A day in the life

What is a day in Malawi like for me? Well, let's just start with today, and you will see the adventures that abound, even when I barely leave my house.

7:30 a.m: Having a little lie in. Why get up early when it's a holiday?

8:35 a.m: Get out of bed after receiving a text from my Malawian sister. My sisters have just moved into a new apartment and have been without water for the past two days. Welcome to the water cuts of Malawi.  (There are electricity cuts as well, in case you were curious.) My sisters are wondering if they can come shower at my place, since I always have water. 

8:45 a.m: Coffee made. Take one sip before trying the lock on my door again, hoping that it magically fixed itself overnight. (Yes, I also believe in unicorns.) Thankfully, I have a back door which I can use until this padlock is either sawed off or fixed (I'm hoping one of my kind engineer neighbors can work the magic).

9:30 a.m: Write a blog post that disappears when my internet cuts out. Had been trying to save it throughout the writing, but posting an 'error occurred' message was apparently all that my internet could handle at the moment.

10:45 a.m: Three sisters arrive. Showers, coffee, cookies, lots of talking and laughing as is the norm.

3:00 p.m: Decide to head with sisters to town, to buy some veggies at the large farmer's market. On the walk, sisters and I contemplate whether we'd wear skinny jeans everyday if we were offered a lot of money in return. I'm all in. One of the sisters declines the hypothetical offer of riches, stating the inability to compromise her fashion sense for money. That's admirable. 

3:20 p.m: Lots of fashion around town. As we are walking over a small bridge that goes over a polluted stream strewn with trash, we pass a woman in a full-length ivory (or was it light grey?) satin cocktail dress. Aside from the incongruity, I am shocked that someone would wear such a color out and about anywhere in Malawi. There's reddish dust everywhere here that seems to coat everything you wear.

4:00 p.m: In the grocery store, a man attempts to speak to me in English (we think) and hit on us (we think). 

4:10 p.m: A minibus guy tells one of the sisters in Chewa to tell me in English where the bus is going. Um, #1. I can read the sign in the window of the bus and #2. I am walking in the complete opposite direction. But, aside from that, YES OF COURSE I want to get on your minibus!! 

4:20 p.m: At the market. Here, I should never look at or touch anything unless I want to be inundated with offers. After looking at some nice spinach, the guy selling it must have said spinach about 20 times, trying to get us to turn back around and buy it. 

4:30 p.m: As the sisters are haggling for a better deal on 5 kg of rice, a baby starts smiling at me, and I start smiling at her until...she cries. Scary white woman alert! Hide your babies!

4:45 p.m: One of the sisters makes the brave decision to try what may be a short cut to my apartment. The trek from town to my home is only about 20 minutes, but it's mostly uphill and then downhill. The possible shortcut looks like it bypasses the hill and cuts straight across to my house. And, after ten minutes or so, we realize that it does. Success!

5:00 p.m: Success, that is, until we arrive to my apartment, go to the back door, and try the padlocks, one of which will not open. The same problem as the padlock on the front door. What are the odds? And now we are officially locked out of my apartment. Panic ensues.

5:05 p.m: Ask engineers to come try to open the lock. I tell them that one of the padlocks on the front door did the same thing.  One of them responds, "Both front and back in the same day. Magic!" 

5:10 p.m: Engineers fail at attempt. Call landlord who sends the gate guard with a saw that is smaller than a ruler. The engineers laugh at it and go get a huge metal hammer.

5:15 p.m: Failed attempts to break my padlock at least ensure that I'm safe inside at night. I think happy safety thoughts.

5:20 p.m: The three men come up with a plan: saw at the padlock for a bit, then hit it with the hammer. Saw, then hit. Saw, then hit. 

5:30 p.m: And finally...success! Walking into my apartment never felt so good, thanks to the three men who were kind enough to do the work to break me into my own home.

Need I write more?

A prisoner without cookies

Last night around 8, my landlord's daughter (my landlord's family lives upstairs) knocked on my door, saying 'Eid mubarak' (blessed festival), a greeting for the Muslim holiday Eid ul-Fitr (the day that marks the end of Ramadan) which is a public holiday here today. She wanted to offer me blessings as well as a plate of cookies that she was carrying.

