Each week at the beginning of the day a different teacher runs announcements, preaching, and prayer. We stand in a line on a small wall and the students stand in four lines by their class, and are chastised for being late as tardy teachers sneak by behind them. We had hoped they had forgotten about us in the lineup, but they had not. This week, Ryan split with one of the teachers so he had only to pray while the other teacher preached. On the first day, the teacher gave a very good speech with only a little bit of rambling. Far shorter than the rest, with far less repeating. Afterwards he admitted to us that he had not prepared adaquitely and promised that it would be longer tomorrow. Ryan led the school in a morning prayer all week and was able to come up with a new semi unique prayer for each day. He kept it short! Sasha has week 6, and her teacher buddy says she must preach one of the days. Thanks for the help with that, mom and dad.
Sasha was sitting on the porch working on some papers when a man walked up holding a liquor bottle. This is not unusual, people are always coming up. But he did not smile, and simply began picking his way through her books. She stood and asked to help him, and he just stared at her before leaving. That stare is unfortunately a frequent occurrence in Seattle, often linked to insidious drugs. She asked a teacher about it, who said that man looked into his classroom and scared the children, but its not a problem. He is just mentally ill and drunk. There is nowhere for him to go, and so he simply wanders. This is much better than the two women in Vanuatu who were mentally ill and wandered the streets topless, breasts swinging. Sasha said there was a meth problem at home, and he didn’t know what meth was but excitedly told the story of his friend in college took a valium and blacked out for three days.
We are beginning to learn names better, and today Sasha brought sweets to everyone who did their homework, so 5 people. Tomorrow, maybe there will be more. She is supposed to cover the basics of bonding with grade 10 (form 2) and the trends of ionic v covalent bonds with grade 11 (form 3), but it turns out no one knows much at all so both classes are learning the same thing at the same time. The form 2s are doing a little better, as more participate and more do homework. If we write something like “CH4” on the board, we get 4 carbons and 4 Hydrogens. Or CH-CH-CH-CH. They will seem to understand drawing one element, but cannot do the next at all as they had just memorized it. It is a tax on patience, as we have worked on this and other practice problems all week. We were afraid it was our teaching, but the teachers say it always happens. And whoever taught form 3s before didn’t get through it at all either!
On Wednesday, lunch is served and so the classes are completely full. We are inundated with “I don’t know, I wasn’t here” from students who skipped class. Some have good reasons why they did not come before, most just didn’t feel like it. It is also infuriating to be the one who has the most acne breakouts in a room of teenagers. After school on Wednesday it is sports day. Last Wednesday a visiting priest gave a speech on the netball court, so we all watched soccer. Someone donated a handsome set of soccer uniforms, so one team wears the shorts and one team wears the shirts. Three students have cleats, the rest run in barefeet. Unlike the girls, the boys do not wear their school uniforms. Their skirts are far easier to run in that pants! Some go out just in the soccer uniform shirt and boxers, one student (who looks like Bruno Mars) made it a few minutes in before running back with his hands covering his crotch yelling he would make this match dirty. Someone lent him some shorts and the match went on.
We walked to another beach, Kaiko lodge, to find somewhere to swim. It was almost an hours walk in the sun, and kids kept coming to ask for waterbottle. When it became clear we wouldn’t, Sasha taught two girls in matching dresses the sneaky high five were you go for it and then pull your hand away at the last second, which they loved. They walked us to the lodge, where we sat drinking cold soda waist deep in cool, clear water. On the way back a group of smaller children ran out and walked half a mile holding our hands, 2 kids per hand.
It has become clear that nobody knows what a cookie is, so we are on a quest to make some. There is not a single chocolate chip in all of Malawi, but we have many of the ingredients for sugar cookies. It does make sense, its so warm it would soon be one chocolate slab. As we sat behind the school after Sasha made Ryan go for a walk, we found the Antlions that make Africas Small Five list. There are the Big Five of Lions, Giraffes, etc. and then the lesser known small five. They sit buried in the bottom of conical holes they dig, and wait for one of the small ants that cover the landscape to slide in. Then is a long battle to the death, the ant attempting to escape and sliding down the steep walls while the antlion grabs at it. Picture that one starwars monster. We found a cluster, and waited for one to thrown dirt up to show an antlion is there, before dropping in an ant. A 5 year old with a broken toothbrush helped us catch ants for our Empire-like fun. As was crouched over the tiny holes torturing ants, the one other white girl in the town hurried by “Hey are you Cassidy?” We had caught glimpses of her before, as she works in the hospital though she never seemed friendly. After being here 6 months and dealing with tourists, that is not surprising. She warmed up quickly learning we were staying as well. She as well has discovered the lack of cookies, and has been making them on the island, so soon we shall have a recipe! She has also invited us to a dance at the museum on Saturday.
