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…

Grappa & Grading!

My intense grading sessions tend to take place at the café right up the road from my apartment, a place owned by a gregarious Italian man, where I can get multiple cappuccinos throughout the day, to keep me awake during the tedious task of marking a lot of essays that are works-in-progress. Today was one of those days.

What was unique about today, however, was being invited to join the owner and a few of his friends for rounds of espresso with added shots of homemade grappa, a gift to the owner from one of his neighbors in Italy. That short hiatus from grading -- sitting around a table and drinking with two funny Italians, a slightly stoic German, and a white Malawian in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday -- was extremely welcome.  I do think, however, that the following certain lines from some of the essays would have been just as hilarious, with or without the grappa. Because they still seem pretty funny now. 

The following excerpts are from essays that were answering the question 'Should tobacco companies be held responsible for smoking-related illnesses and death?'

"Despite the freedom people have to smoking, there are several institutions that provide civic education to the people especially the elderly and the blind making them aware of the health problems which arise from the smoking behaviours."

[Man, the blind and the elderly get all the perks.]

"The women along the lake shore areas share this blame. They spend much of their time at the lake to the extent of offering their services (committing copulations) for fish." 

[Nope, I didn't add that parenthetical phrase. It came like that. Clearly, I couldn't make this stuff up.]

"It indirectly affects the ant smoking lobby."

[Yes, those ants really need a lobby to smoke in!]

"As any person mainly smokers know, there is a caution written on every ciggarette that warns people on the repurations one would encounter as a result of smoking."

[On each cigarette in very very very tiny writing is imprinted the warning: 'Smoking results in repurations!' No wonder people still smoke. 1. The writing is too small to read and 2. No one knows what repurations are.]

"You know the truth but you are biting about the bush deliberately."

[Hmmm...I didn't know there was such a thing as unintentional biting about the bush. I'm going to leave that one be.]

Poetry Contest

After reading hundreds of poems for a poetry contest, I decided to take what I thought were some classic stanzas and put them together into one new poem. All typos and lines that may be confusing are original and have not been changed one bit. Here it is:

I like your curtsey, it makes me flounder

Your love to me is like a sum without a remainder

you always be my motivation.

when am tantalizing

a!! babie you are

my every day agenda,

your love is so patience, it does not make

me agonizing

The moon can tell better of how I shine

I bring a bliss better than fine

A prodigal son, who was lost, carried away

by a western tide of baggy and anorexic jeans.

Consumed by all of it, I can’t help but take a trip down memory lane

and revisit the worlds that my mother instilled in me

when I was a boy, & they are

“if you want to make the world a better place,

take a look at yourself then make that change.”

But where do we find some1 who’s been threw the worst

We must teach the old men

We must drill the resolute woman

Indeed useful things for everybody life

Will be increased

The making of not complicated things like wooden wood spoon

Aliens ruling the world?

for what are robots? If not abbots

Thats my wish, if they can do gardening

this, in my deep comma like catnap remember

Indigo we shall wear

Hallucinating with the hangovers of a drenched mope

An aware of its evident pomp

Breathing in short gasps of ecstasy

Then HIV/AIDS will become history just like Bin Laden 

By the efforts of concerned persons to soccour

A bland new world will meliorate

All the single ladies

Slightly geographically misplaced SWF seeking unmarried, un-girlfriended (hey, it should be a word), de-cluttered, baggage-less, sane man who is not seeking a booty call. Okay, that isn’t what I wrote when I delved into the world of Internet dating for exactly four days, but it is perhaps what I should have written.

Recently, some of my students had to write essays about Internet dating. (Yes, I realize how ridiculous the assignment was, in a country with incredibly spotty Internet service, students without computers, and some perhaps without electricity at home, but I made the assignment based on a newspaper article in one of the local papers here.)  After reading so many first and second drafts about this topic, I got curious and decided to take the plunge myself into the chaotic yet sometimes fruitful world of Internet dating, kind of as a social experiment (and, mostly, to be honest, I thought it would make for a good blog post).  Plus, I’d recently gone out on a few dates with someone here who, I later found out, has a girlfriend.  So, what better way to assuage the disgust of knowing you went out with a cheating bastard (or the thought that it's somehow all Karmic) than to peruse profiles of thousands of single men and choose the ones to your liking. It’s kind of like the meat market idea gone virtual and then sanctioned by society.