I went to open my door for her. My apartment door has three locks: two padlocks that secure the barred metal door on the inside and then a lock for the glass-paneled door on the outside. I had gone running earlier in the evening and locked all three locks when I returned out of habit.  Trying to open the first padlock, the key didn't work, so I tried the second padlock key. Nothing. I opened the second padlock, went back to the first padlock, now knowing which key would open it. Still wouldn't open. We then tried to pass the cookies through the kitchen window that opens slightly, but with the security bars, it was impossible to get a plate of cookies through without turning the plate sideways and losing all the cookies to gravity. Back to the padlock. Didn't open. There I was, locked in my own apartment staring through metal security bars at a plate of delicious-looking cookies held by my landlord's daughter, who generously wanted me to share in her family's breaking of the fast of Ramadan.

This is my life.

Wonder Twin powers...activate!

When I was young, there were times -- most likely when one of my brothers was torturing me -- that I wished I had a sister. And I thought a twin sister would be the perfect comrade.  To me, twins represented a balance; what I was lacking, my twin would have in plenty and vice versa, creating a better version of each of us.

Perhaps my longing for a twin was due to some unconscious notion that I lacked balance.  This idea of balance can be a bit elusive, in part because it can have different meanings. A person can have good balance, can balance other things, and can be balanced. For example, I have good balance; I can hold yoga balance postures for quite some time (although I attribute this to years of ballet and not a cleared mind, as yoga promotes).  I am not, however, good at balancing actual things. In Malawi, many women are very good at this. They are able to balance large objects -- buckets, boxes, bundles of sticks -- on their heads with ease and then walk to their destination with the objects still poised there precariously. Never have I seen any of these things come toppling off a woman's head here.

But being balanced, now that's the slippery one.

There is the idea, at least in the U.S., that being balanced is a state of being that should be sought after because it makes a person more whole, happier, and more productive. If all aspects of my life are in harmony, if I'm giving them equal amounts of attention, then I will be balanced. I disagree.  In fact, I would argue that being balanced is actually counterproductive.

I will relate the difficulty and danger of being balanced to teaching high school. When I worked as a high school teacher, I taught four different courses each day. That meant that I needed to create four different lesson plans each school day, with a total of 20 separate lesson plans a week. Now, I realize that some people (hopefully none of you) think that teaching is easy, but it is difficult, exhausting, and time-consuming.  Being a good teacher takes ingenuity, creativity, and expertise in the subject matter. Developing 20 excellent lessons takes at the very minimum 20 hours. Is that feasible? Well, even if I could do that for one week, it's pretty much physically and mentally impossible to sustain that throughout the school year. So, what has to happen?  Imbalance.

For example, maybe for three days, I create fantastic lesson plans for two of my classes while the lesson plans for the other two classes are less inspiring. Then I switch and make wonderful lessons for those second two classes for a few days while having the other two classes do activities that aren't as well-planned or creative. To me, by creating imbalance, I succeed more than if I tried to actually be balanced. Striving for balance -- dividing my time and energy equally each day among the four classes' lessons -- would result in either my becoming burnt out or my being a mediocre teacher, with mediocre lessons, all the time. Neither of those options is very appealing to me. Thus, putting more energy and time into one thing for a while is a way to eschew mediocrity. (This way of thinking is also how I justify eating giant slabs of chocolate for dinner sometimes, but I'm not sure if I could fully support that with this same argument if challenged.)

My point is that people should stop striving to achieve this state of 'being balanced.'  Do you want to spend more time with your family? Great, do it. And as a result perhaps you need to spend less time at the gym or order take out more or not work sixty hours a week. So be it. But people (and I feel like women have it harder because they're expected to do it all and still look pretty) shouldn't feel like failures or feel guilty because they cannot 'balance their lives.'  Drop that notion of failure. Forget about your phantom twin (unless, of course, you actually are a twin), and delight in being imbalanced.

Faux Fall

As I worry about my friends and family on the East Coast getting slammed with a hurricane this weekend, I'm also thinking about how wonderful the weather here in Malawi is.  Not to be self-absorbed or anything, but I mean this is a blog, so I've pretty much gotten over the fact that anytime I write a post, I'm being self-absorbed. So here I am flaunting fantastic weather to my friends and family, some of whom who are probably -- at this very moment -- being inundated with rain and severe winds. (Does this make me a terrible person?)

