Saturday, December 31, 2011

A New Year’s Rain

I’m sitting on the lower bunk in a cramped room at the Pine Tree. It’s a little chilly in Mzuzu, but utterly quiet here a few kilometers outside the city. The other three bunks are empty and it’s raining outside the window. It’s New Year’s Eve. My family called to say they would call back in a half hour, they were checking out of their hotel in Miami. Zebra is at the lakeshore with his boss and her husband. Bear is in Lilongwe, not particularly in the mood to talk to me. The past two months have been a breathtaking whirlwind of travel, a test of friendships, and an ever creeping sadness. I am exhausted. Movement, sounds, sights, smells and people. I feel like my body is preparing for the return home, changing back to its original state. I don’t know why, I don’t particularly want to.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Happy Birthday Sis

Second one I missed, and hopefully the last. Happy Birthday, wish you a lovely twenty-first that you will remember. The world outside the bubble awaits, and though it seems scary and exciting at first, it falters hastily and slips into normalcy before you realize. Enjoy it now. And add to my tab a second Sunday cart feast at China Pearl.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Why The World Ends

The world seems to be crumbling apart. A new uprising, war, famine, dictator with each passing day. Things worsening with no end in sight. People clinging to the hope that the day is darkest before the dawn. As much as I teach myself not to care, tell myself that these are the world’s problems – they brought it upon themselves, they can fix themselves, I can’t help it. Whether I like it or not, I care. There’s not a thing I can do to change that.

Yes, providing food aid to Somalia is a bad idea. It sounds inhuman to say, but it’s the truth. Aid perpetuates a deceitfully destructive machine fueled by guilt and politics. The only way we truly learn from our mistakes is to face the consequences and to try something else next time. If we are simply handed free chances then mistakes become commodities. We no longer exercise caution and thought, discard logic, and are wasteful in our ways.

Despite all this. Despite my firm belief that aid is an incredibly unproductive solution to the problem, I still want to help. I want to do something. It’s not guilt. It’s certainly not obligation. It’s something much further inside, places quite unfamiliar to me. Humanity. Empathy. How can I let another suffer? The world could do nothing and Somalia would painfully and slowly find a sustainable solution to famine. But we can’t. I can’t.

I guess that is what separates us from most animals. To empathize, to feel and channel the emotions or sufferings of others is very queer nature. The world may seem to be in the Kali yoga, which it quite likely is, but people will not change. There are awful, ruthless characters acting as leaders in this age, but the power belongs to the people. In the years to come perhaps every leader will learn to fear the people, who for so long have been trodden upon.

At the same time people got complacent. They were happy with the lives they had and were happy to let anyone lead, as long as the status quo was maintained.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Orchid Poacher

“Your judgment day is here,” sneered the guard. He was quite proud of his position as sole gatekeeper. Thazima gate obstructed the only road into Nyika and the only way back out of the wilderness into civilization. He retained the power of permission and though a fool, he was a prideful and well-ranked fool. The gate was always closed and though he rarely inspected passing vehicles, he had made a particular habit of stopping foreigners. Falsified park entrance fees can be embezzled from even the most well-read travelers. You can’t blame a man for trying. It was Saturday and he was out of uniform on duty, which was unfortunate today, of all days. For today, a poacher in a vehicle full of foreigners had been brought to his gate. What to do? Aggressively jabbing the poacher’s shoulder through the window, questioning him, had not satisfied the appetite. No, he craved a more drastic gesture, worthy of his rank. In skinny blue jeans and a checkered blue short-sleeve shirt, he sauntered to the back door and hopped in. Squatting on the spare Landcruiser tire, the continued interrogation of the poacher provided mere meek responses. Still not enough. The hunger for power turned his insides until he back handed the poacher in the face. The man cowered into the back of the seat, protecting his head under his hand-cuffed arms, writhing in fear of being hit again. Enough. Adrenaline and euphoria coursed through his veins and satisfaction warmed the muscles under his face.

Why did I say nothing?

We hadn’t seen any animals for miles; the plains seemed void of life. Someone had been through there earlier. Controlled burns and invasive grass species left patterned markings on the hills. It seemed like the drive would never end; hill after hill, the tall pines of Chelinda eventually disappeared into the horizon. We stood in the back, clinging to the cab, as the Landcruiser shuddered over the dirt road. Maxon sat behind us, on the back wheel, in his new blue work suit. Another man contained the unfastened, clanking shovels with his feet. Brino scrutinized the landscape, perched on the edge of the bed, clutching the M16 against his calf. The safety was on. It wasn’t until we had reached the Juniper forests that the men jumped up behind us, hollering into the distance, pointing and yelling at two obscure dots scurrying over the hills about a kilometer away. Poachers. The vehicle jerked to a halt and the dust trail amassed a cloud in the rear. The men behind us hopped out in a frenzy, pointing into the distance and commenting to each other. Geoff scurried out of the passenger seat and pulled out his camera from the satchel. The three of us scanned the distance in confusion trying to discern what all the commotion was about. For a moment, everything was quiet as we watched, broken only by Patsy’s inquisition from the driver’s seat.

Brino fired three rounds into the air. Unsilenced, coupled with the side-effects of an old weapon, the shot rung in our ears. The sound echoed throughout the plains for a long moment. One of the dots vanished into a patch of forest and the other ran over the side of the hill. Geoff had missed the thrill of the action and asked Brino to fire again, this time on camera. Two more shots pierced an invisible enemy in the sky. In a flash of fire the moment passed, blood coursed back to a constant pace. The dots had escaped out of sight and everyone boarded the vehicle. Brino unclipped the magazine and mechanically removed the bullet in the chamber, pushing it firmly back into the clip. Maxon was smiling as the others commented excitedly about the sighting. Once we reached the edge of the Juniper forest, Brino led a party into the hills to search for any remaining poachers or any meat they may have left behind in frightened haste. They walked over the hill and disappeared only to return an hour later valiantly escorting a man with a feeble demeanor, his hands tied with shoe laces and trailed by a flour sack full or orchid roots. They sat together on the rocks by the creek recounting the catch to an eager audience, followed by a photo shoot. The photos reminded me of those taken after a successful animal kill.

We are often delighted by learning what we don’t know. One of our most human faults is believing what we’re told, information we ingest for lack of interest in the truth or a fear of further complicating life. Every story has three sides: his, hers, and the truth. And in no place on earth is that more accurate than here: a story is more than just a tale of a sequence of events; it is someone’s truth, someone’s belief. It is easy to believe poachers are bad people that hunt and deplete the abundant natural life in the plateau. It is easy to believe rangers are knights of nature, protecting defenseless creatures and plants. It is easy to side with what the village perceives as good in the fight against what the village perceives as evil. As many officers like to preach: “thou shall not steal,” right? Officers and villagers believe you have God on your side, ammunition powered by the great Unknown, expelling enemies with the aim of the angels themselves, in that eccentric Malawian religious fervor. But where does God reside in the villages bordering the protected areas? In the CCAP church? The Catholic? The Seventh Day Adventist? One would hope that the faith of the congregations in Phoka is equally as good and innocent as the faith of the congregations in Chelinda. This isn’t a battle between good and evil. In truth, it is much simpler than the complex and contorted reasoning people construe to actions driven by desperation.

It is a war, like any other war: fought for purposes unclear and problems inevitably unsolvable by violence or taking prisoners. Rangers, backed by the Malawi government and various western wildlife NGOs, on one side and the elusive, poverty-stricken, poachers on the other. The rangers seem out of place against the vast grandeur of the plains in their vehicles and weaponry. Though, any human presence seems out of place in these lands. The rangers are technically armies, military trained and armed with the aim of catching or eliminating poachers. Originally a program piloted in Kenyan parks, armed rangers have become a norm in parks throughout sub-Saharan Africa, though much seems to have been lost in translation. A poacher catch has numerous benefits to park officers: expensed trip to Rumphi to submit all necessary paper work and registering the criminal into jail, free meals expensed at the most expensive Rumphi restaurant, perhaps a night stay (should the paperwork take longer than anticipated), perhaps some allowances, and an opportunity for shopping with free transport home. Officers and rangers are taught that poachers are scum, sub-human enemies worthy of mistreatment and abuse. With an expensed kicker, this isn’t a fight for the wildlife; it’s a fight for their livelihoods, protecting a way of life rising up to the highest ranks of government.

About fifty kilometers oriental of Chelinda is Phoka. Phoka, like many other villages along the northern border in Chitipa, is home to many poachers. Skilled hunters and laborers that design and produce some of the most intricate and beautiful weaponry in Malawi. Some of the confiscated guns, bows and arrows, made entirely of locally scavenged materials, rival fine occidental arms. The poachers journey into the heart of the plateau by foot, tracking to kill reedbucks, bushbucks, perhaps roan and elon, or to harvest orchid roots and flowers, which they carry back. The meat is then sold and consumed locally, while the orchids are sold in a linked trade route smuggling them through Chitipa into Tanzania. Each journey is not an aimless hunt; it is a calculated risk of one’s life and the livelihood of one’s family. In one of the toughest years for tobacco and a country ranked among worst poverty-stricken nations, poaching isn’t a hobby or a spare source of income, it is a necessity. Some poachers are shot, killed, and injured, along with many rangers, in gun-fire battles or ambushes. Many more are caught and imprisoned in Rumphi. They pay hefty fines or bribes and return to their villages, their families, make new weapons and try again. More carefully next time. People aren’t inherently bad; it’s the world that makes them that way. Somehow, we forget that because it is much easier to assume otherwise. It makes our lives simpler.