I know friends who have ‘met’ a plethora of men online, some who have been on lots of dates as a result, and two who have married men they met online. However, after four days of having an active profile on an online dating site, I realized how much dross my friends must have sifted through to find people they wanted to merely meet.

I imagine you’re all wondering just exactly what kind of things happened to me in those four days.  And even though I’m still emotionally scarred from the experience (okay, not really), I’ll recount the messages I found most, er, interesting.

As we all know, first lines are important to hook the reader into reading more, into being interested in whatever else follows. And when it’s a dating site with thousands of people to possibly date, you’d think people would take the time to carefully phrase that very important first line of that very important first message that is sent to someone. Or not.

Here are a few first lines of first messages (and first impressions gone awry) that I received. And I kid you not that these are the very first lines that some guys sent me as their very first message. (Seriously, why doesn’t anyone start with “Hi”?)

“I am articulate, too.”

[Yay for you!  But if you have to announce it as your first line, it makes me a bit skeptical of its veracity.]

“Do you really speak Japanese?”

[Did I not write in my profile that I spoke it ‘poorly’? Clearly you must have read that in order to formulate this question. Are you actually calling me a liar straightaway?]

“I was driving with my knees across midtown in gridlock traffic(typical nyc)and had to pull over to send you this message, almost crashed because of you, now being chased by a killer squirrel, so I hope you're worth it ;)”

[Yes, I would love to get in the car with you now to go out on a date! I mean, driving with your knees while browsing online dating websites is such a turn on!]

“surely there must be able, intelligent and single men in Africa. . .even if you are in an undeveloped country do you not get to socialize with the foreign diplomats?”

[Dude, you actually took time out of your day, not to say hi and introduce yourself, but to give me dating advice? And to tell me that I should be trying to hook up with diplomats because clearly those must be the only able, intelligent, single men in any underdeveloped country in Africa? If there were an emoticon of flipping the bird, it would have gone straight to your inbox.] 

“Are you for real?”

[Um…no, I’m an angel sent from heaven. Duh.]

I honestly thought I’d last a bit longer than four days. I mean, imagine what other messages I could have gotten if I’d only held out longer. And, who knows, maybe someone would have even sent me a message that started with a clichéd yet still appreciated “hi” after all.

Four-and-a-half-hour staff meetings?

No, not "Four half-hour staff meetings." If that were the case, I probably wouldn't be lying on my couch right now, slightly comatose, eating chocolate and biscuits, and feeling that my usual slightly witty writing will not emerge.  But it really was a four-and-a-half-hour meeting. Today, that was my entire afternoon at work, with afternoon classes canceled so the faculty could sit in a classroom on a hot day for over four hours.

Although there was the obvious difficulty of staying awake in a small, hot room with no ventilation for that long, listening for the most part to the Chair of the Meeting the entire time, there were some moments of amusement (even besides my doodling penguin-parrot hybrids on a copy of the agenda).  For one, the dulled, glassy-eyed looks of some of my colleagues after the two-hour mark were pretty priceless. Then, around the four-hour mark, there were looks of exasperation when yet another colleague brought up yet another new point which was inevitably to be misunderstood yet again by the Chair who would then talk for fifteen minutes about something irrelevant, with one of his 'jokes' added to the end of his misguided explanation. 

I can't claim that I didn't drift off several times throughout the meeting, day-dreaming about lying on the beach in Costa Rica or hiking surrounded by colorful fall foliage in Connecticut or simply just thinking about how great it would be if I were standing outside the room where the meeting was held. Then I could have run away. And gotten lunch.

At one point during the meeting, around 3 p.m., lunch was brought in for us. Rice with chicken or beef in individual Tupperware containers was passed out to each staff member. Because I don't eat meat and there was no other option, I declined. About ten minutes after everyone started eating (the meeting continued throughout lunch), the Chair was struck by this astute observation:

Chair: (Looking directly at me, he interrupts what he's been talking about and says): I see some people aren't eating.

Me: (completely deadpan and monotone) I don't eat meat.

Chair: But there's chicken!

Me: (same tone and look...I mean, do I have to emote after three hours in a boring meeting?) I don't eat meat.

Chair: But there's chicken.

Me: Chicken is meat.

Chair: Ohhhhh.......

This exchange was exceptionally funny to me because: 

1) He knows I'm a vegetarian and has even had me to his house for dinner where careful arrangements were made about what to prepare for me. 

