Tuesday 27 December 2011

Bus trips are bizarre

 7th December 2011

Life is too short to sleep in. Then again, some days I feel that life is too short to not sleep in. This conflict is never a problem when traveling by bus in Africa because, believe me, you want to get to the bus station early. You want to take the first morning bus (usually around 5 a.m.). You want to board the bus as soon as possible. Once you see it pull into the station, you want to be on it. This is why I was at the Lilongwe bus station in Malawi at 4:15 a.m. yesterday.

If you’re not there early, things are nearly guaranteed to be more miserable than just being on a bus for 12 hours and praying/wishing/hoping that the bus won’t: breakdown, take a corner too fast, take a corner too fast while going downhill on a road without guardrails (wait, what are those things again?), hit a person who – believe it or not – is completely unaware of the bus honking its horn as it careens down the street and who decides to dart across the road just as the bus nears. Or maybe it’s a herd of cows that are in danger of being hit, as they meander across the road just as the bus turns a corner. There is, of course, always the risk of the bus getting waylayed by the police who decide that, because the bus is transporting too many sacks of potatoes, it cannot continue its journey for about, oh, eight very slow hours.

All of these are not what I want to experience on a long bus trip. But I have no control over them. What I do have some control over is my seat. So at 4:15 a.m., I climbed onto the bus for Lusaka, determined to get one of the coveted window seats on the two-seat-in-a-row side of the bus instead of the worse three-seat-in-a-row side. And at 4:15, forty-five full minutes before the time the bus is scheduled to depart, there is only one of those precious good seats left. And it’s mine.

The trick about being a woman traveling alone on a bus is to get a good seat neighbor. And by ‘good’ I mean not a man. Not that I’m trying to be sexist here, but I’d rather not have a man fondling my thigh under the cover of his trenchcoat that he has draped ever so casually over his leg and part of mine. (Yes, that actually happened to me once on the train from NYC to the town where I was living outside the city, on the very last train at around 1:30 a.m. I think.) I don’t want to be totally on edge for 12 hours on a bus. So I opt for women or children as my seat neighbors. I just place something on the seat next to me when a man boards the bus and remove it when a woman or child boards the bus. That simple. So you can imagine my surprise when, at 4:30 a.m. and still with plenty of empty seats left on the bus (and with one of my bags on the seat next to mine), a man asks me, in English, if someone is sitting in the seat next to me. I’m in the second to last row of seats on the bus, so I can see all the empty seats ahead of me. There’s absolutely no reason for the man to sit next to me.

"Is someone sitting here?" he asks, pointing to the seat next to me, where my bag is.
“Hopefully,” I say, not wanting to lie exactly.
 “Eh?” he asks, not understanding my response.
 “Hopefully,” I repeat again.
“Eh?” he responds, still confused.
“Hope-ful-ly.” I say it more slowly this time.
“Eh?”
“Someone might come.”
“Eh?”

Dude, it’s 4:30 a.m. Sit in the empty seat behind me. Or in front of me. Or across the aisle from me. But don’t make me want to kill you first thing in the morning. That’s not cool for either of us.

“YES,” I finally lie, and he looks crestfallen.

Boy, I sure ruined someone’s morning. But I have made my day more delightful when I move my bag off the seat so an 8-year-old boy, traveling with his older brother, can sit next to me. Children are my favorite. When the bus fills up, a little girl sits in the seat behind me. At one point, I place my hand on the top of the back of my seat, and she kisses it quickly, then looks away.

Bus trips are bizarre. Which is probably why I take them.

Monday 19 December 2011

This is why I love Malawi

5 December

The story can’t begin at the beginning. What story does? Chronological order is overrated. Time travel is not. And what better way to travel through time than tell or read a story?

Today, I am still at the lodge in Lilongwe. I thought I’d be leaving this morning, but Mondays there is no direct bus from Lilongwe to Lusaka. And I’m on my way to Livingstone, Zambia to go to Victoria Falls, and in order to do that I need to first get to Lusaka. I leave the lodge around noon, heading on foot to Crossroads, a small shopping complex with a few banks, restaurants and clothing shops. It’s hot today, and I swear I can feel the skin at the part in my hair getting sunburned as I walk the ten minutes there. But I have a purpose. And that overrules the possible sunburn.