We spoke a little of our hometown- explaining that if Malawi is the warm heart of Africa, Seattle is the cold shoulder of America. It is not an apt description (especially as the term “cold shoulder” is not used here) as we love Seattle and the ability to put on headphones and ignore everyone around you, but Seattle Freeze is real. Here, our smile muscles get sore just to walk to go buy bread. It is considered rude to walk by anybody without speaking to them. A nod doesn’t count. We explained how there are more dogs than children, to very shocked looks. Remember, there are feral dogs running around and no one keeps them as pets. When Joanna caught some puppies and taught one to sit, no one could believe it. One teacher said they value family more, and we explained we value it deeply but begin having children around 30 instead of 16. He had 3 siblings, our physics teacher had 3 direct siblings, 5 on his mothers, and 5 on his fathers. Also, they have never heard of The Beatles. The N-word has a very different meaning as well, they know it from people like Chris Brown using it in songs, and so it is associated with fancy cars, fur jackets, and gold chains. If you wear a jacket that makes you look like a pimp, then that is an “N-word Jacket”.
My old Chemistry teacher who was and is fantastic has been sending experiment ideas (thank you Mrs Baker! 4th period chem forever). Justice and I have been working our way through with the ancient chemicals around. Today, we mixed sugar and HCl behind the school with 3 gloves between us, and my sunglasses as protective goggles. In one of the glass bottles we have been trying to get rid of in the Bishops house. (“can we toss these?” “Yes of course you can use them” whelp, here they are- being used). It took awhile but it did boil and rise into a lumpy black snake. It was very exciting, and doesn’t quite fit into anyone’s lessons, and we did use all the sugar from the teachers lounge, but the students won’t notice and there were ants in the sugar anyways. For disposal, we hid the glass bottle in a bush instead of in the trash where someone would try to burn it. We should teach proper disposal of chemicals to students, but it is difficult when we really would never follow through.
After another exceptionally hot week it was finally the weekend and in a surprise twist of events we actually had plans! Friday night was movie night. One of the teachers had been trying to see Avatar so we invited him over to the biggest and only movie theater in Malawi: the side of the Bishops house. We came prepared with cordial and biscuits to really make the movie theater experience come to life. Children paused from trying to get mangos to hide in the shadows and watch. It was a beautiful show under the stars and Justice even brought Ryan’s laser pointer which he admitted to have been using as a light to walk home with at night.
The next morning, we took a hike up to the tallest mountain in Likoma. At the top were some cell towers and some very friendly guards. We had hardly arrived at the top when they came out and invited us in the gate for a grand tour of the cell tower. They very proudly showed us the server racks and the radio room. Looking back, they probably would have let us climb the tower if we had asked. There’s always next time! We entertained some children and taught some students that came by during the day. That evening the dance was delayed to Sunday since the Illala was delayed (no surprise there). So we headed to a bar in Mbamba to meet up with Cassidy. We got to hang out with a bunch of locals and even played a game of pool with the immigration officer. Unfortunately he also informed us that we had overstayed our visa and we should come see him on Monday. Hopefully he will go easy on us since we let him win.
The next day was church day. We got up, had our breakfast and spent our hour and a half listening to music and Chichewa at church. Once we had made our offering, we snuck out the side door and got ready for our beach day. We did hear from someone that someone complained of us leaving early, but we were far from being alone in leaving early and we simply cannot do FOUR HOURS. Cassidy joined us and we started the trek to Mango Drift and the promise of pizza. The power was out so we had to wait till the afternoon when the ovens would have power. We decided to go cool off and take our first bath/shower in a long time by jumping in the lake with snorkels. There were so many of the famous Chichlids. The ones the fishermen go for are a boring gray, but the ones that put Lake Malawi on the map are every color. Our favorite is the brilliant blue or purple, but theres purple and gold, black and checked pattern, stripes down the side, bright yellow, and many more. They were quite used to people and you could swim right through their school without disturbing them much. The lake was amazingly cold and refreshing only a few feet down. We had almost forgotten what cold felt like. We enjoyed our pizza, played some cards and Ryan tried without much luck to prepare for his classes on Monday. It only served to further his dislike of the English language. There are so many rules and none of them make any sense! I am learning a lot about the language so that’s a plus.
Finally, it was time to see the traditional dancing. Cassidy’s boyfriend picked us up from Mango Drift and brought us over to the museum where the dance was to be performed. We got a soda and settled in. There was one dancer dressed in a mask and frills all over his body and about 12 backup dancers who also played instruments. There were the drums and a bent piece of metal called a Kanada that they hit with a nail. It wasn’t a very complicated instrument but they played very loudly and well, and the singing that went along with it was unlike anything weve heard before. The best was to describe it is probably a mix between acapela singing and yodeling. You run up and put Kwacha in their bowl- a hold over from previous times were the village donated so the dancers wouldn’t kill you.
Ticket to Anywhere 