2) He was so emphatic about the chicken, as if it were the quintessence of vegetarian eating. CHICKEN. How can you not eat chicken?! It's chicken! (Yup, no matter how much you emphasize the word, it's still meat.)

3) He practically sang his "Ohhhh," as if it went up a mountain and back down again, like one of the tones in Chinese. Low-high-low. It was an epiphanic sound, as if he were a five-year-old witnessing a wondrous natural phenomenon, like seeing, for the first time, a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis.

In that magical teaching moment, I could have explained about other meats that might be slightly confusing (Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam), but I'd been sitting on a hard school bench for three hours already, vaguely paying attention. And that was taking a lot of work. So I let the teaching moment pass and got back to my very important doodles.

Best of the 'best'

Does every teacher have a love-hate relationship with grading essays? I certainly do. Maybe it's my attention to detail that mires me in the minutiae of commas and appositives and dangling prepositions; before I realize it, an hour has passed, and I've graded exactly one essay. More likely, however, it is the actual overall writing that forces me to read a sentence or paragraph (or, unfortunately sometimes the entire essay) multiple times before vaguely understanding the meaning that is trying to be conveyed. Now, I am not blaming my students; I'm their teacher, and I'm teaching them how to write. So, the giant sighs that can be heard from my apartment while I'm grading essays are not only because I'm thinking, "This makes absolutely no sense" but also, "How could I have failed my students this much?" (Those sighs may also indicate that I have run out of chocolate in the midst of grading 250 essays. That is when you want to knock on the door, drop chocolate, and quickly run away.)

Even though grading essays is a terrible time for me, I absolutely adore my students here, especially those that I've had in class since February. They know me well enough to show up to class not too too late (ah, Malawian time!) and to be able to joke around with me. Today, for example, one of the students got up to leave class without saying anything. I looked puzzled as I watched him hurriedly jog down the steps leaving the classroom. Then, because he was half-running, he completely wiped out on the cement landing at the bottom of the steps. (He also immediately bounced back up and ran off). Because I was at the front of the class, I was the only one to see this, although the entire class heard it. And I started laughing. A lot. And so did my students. Once I stopped laughing, I asked them, "Am I a bad person because I just laughed at that?"  "YES!" they all responded. See, lots of love in my classroom.

My newer students (since August) don't know me well enough to tell me I'm a bad person. And they don't know what a hard grader I am. If they did, they might not have produced essays that included the following very questionable sentences. They had to write argumentative essays answering the question: Should tobacco companies be held responsible for tobacco-related illnesses and deaths? Here are some of their sentences [with my added commentary because I couldn't help myself, and you'll soon understand why]: 

In these activities you find tobacco cigars or powders is being painted white before people who are ignorant or aware for its harm on peoples' health. 

[Are you sure you aren't taking any white powder while writing your essay?]

Tobacco smoking is husardace to human health.

[Husardace, pronounced 'hew-sard-ace': a person skilled at cutting up sardines; being skilled at chopping in general.] [Much better than that trite word 'hazardous,' don't you think?]

Smoking is done in two ways that's smoke smoking, smokeless smoking, and passive smoking. 

[Dude, I've heard that smoke smoking is like so totally better than smokeless smoking.] [And wasn't that three ways?]

When a pack of cigarettes is on display, it is an invitation to treaty.
[Treaties and cigarettes. Cigarettes and treaties. Some things were just meant to go together.]

It states that this crop [tobacco] is majory used for the production of arms especially bullets. We are told that tobacco is a raw material for the poison in the bullet. 
[Ummmm....]

Such an argument can also be related to the current fashionable HIV and AIDS. 
[Right, because we all want that fashionable new disease, don't we? I mean, the two Ashleys have it, so now everyone has to get it.]



...there will be more, I'm sure.

Race

I hallucinated yesterday. Or so I thought. I’ve been sick all week, have gone through bits of delirium, and had just come from a class during which I got the cold sweats for a few minutes. So when I saw a little blond white girl standing outside the main door leading to my office, I thought my flu had reached its apex and was concocting visions of myself as a child. Thankfully, I was wrong.

The girl belonged to a blond white couple, whom I saw upon entering the building. What struck me afterward was how out of place that little girl had looked to me -- not because I thought she was a younger version of myself come as the harbinger of my imminent death due to this flu but simply because she was white. The same feeling of discordance happened when I went into the building and saw the couple, who were also glaringly white. And then I realized how obviously different I must look everyday on campus here.