Yesterday, I realized several things: 1) After working everyday for weeks on end grading end-of-semester assignments of 300 students and then final exams of 300 students, I’m a bit off my game. 2) I don’t have enough cash to pay the lodge for two nights. 3) The ‘ticket’ I bought at the bus depot earlier in the day was not actually a ticket but just a reservation card, and I was worried I’d gotten scammed out of $40 (see #1 for reason/excuse for not checking when I bought it). 4) I realized my GRE math score is actually considerably lower than I had initially thought. As in “oh my god, I’m totally stupid” low. As in “if I weren’t the spitting image of my father, I’d kind of assume I couldn’t have come from my engineer father’s genes” kind of low. And if I could use #1 as an excuse again, I would. But, I’m just going to go with the fact that I don’t care about math anymore (shhh…I think I just heard the hearts of some of my nerdy math friends breaking).

For reasons 2 and 3, I needed to leave the lodge. I get to the shopping complex, get cash from an ATM, turn to think of my next move, and then immediately get distracted by a sign for a coffee shop. Mmmm…ice coffee. So. Easily. Distracted. By good-looking men and signs for coffee. I’m not sure which makes me more pathetic. Like a moth to a flame, I head to the coffee shop for coffee and then start talking to the cashier. I tell her my story about the bus ‘ticket’ and being worried that I won’t get an actual ticket today or that I’ll be forced to pay again. ‘So,’ I ask, ‘Do you know how I can get a mini bus to the bus depot, to Devil Street? I need to try to get my ticket today.’ (Seriously, no poetic license with the name of the street. That actually IS the name of the street.)

She gives me really detailed instructions, so detailed that I think I can’t possibly get lost along the way or back. And I easily find where to get on a minibus heading toward the depot. As I get off the minibus at the depot, a Malawian woman getting off the minibus looks at me, motions me to follow her, and says, ‘Let’s go.’ For some reason, I know she’s going to walk me to the depot where I need to go, so I follow her. It is complete chaos in the area surrounding the main bus depot. There are people everywhere, walking on the side of the road, in the road, carrying goods to sell or sacks of potatoes or grain to put onto a bus. Minibuses are everywhere, honking their way through the streets to clear the road enough not to nick someone as they pass. The road is bumpy and dusty and impromptu stalls line the side of the road, with people selling airtime for cell phones, mangoes, candy, soft drinks. We walk up the road for about five minutes, and she points for me to go right. She continues straight before I can get out much of a thank you.

Just as I knew she was going to show me where to go, I know that she has directed me to the wrong place. I was just here yesterday, so I remember that the place I need to be is nearby. I walk around for a while, trying to find the ticket counter that I need. I get a lot of looks and several men say ‘hi lady’ or ‘hi mama’ or ‘hi sistah’ as I pass. I weave around the stares and calls and minibuses and people and cars and finally find the ticket counter. The same guy from yesterday is there, cigarette dangling from his mouth. He remembers me, gives me my ticket, and tells me to be there at 5:30 the next morning.

A couple of weeks ago, I was teaching, winding up my classes, preparing my students for their intense final exam. The students had a 3-minute speech to prepare and give as well as two business letters to write, all within the final couple weeks of class. Even though I have 300 students, I know nearly all of them by name. I honestly don’t know how I’ve done this. Granted, sometimes it means looking at a student for a full 30 seconds before the name clicks in my head. But hey, that’s a lot of names to remember. And the names started out as foreign to me as Chikumbutso, Tiwonge, and Mphatso and as unusual to me as Novice, Precious, and Eden (the last three are men, by the way). So when, in Lilongwe amid the complete chaos that is the bus station, I hear “Hi Ms. Howland!” and turn to see one of my students, I know that it is Benjamin. He’s in a minibus that is about to leave, but we shake hands and say “hi,” all smiles. The whole country seems like a small town to me. And sometimes that annoys me. But most of the time I’m happy to run into people I know. It makes me feel like I’m back in Kent. Well, sort of.

Sunday 27 November 2011

To Hospital

Cholesterol, uric acid, glucose -- these are the reasons that I needed to get blood taken, for my annual health form that my program requires me to complete again this year. I went to a private hospital here, was shown to the lab where I thought I had explained what I needed by pointing to the 15 items on the form.  

The receptionist checked off boxes on a receipt filled with the names of a couple hundred tests, looked up the prices of each, and wrote the price next to the ones she had checked. After adding the individual tests' prices, she wrote the total cost on the top of the page, explaining that I needed to go to the cashier (in another part of the hospital), pay the total, come back and then get the tests done. As I'm walking down the hall to the cashier, I start to total the costs of the individual tests to make sure the sum is correct. And I'm a bit surprised when I see she has checked off the test for syphilis. (What?! Do I look like I have syphilis? Because it certainly is not one of the tests I need done.) That can't be right, I think, then start to look at the names of the other tests. I get to 'stool sample' and turn around fast to run back to the lab.

