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.

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.

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.

A small bird married a big bird

It is so short, really. Just three typed pages, staring up at me. Yet, I have to force myself to read the lines, turn the page, read more. I’m a reader; three pages should not be difficult to read. But when I have to read what seems like the same three pages over and over again, correcting what seem to be (because they are) the same mistakes over and over, it becomes an agonizing task.

Yes, it’s back to grading essays. I’m trying to grade 20 a day during the three-day weekend here.  Doesn’t seem too bad, right? Twenty minutes per essay, so about six and a half hours total per day. But that’s only if I worked straight. For me, after each essay, I have to do something to make me want to continue living. And depending on how terrible the essay just read was, that can take some time. That could mean making a cup of coffee and eating a cookie. Or painting my toenails. Or stepping onto my patio to remember that the world is still spinning. And since I really do want to continue living, I take my time with these things.

What you get to see here are the highlights of those essays. Now just imagine reading pages upon pages of this rather incomprehensible stuff (whether because of language or logic problems), and you just might start to understand a little bit of what it feels like to be me at this moment. Well, in order to fully get the picture, imagine yourself trapped in a room with a couple hundred teenagers who don’t use full stops until they’re sure you’re thoroughly confused by their lengthy run-on sentences, as they try to trick you into thinking it’s the run-on that makes their ideas confusing, not the fact that their ideas are ridiculously (and thankfully at times laughably) illogical. (My own lengthy sentence there was a little sneak preview.)

And here are some of those gems culled from the last two days of grading. These are from essays written about either academic freedom or AIDS, although one is from an essay about tobacco companies. Commentary could not be avoided, of course.

Rural areas people have got nothing which can make them to be busy such as entertainment as a result they concentrate on sex as their source of entertainment.

[So glad I live in a city where I can keep busy. Otherwise, I’d be having sex. And that’s not as entertaining as going to the movies. Clearly.]

Heart disease is regarded to be an important disease especially if it results into stroke. Stroke is deadly it paralyses the delicate body parts.

[Although strokes are known to elevate heart disease from the 'important' to 'super important' disease category, I hope never to have a stroke because I absolutely adore all of my delicate body parts and would like to keep them in working order.]

For example, a lecture may weed students on personal grounds not on academic context.

[Yes, on my personal grounds, I like to weed students every few days. It keeps them from getting too rooted and pesky.]

On every problem there is a solution, a small bird married a big bird.

[What?] [Seriously though: what?!] 

[Okay, true, as a child I did think about marrying Big Bird because he’s big and feathery soft and yellow (yes, before I started hating on the color yellow), but I’m not sure I ever thought it would solve my problems. Then again, what problems did I have at six? And if any of you are thinking, ‘Didn’t you have a slight speech impediment that older kids made fun of at that time?’ you’re no longer my friend. See, this is what happens when lack of logic sentences appear in the middle of essays; I get completely sidetracked by illogical thoughts of my own.]

This could help to avoid avoidable expenses e.g. instead of buying learning materials to educate people, the money could be used to drill boreholes for example.

[Good to know that while I’m teaching, this student is sitting in class thinking, ‘What a waste. I could be drilling boreholes right now.’ That puts an extra spring in this teacher’s step!]

For example, the vaseline handed hand can easily break condoms.

[Does this one even need commentary?]

Youth of these days are sexually active and they think the only way of having is by having sex, so they end up being pregnant (for the girls) impregnating (for the boys).

[Soooo glad I’ve been taught that girls get pregnant. I’ve been wondering about that for years.]

They [girls at puberty] are taught how to treat and satisfy men, how to take care of themselves and other traditions a woman should know like how to cook well.

[Well, hello there patriarchal world! I thought I’d left you for a moment, but here you are again, shoving your misogyny in my face. Step back away from me, please…keep stepping back…just a little farther…keep going…]

Word.(s)

What, do you ask, could be on the agenda for my exciting life in Africa this week? High school math and studying vocabulary words? Why, that's right lucky winner, it's time for the intoxicating cram session for the GRE! 

Of course, I like me some math now and again. But believe it or not, I don't care how many miles Janet and John are away from each other in separate cars traveling at different speeds on a Tuesday in July, as they try to make it to Granny's house 160 km away. They should have carpooled and bought a map; that's my brilliant answer which ETS will unfortunately never see since it's multiple choice.

Anyway, in trying to study for the GRE but also procrastinate by writing a blog post, I decided to merge the two and create something that could be entertaining to people other than myself. The nerdy challenge on a Friday night: pick up a stack of GRE vocab cards and create a poem using all of those words. (I did cheat and left out the words: abstemious, perigee, peripatetic, and expurgate. But it's my lame game, so I can cheat if I want to.)  Jealous of my life in Malawi yet?  Yea, me neither. Not this week anyway.

