evelyn took a solid hour (this is not an exaggeration!) to wrap the gift. They’d bought these 3 sheets of shiny silver wrapping paper with red hearts and white flowers painted on to it, and they borrowed scissors and tape from our supply box. They were dismayed that we’d run out of “white celo-tape” (clear scotch tape) and only had brown packing tape left. I felt that Humphreys was going to be just thrilled and that the brown tape would really not bother him in the least – but since Chifuniro and Evelyn seemed so concerned, I suggested making little rolls of tape, sticky side out. They implemented this in their wrapping design, and Evelyn also devised this way of leaving an extra fold near the corners which covered up some of the small pieces of brown tape they’d placed there. They were so meticulous the way they arranged the papers, quietly considering how to most beautifully line up the 3 papers, each of which was shorter than the length of the box. We chatted a little, but mostly they worked silently, attentively. “Gail, I like your style,” Chifuniro told me. I was a little confused by this. I was wearing these old, really baggy, unflattering cotton pants, old sneakers, and a loose-fitting button-down shirt from REI. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Your style of celo-tape,” he said.
I missed the presentation of the gift, which occurred after 9 p.m., but the next day Eric showed me the video he’d taken of it on his cell phone: there was some dancing, singing, clapping, whooping, and Humphreys with this huge grin on his face looking happy and embarrassed. A success!

Roles are constantly shifting in this project, and my job here has changed since Mchinji. Ruben has transferred supervision of the team to me, and Amanda is helping me with some aspects of it, but Ruben and Marcela are still helping us with the work of resolving data discrepancies. Ruben, Amanda, and I have completely different ideas about how to manage the team, including how to work with our Malawian data team supervisor, Tony, who has a masters degree in international development from Boston University. So the transfer of authority was rocky (and having 3-4 strongly opinionated supervisors for a team is never easy!!), but we got through it and have gotten into some sort of routine – though things will continue to shift right till the end since our departure dates are staggered. Monica, a demographer from Penn, helped us for a week with a self-contained data cleaning project, and it was great to talk to her about her work exploring the relationship between learning one’s HIV status and educational attainment of one’s children. I read her paper and got an idea for how to extend her work, which was exciting! Not much time for research here though.

We had an adventure to Nyika Park last weekend with a bunch of our Malawian staff, I’ll tell you about it in the next post.

Mchinji

My first week in Malawi was so full and colorful. Two American women from our project picked me up in a tiny white minibus with a Malawian driver Weison, from the Lilongwe airport and took me to the Kayesa Inn in Mchinji district, the first region where the survey is being implemented. Kim is a politics student (or post-doc?) who I think is studying whether majority vs. minority status of different ethnic groups in a country affects their inclination to collaborate politically. She has a Fulbright to stay through January, and is here with her adorable and intelligent 14-month-old daughter Kezia and her husband Josh, a philosophy grad student whom she met on the previous survey round – he was here with an NGO building a library. Jessie (pictured at left in Kayesa Inn) is an outgoing and very sassy sociology student at the University of Florida who is managing the Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) survey team – which means she oversees the Malawian supervisors who manage the Malawian counselors who administer HIV tests in the field. On the drive to Kayesa, I drank in the Malawian countryside, which now in the dry season has orange dusty clay earth, not much grass, trees shaped completely differently from American trees –banana trees, mango, palm, and baobab trees, and one particular kind of tall tree with very large round leaves and huge orange blossoms on top that I swore I’d seen in Nepal and India. It is winter here since we’re south of the equator; here winter means it’s light from 5:30 a.m. till 6 p.m., never rains, and is sunny and 70s – 80s during the day, but 50s or even 40s at night. The mornings are lovely with pink and pale yellow light, birds singing, roosters crowing, and quiet morning chores like scrubbing laundry and hanging it out to dry.