But who am I write about good and evil? When a man was being mistreated, even though a criminal by law, I did nothing. I said nothing. Am I not equally as guilty and malicious as the officers that abuse their powers or poachers that destroy wildlife? I sat there with a dumbfounded look of indecisive bewilderment on my face, akin to that of a fool, as a man cowered into the back of my seat. I glanced to the rear, never turning around. I looked to Zebra to my left and Bear to my right, as if asking: what should we do? What should I do? It was dark and cold by the time we returned to Chelinda with the poacher. He was to be transported to Rumphi in the morning. For the night he was placed in the care of Brino, a humble, quiet ranger. Brino escorted him to his house, shared a meal of rice and relish with him at the dining table with his family, and provided him a warm place to sleep. In the morning, while transport was being arranged with the necessary paper work, officers came to offer their astute advice. Jarvis, the head of Peace Parks, an NGO solely dedicated to the eradication of poaching, had come to check on the prisoner and to his astonishment found Brino and the poacher eating breakfast together at the family table. Furious, he lectured Brino on his imprudence and shoved the poacher to the floor. Once he recovered, crawling to a corner of the room, Jarvis harangued him: “You are a poacher; you don’t eat at the table, like humans. You eat on the floor, like an animal.”

Bear: http://murphyinmalawi.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-orchid-poacher/

Monday, September 19, 2011

Unripe Bananas

My yard in the dry season is decrepit, exactly as it was this time last year. The grass fence I had built during the rains has fallen apart, except for the sections near the front of the house. Pigs, goats, chickens, guinea foul, dogs, cats, pigeons, winds and children each played their part in the inevitable demise of the little semblance of privacy. Gaps turned to passageways, turned to missing sections, turned to fire kindling. It doesn’t matter anymore really. Things from the earth here have a tendency to ultimately return to the earth. There are about five pigs and piglets scurrying about my back door at the moment, oinking, snorting, whining in search of food. The Zyambo’s livestock seem to grow in number exponentially with each passing month, most endearingly evidenced by the increasing number of guinea foul banging and squawking on my tin roof at five in the morning and the farm animal a cappella in the yard. It’s humoring to waste hours watching the animals scuttle about the yard, interacting with each other without a care in the world. Especially the mother hen and her line of chicks in close pursuit. Equally humoring are the spastic, alien geckos watching vigilantly from the rafters, as if in a constant state of panic and anxiety.

There is a banana tree in my yard, between the kitchen and a decrepit piece of fence adjacent to the Zyambo’s bafa. Its leaves hang over the trash pit and it’s managed to grow abundantly during my service. A testament of resilience, having survived dry seasons, flocks of farm animals, my general lack of knowledge and interest in gardening, and a burning trash pit. It’s still the only green growing in an otherwise dry, barren environment. A channel of water leads from the drain of the Zyambo’s bafa to the base of the banana tree, keeping it constantly watered. About two months ago two large flowers of bananas appeared and the burgundy purple flowers at their ends fell shortly after. Benedicto informed me that they should start ripening within a week or so, as all the water was now feeding just the fruit. Weeks passed into months and the unripe green bananas clung stubbornly to their stems. They did not even slightly shade yellow, instead remaining a lush green. We can’t figure out why. It’s as if after expending months of effort in fruiting they just gave up, so near the end. It’s as if they thought: what’s the point in ripening, in completing a cycle, when we can just cling verdantly to this tree, ever fed by water and still face a similar fate? Perhaps they are tired, or perhaps they need to have their faith restored; that by ripening they will feed a mouth, improve a life even if only for a moment. So near the end they simply have to turn and while they may be eaten by an unscrupulous goat or never appreciated, they will have finished what they started. More than what most can say for a lifetime.

Bear (Wellesley) recommended putting them in a sealed plastic bag, so I picked four of them and tied them up in a People’s jumbo. Last Saturday, we threw a month-belated birthday party for Bear. Belated because we were both at Kamp Kwacha and Zebra’s mom and sister were visiting. It was a celebration of surprisingly good success; she seemed happy and liked the food. We made burgers, luckily procuring ground beef at Rumphi Metro, and fries, with plenty of Greens – one of several of Bear’s favorite meals. And Zebra and I baked successfully on our own, on a mud fire stove, for the first time. We made yellow cake, from scratch, filled it with custard and topped with a chocolate icing improvised from a Hershey’s chocolate bar from a parcel and milk, icing sugar, and Blue Band. Zebra carved a birthday candle out of a large Moonlight and I topped the whole thing of with crushed macadamia nuts. We were trying to replicate a Boston crème cake with what we had and quite proud of it. A slice of home for Bear, one of the best people I know, probably my closest friend who knows everything about me, who cares unconditionally, loves almost limitlessly, and melts even the most hardened of moods with her mischievous big blue eyes and a laugh as infectious and delightful as her smile.

With one camp successfully over, planning begins for the next camp. The inaugural Kamp Kwacha was a success. Hobbit handled all the logistics and I handled all the curriculum and classes. Together, the camp was near perfect; not a single hitch that wasn’t easily solved. Zebra, Bear and I are hosting an all new, revamped, restructured, and renamed environmental camp, now called Camp RENEW (Revitalize, Enlighten, and Nurture Environmental Wellness). It will be hosted at Chilenda Camp, as before, but the camp will be molded on the Kamp Kwacha model: few students, more interactive sessions, more difficult material, and better food. We want to provide a greater variety of knowledge, at a faster pace, to a more selective group of top students. With about eight staff members for twenty students, we provide greater attention for each student. We will teach topics ranging from environmental protection to business to building local windmills. And as essential to any good camp and happy students, the quality and variety of food will be better (especially if we can secure a particular local chef who previously served as chef to the French embassy). All of these qualities are the opposite of the current Peace Corps camp models, which prefer many students (upwards of 80), leading to less learning, attention, course offerings and general enjoyment.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Malawi Vice

Due to recent political events, a long string of occurrences in the government, police have set up two to three times more road blocks. Also, fines and bribes have nearly doubled. There is a particular police squad in Bolero that stops every matola heading to and from Rumphi boma. These matolas are used only by villagers and each stop takes up to two hours because the fine is MK 7,000, as matolas are illegal, though the only mode of transport in rural Malawi. No matola can ever pay; they do not even have enough customers to cover fuel costs. The poor eat the poor and those that are given even a little power will abuse it to harm their neighbors and friends to feel more powerful. The selfish nature of mankind.

I have grown to hate these police, their obnoxious mannerisms, the way they require drivers and citizens to cower before them and pay whatever money they have.

What’s truly infuriating is that the same police ride matolas to get home, or on their days off to get to town. I physically shudder with anger when I see them or think of them. Last week, I was on an afternoon matola travelling to Bolero from Rumphi. We stopped in Chikwawa and three corpulent Bolero traffic policemen stumbled out of a bottle store, drunk at half past noon, and boarded the matola to go home. They were done for the day having spent all the matola bribe money collected since the morning. The matola dropped one at home, another at a bottle store in bolero and the third at the station.

One morning, they stopped a Mwazisi matola and held it up for two hours. I had thoughts, horrifying thoughts, anger, rage that I did not know I was capable of. There was a woman in the matola, very ill and in pain. Her family was taking her to the hospital in Rumphi on the only transport available to villagers. The ambulance is flaky at best and would not pass through till much later. We waited in the morning sun that grew hotter with each passing minute. We waited as the driver cowered and begged the officer to let him pass for a lower fee. I felt such sympathy for the woman while at the same time feeling such violent hatred for the police.

The system is corrupt and in the end it is people, ordinary citizens, poor villagers that suffer. It’s maddening but unfortunately that’s the case all over the world. The rich, the political, the powerful rarely understand or care for the plight of the citizens or poor they swear to protect. Power corrupts all and harms the people. Just like I am capable of the duality so are other volunteers who have shared their horror at the violent thoughts they conjure here. So are the policemen that take bribes, let their fellow farmers, their physical neighbors, suffer and still go home to their families. It’s sickening but it is our nature: a duality of love and hate, and while we try to embrace the former, our natural instincts pull us back into balance.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

A History of Violence

“I am in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive and I am not afraid.”

There is something frightening I fear in myself. A force equally as potent as the capacity for love: the capacity for hate. A dark face that lurks unnervingly below the surface: powerful, exciting, and alluring in its shroud. I’m thinking of all violence happening this very moment and that has happen in every moment before it, stretching back to the very beginning.

I remember growing up on violent video games, despite the stern protest of my parents. As a child, and more so as a young man, I craved and was addicted to the feeling of power, even false power: to have God-like control over the fate of animated armies or selecting the most pleasurable weapon with which to bludgeon an alien foe (a brut hammer).

I vividly recall the first time I played video games. It was in Perth, at a friend’s house. He was blasting through monsters in Duke Nukem’s pixilated palace of pain, scoffing at squares of blood that would spray everywhere. “The best is the rocket launcher,” he said eagerly as he keyed a weapon swap. He burst into a boisterous fit of laughter when the missile round expelled the monster into a fountain of red. Fortunately, he was too preoccupied with his own victory, and perhaps too young and insecure himself, to notice the horrified expression on my face.

We are trained for violence from a young age and it appears in a multitude of forms. As boys we battle aliens, protecting our planet, our families. As young men, we’re educated in the history of war and of the valiant soldiers. As men we are expected to fight for our country or cause as the highest order of honor. Men are to be quiet fortresses: strong, brave, and inclined to violence in the fight for good.

But what war is good? Give me a cause worth its weight in blood and I will gladly, and fearfully, march into battle. Since the existence of mankind we have stabbed, shot, chopped, raped, pillaged each other to what end? It is the same violence repeated in the name of religion, land, culture, vengeance or whatever reason in vogue during the century. We are wired with such potential for both good and evil: our minds powerful enough to skew reality, to forget and rewrite the same history.

It’s disconcerting because I have genetically inherited that ability. Here, frustrated by politics, corruption, and a tightening police force, thoughts are finding solace in the euphoria of violence. Violent revenge in the name of citizens that needlessly suffer under the rule of a growingly stubborn tyrant. The need to revolt, to spark a revolution is strong, but what will it achieve? More violence, killing and the fate of every other unstable African state.