Malawi has the kind of weather I love. Okay, perhaps I wasn't quite ready for the cold of July, but I'm once again content with the warm, sunny days, blue skies, and cooling breezes that confront me every morning when I leave my apartment. In Blantyre, it never gets colder than an early New England autumn night, and the rainy season is laughably mild compared to what I became accustomed to in Costa Rica. Add fruit trees to the temperate weather, plus trees that seem to flower year-long, and it seems like a tropical wonderland. But what's even better is that here I can also be reminded of autumn in New England.

Since this year's rainy season has been over for quite some time, the greenness that was once so prominent has subsided a bit, and some trees have been losing a few of their leaves. There is one less-traveled street in particular that reminds me of fall in Connecticut.  It is lined with fallen leaves, slightly browned and crinkled at the edges -- not nearly as many as a proper New England street would have in October, but the smell of October is there. There's nothing quite like the smell of dead leaves underfoot, particularly when running.  It may be the memories of high school cross-country that intensify my feelings of contentment when I'm running in autumn, even if it is a faux autumn on just one short street in Blantyre. No matter the reason, running that street at sunset -- with the orange and pink western sky creating a quietness that belies the chaos of commuter traffic just one road over and the crisp brown leaves that crackle underfoot -- takes me back to Connecticut for a few minutes.

How to Meet a Man in Malawi

Stand on the side of the road. Go to the market. Run around your neighborhood.  All of these are sure ways to meet a man. In fact, it's possible to meet many men in one day, all of whom are happy to stare, fumble for words, look you up and down, stare some more, call you sistah, demand you get in their car, invite you for "coffee," and other fun things.  However, finding a suitable man -- or (gasp!) a really good catch -- is an entirely different story.

Yesterday, prompted by one of my Malawian sisters (yes, I'm the adopted sister, in case you were wondering about the pigmentation difference) who told me a slightly disturbing story  involving a man interested in her, I shouted loudly in my office at work, "What is wrong with men?!" and then turned to look at the only man in the room. With the two of us glaring at him, demanding a response, he immediately looked like a trapped animal and started stammering, "Oh, guys...you know...I mean...it's not me, you know..."

This, in turn, led to a discussion about dating possibilities here. Sadly, we determined that the pool of potentials is so small that, in order not to become severely depressed about it, we needed to add to the pool by re-evaluating those men who had been nixed initially.  Yes, if you can believe it, we were combing through the trash for the least offensive of the cast offs, in order to make the pool at least swimmable. 

It's not as if there are no suitable men, but those who are suitable have: 1. wives, 2. girlfriends, or 3. enough baggage to fit me and all my baggage inside with plenty of room to spare. A portion of those who are then left know their status as suitable single hottie and work it with as many women as possible. Thus, after dismissing those who have wives, girlfriends, crates of luggage, and exaggerated egos, the dearth of potentials is dismal.

So, what are single women to do? For now, I think we're pretty content laughing at incidences that happen to us (Mr. Audi is the source of ongoing jokes) and teasing married men about the laughable actions of other men. Juvenile? Absolutely. But I'm reminded of the Sandra Cisneros short story "Eleven," in which the eleven-year-old narrator realizes that we are still all those other past ages underneath our current age: "Maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay."  Exactly. Or maybe I will need to vent about boys as if I'm fifteen. And that's okay.

Write me into your day

Today in one of my classes, I taught my students how to write thesis statements.  It's an afternoon class, and the large room gets rather warm at that time. Even though the sunshine has to fight its way into the loft-like room, the warmth and spring-like atmosphere seep in, creating an environment more suited to daydreaming than studying. Birds are constantly singing in the windows and occasionally fly through the open windows on one side of the room, cross the room, and fly out the open windows on the other side. It's a struggle to keep students focused and motivated to write. And, really, how interesting is it to practice writing thesis statements? So, to keep them engaged, I ask students to give me topics that everyone will write about. 

Me: "Someone give me a topic, any topic." (Birds chirping.) "Anyone...? Anyone...?"