No one here needs my stool, I explain to the receptionist. She looks at me with either an "are you sure?" look or an "I really don't care what you're saying" look. I'm not sure which. What matters though, is that I was adamant: absolutely no one at this hospital is testing my poop.

After clearing up the mix up, paying, and going back to the lab again, a lab technician calls me in where he is ready to take blood. It's rather uneventful, thankfully, although he has a moment of disbelief when in the midst of our conversation I explain that I don't have a television. I represent 'America,' and am now shattering his image of what that stands for. 'Are you really that poor?' he asks because that must be the first reason he can think of to NOT have a television. I wait before answering, and he quickly apologizes, telling me he was just joking. Good, I think, because I really don't want to have this conversation while you're sticking a sharp object in my arm. Conversation topics to avoid: the relative 'poverty' of Americans, the current fuel shortage, the increasing cost of everything due to the fuel shortage, politics, my lack of interest in soccer, how I don't like nsima...the list goes on. Perhaps silence is best in this moment.

The blood is put into two vials, he leaves and says someone else will be in to do the TB test that I need. I'm a bit perplexed when not one but two men walk into the room. Uh-oh, I think, this can't be a simple TB test. That doesn't take two people. What other test did the receptionist check me off for? They assure me it's the right test, so I ask them why there are two of them. They merely laugh. Which gets me even more worried. (Did I mention how much I hate going to hospitals? And double that for hospitals in countries other than the U.S.) I suddenly think that maybe the way they do the test here is so painful that one of them has to hold me down. Yes, I know that such an active imagination is not helpful in these types of situations.

A few seconds later, much to my shock, I learn why there are two of them. The older gentleman is holding up the needle which he has stuck into a vial; he holds both about an inch away from his eyes. He pulls the plunger down to fill the needle with the antibody while he says to the younger guy, "Okay, now I can't see anything, so you have to tell me when I have the right amount."

Huh? Hey you Mr. Blind Guy who is about to stick a sharp object into my arm, did you have to say that in English?! And, excuse me for being a bit rude here but what the hell do you mean you can't see? At this moment, an image from the book Naked in the Temple of Heaven comes to mind, where the narrator and her friend are in a hospital in rural China in the 1980s where they've gone because one is really ill. A hospital worker is about to give the sick woman an injection when her friend realizes there is rust on the needle. At least I know this needle is new and clean, but as a reflex I fold my arms across my chest and ask the guy directly: "What do you mean, you can't see?" He just chuckles and says that it doesn't matter because the needle can go anywhere on my forearm. Uh...not making me feel any better, dude.

I almost scrap the whole idea of getting the test done that day, but I really don't want to have to come back here again. I can't believe how brave (er...okay, stupid) I am as I unfold my arms and lay my right arm out for a blind man with a needle. And, although I can't say that it didn't hurt, it wasn't that bad, really. And since there's no reddening or swelling around the area now, I'd say that I'm TB-free.




Anticipation

"...is making me late. Is keeping me waiting."

I used to love the J Mascis cover of this song. And, 15 years later, it's back in my head, mutated (lyrics not head) to be: "Procrastination...is making me hate...is keeping me crazy."

Yup, 200 exams graded already and staring down at the last 100. It's brutal. It really IS making me hate, crazy-person style. I'm taking too many breaks in between grading too few exam papers. I'm finding myself scribbling words like, "What?!" or "Huh?" or "This makes no sense!" in big, red letters as I grade. I actually don't have to write anything on their exams except their scores. But I can't control myself. It's as if my students have formed an anti-learning cabal and decided to try to get me to quit my job by pretending to have learned absolutely nothing during the entire year.

Am I exaggerating? I mean, sure I love some hyperbole every now and then (I will admit that just a few weeks ago, I stated that one of my financially successful friends was a 'billionaire' which is quite a leap of, oh, nearly a billion dollars). However, this time, I'm not going off on the deep end of dramatics. Part of the exam, for example, was to measure how well I had taught my students how to integrate quotes into their writing. I gave them a mock essay and three short sources that they had to use to integrate into the mock essay. One very obvious habit of using quotes in any context is to put quotation marks at the start and end of the quote, right? Two very simple marks. Not much. Doesn't even take a lot of ink. Really important, though, in terms of not plagiarizing which is what I spent way too much class time on, in my opinion. However, I assumed that of all the things I taught, integrating quotes -- or at the very least, not plagiarizing -- was the one thing my students were bound to know for their exam. SURPRISE! So many students not only did not cite at all (I think I spent weeks on this) but decided that quotation marks weren't necessary either.  And to be 'lenient' in my grading of this section, I was giving 3 points to students just for using quote marks. I honestly thought that was a give-away. I'm wrong so often...

