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.
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.
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