When I was a high school teacher, I taught a unit on race to my AP English class. It began with a classroom discussion about the idea that race is a social construct used to categorize people in order to maintain the power structure of society, not an accurate way of defining people or their ethnic backgrounds or skin color. So even though I use the terms that have been designed to talk about peoples of different ‘races,’ I actually don’t believe in the simplicity of this construct. For one, the people of the U.S. are too complex to be narrowed down to a few check-boxes (African-American, Hispanic, White, Asian, American Indian, Pacific Islander) that are supposed to define all of the ethnicities and backgrounds and histories of the people who make up our country.

I wish that here in Eastern Africa – the heart of the earliest human ancestors, near what National Geographic calls ‘humanity’s hometown’ – racism did not exist. The first couple of times I heard racist comments here, I was actually speechless. Not because I am naïve and think there are places in the world where racism does not reach but because the people who made the comments to me had literally just met me. (For the record, it was not the couple mentioned above.) It was as if to them my blinding whiteness screamed, “Of course I’ll commiserate with you about ‘these blacks!’ My skin demands it!” My skin may demand SPF 90, but it definitely does not demand ignorant comments.

So what to do when people here make assumptions, based on my being white, that I'm just as racist as they are? First, I imagine locking them in a tiny room with Tim Wise for a few days. And then I use what has become my kuchiguse (Japanese for: the phrase that I use a lot); referring to whatever inappropriate comment was made,  I tell the person simply: "That's not okay."

 

I am not a dog

Since I have a bad cold, I decided it would be a good idea to take some nighttime cold/flu medicine last night. Smart, right?  Sure, up until the part where I decided not to fall asleep but to respond to the unread emails in my inbox. So I wrote a few slightly cheeky emails to a few slightly unlucky people while drugged up on cold meds.  Sick me + NyQuil + interacting with anyone = epically bad idea. (And yes, if you must know, one of those emails was to someone I kind of fancy. Or rather, I did fancy. Because clearly I need to get over that one now. But save the eye rolls and head shakes; I know how stupid I am.)

This event got me thinking about how we interact with people in general and then, more specifically, how our jobs affect the way we communicate with others. And for me, my job has nearly always been about working with adolescents and young adults. How does the way I interact with my students influence the way I interact with others?

Example:
In a class of about fifty students yesterday, after going over some information regarding referencing (yes, absolutely thrilling lecture, by the way), I asked if anyone had any questions. I apparently didn't see one guy near the back who had his hand raised. So he snaps his fingers. More than once. I give what I've been told is my infamous Medusa-like teacher look, and state, "I'm not a dog." This, of course, makes the entire class laugh and the guy look a little embarrassed. "I have a name. Do you know my name?" I ask the student. (I should note that these are students who have been in my class since February.) "Yes," he replies. "Good," I say,"Use it." He then proceeds to ask his question, and I start to answer it.  At the end of my explanation, I ask him, "Now, what did you learn?" He summarizes what I had just gone over. "Yes," I say, "And...?  What else?" He looks at me blankly. I stare at him, hopeful. Blank look. Hopeful stare. Other students start to murmur: "Don't snap your fingers...don't snap your fingers...don't snap your fingers" until it finally dawns on him. "Oh, right. Don't do this [finger snap]." 

I think my Type-A, slightly sarcastic yet warmhearted (I hope) personality is apposite to teaching adolescents. But how does it translate to other relationships?

I wonder about this for other people with other professions. A prison guard and his/her significant other. How do they communicate with each other? And what would communication be like if married to a professional clown? In other words, how does what we do for eight hours everyday influence the ways in which we interact with people? How do our jobs affect our relationships? 

Coffee, Chocolate & Cheese

“These are a few of my favorite things.”

(Thanks Julie Andrews for making that song stick in my head for like 30 years.)

Unfortunately, living abroad can challenge a person’s access to their most-loved foods. In Japan, the coffee that many people drink – out of cans (hot or cold!) purchased from vending machines – leaves much to be desired. And although I had fantastic coffee in Costa Rica, I could not get good cheese; all the local cheeses tasted bland and similar, no matter the type. And here in Malawi, both the coffee and cheese are nothing special. Neither one is dismal, but neither is more than mediocre either. Thankfully, in all the places I’ve lived, I’ve had access to imported chocolate which has, at times, probably kept me from killing someone.