Why do I feel strongly for innocent villagers? Are they so innocent? Aren’t they just like the Germans, the Croats, the Serbs, the Muslim Americans: innocent citizens? The people that simply let violence and corruption happen, buying into the national rhetoric? Why don’t they say stop? Why do the masses allow themselves to be fooled by higher powers and then brood vengeance against an enemy they manifested?

Perhaps people are no more than children witnessing a violent game: instinctively want to turn away and say this is wrong, yet cannot form the words. They fear being ridiculed, abandoned, and ultimately alone. Either you are with us or against us. You aren’t a real man if you oppose violence. I’ve seen enough commercials for the Marines. Enough movies like Rambo glorifying war. Enough talk of the allure of uniform. These are forces that ultimately form boys into the men that shape this planet.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Riding in Cars with Girls

A few months ago I couldn’t sleep. We were in Monkey Bay to celebrate Dirty’s birthday and we went big the previous night, pig roast and all. Shingles slept in until late into the morning, but I lay watching the sunrise over the lake through the straw covered windows. When she stirred awake she saw me lying, staring at the space in front of my eyes. She put a concerned hand on my chest and asked “what’re you thinking about?” I told her my mind was wandering, disconcertedly drifting through the past from one thought to the next memory. I always rein it in, but this morning I let it wander. “Do you like thinking about the past?” “No,” I lied. I do like the past, it is in a way comforting and soothing to see your life pieced together from today. The future is frightening in its unpredictability, which only provokes my need to plan and plan. The warmth of memories keeps me sane and I find solace in them during gray days. I only restrain them because I’m afraid. Some memories still have a singe of pain and a mere flash image, a millisecond of thought, can trigger the degradation of all thought and I fear my naïve memory may slip in to such an abyss. What I did not tell her was that that morning I wasn’t afraid, because she was there and the safety of arms were only a glance away.

Wind
The Killers came on, All These Things That I’ve Done, from the Hot Fuss album, if I remember correctly. KISS 108 promised all the latest hits commercial free and was the most popular station in New England. I can’t remember what month it was, but it was cold out. We sprinted out of the movie theatre and took shelter in her car, blasted the heating and huddled until the dry air warmed the interior. What movie was it? The memory has holes. It was sophomore year, must’ve been near winter. She was using her family’s car, a big Toyota SUV that took some time to warm up. She made me laugh and I enjoyed her company. We pulled out on to Rt. 9E to drop me off at Bentley first and then she would head back to Wellesley. I remember the roar of the engine as she accelerated down the highway. It was late and the lights from the dashboard illuminated our faces and she was dancing while driving. When the song came on she turned up the volume dial and began singing along. She looked at me smiling the words and I laughed. We never really spoke after that and had awkward interactions. We both needed something that night, the companionship of someone outside of our worlds, yet someone not entirely unfamiliar. She never called and I never bothered to write. I will always remember her singing in that car:

“Help me out. You know you gotta help me out. Don’t you put me on the backburner.”

Almost three years later she was working in San Francisco and I foolishly stayed in Boston. We began emailing each other from work; casually discussing life after school, building what I realize now was a kind of relationship that stems from loneliness. New graduates living and working in a city; on our own for the first time. But I’ll never understand why we took comfort in each other, why not someone else? We were both close to our families and had plenty of friends nearby. Why reach out across a continent? Perhaps we were trying to prove we could handle this growing up business and wanted to show our family and friends we were independent. Emails became letters. Letters often became phone calls, a little after midnight when I got out of work and she was still up. I used to look forward to those phone calls exhausted from work, having no personal interactions for weeks, walking out into a dark empty city, walking into an empty apartment. Her cheeriness and humor were lined with sadness, but it was enough, we didn’t feel alone and fell asleep happy with our phones by the pillow. Then it just stopped. I don’t remember how or when, but I guess we both got what we needed and didn’t need it anymore.

We haven’t talked since. I think she’s married now.

Water
I dubbed her the Little Navigator. She sat in the passenger seat fumbling with a giant map unfolding New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and fringes of the surrounding states. We were somewhere in Edison searching for parking so we could eat. We were on the hunt for a particularly large and delicious masala dosa, along with an order of chaat masala and two glasses of falooda. Having received a speeding ticket weeks earlier, I was quite content idling in the back lot of a strip mall. She was getting hungry. We did this a lot that summer, driving around together for food, picnics, IKEA, movies, malls, more food. By some chance of fate we ended up at the same firm and later that summer another turn of fate prematurely ended the lease on my sublet in Trumbull. I had no place to live and another month and a half remained on my internship. She happen to start her job that week and so I moved to Stamford. I remember how nervous I was asking.

“Hey, so my sublet for the summer ended, they finished rotations early so they’re leaving.”
“Did she ever give you back the money?”
“No, won’t return calls or emails, I think she’s gone. But I was wondering if…if it’s alright if I stay with you for a little while? I have no…”
“Dooks! Of course you can stay. I was hoping you would stay.”
“Thanks, it’ll just be till the end of the summer.”
“So...I was going to ask you anyway. Didn’t know how you’d feel.”

I immediately handed the keys back to my parents when I opened the box. However, they would not have it. This was a gift to their son, the first in the family to graduate from college in America, the result of more opportunities than they ever had. We drove around in it all summer, at least until her father made a snarky comment about how parents shouldn’t give expensive gifts to children. She defended my family arguing that they gave it out of love and a want to provide all the best things for their children. I was furious. My parents had nothing growing up and now, in America, they still have little, but provide the world to us. Even if we refuse. And we always refuse. Who was this shmuck to criticize my family? I eventually convinced my parents to take the car, claiming high fuel costs shuttling back and forth from Randolph to Stamford to Shrewsbury. I took the old Corolla and we still took road trips. Scenic drives down CT-15, connecting I-84 to I-90, and coming home to Stamford. Coming home. A home we made together for a brief moment of existence.

It’s was a strange realization the other night. To think that some of my fondest memories, some of my happiest moments, took place in cars, buses, vans, trains, planes with girls. Transient places where thoughts fall in order, where, according to Alain de Botton, thought is clearest and truly free. Though my friends ridicule me, these modes of transport are where I feel safe, comfortable and at home. That is why I sleep so deeply and so instantly in vehicles. Perhaps it’s the result of growing up always moving and now home is movement. And beyond the mere purr of the engine or the rhythm of the tracks, it’s also a false sense of stopping time. The world moves past you, yet you remain stationary in a capsule, safe and carefree. She makes it all the more precious, for not only have you stopped time, but you aren’t alone, vanquishing both time and solitude: our two greatest foes. Free of obligations of place or time, you are in movement not belonging to any singular place or falling victim to the effects and sense of time. A keen awareness of physical movement but unaware of direction or minutes expended. Like chasing the sun in a plane without a clock. Isn’t that what we all want? To find the love of our lives and once found to stop time for eternity? And if not eternity, at least for the length of a bus ride.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Awakayi

There is no sensation that compares to opening a fresh batch of homemade awakayi (well, a close second is opening a fresh bottle of Sriracha after two years). Awakayi has so much more attached to it than mere deliciousness, nostril-pleasing aroma of spices and pickled mango, and saliva-inducing red chutney drowning in marinating oils.

Beyond the sensual symptoms are the memories of clay pots of pickle, my grandmother preparing large vats of spices for the family, and eating it with everyone on banana leaves. For most, awakayi is just another exotic chutney from Patek’s or a mild achaar. But to my family it’s in our blood, from infant to adult there is not a single meal without a jar of grandmother’s awakayi. When a pot of pickle is finished cooking all of us: cousins, nieces, brothers, sisters, crowd the stove to get first dibs. Once the pickle is transferred to jars, cooked rice is thrown into pot and mixed with the remnants along the walls and bottom. This is the best serving of pickle as it is fresh and mixed with hot rice and the flavor that only comes from eating out of a pot. Our grandmother would hand feed each of us, one by one, and we would fight over who got seconds.

These are the memories that came to mind as I opened my last and only bag of awakayi. Sealed in three air tight containers to ensure freshness and prevent leakage, I surgically removed each bag. I didn’t want even a drop of oil wasted. I patiently poured it into a Blue Band container and put hot rice in the bag. It was no clay pot, but this is Africa, close enough. My mouth watered as the smell filled the kitchen and the white basmati slowly turned a vibrant, deep red. Memories were overrun by a grumbling stomach, but I could not rush. No, this had to be savored. Such treats are few and far between. I scrapped every last bit of pickle and every grain of rice out of the bag and onto a plate and washed my hands at the basin. There it was, my favorite dish, served the only way I like it.

My grandmother always scolded my taste in food, claiming I liked poor people food too much. She accused my mother of the same tastes when she was growing up. What do the impoverished eat in a small Indian village? Rice mixed with raw chili powder, salt and oil. Rice with pickle. On a good day, rice with a curry gravy. Little vegetables and rarely any protein. My second favorite is rice with chili powder, oil and salt. In fact, just writing it is making my mouth water. So what if the poor enjoy these dishes? Doesn’t make them bad. It’s simple, delicious, and as I would realize later, perfect for the bachelor diet. Who needs nutrients? Better an addiction to absurdly spicy, yet simple, food than some other vice.

When my parents came to visit they brought, literally, three giant cardboard boxes of food. Every prized American treat was now in a cardboard cube in my house. Of course, these were non-perishable treats sealed air-tight and bursting with traditional American high-fructose corn syrup. Rows of Cheetohs galore, bags of Snickers, cans of Pringles, boxes of Indian food mixes, enough Maggie to put a desi college sophomore to shame and sachets of instant curries. And the best part: triple-sealed containers of pickles and spiced lentil powder mixes. It was like Christmas morning during the best market year in five decades. Every imaginable treat was at my finger tips.