Silence. More birds chirping.

Great. Here's your topic then: beauty pageants.  

Stares. 

"Staring at me is not going to help you write." 

This has become my new favorite line in class. I'm thinking of taking it to the streets where I get stared at quite a bit, especially walking to and from work. "Staring at me is not going to help you drive, dude!"

My students take my new mantra pretty well and just smile sheepishly at me and then start writing. Today, however, one of the young men in class contested the topic. 

Student:  "But I don't like this topic. I don't know about this."

Me:         "You can't write something about beauty pageants?"

Student:  "No. This is about girls. I don't know anything about girls!"

Me:        "Are you admitting in front of this entire class that you know nothing about women?"

He started writing.

I so love teaching adolescents.

The Continuation...

#5: It's easy to play dumb

Blonde jokes aside, being in another country can allow you to get away with quite a bit at times just by perfecting a vacant expression.  Now, please don't think I'm condoning the regular use of this sort of behavior. However, the occasional use of a vacuous look comes in handy sometimes.  Once at a public bath in Japan, for instance, I was asked -- in Japanese -- to leave because of my tattoo. With the look of a confused puppy, I stared at the woman until she gave up and walked away.

#4: You get asked to do the strangest things

If I were in the States, would I ever get asked by a Korean man (speaking to me in Japanese) to be a mail-order bride? 

#3: You make people happy as they watch you eat 

My very first night in Japan, lost and confused in Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido, a guy rescued me from spending the night on the street (that is another story altogether). That night, he took me out with a bunch of his friends who ordered an assortment of Japanese food for me to try, including natto, a sticky, stinky dish of fermented soy beans. As I tenderly wrapped the residual strings of smelly stuff around my chopsticks and put that first bite into my mouth, they were enraptured. When I said I liked it and started to eat more, there was a group, "Ooooooooooooooooh!"

A couple years later, the same thing happened when my Japanese ex had me try shirako without me knowing what it was: fish sperm (or, rather, the entire sack of sperm, so I guess 'fish balls' is a more accurate translation). And no, that incident is not why we broke up, although in retrospect it would have been a good enough reason.

#2: If people come visit you, you get to watch them eat

I will never forget the sickened look on my brother's face when he ate dried seaweed in Japan or when a bowl of raw scallops was placed in front of him at my friend's house and, to be polite, he tried to eat one.  

But don't think I only like watching people (and apparently just my brother) be slightly tortured while eating strange foods; I also like watching when people who visit me actually enjoy the local food. In Costa Rica, feeding a friend a granizado (THE most delectable shaved ice treat made with sweet syrup and condensed & powdered milks), I got to watch her face radiate pure joy.

#1:  English

There are websites dedicated to funny uses/errors of English, but if you live abroad you can be a part of documenting all of the amusing signs, t-shirts, and menus around the world.  The misuse of English can be a source of daily amusement, wherever you are.

Case in point: At work one day here in Malawi, my co-workers and I were talking about the baldness of one of our colleagues (yes, a very productive day at work). Trying to help, one of my co-workers emphatically told our bald colleague: "You know, they make something for that [baldness]. It's called Miracle Grow."

Top 10 (Less Obvious) Reasons to Live Abroad

 #10: The most amusing miscommunications occur regularly.

One night last week, I had a male friend over for dinner. I live in a flat, and the landlord's family lives above me. I thought briefly what they -- strict Muslims -- would think of a single woman having over a man, alone and at night, but then didn't think of it again. Yesterday, as I was going out, the landlady called down from her upstairs balcony to say hi and ask how I was. Then, out of the blue, she asks, "So you have a boy?"  Within the loooooong thirty seconds or so of silence that followed, as I scrambled for something to say in response, I thought: "Oh my god, I've crossed some line during the holy month of Ramadan and now she's asking me this question because she's already planning my wedding because naturally that is what must happen if I dine alone with a man in the apartment that is part of their home."  To stall the inevitable, I just did what a proper blonde girl has been taught to do; I played dumb. "Sorry?" (head tilt) "You have a boy. You know, a maid. That man who comes to clean." Oooooh! Right. She's referring to the man I hired to cook and clean for me twice a week. Huge sigh of relief. I don't have to get married after all.