(Not really) An Ode to ETS

What I write here, this doggerel at best

Is merely a peccadillo for truly I jest.

My indolence I’m trying to shed

Since the nearing GRE deadline makes me want to hide in bed.

But don’t mistake this verse for something pedantic;

Just trying to study as much as I can stand it.

These vocabulary words are evanescent I find

Their desultory meanings so unkind,

As I try to harness my itinerant mind.

An incipient place for them to remind

Me to be less diffident

As I become more confident

And thus study time feels less exigent.

Though I still feel the need to malinger,

That headline would be a winner:

"English teacher feigns flu to study words."

So I abjure that move; it's absurd.

To mitigate my stress, rather,

An exegesis of ETS (a.k.a. blather).

An intransigent company, an anathema true

I censure their practices and not just a few.

No approbations here, no words of joy;

Just me, antithetical to their ploys.

Their practice books filled with grandiloquence

Only to egomaniac money mongers does it make sense.

Their self-aggrandizing nature I impugn.

I hope my fractious comments bring them to their doom.

The new LOL

(Part Two of Lake of Stars Festival: Saturday afternoon)

Just how difficult is it to get money out of your bank account in Malawi? Some days, it’s nearly impossible. Malawian Sis needs cash, so we stop at every NBS Bank along the way to the Lake (which actually isn’t that many) so she can try her ATM card at each one. No luck. The entire system is down. She calls her bank rep, who tells her just that: the entire system is down. How is it possible that a bank’s system is down for the entire morning? And, we later learn at the mobile NBS bank housed in a large van that is parked at the lakeshore right outside the Lake of Stars music festival entrance, the system is down that afternoon as well. How can a bank have a mobile unit but not a system that allows you to access your own money via your bankcard, for an entire day? Good question! Lack Of Logic is the new LOL.

The important part of the afternoon, however, is that we’re finally at Lake Malawi and at the Lake of Stars festival. Since I’m here for the poetry reading (that, unfortunately never happens because none of the three contest winners show up), I call my contact at (who is the founder of) the Book Bus, a mobile children’s library that has been traveling around Zambia and now Malawi, promoting literacy and reading to children in schools. He takes us over to the Book Bus, which is parked away from the festival entrance, next to a soccer field where other activities to promote community development are taking place.

The Book Bus

 

Quentin Blake illustrations

The Book Bus is outstanding. It is more than I had imagined when the founder and I met in Blantyre a couple weeks back and he described it. It is covered in painted illustrations by Quentin Blake, the illustrator of Roald Dahl books. Inside, the old safari bus has seats along the outer edges and bookshelves lining the area above the seats. There are books packed onto the shelves and then overflowing, piled wherever there is space. 

I start to step down off the Book Bus and stop to take a picture of the school children. They suddenly get super excited, jumping and pushing to be front and center in the picture, then clambering up toward me to see the picture after it is taken. They want more and more pictures to be taken, until finally the bus driver has them arrange somewhat orderly for a group photo. 

Since we haven’t eaten all day, after the Book Bus we head to the lodge where we’re staying, and plan to eat an early dinner. We drive north on the paved main road, away from the festival, then make a turn when we see a very, very small sign advertising the lodge. (Signage is not one of Malawi’s strong points.) We turn onto an incredibly bumpy dirt road that has several turn offs with no signs for the lodge telling us which direction to go. We stop and ask someone we see who insists we just keep going straight. There’s another fork in the road after that, with (of course) absolutely no sign letting us know which way to go to the lodge. (I mean, why have signs to direct your customers to your already out-of-the-way lodge? LOL.) We pass through a tiny “village” – basically ten small brick buildings that have no electricity and no people in sight. After what seems like an hour (actually just 15 minutes) going 5 mph on a dusty road in the middle of nowhere, the lodge appears. 

 lodge

We park, walk toward the blasting hip-hop music coming from the restaurant that has a few very drunk young men parked on the stools around the bar, and are interrupted by two men who insist on taking our bags and who point us toward the manager. She gives me a limp handshake, barely smiles, and then looks confused when I tell her my name. My Malawian sis speaks to her in Chichewa, reminding her that they spoke on the phone just yesterday about the reservation for this weekend. She still looks confused but has one of the men go get the key to our chalet.