So, I did what I’m best at: eat. Eat, get dizzy from the spice, rapidly suck air to cool my tongue, pass out, and do it again. My happiest memories in college were picking up a tub of Ben & Jerry’s at Harry’s, going back to her dorm and making the spiciest curry imaginable (usually chana), then eat, suffer in pain, cry, laugh, swear like a sailor, lose sanity, and wash it down with mint-Oreo goodness. You would think we would have learned our lesson, but addiction is an ardent ailment. While almost all other students were experimenting the limits of BALs and any smokable foliage, we sat on a couch and ate food that would induce pain and joy at the same time. It was a high unlike any other.

After eating and sharing it with other volunteers I have managed to level inventories to half of one box, plus a smaller box full of candy and snacks. An impressive feat.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Earth-movers

I woke up this morning to the sound of a large truck pacing forward then backwards with a loud beeping. Today was marked for civilian demonstrations throughout the major cities of Mzuzu, Blantyre and Lilongwe. Demonstrations supposedly organized by a Minister against the government regarding fuel shortages, tobacco and issues of governance. DFID recently pulled out of Malawi. The village was abuzz with excitement; people had been talking about it for days and radio voices echoed throughout the day. We were issued a no-travel notice from the office from the 19th-21st.

This was no ordinary truck. After I got ready, I walked out to the sandy path leading to the EPA for a beekeeping meeting. In the distance there was a crowd gathered in front of the EPA (strange because there is never anyone there). As I got closer the giant yellow Caterpillar earth-mover came into view. It was plowing a large square area in front of the EPA, shifting dirt to the outer rims, flattening a space. I spotted Mr. Singini – the secondary school night watchman – in the crowd and greeted him.

It seems the machine was sent by the government to clear land for temporary housing. The housing will be for the road builders, expected to begin work shortly. I guess all the gravel workers, other workers, and machines need a place to stay for the duration of the construction. Though it is a short road, Mwazisi is very remote and shuttling workers back and forth is not feasible. That somewhat solves that mystery. It’s strange how these developments kind of just show up. I don’t think anyone knew, perhaps I just didn’t know.

It seems you wake up one morning and there’s a giant earth-mover in your back yard. Just fell out of the sky. While a series of large construction machines may seem normal to most, it is certainly not normal here. To put it in perspective: seeing these machines in Mwazisi is like seeing a herd of elephants roaming about Post Office Square.

Despite the suddenness, I’m excited, as is the community. All these giant machines appearing, new people passing through. Though it is still isolated, the village is developing and changing in many ways: construction of the EPA, initiation of the Kulera Project, installation of electricity, commencement of the tarmac road, and soon the arrival of a second Peace Corps volunteer. The village is moving forward or at least poised to move forward, in many positive directions. Confirmation of my belief that development is best on a small-local scale, provided the presence of large infrastructure projects to support and encourage growth.

The kids are on holiday and crowds mounted the dunes piled up by the yellow giant. Everyone sat and stared, transfixed, as if in a trance, watching the giant move forward-backward- forward-backward. I sat in a trance too; it was calming in its repetition and in a way majestic. It was like a yellow elephant moving dirt about. It had a meditative rhythm that made it hypnotic. And like a child, you wondered what will it do next? Ah! Forward again.

These new developments are a pleasant distraction from the current tobacco problems, which continue to worsen. This is one of the few large-scale demonstrations I have ever heard of Malawi. We’ll have to wait and see how successful its actual execution is, but if it is then I think things will change even more in Malawi.
I remember the second-years when I arrived in country: “welcome to the most politically stable, safe, and boring country in Africa. Nothing ever happens here,” they said, “it’s nice but life can get very boring and monotonous.”

Well, life just got interesting.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Mwana Wane

“You are too mobile,” scolded Mrs. Gondwe. For three weeks the primary school had no headmistress, and though she had returned only yesterday, she was already about the yard twisting laundry. Her left leg was still swollen and she limped when she walked. For three weeks she was bedridden at St. John’s, a new hospital built across from the airfield. It was a beautiful addition to the dirt strip off the M1, but not uncommon as Mzuzu was a growing city bustling with new constructions. Afumu was sitting under the vines when he proudly introduced me to their son, my brother, a student at the Malawi College of Accountancy, currently visiting on holiday. Strange we had not met till today. It was Sunday and the dry season heat was rising with the morning sun.

She reluctantly dropped the pair of trousers in the basin and walked slowly to a chair under the vine shade. The severe pneumonia left her but the high blood pressure had to be constantly monitored. She struggled to settle in the blue plastic chair. Afumu Gondwe put the leather chief chair out instructing me to sit on the chieftainship. I sat and inquired on her condition. She said that it had been a terrible three weeks and she was in a lot of pain. “I saw heaven, but God returned me back here,” she said with a sting of despair. Sadness was draped over her face, a sadness that rose from an inability to understand God, to come to terms with his judgment. She didn’t want to be here anymore, life had taken its tolls and she spoke of her return dripping with such disdain.

Mwana Wane. This is our child. That is how Mr. and Mrs. Gondwe always introduce me to others. What can a child do for such sadness? Our time on earth is short, though perhaps for many it’s too long. “No more salt and sugar, take lots of walks,” I prescribed hopelessly. Things have taken a turn for the worse in Malawi. People are desperate for money and hope is being sucked out though a national straw to the very top. The village has changed, despair blows violently in the dry winds leaving a thick air of tension in its wake. Tobacco sales have plummeted after a large buyer moved its operations to Zimbabwe citing lack of cooperation from the government. The UK, Germany and Norway have all pulled aid from the country citing human rights violations and governance issues.

The Global Fund has ceased funding to Malawi. ARVs will soon be cut as the country will not meet testing requirements. A ripple effect of the flight of NGOs and businesses has been triggered. Many Indian businessmen are closing shop, moving back home or to the US to start new businesses. NGOs are following suit or slashing their budgets. There are fuel lines stretching kilometers down roads in Lilongwe. Diesel and petrol are scarce and the national highways are empty. New roadblocks were built to collect more fines and bribes while the new budget, to accommodate for missing aid, has placed new taxes on basic necessities. A loaf of bread jumped from MK 100 to MK 140 overnight.

Mrs. Gondwe was right. I have been too mobile the past two months. Though my community is still somehow managing to get by, I have been away with a heavy dose of guilt. I miss home, but camp preparations and VAC duties have kept me in Lilongwe. To supplement it are a long list of little things that just need to be done. I’m afraid I will be away again until September for camp and my sister and Henry are visiting. My futile efforts will not change Malawi, nor will they alleviate the burdens of a tightening government in the grand theatre of global economic turmoil. But I keep telling myself: I’m doing what I can with what I have. It’s not enough, but it’s something. As long as I stay away from uninformed psycho Canadian women, I cannot give up.

It seems that throughout history the multitudes always suffer at the hands of few.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Centaur & The Specter

Centaurus has returned to the night sky, for some time now. He humbly guards over the Southern Cross, his sword ever ready to strike the glowing heart Antares should Scorpio lay siege. The scorpion waits patiently, his tail wound around the center of the galaxy, drifting across the celestial sphere, with his red heart exposed to the universe. To lose the Cross is to lose our bearing, our sense of time and place, and the heavens will fall to the Earth. Without a South, there is no North. Is he aware of the utter chaos that would ensue from his folly? His heart glows red, a star so far away that burns with such intensity, does it overpower his mind? Perhaps he has no mind. Perhaps he only attacks because the centaur defends.

On the Earth, among mortals, the Specter has returned. You cannot see her except for in times of darkness, when sadness engulfs the world. Until then she drifts under the opera of the heavens. She seems to be endeared by this season of death, though it only comes once a year, for she leaves her world far across the seas to merely pass through our world. She likes to watch the green life wither from grass and the fields burn to charred remains. One can never understand her fascination with Death, though it was Death that untimely took her without reason. Some say she is in love with Death and comes once a year to secretly witness his life. But I disagree; I think she comes to watch the world die.

The next two months will border the fringes of insanity. Getting things ready for Kamp Kwacha in July, then a VAC meeting, my sister and Henry are visiting in August, and camp begins as soon as they leave. September is the island in the distance and the seas are growing rough. I am ready to come home and reclaim the semblance of a life I have left. There are many things that have changed in me. I have learned to be realistic and not a daydreaming fool. I have learned that one cannot evade Death, he comes when he desires at no one’s convenience. And with Death around any corner, I think every day of what’s important.

My family. My friends back home. My memories.

I have also discovered that we never really fall from innocence; it simply secludes itself into protection. People never really grow up. In better words, there is no growing up; there is a layering of defenses to protect that child inside. The mischievous one that can love and hurt unconditionally. That needs attention, caring and love yet yearns to be free and explore a world of senses. I get satisfaction from thinking of myself as mature and grown up, but I too am only protecting a jealous child who is afraid of being alone and the dark. That sometimes wants to destroy life without thought but loves intensely because he knows of no other way. Impulsive and desires to explore the world without straying too far from home. This is the child I fear, love and protect.

I miss her more than ever, I don’t know why. It seems that in times of sadness my mind drifts to a happier time in a happier place. I don’t think of what happen anymore; no longer try to decipher a female mind. It does not matter and even if I do try I cannot remember anymore. But the happy memories are enough. They are a shining light in the darkest of days and without them I would be lost. So no matter the pain, the tears, the utter hopelessness that ensued, it was the gift of these memories I am grateful for. Wherever I am, whoever I am, I can love, I have loved and even a small memory of that can radiate a relentless hope. Thank you for these memories, especially in these months.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Azungu Bo!

Airtel has been running a 100 Free Texts promotion for the past few weeks. You send a certain amount of texts and you get 100 free ones. I don’t have Airtel, but Flamboyant does. And so, three, four, more times a week I get random texts filtering through Mwazisi’s shoddy network containing critical messages such as “Azungu Bo!” or “Flash SoCo!” Though annoying it is nice to hear from friends; it gets quite lonely some days in the village. More importantly I didn’t stop him because I have TNM, the AirTel promotion does not apply to me, so he gets charged for each text he sends me. Perhaps I’m an awful person, but Flamboyant is a close friend and very frugal. Cheap is a better word. Cheap to a point of frustrating and this is my lesson to him.