Now do you see why I'm procrastinating so much? But it's a terrible feeling. The knowledge that I still have 100 exams to grade -- and within an ever-decreasing amount of time -- gnaws at me. It makes everything else I do slightly un-enjoyable. Anyone who has procrastinated knows this. And I'm assuming that means everyone. Some people, I think, are just better at procrastinating than I am. I need to learn from them. Maybe that will end the song in my head too.

"It's making me cray-ay-zy...it's keeping me hay-ay-ting..."

Sunday 13 November 2011

Class begins now

Good morning, starshine! The Earth says, 'hello!'

It's time for the world to start to make more sense. That's right, it's time for Logic Class!

Since this is your first class, we'll start off slowly, with some seemingly simple (yet somehow very tricky!) stuff.

Let's begin with knocking on the door of someone's home. It's Sunday morning around 7 a.m. The front door is closed and visibly locked (with not just one but two padlocks that you can easily see), and the curtains are drawn. You've been told by your boss to go next door and borrow the VERY important Sunday-morning item of a BOWL.  What do you do?

a) Stand in front of the door, frozen like a deer in headlights until the occupant finally opens the curtains getting startled by your creepy, stalker-like stance.

b) Dial-a-friend! Whip out your cell phone and call someone for help, proceeding to talk very loudly directly in front of the front door.

c) Knock loudly on the front door, incessantly for five minutes straight, until the occupant finally trudges to see who would be rude enough to do such a thing at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning. 

d) Realize the occupant is probably either still sleeping or just enjoying her early Sunday morning and doesn't want to be disturbed, thus -- and I know this can get complicated here -- the locked door and drawn curtains.

Believe it or not, the correct answer is d. 

Yes, I can see by your puzzled looks that you're just not sure why this would be the right answer.  Let's begin by looking at the situation LOGICALLY. Sunday morning at 7 a.m. Yes, I realize that YOU have been at work for an hour,  cleaning and cooking for the guys that live next door to me, but not all people begin their Sundays at such an early hour. Plus, when their door is locked with the curtains drawn, this usually means the person inside is either still sleeping or doesn't yet want to face the day outside their apartment, even if you know the person is usually awake and up by 5 a.m. most days. 

Are you starting to get it? Closed curtains + locked door = do not disturb. But what if you do make the mistake of knocking on the door in this situation? Well, know that the use of just a few knocks is quite sufficient. You do not need to take it upon yourself to wake up the occupant with continuous loud knocking.  In fact, this is considered rude (I hear your gasps of disbelief, but trust me, it's true).  Unless you are a very close friend or family member or there's an emergency (and, to answer your next question, no there is no such thing as a 'bowl emergency'), usually purposely trying to wake a person on an early Sunday morning to borrow a bowl is considered quite impolite. 

Are you starting to feel overwhelmed? I know it's a lot of information, so we'll stop here for today, but not without homework.

Your assignment is this:
Imagine that you are writing a formal assignment to be handed in to your (female) English instructor, who is the person who will give you a score not only for your assignment but also for the entire semester-long course. On a scale of 1 to 10, how appropriate (1 = not appropriate at all; 10 = completely appropriate) is it to write the following in your assignment:

"Most women are weak in their thinking capability."

Good luck! We'll have fun discussing this tomorrow.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

"Are you busy?"


“Are you busy?”

I don’t know why this question offends me so much. It shouldn’t. It’s kind of polite, taking the time to wonder whether or not I have time to help.  However, as a teacher, unless it is during those glorious times of vacation (I hear a chorus of angels singing ‘hallelujah’ even as I just write that word), the answer is always ‘yes.’

But that’s not really what students are asking when they ask me this question. What they are wondering is if I can stop what I’m doing at that moment and help them with whatever difficulties they’re having. In other words: “Ms. Howland, am I important enough for you to care enough about me at this very moment and stop whatever you’re doing and help me right now?” Again, the answer is inevitably ‘yes.’ Because that’s my job, and I really do like helping students understand how to improve their work. (However, when you accost me in the parking lot in the morning when I’m just arriving on campus, be forewarned that you should wave a slab of chocolate or a freshly brewed cup of coffee under my nose to ease that disgruntled Grumpy dwarf who tends to inhabit my body in the early mornings and will not answer politely otherwise. It’s him, though, not me. I’m a ray of sunshine always.)