She looks even more confused half an hour later when we sit down at the outdoor restaurant overlooking the lake and order dinner. Granted, it is only five p.m., but after taking our order (we all order Chambo, a tilapia-like fish that is found in Lake Malawi) and heading toward the kitchen, she turns around and, looking puzzled, asks us, “You want your food now?” (That is a question only explained by LOL.)  “YES!” we all say a bit too emphatically, but we are so hungry at this point we kind of can't help ourselves. We’ve sat down at the restaurant, ordered drinks and a meal, and are getting asked if we actually want it then? Perhaps it's our hunger that isn't allowing us to see her logic; I mean, do the three of us look a little too well-fed? I’m curious as to what she is thinking and want to ask her what our options are for when and where to get our meal, but hunger overrides any curiosity; I worry that any additional speaking and/or inquiries may result in us never getting fed. And we want our Chambo! Some days the new LOL can be pondered and questioned and attempted to be understood. Other days (particularly when you're hungry), you've just got to let it go.

Part Three, Saturday night: Coming soon…

Suddenly prison

An impromptu stop at a prison. A mobile children’s library. A drunk man falling onto my head. A chorus of orphans singing. This (and much, much more) was all in one weekend, the weekend of The Lake of Stars, a music festival held on the beach at Lake Malawi.

Part One, Saturday morning: Attempts to get petrol (at the exorbitant price of about $8/gallon) for the 4-hour drive are finally realized after fearing that the fuel shortage was back in force. We finally fill up and are off toward the lake. Well, that is, until we (my Malawian sisters and I) near the prison in Zomba, a town an hour east of Blantyre where we live. On impulse, we decide to visit someone we know there. 

After parking the car and wrapping chitenjes around us like sarongs (women cannot enter the prison wearing pants), we walk up to the gate guard who lackadaisically moves the metal detector wand around us. Even when my belt (which is hidden by the chitenje) continues to set it off, he is satisfied by my saying, “it’s a belt” and doesn’t look to see if I’m being honest or actually packing. He does not seem to have this same attitude when he ‘wands’ one of my Malawian sisters, slowly moving the wand up and across her breasts, to the point of all of us noticing. “Hey pervert, the wand isn’t supposed to be used for feeling someone up!” I wish I could say that, but we actually do want to get inside and he probably wouldn’t have understood what I said anyway. He gives us tiny worn wooden chips with the word “visitor” penned on them. We hold onto them, and this is all we carry inside with us. 

 (wall surrounding the prison)

Wearing large sunglasses and with my blonde hair down around my shoulders (and wearing a chitenje, to boot!), I get quite a few stares. I am the only white woman in the entire place, and the three of us – my Malawian sisters and I – are clearly the best dressed, most recently bathed, and nicest smelling of all of the visitors (plus, we're speaking English!). We’re getting stares and more stares. Prisoners and visitors alike rearrange themselves to be in a good position to stare at me. Granted, I get stared at and shouted at and hissed at and kissed at (no, not kissed for real, just kissed at, whereby men childishly make kissing sounds as I walk past them) quite a bit here, but this is the first time I feel slightly uncomfortable. Perhaps it is the dank concrete building with peeling paint on its walls. Or maybe it’s the guards’ lascivious looks. Or maybe it’s just because I need to pee and know there will be no place here remotely clean to do so.

We walk into a narrow room, with five different visiting stations, although with no barriers or separation of any sort in between them. Each visiting area is a hole in a cement wall, with chicken wire attached. After the chicken wire is a gap of a few feet and then another hole in a cement wall with more chicken wire. Thus, we look through chicken wire, across a three-foot gap, to more chicken wire behind which the prisoner stands. Communicating with the prisoner means shouting across the gap while other visitors on either side shout at the person they are visiting. Some prisoners stand next to one another, at one chicken-wired hole in the wall, while their visitors stand next to each other on the other side, all shouting back and forth to communicate, creating a cacophonous din. I strain to listen to what our friend is saying to us and think I only get about 80%. But perhaps the lack of listening is exacerbated by my continued ducking behind my Malawian sisters when the staring from other prisoners gets a bit too creepy.

At the end of our visit, we walk back to the car (the only car there), and I get my camera. I very conspicuously de-chitenje and traipse back toward the prison gate to take some pictures. Attempt denied, as a guard quickly emerges and tells me ‘no pictures.’ I am a bit surprised, as the prison clearly does not have any sort of high security. I mean, when a guard ignores the metal detector wand going off and instead chooses to use it to rub a woman’s breast, one cannot imagine serious security. Plus, the metal door leading up to the prison is left hanging open, and the first wall surrounding the prison has no barbed wire. In addition, there are no visible guards in the visiting area inside the prison. None. So really, why the no pictures rule? Lack of logic strikes again!

The guard continues to look at me as I walk back to the car. Perhaps he too is perplexed by the illogical ‘rules’ of prison security. More likely he’s just wondering who we are – a white blonde woman and two Malawian women, all of us wearing big shades – and who we visited, as we get back into a black SUV with tinted windows and drive off. 

 (driving away from the prison)

Part Two, Saturday afternoon: Coming soon…