#9:  Children think you're the coolest person ever.

Okay, clearly this happens without living abroad. Every parent knows their child thinks Mom and Dad are the coolest people in the world, at least until their children hit adolescence. But abroad, whole herds of children will swarm at me, sometimes following me as if I'm the Pied Piper. Inevitably, every time I go running, I get high-fived, challenged to and beaten in a sprinting race, and sang at with "Hellohowareyou?" It's a rare (and sad) day if none of the above happens on my run. Who doesn't like being that cool? If all else falls apart during the day, I know that some child will smile at me, leaving me smiling for hours.

#8: If you're a single woman, men think you're easy.

I actually hate this, but it makes for some really funny stories. Take Mr. TwentySomething in his Daddy's sleek black Audi SUV who stopped me on the street while I was running to chat me up and get my phone number.  That very night, he asked me to get coffee with him the following evening. The next morning, he texted stating that he thought I could make some "pretty tasty coffee" and that he'd rather just come to my place for it. Um...seriously dude? A few texts later, another red flag ("I already miss your gorgeous smile") caused me to stop him in his one-track-mind tracks with this text: "I'm older than I look. I just want to be friends. Hope that's okay."  I've never heard from him since.

I guess an added bonus to #8 is, if you are easy, then you're never in short supply of men.

#7: You can blame your idiosyncrasies on cultural differences.

Do your books and papers need to be in neat piles aligned with the edge of your desk? Do you do baby hand claps when you get excited about things? Do you overuse post-it notes to the point where your desk looks like Rainbow Brite threw up all over it? Well, if you play it right, you can -- at least for a little while -- rid yourself of the "crazy" moniker.  All it takes is a little, "I guess this is just how we do it in the U.S." and "I guess it's a cultural thing. I never really noticed it before."

#6: As a single woman, you will get asked, "Why aren't you married?" a lot.

At first, this was quite annoying. I mean, my relationship status is really no one else's business. (Granted, I must admit I just asked a guy recently why he didn't have a girlfriend, but it was more of a compliment in that he's hot and smart and funny and thus must have a girlfriend. Sigh...I'm such a hypocrite.)  Anyway, when the question is posed to me, I realize that I can answer with anything, and that has proven to be most amusing. For example, I can answer à la Bridget Jones: "underneath my clothes, my entire body is covered in scales." Or,  "Well, I've been married five times already, so I don't really want to get married again."  Or, my favorite which I have yet to do: start crying and then say, "Because no one has ever asked me!" See how much fun this can be?

(To be continued)

The Minibus Misadventure

As I have written before, the minibuses are usually pretty packed. So one day when I get on an empty minibus at the minibus 'station' (read: dirt parking lot), I assume the driver is going to wait for the minibus to fill up before starting. I tell him where I'm going, hoping he understands. (At this point, I hadn't learned the Chichewa phrase for "Drop me at  ____, please" which is basically one of the only three Chichewa phrases I know which is completely shameful and unacceptable). Anyway, I don't have a chance to make sure he knows where I want to go, as he immediately pulls out of the station and drives off down the main road of town, heading toward my university where I need to go. I feel very uneasy, since I've never seen a minibus with only one passenger, and with the cost of fuel and the current fuel shortage, I know transporting one passenger isn't something that any driver will do. 

My first thought is that I am going to get robbed. I am thinking this as I hand my 50 kwacha bill (about 30 cents) to the other man on the minibus, the money collector. He takes the bill and smiling asks me, "What kind of drink do you like?" I assume he means alcohol, so I reply, "I don't know. I don't really drink that much." (Okay, of course the correct answer is wine and the more correct answer is Reisling or merlot, but I mean did I need to share with strangers?) "Sure, sure," he replies, not in the accusing 'you're such a liar' way but in the 'I'm not too fluent in the language you're speaking, so I have no idea what you just said' way. The driver, while driving, then immediately turns around grinning, holds up a plastic packet of gin, and asks if I want one. Sold in Malawi, these little plastic packets hold a shot of gin and look like large ketchup packets from fast-food restaurants. They're easy to transport and, apparently, easy to drink on-the-go, as my minibus driver soon proves to me.