We are here implementing the Malawi Longitudinal Survey of Families and Health, compiling a large database of health (including HIV status), economic, social and demographic information for a large random sample of Malawians. I have only a general sense of how our various staff fit together, but I am involved with the data team, a group of Malawians trained to do data entry in Access and Excel, and a few grad students who are managing them and coordinating with the other teams. Our team is responsible for logging and keeping track of quantitative parts of the survey, managing databases, checking for discrepancies, and sending interviewers back into the field (when possible) to resolve them. When I arrived, several weeks after fieldwork started, the team was being managed by a warm and very energetic Chilean demography student from Penn, Rubin, and his lovely Chilean wife Marcela (in photo at left). Rubin created a huge Access database with 9 sub-databases and all our work revolves around that; he named it “Galu”, which means “dog” in Chichewa. He is bursting with ideas for how to make our whole process more efficient and reduce errors, and after he and Marcela depart in 3 weeks I don’t see how I’ll possibly match his enthusiasm when I will (most likely) take over managing the project. He is a great manager and is including me as a co-manager, which is fantastic (and also a sign of a good manager). We students on the project can take on various roles: some spend a good deal of time with their own research, others spend all their time managing survey implementation, training and supervising Malawians. Our roles can also evolve during our stay. I am happy to be in this role, supervising Malawians, because I feel that cross-cultural management is extremely delicate, interesting, challenging, and important - basically I consider the way we manage and treat our staff to be a particular kind of global development work. And I just don’t feel like I’m “here” unless I have a fair amount of interaction with Malawians. One day at lunch I took the little white minibus with our staff into the boma (the market) instead of dining with the other grad students into the hotel because I had to exchange an electric water kettle (which I bought to purify water) that wasn’t working. There in the bus, talking and laughing with them, I felt I was finally “here”. They were so playful and inclusive, and when I described my errand they volunteered the biggest, tallest guy, Moses, to be my “bouncer”, as they called it. He went in with me, and the shopkeeper exchanged my kettle very politely, no questions asked.

One nice thing about Kayesa Inn is that all the data team stayed there together, along with some graduate students and post-docs on the qualitative team. We ate dinner together in the evening, which was a nice way to get to know our staff. The food was really good while I was there – always rice and nsima (porridge made from maize which is the Malawian staple), with some chicken or goat meat, sautéed greens, a salty tomato sauce that’s used to flavor the nsima, and/or one or more of the following: boiled eggs, French fries, fried eggplant, cooked beans, or pumpkin leaves, which were my favorite in Nepal but here are cooked differently – with a creamy peanut sauce instead of potatoes. Everyone told me that the food had improved quite a lot when Susan arrived! Susan Watkins is the demography professor who is the brains behind this whole thing – who started the project in 1998 and is one of the PIs on the grant, along with 2 economists. I was lucky to overlap with her and Ann Swidler, a sociology professor from Berkeley, during my first week in Malawi. Susan and Ann would join us for meals and tea, and anything anyone said around Susan was fair game for the most rigorous intellectual criticism or professional development advice. For example, Susan told me she’s on a campaign to get her female graduate students not to speak in questions (“I am studying statistics? I am doing social network research?”) This style of hers was completely invigorating (though sometimes a little embarrassing), and I appreciated that she genuinely cared a lot about everyone’s intellectual development – including our Malawian staff. Ann had a different style: she was less openly critical but if you sat down next to her, she’d take a subject and just start talking, about all sorts of intriguing stuff – some academic and some personal and some mundane, and ramble on and around and hit on all different subjects and by the end of the meal she would have downloaded a bunch of articles onto your flash drive – from independent Pentecostal churches in Malawi to a study of sexual networks on Likoma island to randomized comparison studies of HIV prevention campaigns. Ann and Susan were a fixture at a particular table by a sunny window in the hotel’s dining room, where they’d spend the day typing on their laptops and meeting with grad students, throwing out all sorts of creative research ideas, Susan with a cigarette in hand and Ann working on her 3 cups of black tea. (Photo above left shows, from left to right, Kim - a student of Susan's who's been in Malawi over a year, Susan, Ann, and the Kim who picked me up, in their sunny window.) Ann and Susan both departed for a conference the day before I left Mchinji, and I was sad to see them go. They provided a lot of intellectual leadership and people responded to it.