One of the biggest questions of my life is: Why have I not made my way to living in France or Italy? Clearly that is where I need to be. I mean, add fresh baguettes and fantastic wine to the title list, and I’m in my own epicurean paradise. Just thinking about this makes me want to crawl into bed and dream about food.

However, thinking about this also makes me feel brutally greedy, considering I’m living in a country where I see abject poverty daily, where people comb through my trash for anything salvageable, and where children are malnourished.

But, I didn’t want this post to be about the poverty of Malawi, nor did I want it to be about my favorite foods (imagine how boring that would have been for those lactose-intolerant, diabetic, uncaffeinated folks). What I want this to be about is the food of Malawi.

The first noticeable difference between Malawian food and the food of other places I’ve been is: SALT. Malawian food is extremely salty, even for me who likes food a bit salty to begin with. Now that I have hired someone to cook and clean for me (I know, I know, totally pampered…and absolutely loving it) I don’t cook much anymore. What have I noticed from this?  (Besides how much more time I have to procrastinate and not grade papers or study math for the GRE or work on my book but instead write blog posts like this one.) I am thirsty. A lot.

The staple of Malawian food is nsima, which is like a thick, gelatinous porridge usually made from maize flour. To me, it looks like a blob of white dough and is tasteless. However (and this is a big however), I’ve actually only tried it once. Pieces are separated from the large blob, rolled into small balls, pressed with a small indentation, and dipped into ‘relishes’ (these are other dishes, like stewed meats and cooked vegetables), using your hands.  I have been told that I need to try nsima again, properly done and with the right relish.  Thankfully for me, the alternative is rice. And local Malawian rice is really good, although not as flavorful as Japanese rice. But Japanese rice, to me, is the apogee of all rice everywhere.

 nsima

One of my all time favorite dishes (or 'relishes') here is greens with ground nut sauce. The nut sauce is made from a powder of pounded peanuts, so this dish is a great source protein (that is, if the College of Medicine sign hasn't already enticed you to eat slabs of beef instead).

Next source of protein: beans. Why would I want to go from living in one country that serves rice and beans to another country that serves rice and beans? One answer: I really like beans. And, no offense Pacific side of Costa Rica (because I do really love gallo pinto), but Malawian style beans are better. They are richer and more flavorful, but who knows, maybe it's just all the salt that I like. (For the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, your beans are the absolute best.)

 rice, beans, & greens

One place where there isn't salt? The lake! Lake Malawi, what I consider the most incredible geographical aspect of Malawi, is a freshwater lake. It's also one of the largest and deepest lakes in the world, and for a really small country, that's quite a lot of lake! The lake is home to a variety of fish; in fact, people tell me that it has the most species of fish than any other freshwater lake in the world. Whether or not that is true, the fish is delicious.

So there you have it: a little slice of Malawian food (minus the roasted mice and fried ants), which is quite healthy, delicious, and cheap by U.S. standards. Now if I could just find a place that serves big chunks of brie and fresh baguettes...

Excuse me, Mister

September 11, 2011

I haven’t forgotten 9/11. But I didn’t want to write about 9/11 today because I don’t think anything I write about it will be good enough for this day. So I decided to write instead about events much less serious (and I mean like light years away from being serious) that have happened to me here recently.

Situation: Walking to work one morning, listening to my iPod, with earbuds clearly visible in my ears.

Man: Hello.

Me: (I’m bopping my head to the music, so I can’t hear you to respond. Please go away. Please go away. Please go away.)

Man: (Stepping very close to me) HELLO!!!

Me: (Damn it!) Hi. (Back to bopping my head to the music.)

Man: I see you a lot around here. Do you stay [live] here?

Me: (Well, that’s a lie. This is not my usual way to work. I’m only going this way because I wanted to go to the store to get some chocolate which I haven’t eaten yet which means I am more likely to kill you if you continue to piss me off by doing things like invading my personal space.) Yes.

Man: Where do you stay [live]?

Me: (You seriously want me, a woman walking alone, to tell you, a strange and rather large man, where I live?) I don't tell strangers that information. 

Man: Oh. (pause) I’m Benjamin.  

Me: (Is he seriously trying to pretend that once he tells me his name we’re no longer strangers?) Okay. 

Man: You don’t want to be friends with me?

Me: Uh. No. I’m going to work.

Situation: I wanted to find out information about places to stay near the area where The Lake of Stars (a music festival here in Malawi) is being held, so I decided to ask a friend of a friend – whom I’ve met only once but who I know goes each year. This exchange happened via text messaging.

