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