 What amazes me, though, is the students who come right before exams and ask me to teach them, for example, ‘how to write an essay.’ Um…well, that’s what half of the semester was spent on, but sure I have five minutes to give you the Cliff Notes version that will not help you in any way whatsoever but will perhaps make each of us feel better: me for not ignoring a student’s request and the student for thinking he did what he could to prepare for the exam. Yea, we’re both completely delusional, but if I constantly thought what I did was meaningless, I’d want to slit my wrists everyday. Okay, okay, I know my penchant for hyperbole can get a bit annoying, but seriously, I do get depressed when I think about how meaningless my job is compared to, say, a health care worker of any kind. So I try not to think that most of my 300 students really could care less about what I teach them. Sigh. (And writing about this now really helps my not thinking about it…just going to find me a dark corner to curl up in now.)

Seriously though, I do wonder what kind of difference I’m making on the world. What am I contributing to that great collective poem that the world is writing as it spins through time and space?  If I weren’t here, wouldn’t another person be doing my job with similar results?  Sure, I’m unique, and maybe I’m the only lecturer these students will ever have who will say, “There’s only love in this room” when I want students to share their work. And maybe I’ll be the only 8:00 a.m. lecturer who will always, without fail, be in the classroom and begin class exactly at 8, week after week, much to the dismay of three-quarters of the students who show up late. And I might be the only lecturer my students will have who gets super excited about anything to do with grammar (as everyone should!). And maybe (due to my complete stupidity?) I’m the only lecturer who will ever dare (read: be stupid) to allow her 300 students – to in fact encourage them, and in some cases require them – to rewrite their essays to improve their work and get more points added to their scores.  (Yup, 300 essays to read and grade. And then to read and grade again. And I sometimes wonder why I’m single? Duh.)

And I know at these times when I’m doubting my contribution and meaningfulness I should stop and remember the times when students have given me those little slivers of sweet compliments, such as “I really appreciate your time” and “As long as I got you [as my teacher], then it doesn’t matter when you leave after that” and “I like your style!” (For the record, he meant teaching style not fashion style, although I’d appreciate either as a compliment.)  I’m assuming my students don’t know how much those compliments mean to me. They are few and far between, but I hold onto them to sustain me through the times when I doubt that I'm making a difference.  

And to me those compliments are like smooth round stones, the ones picked up on the beach, pocketed, forgotten and then found later that night when the cold summer air forces my hands into my pockets. And as I turn the smooth stone around in my hand, I remember not only why I picked it up but also why I came to the beach in the first place, what I was thinking as I watched the ocean lap the sand, as the water turned from blue to gray and finally filled with moonlight.

Saturday 5 November 2011

Bitter Pillow


“It’s a bitter pillow to swallow.”  (This quote brought to you by one of my students in his essay.)

Yes, the very thing we expect to cushion us during our journey of sleep is what chokes us with bitterness.  I think I like this new phrase.

I’m thinking about this now because I have just swallowed pills after being sick for days from the worst food poisoning I’ve ever had. I hate being sick. Well, who doesn’t? But being sick in one of the least developed countries in the world is a bit more frightening than being sick elsewhere. I am lucky, though, that I know doctors here. In fact, the morning after being up all night sick, I called a doctor friend who listened patiently to my symptoms, asked a few questions, then told me what medicine to get and advised me to drink Coke (and then actually hand-delivered three bottles of the soda himself).
 
The good news is that I finally swallowed the right antibiotics, albeit with my last Coke.

I went to get the antibiotics today. Driving here is crazy enough when I’m highly alert, but it gets completely maddening when I’m sick. It was as if I suddenly realized just how risky it is not only to be a pedestrian here but also a driver, a passenger, a bicyclist, a baby on the back of her mother, a chicken or a cow. At one point today (and I was only driving for ten minutes, tops), a woman walked directly into the road -- in the path of my car -- without looking. I honked the horn and slammed on my brakes. She turned and stood in front of my car, in the middle of the lane, and just stared at me, and smiled. (Now, the reality of living in a very poor country is that sometimes slow reaction time or lack of awareness can be due to lack of nutrition or literal starvation. But this woman looked neither malnourished nor starved. Instead, she looked like she was on her way to or from her office job.)

Her smile was puzzling. Was she smiling because she realized that she had been an idiot for a second and didn’t look before crossing the street? (We all know this ‘look both ways’ thing is one of the first rules of Mom as she sends us out into the world as kids.) Or was she smiling because she had almost gotten hit by a white woman who, at that moment, looked quite pissed, shaking her head and swearing. (By the way, I don’t do the swearing bit when I have passengers. And, most of you probably know that I almost never swear ever.  I just release it all when I’m alone in the car, apparently.) I kept swearing but waved her across the street and drove on, wary of what was to befall me on the road next.