I visited him last week, for the first time, to conduct business training in his village. We met in Kusungu BOMA and caught a matola to his village. He made sure to specifically open his backpack and show me a plastic bag from People’s. “See I bought you meat, and not just any meat: sausage,” he said proudly. The pack of economy sausage had ruptured on the corner and ground mush oozed into the bag. “Oh damn it. Whatever.” It was his way of thanking me for doing the training. I laughed thanking him for the gesture, though told him I was ok with anything, even bread and peanut butter. For Flamboyant, this was a great leap in expenditures, even SoCo doesn’t get meat, and I appreciated his sincerity.

The training went well, I hope. His community is wonderful and his Forestry department is probably the only extension office that does any work in all of Malawi. His favorite neighbor, Olive, spent the previous week learning and practicing my name, which she executed perfectly in our first encounter. She was an amazing woman with an adorable crew of children. Flamboyant is virtually fluent in Chichewa and I stood gaping in awe as he conversed gaily with Olive and everyone in his village. After spending the night in his well furnished house, we went to a nearby tea room for breakfast. I was fighting off a three week cold and coughing out a lung, but somehow managed to finish the all day business training. Flamboyant’s counterpart translated and while a majority probably won’t really use these skills, at least four or five of the attendees really got it. They grasped the material and asked thoughtful questions.

That was it actually. Not sure where I was going with this. Nothing very exciting or profound, like Flamboyant's texts.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

On Family

This is a piece written for the 50th Anniversary commemorative book for Peace Corps Malawi.

Family is the bedrock from which we grow, no matter its size or form. For most of my life I only knew of family bound by blood, exploring and coming of age nourished by genetically unconditional love. And that love was more than enough. Years later, a world away, I was welcomed into a new family. Not a family I was born into or a family in the American sense of the word, but a village, a community, that cares for each other.

It was early November and the winds in the valley were restless in anticipation of the rains. A Wednesday, I had been in Mwazisi for seven months. I was caught with a burning fever, accompanied by aching muscles and waves of nausea. The relentless fever soared by the second morning and I could not reach the PCMO as the cell network was down due to fuel shortages and a faulty tower. Unable to reach anyone I waited patiently, taking Ibuprofen and tylenol.

News of my illness spread instantly throughout the village and in minutes I was surrounded by movement. Fathers fetched water to keep me hydrated. Mothers cooked soft foods because I was too weak and nauseous to eat. Brothers and sisters kept vigil by the school waiting for a cell signal. Many came regularly to check on my condition, worried it was malaria, and urging me to see the medical assistant.

By Saturday network was up, the PCMO prescribed antibiotics and I was in recovery. Chief Chimbata and Reverend Kumwenda visited as representatives of the community. My first intervention. The community expressed concern that I was not eating enough and thus got sick. They said I live a lonely life and I shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help. Then Reverend Kumwenda explained that he and Chief Chimbata would keep me company while I recovered. He told stories of his travels in South Africa, Gandhi and how the world has changed.

America is a land of many fenced families and Malawi is a country of one family. I am a stranger, yet my community cares for me like their own child. They worry when I don’t eat or get sick or return late from travelling. They love for no other reason than I am here and part of the village, living, surviving life together. Towards the end of the visit Reverend Kumwenda said “we don’t want you to die Mr. Prashanth.” They departed with a prayer and I remained in a quiet emptiness.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Crazy

Hectic couple of months. Seasons changed overnight, Malawi changed overnight, suddenly everything was harsh and sparse. The fields burned and emptied like tanks of fuel and everything stopped.

Work has been endless and I have been traveling for Kamp Kwacha and dealing with administrative works. The EPA is practically completed and remains to be opened. All my closest friends are gone and suddenly the whole country seems empty. My sister is flying to Kigali and then coming to Malawi in August.

I miss home and a little part is eager to experience something new. Looking forward to enjoying the remainder of year, closing projects, finishing camp, seeing my sister and seeing Malawi. Will post more.

In The Company of Degenerates

This is a short fiction piece written for The Outlet. It was written for some volunteers in Malawi, thus large portions may sound like utter nonsense. Also, it contains explicative language.

There were the indescribable orgies. The countless discussions of foamy butts. The harrowing tales of diarrhea (of the explosive nature). The deafening dance parties with no pants. I had turned off my phone as instructed by the stewardess. There was a nor’easter that winter and the worst hit the area in late February. Runways were iced, turbulence and delays abounded the airlines. As my plane descended into the snowy quiet of Philly, I thought of nothing. My mind was empty. It thought not of the future or the sharp turn my life was taking. It harbored no nostalgia for the life and family I left behind. No fear as I opened the overhead compartment. No excitement as I exited the terminal. It was clear and the static silence inside my mind mirrored a city muffled by snow. I was waiting for a call I didn’t want to answer.

We were the only two left waiting by the luggage carousels. I had seen her on the plane earlier, but said nothing. She had on the strangest combination of clothing, accented by enormous pink headphones that hung around her neck and a wild bush of brown hair on her head, as if she had been electrocuted. She stood with a stark confidence adorned in tattoos of flowers that organically travelled over her pale complexion. After waiting patiently, passing glances, we found our luggage at the counter and adventured into the cold through separate exits. We took separate cabs to the hotel, so humanly unaware that in three months we would be neighbors, site mates. Unaware that she would know and understand me better than most of my friends and that I would know just how to push her buttons or make her giggle uncontrollably.

The low hum of the television filled the hotel room. News filled my eyes and some sound filtered into my ears but my mind was elsewhere, with a girl. The overcast skies outside the window were comforting, as if the day hadn’t really begun. As if a blanket was thrown over the world. I was the first to arrive in the room, and of course taking the better bed I lay there recovering from the journey and an ambushed hug from a Montana girl by the front desk. It’s not that I don’t like hugs, just not from strangers in hotel lobbies. There is a certain cold etiquette and approach to life that living in Boston ingrains in people and warming is an arduous process, not to be taken lightly. Over the months I would lose count at the many more times she would ambush and jump with hugs, even with her missing tooth.

There was a sound at the door and after a moment of fiddling a stout man with a scruffy demeanor strut into the room. Long, disheveled hair, an unkempt beard, glasses, all bundled in a large coat topped off with a baseball cap, it spoke.

“Great, of course they put the ethnic kids in the same room.”
“Hi. Prashanth.”
“Sol. Nice to meet you. Are you Indian?”
“Yeah, are you?”
“Half. Great, so they put the Indian kids together.”
“Go figure.”
“This is pretty nice. Did you see that Connecticut douche bag downstairs?”
“No, what happen?”
“Had his fuckin’ little blue Brooks Bothers polo on and shit.”

After the rest of the group had abandoned us for dinner, opting for fine Philadelphian sushi, we gathered a big burly Texan in the lobby and sauntered out in the cold. Passing by a Connecticut douche and emptying our allowance accounts we ended up in Chinatown. While warming a Bostonian may take time, warming a half-Sikh, half-Jew, Philadelphian takes about four cold beers and an order of roasted duck and pork belly. Wild cowboy stories of hunts and fighting bears filled the table which was already spilling over with food and beer. Bottles clinked to clank of cutlery on plates and everything was finished. It was one of the best meals I had ever had and the best meal to leave a life behind in the company of two strangers.

Time can pass so quickly that it fools the mind. It was only yesterday that I was on a plane with one of the Backstreet Boys, bound for Jo’berg and then Lilongwe. Or was that a year ago? I can’t remember. Faces and events exist in my memory but they wander aimlessly without an anchor in time. It was only yesterday that a douche bag from Connecticut cornered me on the dance floor with his gyrating groin. It was only yesterday I lay content on an empty Nyungwe beach under the resplendent cover of Passover stars. It was only yesterday I set aside my ego and mustered the courage to call her and say goodbye. It was only yesterday my sister was four and shattering my gifts of constructed Legos. It was only yesterday I walked out of a conference room and never went back. It was only yesterday I turned twenty-four.

I had never had the privilege of real friendship until a few years ago, with a tax accountant and consultant, no less. Years of always moving yet leaving nothing in my wake. Nothing to anchor my memories. And like time can fool the mind, it can sometimes stretch, contract and contort the capacity of the heart. This is what I was thinking about that April night, sandwiched between a grinding Colombian with no pants or shirt and a similarly attired Portland lesbian attempting to remove my shirt. The small wooden dance floor barely accommodated the ten of us so two had mounted the bar top. Trace Top 40 blasted from the television and a girl with bright red hair strut down the streets of New York City. What was her name? Movement surrounded me, and though it was dark the shifting television light illuminated the drunken faces glistening with sweat as they danced merrily into a tired bliss.

Panning across the steamy dance floor, past the moon-lit windows, past the half-naked bodies, it occurred to me that I was happy. These were my friends. Shirtless, pantless, shoeless. Dancing the world away in an aroma of sweat and vanilla abs, without a care. Most are dirty, few don’t shower, some never shave, and a minority shave in the wrong the place, resulting in a disturbing fu manchu. Their glow bracelets whirred in the darkness to shrills of laughter that filled the night. And under that same night, far, far in the North, a girl meditated on her next choice of extensions to tame her electric hair, while painting in her mind over paper cutouts of birds in trees of peace and angels of sustainable justice. Down the hall, on the top bunk of the left bed in Dorm 3 a Montana girl slipped into a slumber while watching True Blood, still waiting for her missing tooth. She would get hungry for Lebanese the next day and ask for homos. On a dance floor, a stout, no-longer-so-scruffy, man replicated the box-man shuffle to the cheers of his peers. Shirtless, shoeless, degenerated off his mind, with a smile of sincere happiness.

