Two items for your reading pleasure

Currently in bloom.

Bats escape the heat of the tin roof. Notice the one with vampire fangs.

But first, a weather update: November is the height of hot season in Salima. It is like living in a dog’s mouth.

My water consumption has quadrupled and still I barely ever have to pee. Every inch of my body is constantly slimy. Mangoes are in season, and I am up to six a day. I have taken up weekend residence at the lake with Sally. It is HOT.

***

Once again, I am typing exams for the end of term. Last week, one of the teachers submitted the following story as a Reading Comprehension passage:

Once upon a time there lived a woman named Mbereka-Miti (“mother of heads”), who was married to a man called Tate-Miti (“father of heads”). When Mbereka-Miti became pregnant for the first time she gave birth to a living head. Annoyed at this, she killed it and threw it into the bush. But the same thing happened over and over again, six times in all. On the seventh occasion she decided not to kill the head but to keep it, as she would probably never have a normal child.

Now the head possessed all the normal faculties: two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth. It could see, hear, smell, eat and talk. The one thing it could not do, however, was walk, for it had no legs. When it came of age, Mbereka-Miti put it in a basket and, together, with her husband, set out on a journey to look for a girl who would be willing to become a wife.

They went from village to village and saw lots of girls, but no one of them wanted to marry the head. Here they were received with insults, there people chased them away or cruelly beat them. But they doggedly went on and in the end found a girl who said she would marry the head. Her name was Matola-tola, that is “she who picks up anything.”

The girl went along with them, together with her younger brother, and they and the head were given a house of their own. The boy and the head shared a room while the girl had one to herself.

It sounds incredible, but during the night the head would change into a European, who moved through the house suddenly ablaze with electric lights and furnished in the most lavish manner, the way Europeans like it. Now the little boy, waking up one night, happened to see this, and the next morning secretly told his sister. She would not believe him and told him he had been dreaming. But the boy said he would tie a string to his ear so that when it happened again he could wake her up by pulling it.

Night came and when the events repeated themselves the boy managed to wake up his sister, who was able to see everything for herself. The head was still in its basket, but as long as the European moved about, it looked lifeless like a wooden mask.

The girl and her brother now made a plan. They decided that, on the next occasion, the boy would get hold of the white man while the girl smashed the head to pieces. Night came and everything went according to plan. The white man could no longer change back into a head and everything in the house stayed as it had been during the night. There were lovely chairs and tables, a couch, a refrigerator, a TV set. The girl changed into a white woman, her brother into a white boy, and even Mbereka-Miti and her husband became white people.

At day break, the whole village flocked to the house, everybody exclaiming in surprise. The girls who had refused to marry the head and who had even mocked it were now green with envy. Some tried to undo their mistake by using witchcraft against the family, but failed, as whites cannot be bewitched.

(Adapted from: “An Anthology of Malawian Literature for Junior Secondary.”)

***

Lastly, a gem from a Peace Corps magazine’s “Achievements of Our Community” section a few months ago.

For the past nine years *** S*** has intentionally lived his life without using money. He has spiritual reasons for avoiding any form of currency, but he also does it as a statement against a system he believes is corrupt. S*** lives in a cave, which holds the few things he owns. He finds everything else he needs, including food and clothing, in trash receptacles in Moab, Utah.

I go to a funeral

I’ve been to two funerals in Malawi, both in the last month or so. This number is pretty low, another difference I can chalk up to living in town instead of the village. In the village, all business stops and everyone goes to a funeral. Here in town, life carries on.