But let’s leave the rest of my traffic trials for the moment and move on to the pharmacy where I went to get the needed antibiotic. Now, for the record, I’ve been to this same pharmacy several times, although usually to buy vitamins. However, I also got doxycycline there once (I take doxy as a malaria prophylaxis while I’m here), with no hassle given to me. Today, however, the pharmacist working must have seen me as an opportunity.

I ask for the antibiotic that my doctor friend told me to get. The pharmacist asks me for my prescription. At this point, it should be noted that you don’t need a prescription here for antibiotics. Knowing this (and possibly emboldened by having lived through the past two days of feeling like I was going to die), I laugh at his suggestion. Being even cheekier, I hold my cell phone at him and say, “I’ll call my doctor right now. Do you want to talk to him?” He disappears in the back, comes back with the antibiotics I’d asked for, and hands them to me without saying another word. I’m still wondering if he was looking for me to give him money on the side, to allow me to get the drugs without the ‘necessary’ prescription.

But I don't really care. Because now I’ve got my pills and my pillow, the special one that softens my journey into sleep with its feathers and scent of lavender. And there's absolutely nothing bitter about that.

Saturday 29 October 2011

Petrol fever!

After a lovely early morning of lounging around, I decided it was high time to get some work done at my neighborhood coffee shop. I drove up the hill to the cafe, not because I'm a lazy American who can't walk ten minutes up the road, but because I wanted to check to see if the filling station across from the cafe was going to get fuel this weekend. There is a fuel shortage in the country, and getting fuel has been a major problem. I just haven't had time to queue for hours in order to possibly get a few gallons of gas. As I crested the hill, I saw a few cars already lined up in the parking lot of the station. Even a few cars meant that the fuel was probably coming later that day. Excellent.

At the cafe, where large trees shade tables on the lawn, and a patio -- dotted with large potted plants -- houses other tables, I sat at my usual table, ordered an ice coffee, and determined to get through the stack of essays that should have been graded yesterday. I had just finished two essays when two of my favourite (note: that spelling is just for you two...and all my other lovely British and Canadian and Australian friends) British doctors walked up. Instead of getting a stack of essays graded and then heading to queue at the filling station, I had a long, leisurely lunch with the docs, discussing a strange array of topics (from dairy farmers in England to the NBA basketball strike) that somehow connected to a few central themes of morality, consumerism, human rights, and democracy. This was far more interesting than grading research papers where two-thirds of my students made up the sources and the quotes. (I'm pretty sure there is no academic journal called The Journal of Internet Dating or books published in New York City, England, but I could be wrong.)

We leave the cafe around two, and the docs go home -- probably to look at a bunch of pictures of eyes of people with malaria; I've yet to see any of these pictures, but apparently they are, compared to my boring astigmatism, quite fascinating and exciting. Hey, I get excited about grammar, so it's only natural that ophthalmologists get excited about eyes, right? 

Right. So I get in my car and in the queue for fuel. I don't know how many cars back I am, but I definitely can't see the petrol station from the back of the line. Luckily, I have essays to grade, and I'm on the side of the road with some shade. It's been hot here lately, so even in the shade with the windows down and a slight breeze, it's still hot enough for me to be sweating.  I get in line around 2 pm, telling myself that I will get fuel before it gets dark. For at least an hour, I don't move at all, and then a car pulls out of the queue, so we all get to move up a car length. Then another car pulls out, and I get worried that these people ahead of me are getting texts or phone calls telling them that the fuel isn't going to come. Or that it went to another station. But I wait nonetheless. And then, at one point, the cars in front of me move a car length, and I can't see a car moving out of the line. And then another car length. I stop grading, get out of my car, and ask the guy in front of me if the fuel has come to the station. YES! And he tells me that we'll probably get fuel because we're not so far back in the line. I want to hug him, restrain myself thankfully, and get back in the car with renewed hope and energy. I look behind me and cannot see the end of the line of cars parked on the side of the road, all hoping that they'll also be able to get fuel before it runs out.

I start tackling the essays in my pile with renewed vigor. I'm determined to get all of the essays graded before I get fuel. Slowly, little by little, the pile of ungraded essays shrinks as I move closer and closer to the filling station, until finally (trumpets sound!) I can see the station itself! Like a beacon in the night, the station appears over the crest of the hill. I'm so close to the station, I can start to smell fuel (or perhaps start to imagine the smell...at this point I think I'm quite dehydrated, so it's very possible I was imagining things). And then, finally (drum roll, please) I turn off the road, into the station, with just a few cars ahead of me. I watch each car fill up, thinking "Please, please, please don't be taking the last of the fuel!" At one car, I think the attendant is telling the driver there's no more fuel, as he puts up his hand, but he's only letting the driver know he should stop, as the car is aligned with the fuel pump. Three more cars. I feel like a kid at Christmas, my stomach filled with anticipation. I have one more essay to grade, but once there are only two cars ahead of me, I can't concentrate and just throw the essay aside for later. The white Toyota in front of me doesn't take long at the pump, and it's my turn. I pull up, hop out of the car, greet the attendant, and tell him to fill the tank. I imagine him saying, "Sorry only 5 litres left," but he just nods and starts pumping the gas. 12,000 kwacha (about $65) later, I have a full tank. It is the happiest I've been to have a full tank of gas ever in my life, I think.