A year has shuffled by so quickly that it’s fooled my mind. Like time can fool the mind it has also contorted the capacity of my heart, accommodating a surfeit of people. She sits in her new flat in Boston, a cat owner now, yet still unsure of a great many things in her life. There was another nor’easter this year, though it’s May and the weather is probably warming, it’s been months since I last called. I wonder what she would say of my company of degenerates. The toothless, the tattooed, the unkempt, the boisterous, the sexually confused, the wonderful, from whom I’ve learned the universality of kindness and the unconditionality of friendship. A year of unanchored memories that float aimlessly through the canals of my mind only to reappear years later, in another life.

And when they reappear, perhaps in the fall, or the winter, I will be reminded of a time I was happy and wonder: was it only yesterday? I can’t remember.

Friday, April 1, 2011

On Mail

With the help of several staff members (thank you Betty and Elaton) and five grueling, miserable days of fighting, Henry's package is finally in my hands. The incident is so corrupted and convoluted that I care not to bring it up anymore. However, I am so very thankful for Betty and Elaton, for many reasons, especially getting the package. For all future packages that may be sent from the bright place known as America, please, please, mark the value of the box as equal to or less than $100.

And thank you to Henry, Erin and my family for the awesome package. Mostly Henry. I could not ask for a more wonderful set of gifts.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

POW-WOW!

Wellesley's PCPP grant is up online, it is for an awesome project building a women's center in her village Kawaza. The center will strive for both women's empowerment and protection of the local forests. Anyone that can help, please see the following Peace Corps page and donate. Thanks.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=614-227

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Charcoal Drawn Skies

Strange dreams woke me at 4 am this morning. I found myself recovering from another world in the corner bed of Dorm 1. It was still dark out, the streets were quiet and the halls of Mufasas breathed a silent breeze after another late night. A Japanese tourist and Wellesley were snoring lightly. I got up discreetly, grabbing my toothbrush, toothpaste and iPod, trying not to wake anyone else. The hallways were pitch black, faint rays of light filtered from the bathrooms. A large rat scurried from the kitchen cross the hallway into the bathroom, returning to its cardboard shelter in the middle stall. I took my time brushing my teeth and spent over a half hour just standing under the warm waterfall shower. My muscles melted in the hot water, my bones were warming and a sense of morning peace grew over me. Pulling on a shirt and a pair of jeans, I grabbed my bag, plugged my ears to Vampire Weekend and walked into the dawn lit street.

It was chilly outside, the sort of chill that in Malawi translates into a scorching afternoon. A couple of mini-buses drove by on their morning routes, but the streets were empty. There was not a sound otherwise. Not a spray of dust, clouds of exhaust nor aggressive street vendors. You spend so much time looking down in Lilongwe, or in any city for that matter, that you forget all else. This seems translate into all aspects of city life, a stressful faith in the microscopic in front of you, everyone under a lens. Surviving this bustle, battling traffic and life with the same aggression and coming out the other end appearing unscathed is a cause for admiration. In that same sense, time also becomes microscopic and hours become minutes, minutes become seconds. But while the cosmopolitan citizens slumber a recovery from another long night of fulfilling social obligations in pursuit of once innocent dreams, the city breathes. Its roads cool, the trees gently shed a day’s pollution into the winds and the birds reclaim their branches.

Turning the corner, passing under the trees rooted in cement circles, light filtered over the streets. The skies brightened as I made my way up the steps and a formation of birds flying overhead caught my eye. I looked up and was instead caught by a beautiful sunrise. The clouds were drawn on to the grand sky with a colored charcoal, glowing a light gold and some still pink. There was a wide diversity of clouds all drawn with the granular strokes of charcoal on paper with smudges of grays and blues. Signs of an artist’s hand were evident everywhere. The sun was hidden behind a large blue PTC and Standard Bank, but once passed the entire sky opened up. By the time I reached the barren tree in the parking lot of the new mall, the view was mesmerizing. I slowed my pace, a taboo in any city, and let the morning Lilongwe soak into my skin. My general loathing for this city seemed to have temporarily vanished and I felt transported to another time when Lilongwe was a much different place. A time before large shopping centers, before roads, going back, back in time to fields of villages and animals. Forests of trees covered the land and the names of chiefs were reserved for villages and not two-story buildings. A quiet time.

It was such a brief moment, as if in a flash of dawn light everything vanished. A brief, microscopic moment in this city, which could be lifetime anywhere else.

Transient places in a transient place, I leave for Dedza tomorrow. The new group arrived last month and their PST is underway. I am assigned to Week 3 and will be teaching village economics and small-business development to the trainees. I’m looking forward to returning to Dedza and enjoying the comforts of home stay for a week. Having a host family, three square meals a day (and a packed snack for class), hot water baths and the beautiful serenity of a Dedza village. I will return on Thursday for a VAC meeting and hopefully return to the Mwazisi by the end of the month.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Remixes in the Waz

To begin commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps, the U.S. Embassy requested that I put together a video for each month of this year of various volunteers in Malawi. So here is my first of a series of videos produced: Wellesley's Reforestation Remix.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=195969923761290&oid=160841183603&comments

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Project Updates - Part IV

Kamp Kwacha
Frodo, Sparkly Eyes and I are planning to conduct a business training camp for 25 Form 3 and Form 4 students in August. For the past two months we have been planning the curriculum, designing the schedule, and securing financing for the camp. Though we originally planned to fund from PCPP, we decided to fund instead from VAST. Our camp, which we have endearingly named Kamp Kwacha, does have a major focus on HIV/AIDS prevention and targets a very crucial age group. Income generation and self-sufficiency are important areas to develop among these students, especially girls. I have just finished writing the grant and putting together the budget for George. The camp will be five days hosted at the Jonah Mission in Senga Bay. I haven’t seen the location myself, but Frodo said it’s a beautiful lakeshore location and has all the facilities we need to host classes and guest speakers. He also said the staff is wonderful and very friendly. We have a preliminary list of ten volunteers with business backgrounds to serve as counselors. The students will be invited from all over Malawi and they will face a screening process that tests competency in English as well as entrepreneurial spirit. We chose to target this age group because they are in process of preparing for life post-secondary school. Very few will go on to university and most will end up with some menial job or farming. Small-business can be the key to living a better life and all they need are the skills to run a business. Many organizations do superficial business skills training in Malawi, including Peace Corps. However, our goal with this camp is to take it a step further and teach more advanced concepts. Over the course of five days we hope to instill a solid business understanding and inject some national pride and creativity in the students. Tall order but we are confident. First and foremost, cross our fingers and pray the funding gets approved.

50th Anniversary
Peace Corps turns 50 this year, in September to be exact. The Malawi office, along with the U.S. Embassy is planning a list of celebratory activities for this year. A committee was formed tasked with undertaking this mammoth project which includes things from a party, to t-shirts, pins, documentaries, and a coffee table book. I am on this committee and was charged with the video portion of the project. Starting with March 1st, the first video deadline and when JFK spoke at Michigan, I have to complete short videos about PCVs in Malawi and their work. The collection email was sent out last week and we wait for submissions of video, music, and pictures. Of course, the problem is I’m in my village, the content is in Lilongwe and I have no means to edit. Luckily, Lois brought her Mac loaded with all the necessary software, so I will have to journey to Lilongwe each month to edit videos and have them ready for the Embassy. This could be a fun project, I haven’t edited in so long, but I worry of the travel and time constraint away from site. I hope it does not affect other project work.

VAC - Freasurer
Last September I was elected to VAC. Last month VAC made the move to combine the Treasurer and Fundraiser positions on the Executive Committee. This was mainly because the transit houses were closed and the VAC lost its funding source along with the ability to control its own funding account. With a heavily reduced income source, now primarily t-shirt sales, there was no need for two positions. Both the current Treasurer and Fundraiser were due to COS in the next few months and elections were held for the combined position. I was elected to this position that we have jokingly titled Freasurer. The position’s responsibilities include managing VAC funds, bookkeeping and maintaining records, and overseeing t-shirt production and sales. T-shirt sales were a default fundraising scheme once the transit houses closed. The interesting part of the position will be overhauling fundraising activities and devising clever alternatives to raise money. Fortunately it is the 50th Anniversary and this provides an ample source of merchandise and much bigger market that extends to the U.S. The main purpose of VAC funds is to sponsor volunteer projects in Malawi and pay for PCV events.

Project Updates - Part III

Women’s Group
The Women’s Group has lost some momentum over the last two months. The main reasons being that I was away and all the women are busy tending to tobacco. They made over Mk. 3,000 from jam sales last year, a great figure for a business they just started. Also, the women planted the CG-7 groundnuts this year so that we would not have to buy more when we begin oil pressing again. Fortunately, TLC has promised us two more presses which will increase our production. With the EPA office almost completed we will be able to move all our supplies and have a central location for meetings. Over the next month I hope to make the stamps and labels for the jam bottles to begin expanding the market for selling. Wellesley designed a lovely logo that will serve as the group logo and be part of a large mural on the EPA’s northern wall. Otherwise, there are some other ideas we are floating about for businesses. The group has been successful but the lack of self-sufficiency worries me. They have funds, members and resources to continue but the problem is they are not generating enough money yet. We will keep pushing until the businesses are more established and perhaps we will reach a point where they are generating enough profit to make it worthwhile to operate these businesses full-time.