"No, no thanks," I say, and the money collector somehow thinks this is his cue to question me again with, "What kind of drink do you like?" Again, same response from me, and this time I think he realizes that we will never be able to communicate and he turns and starts talking to the driver.

OR, I suddenly think, perhaps he has turned to the driver because, since they can't liquor me up, they're just going to take everything I've got and then leave me somewhere. I think about exit strategies and slide open the window as far as it will go. I determine that I could fit through it and that I'd go out feet first if I needed to make a break for it. Just as I finalize this plan, the minibus stops and a young woman carrying a Bible gets on. I think she has saved me and am grateful she doesn't get off before I do. Before I get off though, I notice that she hasn't been offered any gin.

Transportation

The public transportation in Malawi creates adventure.  Going anywhere within the city (and I use that word very loosely, since Blantyre seems more like a large town), one needs to use the 'minibuses' which are old minivans with sliding doors and three long seats in the back plus two individual front seats. When you enter through the sliding door, there is an aisle to slide down to get to the back two rows. However, since there are also two fold-down seats that fold into the aisle, entering and exiting a minibus can sometimes be an ordeal that involves several people getting out of the van in order for one person to get on or off. 

For each minibus, there is a driver and a money collector who sits in the back with the passengers and leans out the window while the van is in motion, shouting out the final destination, while the driver honks the horn in staccato bursts, trying to pick up more passengers. Along the route from its starting destination to its final destination, it will stop anywhere to pick up passengers. All one has to do is flag down the van. Thus, a ten-minute drive can turn into a twenty-minute ride on the minibus. Even better, a ten-minute drive can turn into an hour ride/walk because the minibus breaks down or runs out of gas or the driver decides not to go the way he said he was going and drops you off somewhere else.

Now, this may not seem too bad, but the inside of the minibus is the absolute opposite of luxury. First, there is a torn piece of cardboard or scrap of wood, with the destination hand-written on it, displayed in the windshield. As for the seats, usually the vinyl is ripped and there is metal poking out of some area. The windows are dusty and stick in the tracks when being slid open or closed. Most of the buses rattle when moving, spew plumes of dark smoke out their tailpipes, and struggle going uphill.

Add to that the usual practice of overloading, and the ride gets even more fun.  I think these minibuses are meant to safely transport around 13 to 14 people. Typically, there are more people than that packed into the minibus, sometimes making the number of passengers close to 20. Just like my first day in Tokyo when I thought there was no way another ten people could cram into the already packed train car, I first thought there was no way another passenger could squeeze onto a minibus here. But, somehow, one more person pushes his way into the van, causing people to squish up against the window or half sit on some stranger's lap, all while the ripe scents of body odor, unwashed skin, and onions waft through the stagnant air of the small enclosed space.

Now, when I am squished between a woman holding a baby with saucer-large eyes staring at me and a man with horrendous breath who is trying to chat me up and get my number, and the minibus stops for one more passenger, I know there is somehow always going to be space.

 

minibuses

Sometimes There Are No Signs

Sometimes people wait to do something -- start a new hobby or stop a bad habit -- because they are waiting for the 'right' moment to do so. Perhaps they are waiting for the first day of a new month or their next birthday or a solar eclipse; maybe they're holding off until they see a clear sign, like an enormous boulder in the middle of the road after a landslide, one that impedes their usual route.

Most of the time, however, we shouldn't wait for any 'right' moment.  We should just jump in and begin. Thus, I'm starting this blog on a random day, with no signs, no momentous events, no aligned stars, and no mathematical symmetry related to today in anyway.

Mostly, I'm starting it today because: 1) I'm getting tired of some of my friends telling me I should start a blog and 2) I am hating on ETS today.

Well, I guess I can't hate ETS too much since they are part of the catalyst for this blog's fruition. However, I can still despise standardized tests and loathe the fact that ETS deletes GRE scores after five years.  So here I am studying once again. Okay, who am I kidding, I never studied for the GRE the first time, which was, I must admit, well over five years ago. 

So, after 30 minutes of reading about fractions and remembering how to add, subtract, multiply and divide them plus some other stuff I've already forgotten, I decided to do something much more self-indulgent. Thus, Heidi Go Seek is born. (Thanks, Dan, for naming my blog!)