Me: Hey. This is Heidi. Where do you stay when you go to the Lake of Stars? Can you suggest a place for me to stay?

Man: I camp outside for free, I have big tent so we can stay together.

Me: (Okay, clearly I have a tramp stamp visible to others that I don’t know about?) Um…I mean, do you have suggestions for a lodge for ME to stay at?

Man: Yes, there are rooms and chalets if you can book in time. I am happy to stay in both no problem.

Me: (Uh…does he actually think I’m texting him, a man I’ve met once, to stay in a hotel room with me during a weekend-long music festival? Do I actually have to waste my time explaining to him that this is not a possibility?) I think you misunderstood. I’m not staying WITH you. I’m only asking you if you know of any good lodges where I can stay. Alone.

Man: Hope to see you there dear. Lots of love.

Me: (Oh dear god…why do I even bother trying?)

Things that make you go "huh?"

Malawi is full of things that make you go, "HUH??"

Whether it's the really questionable fashion statements seen daily or the discordant scenes that one is privy to when living in one of the poorest countries in the world, this country is rife with opportunities to practice your puzzled look.

Do you love watching "What Not to Wear"? Are you considered a fashionista by your friends and colleagues? Then, your search for the perfect love-hate relationship is over. Come here, and you'll be torn between looking away quickly from the tragic outfits that may burn your eyes and staring at the same outfits that make your mind reel trying to find a schema to fit the sight into. Even for the slightly style-challenged person that I am, I often find myself appalled by and drawn to certain fashion disasters. Let's just start with this: sexy fishnet stockings should never be worn by anyone over 50 (and I'm being really kind with the age limit here) unless she's a hooker. (Wait, did I just say it was okay for a 51-year-old hooker to wear fishnet stockings? Clearly, I need to take back that statement.)

Okay, on to university students. One would think that a university campus would be filled with students wearing jeans and t-shirts. Although there are students who do dress casually, others seem to think the more formal the dress means the more style one has, and sometimes it can. However, even at Smith, the school that claims debutantes and former Presidents' wives, never would anyone have worn an evening cocktail dress, complete with wide satin sash tied in a bow at the back, and strappy silver high-heeled sandals to a class, unless for a lark. But at 7:30 a.m., there that outfit was, on campus. I guess I'm more of a flip-flops and tank top kind of girl to understand.

And just when you think you can't be perplexed any more, the rest of the country is there, waiting to present multiple incongruous scenes each day.  Let's just start with my neighborhood. Walking down a street adjacent to mine will land me in an area of large houses, high fences, gorgeous gardens, and expensive cars (including the Mercedes convertible that I kind of covet, albeit just for a second -- okay maybe a few minutes -- everyday). Anyway, what else do I find along this street? Lots of gate guards sitting next to the gates of those expensive homes, guarding, among everything else, that $50,000 convertible. How much do these gate guards make per month?  Most likely, it's less than $100. So even at the 'high' salary of $100 a month, for a guard to purchase the $50,000 Mercedes convertible that he protects, the guard would need to work for 42 years -- as long as he doesn't need to eat or pay rent, that is.

Two different styles of living:

 and...

Of course, every country has its contrasts, but the ones here are often in the same breath or blink, and that's what makes it poignant, at least for me. Yesterday, I saw a barefoot woman in dusty old clothes, collapsed on the side of the road while, in the distance, I could see the manicured lawns of the cafe where one can buy $4 iced lattes with ice cream.  A few days ago, I was also struck by the incongruity of my extremely well-dressed and fashionable Malawian sister, in heels and a black dress and carrying a stylish handbag, on the same street as a woman wrapped in a chitenje (which is like a sarong), with a baby on her back, and a bucket on her head.

 And if that scene isn't enough to make you do a double take and/or wonder where on earth you have landed to be presented with such a contrast, then there are still random things that might have you scratching your head, such as this:

Yes, that's right. The College of Medicine -- the university that trains doctors -- has a sign just outside its Sports Complex (complete with dirt track, soccer field, gym, and outdoor basketball courts) with a picture of huge slabs of meat. Sure, it's an advert for a butchery, but it's still a sign with a picture of huge slabs of meat outside the College of Medicine. (Someone please tell me, does meat = medicine? This vegetarian needs to know, in case I get sick.) And although I love one of my sisters' explanations -- that perhaps they are promoting the intake of protein for exercise -- this sign certainly is enough to make me go "huh?"