Our team of Malawian data staff is a diverse and hardworking group; some are shown in the photo below. Chifuniro is from Likoma Island, an island in Lake Malawi with population 12,000. He is vegetarian, runs an hour a day, wants to be an accountant, and has a stunningly beautiful girlfriend, Efi, who joined us for lunch one day and was too shy to answer some of Susan’s probing questions. He has an accounting certificate but needs a master’s for a good job, and may not be able to afford the education. I asked where he met Efi, and he said they attended the same school. “You were classmates?” I asked. “No, I finished before she did,” he said, “but I spotted her.” The Malawians speak English in an old-fashioned British style which they picked up during British colonization. Gift (love that name!) and Leeness are engaged to each other; they met while working on a previous round of the survey. Another of our staff, Austin, has endured great hardship in his life: he lost his mother at the age of 3, and his father at the age of 16. He has since lost all his siblings (2 brothers and 1 sister) – most recently his brother who left him 4 orphans to care for. When he was a teenager, a Peace Corps Volunteer in his village saw how intelligent he was and paid his school fees so he could finish high school. He is involved with a lot of community-based organizations (CBOs), which are voluntary service organizations founded and supported by the community (unlike NGOs whose support is usually external to the community they serve). He is cheerful when I talk to him at meals, and on our team he works with integrity and concentration. I asked how he does it – how could he be happy in spite of all that hardship. And he responded that his Peace Corps friend once told him that although he’d experienced a lot of hardship, it would do himself no good to complain; instead he should try to be happy with the present moment and remember that the future could be better. He felt pretty bad when he heard those words but went home and reflected on it and decided that she was right! “Why not appreciate this day,” he said to me, smiling, “those other things are in the past! The future can bring something different!” The extent to which he’s been able to integrate this philosophy seems to help him a lot, but this does not mean that his grief is gone. When he described the CBOs he’s involved with to me, he said they all relate to AIDS prevention and treatment, and do a lot of work with AIDS orphans. “Sometimes when I see those orphans, I feel so sad,” he said, his voice trailing off, and I felt very sad sitting there with him. Then he abruptly got up, said “Thank you, have a good night,” and quickly exited the room.

On our last night in Mchinji we were all sitting around after dinner, and Rubin asked Agness to sing – he noticed that while she does her data entry she’s always unconsciously harmonizing to whatever African gospel music is playing on the radio. She showed us all how to clap along, a quick light rhythm, and when she opened her mouth, I was transported! How can I possibly describe it? I felt I’d transcended this world of pain and misery. And when all the others effortlessly joined in harmonizing her, I was transported even farther away, to some perfect place and tears were in my eyes. There was no sense of time, and everything felt resolved.

When she finished, I asked what the meaning was of the song. She said the Chichewa words meant, “There is no person like Jesus.” These people, they know what life is about.

Johannesburg

The journey to Malawi was more exciting than expected. During a brief layover in Atlanta, I glanced at my itinerary and realized that it included an overnight 16 hour layover in Johannesburg, once again confirming my realization that it was a dumb idea to watch an extremely graphic movie about gang violence in Johannesburg the night before departure. (I still recommend "Tsotsi"!! Just time it differently!!) Internet sites for hotels near the Jo'berg airport had user comments like "There was an armed robbery on the fourth floor while I was there", so I reluctantly booked a super-expensive room at the only place my travel agent was familiar with. While our flight from Atlanta to Dakar was delayed, I met a young American woman with blond hair tied back in 2 french braids wearing dark-rimmed glasses, beat up jeans, flip flops, a tank top showing off her Celtic knot tattoo, and a huge REI backpack. Friendly, talkative, and completely down-to-earth, she's a volunteer for DAPP - is living in Zambia for 6 months doing environmental work in the bush. Our flight delay was going to cause Maureen (pictured at left) to miss her connection to Zambia, and she planned to spend the night in the airport, which she'd done before. A friend from her volunteer program was posted in Johannesburg, and in a period of 6 months this guy was mugged 5 times at either gunpoint or machete-point, and once was set on fire. "He's the kind of guy who attracts it though," she said - a white guy with dreds, lots of tattoos and piercings." Still it didn't sound positive!

An older South African woman listening to our conversation said that the airport was probably safer than any hotel in Johannesburg. "We have a lot of problems," she said gravely. So I decided to stay with Maureen and cancelled my hotel reservation. Then we hopped on the plane and landed in Johannesburg 18 hours later (with refueling in Dakar). When we arrived, we found that South African Air would not check us in a day early for our flights out the next morning, so we could not get back into the secure part of the airport that we exited when we went through customs. So we had to find a place to stay- but since out 2-hour flight delay had caused Maureen and about 15 - 20 other passengers to miss their connections, Delta made arrangements for all of us to stay in a hotel. And the Delta people very kindly let me stay with Maureen even though the delay had not changed my itinerary!! It took about an hour for Delta to arrange transportation for us, and meanwhile Maureen and I hung out with this American guy who runs a training center in Botswana for law enforcement officers - mainly managers/higher-up administrators like police superintendents - for a very large region in Africa. They host several multinational trainings per year. A black guy from Georgia, he started out as a police officer and worked his way up; I was very impressed at how he built this career for himself. He struck me as a very highly evolved person. "As a cop you come to terms with death," he said. "You have to: you see it all the time." But when I pressed he admitted that probably not all cops came to terms with it. He certainly seemed a lot more at peace with it than I was, obsessing about possible crimes that I felt would inevitably strike us that night!