M24
The road from Rumphi boma all the way up to Chitipa is horrendous to say the least. It is the infamous back road to Chitipa and is the shortest distance between the two bomas. The only problem is that it is the worst road in Malawi and gets progressively worse the further you travel, the worst of which begins after Chilenda camp. Currently, the only way to get to Chitipa safely and timely is to travel around Nyika, through Karonga and then west to the boma. This is a longer distance but really the only option. The entire stretch of the back road measures about 224km. The portion closest to Chitipa is nearly impassible with gaping cracks and dangerous cliffs. The portion from Rumphi boma to the Mwazisi turnoff (basically Chitanga) is labeled M24 on the road network map. This is the portion that Wellesley and I hope to get paved. The entire road is currently under analysis by the Arab Development Bank, they hope to pave all 224km of the back road. The initial and economic reports have been completed but there has been an issue with completing the feasibility study. Due to internal disagreements the project has been put on hold for an unknown period of time and it could be years before any progress is made. Thus, we have undertaken the task of finding funding for the unpaved 40km segment of M24. This segment faces the heaviest traffic and is economically a vital area. All the main villages run along this road and these villages have access to electricity. While in Lilongwe, we met with the Roads Authority’s chief engineer and collected all the current reports on this road. He was an incredibly helpful and well-spoken man that showed us designs for a cheaper road that is just as strong. We were able to reduce the cost estimate from $600,000 per km to $200,000. This puts the total cost at roughly $8 million to pave the M24. Now the hard part: funding. Once we complete further research we hope to begin shopping a small proposal to various donors, corporations, and embassies in hopes of slowly selling each portion of the road. $8 million is a large sum, but when broken up it amounts to a minute portion of donor budgets. We are fully aware we will not pave this road before our time ends, but we can at least put the wheels in motion.

Project Updates - Part II

MBA & TLC
Where to begin on the beekeepers? The FOM grant money has been well spent and over 100 hives have already been completed. The carpenters are hard at work while the remaining 80 planks are on the way. There was quite a bit of drama surrounding the transport of the planks. We paid the head of Parks & Wildlife at Nyika (Mr. Zamini) Mk. 14,000 for fuel to transport 200 planks from Chilenda to Mwazisi. The whole event was a disaster but 120 planks plus free discards made it to Mwazisi, meanwhile I lost my sanity. It took three days in the cold, rainy plateau and most of it spent arguing to the get the planks here. Once they made it, as I expected, Zamini cancelled the deal on the remaining planks and demanded another Mk. 14,000 to bring the rest. The man is a swindler, I knew the day I met him, silver-tongued he oozes of distrust and reeks of the criminal. However, we literally had no choice. I’ve called him numerous times since the first shipment and each time he has a new excuse on why he cannot bring the planks. The Parks department makes trips at least once a month to take the staff to a nearby boma to buy supplies and food. Chilenda is isolated and more trips are made, it’s just that this man wants some more money in his pocket and we don’t have any left. Private trucks transport large shipments of wood almost once a week to various selling points along the main road and to the boma. One of the selling points is Chitanga, the village next to Mwazisi. These trucks are owned by local merchants and definitely carry a little on top for friends and chiefs. That’s when I had the idea to try these trucks and even if they only carry 10-20 extra planks each trip they would eventually bring our remainder. Fortunately, the lead carpenter for the hive project is friends with a chief in Chitanga, whose son is a driver for the lumber trucks. He agreed to bring some planks each trip and the best part is it would only cost us Mk.500 per set transported. The plan is in motion, let’s hope it works. In the meantime, the Executive Committee is scouting an ideal location to hang the hives. Due to transport logistics in the rains the site maybe moved from Vwaza to Nyika.

Running parallel to up starting the Mwazisi Beekeepers is a greater project from Total Land Care. TLC’s Kulera Biodiversity Project has two years left on the clock and one of major segments is the amalgamation of all beekeeping groups in Nyika. Once combined, the new enterprise will explore opportunities in bottling and marketing honey under its own brand, perhaps even internationally. Currently, Mzuzu Coffee Growers bulk buys the honey from beekeepers around Nyika at an astonishingly low price. The farmers make virtually nothing and the company bottles and sells the honey at a significant premium. Cutting out this middle man is next logical step for these beekeepers that already produce quality honey in large quantities. Combining all the groups will enable a stable and constant supply of honey, which is crucial for any successful business. Also, the quantity will be in the hundreds of tones, enough to satisfy both residential and commercial customers. And most importantly, the new enterprise will redistribute profits back to the farmer and generate new income sources for many rural families. TLC has already sent consultants to analyze the prospects of this project. There is an office in Hayway filled with honey processing equipment that is unused. It was from an old grant provided by an NGO many years ago. The office is still there and I suggested that the new group use the facility for commencing processing. Mwazisi’s group will be merged into the larger group. Hopefully next week I and Mr. Mkandawire (TLC’s Northern chief) will travel to Thazima and meet with Duncan, the chairman of the Thazima Beekeepers Association. TBA is the largest honey producing group in Nyika and has been in existence since the 1980s. They are the biggest suppliers to Mzuzu Coffee and will serve as the central group once all the groups are combined. As with any large undertaking, we will see how this plays out.

Project Updates - Part I

EPA
The main office building is practically completed, only some minor finishing touches remain. We are also waiting on the DADO to wire the building for electricity. I have decided to assign one of the open offices for NGOs that operate in Mwazisi, a list which currently includes: Peace Corps, TLC and DAMRA. This will make it easier for the extension workers to store materials, keep books, and track the progress of running projects. Hopefully, this will also encourage a greater presence by the NGO and greater participation by the community. The next phase of the project is the construction of toilets. We hope to finance this portion with community contributions, which are supposed to amount to 25% of total funding under the LDF/World Bank rules. To meet and exceed that threshold we have asked all area chiefs (40 of them) to provide monetary and labor aid to the construction of these toilets. Our funds are running short, we barely have enough to cover the toilets and we need assistance. We discussed so many different design plans, my head is spinning. The community wants strong, expensive construction materials and practices for the toilet construction. As funny as this argument seems, we can’t afford it. So Mr. Mponda, Benedicto, and myself redesigned the structure to use a marginal increase in cement while eliminating the need for 20,000 bricks (Mk. 40,000). We hope this idea works and according to our design it should be just as strong, if not stronger, than the standard design. It is now almost mid-February and the construction of the main building should be entirely completed by the end of the month. Meanwhile, various community members are beginning to get jealous. Accusations are floating around that EPA committee is stealing funds and using it for themselves and thus we are doing a poor job with the construction. The biggest of these accusations was from the committee Chairman himself, who has never attend any meetings or helped with the project. Fortunately, there are enough good people in the community to defend the project and the tireless efforts of the committee. I am never doing a construction project here again.

Secondary School Business Club
Due to the success of the Women’s Group, I began a business club at the Secondary School. The main goal was to attract students in the later forms and teach them business skills. Several students had already come to me independently and indicated interest in learning about business. Granted I hate dealing with teenagers and had no interest in teaching class, the club was a nice compromise. The students in the club are wonderful and eager to learn. I have good mix of boys and girls and it’s already clear that the girls are much smarter and well-spoken. We had our first meeting last week and discussed several ideas for businesses. I tasked the members with doing some market research for the next meeting and we will see if our first business, a cinema house, will come to fruition. During the course of starting this business I will teach them basic skills and together we will write a business plan. This project is still in its infancy so will we see if sustains member interest over the next few months.

Safe Water Project
Using the buckets and Waterguard provided by PSI at IST, my counterpart and I have created a safe water club at both the Secondary and Primary schools. These clubs consist of several students tasked with fetching and treating borehole water for school consumption. In the case of the Primary School, where there are over 900 students, this is a major task but the students are enthusiastic and diligent. They have already consumed the initial supplies of Waterguard and are in need of more. In many schools in Malawi children are often dehydrated and the borehole water or river water they do consume leads to waterborne illnesses and diarrhea. Especially during the rainy season, ground water gets contaminated and is often murky. Thus, we provided the equipment for students to treat their water and conducted demonstrations on proper treatment. We also stress the importance of the clean drinking water for health and safety. After that, it’s all up to the students and the schools to continue the water program and we just have to regularly check-in on the status. Fortunately, the students have been active and we hope it continues.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Things I Miss (In No Particular Order)

Cooking with my mom. Eating home cooked meals, filling up to the brim with paneer, naan, kufta, kobhar anam, sambar, dosa, kobhar chutney, pachadis, gulab jamun, soampapadi, kodi goodu kura, payasum, ice cream. Washing it all down with a nap on the couch. With the TV on. Playing some quiet filling movie. Talking tech, books, movies with my dad. Having everything taken care off. Cleaners. Ice cold milk and warm chocolate chip cookies. Molten chocolate lava cake. And the white one too. Cheesecake. Chinese food. Delivered. Showering in the morning. Eating above and beyond physical limits with my sister. Baan Thai. Laughing hysterically at nothing for no reason. My sister teasing and annoying my mom because she’s bored. Annoying my dad because she’s bored. Annoying me because she’s bored. Impulsiveness. Dad eating something fatty, oily, or sweet and my mom scolding him. Coming home after being away, opening the door to the aroma of spices, music playing, voices chattering and being filled with the comfort of knowing you’re home. Endless hours to do whatever you want. Weekends. Shopping. Eating out. IM’ing while doing work, while talking on the phone, watching TV and eating…all at the same time. AC. Bathrooms. Hot morning showers. Absence of dust. Sinks. Giant mirrors. Walking around barefoot. My bed. Laundry machines. Wing nights with Fang. Blue Moon and orange slices. Disoriented Rock Band. Making fun of some new ridiculously skinny jeans that Jeff bought. Harvard Gardens. Red Hat. Sushi. Fang moaning after the first bite of sushi. Doon asking if his shirt made him look jacked. Acapulco’s with Raj, Kush and Dan. Cheese. Pizza. Viva Burrito. Anna’s. Felcarro’s. My apartment. Parties at my apartment. Dim sum Sundays with Henry. Eating way too much again. Then bakeries in Chinatown for moon cake, peanut butter buns and egg custard pastries. The commuter rail home. Red line. Green line. Orange line. Movie theatres. Watching movies with my family and the delicious snacks that usually accompanied. Netflix. My sister’s ability to make us laugh no matter how serious of a mood we are in. Buscalung. Teasing Prachi. Making fun of some ridiculous winter jacket designed for moon landings (or something) that Anil bought…with matching goggles. Being coerced into becoming a Huskies fan. Adventures with Nina. Trader Joe’s. Whole Foods. Hummus. Fast internet. Dressing nice. Not getting dirty the second you step outside. Talking about life with my sister. Fang making pot stickers. Our big TV. Sarcone and Arman and all the adventures, foods, beverages and comments about women that usually follow. My friends prescribed cheer up sessions when I’m depressed. Dunkin Donuts. Eating gross Chinese buffet food with my sister and paying $40 for it. Going back to the same place. Knowing everything in the lives of my family. Diya. Playing with the kids at my mom’s daycare. Springsteen and Floyd blasting through the apartment. Lengthy discussions about useless TV shows with roommates. Boston. Family, friends and everyone in between.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

The Conversation Has Changed

The cool wind atop the hill estate blew through the smoldering rubble of the manor. Overcast skies softened the light on her skin and the surrounding grass fields radiated a lush green. Russet wisps of her hair wandered over her cheeks which grew pale in the chilly morning air. Not a tear; as with everything in life she accepted loss to complications. She held his hand as they tread cautiously through the remains. The blackened indiscriminant shards of wood and glass crunched under their steps. Smoke was rising from embers still burning the night’s memory with a vengeance. A grand structure once stood tall in this very place, a home filled with memories passing on the legacy of a family. Reduced to ashes it is more than a mere memory now.