The sun has already pinkened and is quickly slipping under the fold of the mountain for the day. I turn on the car, pull out of the station, and head home, glancing at the fuel gauge periodically just to be sure there's still a full tank. It's 5:30 pm. It took three and a half hours and 20 essays, but I have the privilege of mobility once again. And it's a wonderful feeling.

Monday 24 October 2011

Malawi in pictures

The daily complications of living in another country and culture sometimes blind me from seeing what is around me. Every so often, I need a reminder of the beauty of life here (or anywhere, for that matter), with all its complexity, unpretentiousness, variation, and commonality.  



Palms with mountain in the background. View from town.









Farm stand outside of town



Transporting sugar cane.




Small abodes with satellite dishes.



DOOM! For those pesky cockroaches.




'Personal Appearance Odds & Ends': Classic




Lovely scene from the north end of town.




Fresh fruits and veggies sold from the sidewalk in town.



Gardens of a hotel.




My classroom.




Trash thrown into the stream.




Football/soccer fans rushing the field after Malawi beat Togo.



Music and dancing for the tourists.




Too close for comfort. I'm not a fan of crocs.




Scene just outside of town.



Along the Shire River.








I really do heart hippos.




The number of coffin shops is staggering.




I love Lake Malawi, particularly in the north.




Yum.



Zebras are beautiful.




One of many tea estates.




Sunset on the Shire River.







Watching soccer, greeting each other, carrying a bag on one's head. Very much Malawi.




The Lake is so peaceful.



Sunday 23 October 2011

Perspective is a beautiful thing

I started this blog partly out of hatred for ETS. After taking the GRE yesterday, that hatred has grown.  Exponentially. (Yup, that’s right ETS, I’m using a mathematical term…perhaps I could get some bonus points for that? No? Well all right then, back to hating on you.)

For those who don’t know, I will (er…or perhaps after my abominable quantitative section performance, the term ‘was going to’ is more apt) apply to PhD programs for both Applied Linguistics and International Education Policy. And this whole time I’ve been trying to study for the math section, I’ve been wondering: what does knowing how to compute the area of a circle based on the area of a square that is partially inside the circle have anything to do with my ability to succeed in that kind of PhD program? Why do I have to know which of four given algebraic equations intersects the y-axis? Isn’t the only math that I should know for such PhD programs statistics? (And I believe I got the only two statistics-based questions on the GRE yesterday correct.)  At this point, I’m sure some of you are wondering why I don’t just study more and take the GRE again. And if I were in the U.S., that would be an option. But here, the GRE (and only the paper-based test) is offered just twice a year, the next time being in April, unfortunately a few months after the graduate school deadlines. 

So, what’s a mathematically-challenged girl to do? Well, I’ve waited this long to apply to PhD programs, what’s one more year? And I think my verbal scores on the exam may assuage my feelings of despair that I am in fact stupider than I thought.  However, more importantly, I’m alive and back at home. No, not that I came close to offing myself while studying math. And no, I also didn’t nearly die during the exam (although there were moments when I felt the need to violently act out my frustrations). What I’m talking about is just the pure joy of not dying on Friday night.

I wish at this moment I could begin a hilarious story about how I went out drinking on Friday night to abate my fears about the GRE the next morning. That story could not only make me laugh in retrospect but also conveniently explain my poor performance on the math section! But alas, no. Friday evening I was on a bus, taking the four-hour ride to the capital where the exam was held.  What was so special about this bus ride? Well, for starters, Malawi has only one type of bus that is comfortable, and this is the coach bus that only travels between Lilongwe (the capital) and Blantyre (where I live). Get on any other bus and there are people, animals, sacks of grain and vegetables seated, standing, and stacked everywhere. But on the coach, there are comfortable seats, air-conditioning, and soft drinks. Well, Friday night the air-conditioning was broken on the coach bus. And it’s been hot. So, I am already sweating and bothered as I wait for the rest of the passengers to board. I see a student of mine walking down the aisle. I nod and say ‘hi.’ I had just taught her earlier in the day, and not that I don’t like my students, but I’d rather not see them during my free time. She stops by my seat, looks at her ticket, looks at the seat number, looks back down at her ticket. Yup, she’s got the seat next to me. What are the odds? (Hey, those are one of the few types of math problems I’m good at! But, I’m so done with math right now.)