In September a seven-year-old girl at the adjacent primary school crossed the road after school and was hit by the District Commissioner’s car. The next day, I went to the funeral. The men sat separately from the women on the dusty ground around the thatched-roof house of the little girl. Everyone was very quiet. Sometimes women would break out wailing, but mostly we just sat, cross-legged and hushed, baking in the sun, looking at the small coffin. Her little friends stared at it fidgeting in their pink and green school uniforms. Eventually, a sort of service began: a man stood and told what happened, a representative from the District Education Office offered his condolences, a representative from the District Commissioner’s office did the same. No one seemed angry when he spoke. A family member spoke again. Later, I asked what was said and was told: this is God’s will. Dressed in white, the men of the dead child’s family stood before the coffin, maybe they were facing Mecca, and chanted Allahu Akbar. They sang soft sad songs. And then we parted our sea, and the men carried Ayisha through the crowd, away to the graveyard.

I go to another funeral

The school watchman, Mr. Ngoma, passed away suddenly from pneumonia last week. He was, as you might remember, charged briefly with my own security after The Burglary Incident and we had a friendly relationship that mostly consisted of nodding, saying thank you repeatedly, and laughing. I was sad, but more in sympathy for my new watchman, Mr. Ngoma’s brother, Ernest.
Classes were cancelled and the entire staff piled onto the back of a large lorrie, along with a stack of firewood and maize sacks and buckets, for a bumpy ride to Khombedza, the watchman’s village a few miles north up the lakeshore road. We arrived to find men and women wailing outside of the widow’s house and, very briefly, we stepped inside to pay our respect. Groups had come from villages all around and established their day’s territory to cook and eat. The women teachers from my school did the same, setting a series of fires to begin preparing a vat of nsima and various ndiwo (relishes)—the usual suspects: cabbage, tomato, goat, usipa. The men disappeared somewhere (presumably to the funeral service) and reappeared only hours later to eat and head home. As it happened, none of the female teachers left to attend the service; they spent the whole day cooking and laughing at my efforts to help. “I don’t know if you noticed, but everyone was laughing at you when you carried water on your head,” one of the teachers told me the next day, sincerely thinking I might not have noticed two hundred people doubled over in laughter at my expense. Ha. Scorched by a day of sun and full of nsima, we loaded the lorrie and headed back to Salima.

Ups:

My Dad came to visit a few weeks ago, and despite one rough night in a hot, cramped hostel, he seemed to enjoy seeing my Malawi. We swam in the lake, staked out some wild animals, and stationed ourselves directly in front of the shiny oscillating fan he purchased after suffering one night of Salima’s stagnant and sultry air. I certainly enjoyed his company, though it has made the weeks since his departure something like post-Christmas blues. Fortunately, I have the fan for my solace.

Sally’s birthday was this weekend, on Halloween, so we enjoyed cake and good company at Senga Bay. It is good to have her in the neighborhood.

In September, with leftover supplies from the World Map Project, we painted a map of Malawi next to the bigger map, and it came out pretty well if I do say so.

I’m still teaching Life Skills and next week we’re showing the whole school a made-in-Malawi movie about decision-making that I think they’ll really like.

In October, Elisabeth and I visited Jerrod’s school in Ehehleni to lead a two-day literature workshop. His house is five miles down a dusty dirt road, sitting at the end of a path on a plateau looking out over Zambia. Serene. And quiet. I have to admit I had site envy. On the first morning, Elisabeth and I led a long and entertaining sexual health class with the Form 2 and 4 girls, who came up with some pretty creative questions for the Q and A session. The next day I woke up with a runny cold and hacked my way through the workshop; still it was better to be sick in good company. We ate delicious meals, baked lemon bread, and watched stars appear in the big big sky.

And Downs

At work, some of my projects feel like they are stagnating. Waiting on decisions. Going to unproductive meetings. Having an Action Plan meeting to schedule the next Action Plan meeting. Cancelling classes because of National Education Day. At the start of the term, I was excited to learn that my schools wanted to start organizing cluster teacher development activities (but wasn’t I already doing that?); somehow, though, we could afford only one one-day workshop this term since the bulk of the school-contributed funds was spent on Fanta refreshments during the five(!) planning meetings.

I keep waiting for the fog to lift, and if the past is any indication, it will eventually. So this week I am waiting for that Malawi magic.