He had changed in the time of his absence. The guilt of his parents’ deaths had pushed him away from those closest to him, but now he was a man wholly reconstructed by an ideal. His guilt and his need for revenge transformed into a fight for justice. The mask he bore was no longer that of a nocturnal vigilante but that of a man he once was. He loved her. He always has, but his pursuit of an ideal was greater than her. It was greater than him. He accepted his solitude as a necessity much like his secrecy. It was difficult to abandon love for something so unknown and infinite. There is the fight and nothing else, no one else. In the outer realms of legend, he was no longer merely a man.

At a point in my life where they seem to have run rampant, I’m exhausted. What is it I’m so afraid of? What am I running from, clinging to their distraction? Looking at my life in hindsight I notice a common pattern and I question the very roots of reasoning for leaving home. I do not consider myself a weak person, though there are several ex-companions that would argue otherwise. At the core I have few fears, most of which are trivial, superficial, and can be overcome with knowledge and understanding. But drowning in thought, a quiet so loud I can hear its resonance, I’ve learned what it is I fear more than anything in the world. Being alone. Anyone that has read anything I’ve written would notice the undertones of solitude leaking, perhaps gushing, from words. I scramble to cram thoughts and distractions into my mind in fear that any small void unfilled will be filled with fear itself.

It’s an unfortunate fear to have, very un-masculine of me. Consider our iconic man; the brawny, broad-shouldered hero of myth and legend. Whether he wears a cape and red underpants, or orders a vodka martini (shaken, not stirred), or is a titan of 1960s Madison Avenue, he is the man we epitomize. Ordinary young men furiously emulate bulging biceps while acting devil may care. Women swoon at the mere thought of these legendary men they want but cannot have. This is society’s ideal man, evolutionary perfection we chiseled from stone earth from the time of Odysseus to Indiana. These men fear nothing, not beast, nor man, nor solitude. In fact, solitude is the string that ties these legends together. Every iconic hero embraces solitude as the ideal partner, never held down by a tangible companion.

Instead they are weighed down by an ideal. Perhaps it was distrust, or a death, or guilt that led them to this path of enlightenment. Once they elevate mortal feelings to true sense of purpose, the ideal becomes beneficiary of body, mind and soul. There is nothing left for anything or anyone else. An ideal. Is love an ideal? I used to believe in love, as a naïve man does. Why do our heroes never fight for love? Is it a quality we reserve for women? What dangers are the keepers of our ancestry warning us of with tales of solitary heroes? What do I believe in enough to abandon all? Nothing. Perhaps I am still too young. An ideal worth sacrificing everything for, that is what I need to shed this fear of solitude. Until then I must rely on my ability to act and hope that one day I can’t tell the difference between reality and character I’m playing. The world my theatre, friends and family my audience, a Kaufman-esque tribute: the story of my life.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Thank You

Under overcast skies the lands are lush with green and my thoughts are scattered with abundance. Maize is cropping up everywhere, some tall as an infant, and tobacco is brooding in distant fields. Grass has grown wild and the flowers bloom their petals from the brush. It is January and the rains have been disappointing. The village is worried but is hopeful the conditions will improve as these are the peak months for rainfall. One can imagine the devastation of a dry year.

I don’t say this enough to the people around me. Be it close friends or family, often taking them for granted. Unfortunately, I have a habit of being thankful instead for the attentions of pursuits. As if I had earned it, as if it was some great accomplishment. The point is its too late. A lifetime of benefiting from the generosities of those closest to me, how can I possibly show my gratitude? It is more immense than words, especially to my mother, father, and sister. Some day I hope to return to you all you have done for me, but for today all I can offer you is my thanks.

You may not be proud of everything I do or say. You may be disappointed, frustrated, angry, saddened and even heartbroken. For these things I am truly sorry, but I’m navigating my own course through this world, making sense of it the best I can. This world: so different from home, placed high atop a silver steeple. We climbed on your shoulders up only to find another steeple above. While you will always have that old world, home, we have only this world. Peering over the edge is an abyss and someday we will be stranded here, your shoulders no longer there to permit us home.

So thank you. Thank you for bringing us out, leaving home, to give us the opportunities you never had. Thank you for allowing us the freedom to choose any life we wanted. Thank you for sponsoring us to pursue that life so that we have no obligations and are free. Thank you for all the little things, from scrapes to pickups. Thank you for being there for the happiest moments and sad ones. Thank you for coming to Malawi, not many families do, and I am privileged that you did. Thank for all these wonderful gifts you brought of food and gadgets that are entirely too much for one person.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Santa Baby

I returned to Mwazisi seven days into the New Year. After recovering from my parents leaving and drudging going back to work. When I left I had a memory of my village: green, people planting tobacco and maize, and power lines zigzagging through the trading center. However, returning I see a whole new village. It’s as if Santa Claus ho-ho’d through this place and everyone’s been good boys and girls.

Almost every wired house now has at least two satellite dishes and of course a TV. I walked into my landlord’s shop to pay my rent and saw a brand new TV hooked up to a new DVD player. My neighbors had their whole house wired for electricity. Keep in mind their son didn’t have any money to buy books and stationary for the new term. There is now a barber shop in town and a cinema house. A new sheltered market was constructed at the fork, rendering the old informal market useless.

All this development is astounding and makes me thankful for those wonderful folks at the World Bank. But my concern is with the money. Unfortunately, Santa Claus doesn’t exist, meaning all these wonderful gadgets were paid for out of pocket. At a time of year when everyone, everyone, is complaining of insufficient funds to pay for fertilizer, what is left? People are taking loans out to pay for their fields, yet buying satellite dishes and TVs?

To top it all off, the future for tobacco in Malawi is looking more dismal with passing week. Demand for this year was already reduced and in five years most farmers will not be able to sell anything unless the ban is lifted. I understand improvements such as a cinema house and barbershop are investments, but with such an uncertain and frightening future, buying a TV is the least of concerns.

Then again who am I to question the quest for impulsive, frivolous, material acquisition? I come from a country rife with financial turmoil because of this very same ailment. Fortunately, credit cards have yet to infect Malawi and the country is not crucially tied to the world economy. The West is on top of the world, culturally and for a time financially. Whether we wanted the prestige or not we accepted it enthusiastically.

With great power comes great responsibility. We are the model for the rest of the world, especially the developing world. Here, young adults embrace every rap star (keenly Sean Paul) and Chuck Norris as the people they want to be. They also know every minute detail, though mostly false, of President Obama. The more urban youth prefer a wider range of musicians and even politicians, but it is still fascinating that this is what we broadcast. This is the way the world views Americans and America.

While Rick Ross is rhyming in front of tricked out DB9s, Snookie works on looking like a fat cheetoh and the Black Eyed Peas get ready for another “good night,” the real America ain’t no picnic. Americans are not partying every night from boredom and driving around in BMWs. Some are but not the majority and there is no question that the middle class got carried away. We watch shows like Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, Real World and we feel better about ourselves that we are not so shallow. The developing world watches these shows and feels inadequate that it has none of those luxuries.

It is no one’s fault. For every negative aspect of western media there is a positive impact. As Flamboyant said “you can’t pick and choose, you have to accept it all.” Mwazisi will be alright. Besides the World Bank, Total Land Care has initiated a three year biodiversity project in the area, one of two areas chosen in all of Malawi. The future is not dim, but I wish people were just smarter about their spending. They listen to American news radio and update me on President Obama. I wish they instead listened to and understood the economic crisis and its causes. Video killed the radio star. Even if I tell them, they wouldn’t believe me.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Eleven

A new year, perhaps a new self? Isn’t that what we all wish for? Who can claim they are truly happy with themselves? Not in a superficial or trivial manner, but content with principles, love, and being good in a world that drifts in ever greyer skies.

The world is flat and my family has returned to the other side. I’m sad now for a lot of reasons. It seems the year in hindsight was only a handful of days and world continues to falter. My earnest hope for restoring my faith in humanity has vanished wholly, perhaps with only crumbs remaining at the bottom of my heart.

Work and family pilfering all of my energies and efforts; I forgot the world around me. In a way, it was more peaceful. To pause and breathe your surroundings means the foul stench of the world fills your being. A suffocating darkness consumes you, yet you regain the ability to interact.

I have been out of Mwazisi for quite sometime now. My mind shut down, I’m stalling. My phone rings at least 15 times a day from site calling on project status, logistics, and a laundry list of work left. It is not work I fear, but the solitude. The quiet of my days I accepted as a reality, but for the past month my home was filled with sound.

Music, voices, laughter, chatter, the opening of gifts, the clatter of pots in the kitchen. I will fall back to my way of life again. Pachoko pachoko. Rebuild the walls. The past year gifted me many new lessons, friends and adventures. Hang my hopes. Little by little.

Happy New Year.