We both laugh at our bad luck – I mean, she doesn’t want to sit next to her teacher for four hours – and then we each put our iPods on and are quiet the entire trip. In fact, I don’t even see her once we get off the bus in Lilongwe, to say bye.  I’m too busy trying to find a taxi driver.

Normally when I exit a bus in Malawi at a major depot, there are swarms of taxi drivers who accost me. Not Friday night. There’s a major fuel shortage at the moment, and particularly in the capital, people just cannot get fuel or have to buy it for over double or triple the price on the black market. So, the dearth of taxis was understandable. However, I didn’t expect to have to walk around the parking lot in search of one. And when I finally found one, I didn’t expect him to quote me a price much higher than what it normally costs to get to the lodge where I stay when I’m in the capital. But, considering it was dark and getting late and there were no other taxis in sight, I agreed. (And here I should mention that a taxi in Malawi is not an actual taxi as most of us know them. They are, to borrow the Costa Rican terminology, ‘pirate taxis.’  Just someone’s regular car, with no sign to let you know it’s a taxi.)

I try to open the passenger door to his car. And I have to try again. And again. I think it’s locked, but on the fourth attempt, it pries open, creaking as I struggle to pull it far enough open for me to slide into the car. I’m not quite sure what kind of damage has been done to the side of the car, and I can’t see it because it’s dark (there is not a plethora of street lights anywhere in Malawi).  I get in, fumble for the seatbelt and then attempt to buckle up. The driver grabs the seatbelt from me. ‘Sweet,’ I think, ‘he’s nice enough to buckle me in.’ Uh…no. He takes the seatbelt and wraps it around the stick shift a couple of times. Yup, that’s not gonna hold in an accident.

When traveling and living abroad, there have been many times when I’ve had to make important decisions regarding my safety and well-being, often in just a couple of seconds. My first night in Japan, lost and confused and with no hotel for the night, a stranger in the train station offered to take me in for the night. On the island of Rhodes, a random person on a near-deserted cobblestone street asked me to join him for an espresso.  And trapped in Panama due to the Chiquita banana factory strikes, I got on a tiny, overloaded boat that went out into the ocean around the coast to illegally drop me on a beach in Costa Rica.  Comparatively, Friday night wasn’t that risky. I knew the lodge was close. Or it would have been had the driver not been a complete idiot.

I tell the driver where I am going, but he has never heard of the lodge (and, in fact, keeps repeating the name of another lodge, even after I tell him several times, “no”). So, I call my usual capital city taxi driver and ask him to explain the directions to this driver. Directions communicated, we are on our way. Slowly. Because the car barely seems to be able to run. And the petrol needle is nearly on E. And my door rattles as we drive. And the driver seems to be squinting and leaning toward the windshield, as if he can’t really see where he is going.

He finally pulls up to a lodge gate, and guess what? It’s the lodge that he kept repeating to me. No no no, I say and insist that we call my taxi driver again (who, by the way, was not able to pick me up due to other work). This driver wouldn’t call again, so I get out the business card of the lodge to show him the name and address. I think he finally knows where he’s going, so we’re off again into the dark and quiet streets of this neighborhood. Next lodge he brings me to is again the incorrect lodge. At this point, I’m getting slightly frustrated and wonder if we’re actually going to run out of gas before getting me to my accommodations. Again, he refuses to talk to my regular driver but instead asks the rather confused gate guard of this lodge where the correct lodge is. He gets some directions, and we head off yet again until – that’s right, you guessed it – he starts to turn down a road with a lodge sign that is again not the correct lodge. At this point, I call Alex, my regular taxi driver, and have him give directions again to this guy. We’ve driven all around the neighborhood but somehow have managed to avoid the street that the lodge is on, but he finally finds it a few minutes later. It is hard to pay him the equivalent of $15 for the trip, even knowing that petrol is costing about that much per gallon on the black market. But I’m tired and in need of a shower and have been up since 5:30 a.m., so I give him the cash. I’m sure neither of us learned anything from the experience.

But what I can do is blame ETS for that dreadful taxi ride. Because I was only there in order to take the GRE, and we know how that went. But I survived both, and that’s what matters. As a friend of mine in Japan used to say when things got a bit rough or frustrating: “Hey, you’re not on fire.” And that has always been true.

Perspective is a beautiful thing.