Yet we made it safely to our hotel, which was actually quite nice (though minimally secured), and the three of us ate together and shared travel tales. Stan looked around 50 (?) and had a great memory for facts and historical stuff - he told us a little about African-American history - how slaves from the same place were always separated because the owners didn't want the slaves to be able to communicate - and he told us that it was white women who first educated slaves (secretly, against their husbands' will). He said always remembers that and feels grateful to those courageous women. He also mentioned that we should be careful as women in this region of Africa: he heard of a woman was raped by a taxi driver in Johannesburg, and the police did not prosecute since she was wearing a short skirt. Stan was quite a person, a very highly developed person. Oh and he'd read "The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series (among my favorite books) and even met the author (another really cool person!! A professor of medical law in Cambridge who lived 20 years in Botswana and has written over 200 books). Apparently "The #1 Ladies Detective Agency" has been made into a movie (how did I miss this?), which would have been a much more appropriate movie to watch before departing Seattle.

(here's a photo of us 3; haven't figured out how to add labels to photos yet on this thing!)

We all went to bed, slept great, and I woke up super early due to jet lag. I meditated, then watched people on the street. Johannesburg is highly developed - the streets are paved and well-maintained, neatly lined with traffic lights and palm trees, and the sidewalk was a curved pattern of multicolored bricks. From 5:30-6:30 a.m. there were a fair number of pedestrians - all wearing winter hats and humble clothes. There was plenty of car traffic - and at this hour almost all the pedestrians were black though I saw plenty of white people in cars. The only white pedestrian I saw that early looked like an old hippie, a guy around 50 with longish hair, wearing beat up clothes and sneakers, who greeted the black guy outside our hotel in some tribal language (not Afrikaans or English). As the morning progressed though, better-off walkers appeared: from 6:30-7:30 some walkers wore ipods, a few non-hippie whites appeared, and a black woman in a perfectly-fitted business suit walked while talking on her cell phone and holding a small designer handbag. Since cell phones, ipods, and handbags are all attractive targets for theft, it appeared safe at this hour, from the comfort these folks exuded. Across the street was a pancake house with a huge fake windmill, and a woman showed up for work wearing this stylized black and white maid's outfit (including cap) that looked like it was the formal attire for Dutch maids about 150 years ago. She had added some knee-high pink and red argyle socks to jazz it up. When we stepped out into the cool, foggy morning, it smelled like we were in Belgium - some kind of Belgian bread/pastry/waffle smell that reminded me of Europe but had never experienced in Africa. What an intriguing city!!

That's the news from Jo'berg. I could have studied the city endlessly, but instead flew comfortably and effortlessly to Malawi, and although I have seen and felt many different things in this gentle and colorful country already, I'll have to wait till my next time on internet to send them to you.

Tsotsi

hello everyone!

Now in DC with mom and dad. Before leaving seattle, a couple peace corps friends came over to say goodbye and we watched a movie. I really should have picked "the gods must be crazy" (the only light movie we could think of about africa). Instead we tried "knocked up" but the dvd wasn't working, so settled on "Tsotsi", which is about a violent gang member in Johannesburg who had a painful childhood and whose accidental kidnapping of a baby eventually leads him to his own personal redemption. This might sound unrealistic but the acting was incredible, and I highly recommend it. It was really touching. It made me think about how all members of society are interconnected, all part of humanity, and those who are most violent often need the most help. The question is how to help them skillfully. The thought alone, is not enough to overcome prejudice... it must also be felt deeply - the movie helped with that, a little.

I am so grateful for these friends, some who go way back and some who I met in Seattle..

flying to malawi tomorrow, will arrive 35 hours later.

farewell Seattle!

Here's the view from the window of the plane as I left Seattle

pre-departure prep

Bob helped me pack.