After 40 hours of nearly sleepless travel from Madrid airport, to Rome (were a man from Costa Rica told us about his beautiful island), to Addis Ababa, and finally to Lilongwe. Along the way, border agents and the person giving out tickets in Europe both asked… “Lilongwe? Where the hell is that?”.
Our trusted Malawian driver was waiting for us at the airport holding a sign, and as we made the 5 hour drive to Mzuzu we almost didn’t recognize the place. Where once was red sand, there was now miraculous fields of grass and new crops. We started out in summer in Malawi. Went to winter in northern Europe. Warmed up with a Greek autumn, and then came back to a Malawi spring. We arrived at the hostel, Joy’s Place, and enjoyed the signature General Joys chicken. Joy was back in Korea to have a baby, but her husband was still there to greet us. They will be back in April and we can meet the new baby!
The next day, we got our sparse shopping done at the always well stocked though more expensive Shoprite before visiting a teacher at the hospital. He and another teacher were driving over the break when the brakes failed. In order to avoid a headlong collision, they had to swerve and ended up rolling the vehicle 5 times. The driver walked away with some bruises, but the Geography teacher had an impacted spinal injury. We enter the “Male surgical unit” to a room of 10 beds. Each person had a different injury and several had family visiting. The beds look old, the wheels wouldn’t spin, and paint is chipping off but it was clean and brightly lit. We greet him and give him our Christmas gift- a mug with some chocolate bars and a note saying: “We are lost without you”. We did have to explain the Geography Joke.
Also visiting was Maryfaith and her sister, who has sworn never to come to Likoma: “Too many bugs! And I cant swim!”. The four of us stuffed in the back of the car with no seatbelts to go back, failing to see the irony of just visiting a friend in the hospital from a car crash. We pack and repack everything for maximum protection, waiting for the Bishop to pick us up. He is around 40 minutes late, so still well within what is considered “on time”. The Innkeeper was in a shouting match with some workmen who want more money. This seems to happen often to azungu people here, they assume you have money so when you plan a job and agree on a price, they will try to do extra work without telling you so you have to pay them more. We wait to say goodbye and wait until he is done, though the bishop urges us to interrupt and let our goodbyes be known. The innkeeper shouts that they are trying to take advantage, then turns to storm away. We quickly wish him good luck and safe journey before ducking into the car. The innkeeper turns back with a big smile that was not there moments ago and wishes us good luck on our travels.
The bishop brings us to the building project, which will be huge with 3 floors. He offers Ryan to come here once a month or so to help oversee the project, to which Ryan is overjoyed, though a little confused on what exactly he would be expected to do. It seems he just needs a white guy to walk around and inspect it every now and then to keep the workers honest.
We pick up the man (Patrick) who has been helping us organize our housing and who has told us to move to the Mothers Union which we find out would put money in his discretionary fund rather than the Bishops. Technically (and the bishop has made this very clear) we are not paying to live in the Bishops house. It is a donation. With us all in the car the Bishop asks why we are being moved to the Mothers Union- and accuses him of being a good salesman which was quite funny and quite uncomfortable. It felt a lot like we had just tattled to our parents that someone had stollen our toy.
Once we arrive, we load everything onto the ferry, and go into town to get takeout. They hand over a plastic bag, with no plastic knives/forks/napkins. “we don’t have”. So we shrug and just eat with our hands on the ferry Malawi style. Lightning starts over the hills and starts creeping closer. It begins lighting the entire sky, and we hear loud thunder now. Since we arrived early, we got a seat in the third of the boat with a roof. Luckily people can go to the floors below, but many crowd into our area. Two forward thinking people have brought tents, and so they get the most room!
We sleep hunched over the table, wrapped in a few jackets from Europe and a scarf. When a teacher comes by, we lend him a jacket too.
The boat leaves only an hour late, the earliest it has ever left. The rain begins to slow, and we have a peaceful night. When the Illala docks, a pair of tourists from France peering over the side ask how you’re supposed to get off. Being the locals that we are we answer: “you just go for it! Push your way to the front and try to get the big boat, that’s free but, the smaller ones are only 100mwk”. Our books, clothes, even laptops, are tied by a rope and lowered into a waiting boat below. This is the most nervewrecking part, but as always, they are successful. Despite the significantly leaky boats all of our stuff remains in the boat and dry! We elbow our way through and clamber across another boat to settle into ours. Along with us is an ex-priest, a friend of the bishops from Virginia. He is around 70 and clambers along with the rest of us.
We left the island with a half full bag each and managed to come back with almost more than we could carry. We got lots of laughs from locals as we made our trek. With what we have brought, we have doubled our stuff. Most of it is books. We dig and find our nice clothes, and rush off to morning assembly still half asleep. Only 4 of the 13 teachers were there the day before, as they all came on the Ilala. We were the only extra ones that came to assembly, and the head teacher asked us to give a speech- as many thought we were not coming back. Our speech was “yeah we’re back like we said- see you in class tomorrow” and with that, we picked up our finals and fell asleep. The ensuing days were a flurry of test grading. It was heartbreaking, though not as bad as we had feared. And some of the answers that students gave were quite humorously incorrect.
Once we had a good night sleep we noticed that Mtombe, our cat, had really fattened up while we were away. Then we realized that when she lay down- her sides would move. The next night, she was very loud and restless. We prepared a nest for her, out of the kitchen and not in our bed. Cats of course never use the nest you prepare (the first time, we set up a few great ones and she still went for the stinky kitchen storage room) but when we got back from class, we came back to a writhing pile of skinny tails and pink paws in the nest we had made. It took awhile to figure it out, but there were three!
In class, Sasha taught students to say “Feliz Navidad” too much excitement. She also taught an effective tool from her Spanish teacher in middle school. “listo!” in Spanish is “Ready” so she slams on the table and yells “LISTO” and they bang on the table and responds “SI LISTO!” and then everyone stops talking and pays attention. We have perfected the use of the projector, and it is far nicer than writing everything on the chalk board. The only thing is they take forever to take notes. It makes sense, there are so few textbooks, so notes are highly valued. They also copy absolutely everything down, important or not.
The ex-priest was very busy, but we caught him in a quiet evening before he left. He and his wife helped begin the first deaf school in Malawi 25 years ago, and come back often to visit. His advice- “never do anything for someone that they can do for themselves”. When the Bishop came to visit Virginia, he spoke to the congregation. The church has signs like “we accept everyone” and was clearly LGBTQ friendly. Some in the church were quite nervous about what he might say with Malawi (and the Bishop being a Trump supporter) being so homophobic, but it went fine. A gay couple walked up to him holding hands, and had a jovial conversation. He had never met such a pair, and said they were lovely. Changing minds one friendly conversation at a time. We spoke later to the Bishop, who explained he was republican, and while not liking everything Trump did, he did like the US being loud and strong arming people who may cause harm.
This whole time we have been hiding that we are not married, answering the question with vagaries like “we are together” since we figure the worst thing we could do is lie. When the ex-priest asked the bishop what the deal was with us, if we were married or together the bishop responded with “don’t tell anyone- but no they are not married!” It seems like most of the people on the island haven’t figured it out though.
Joanna set up a lunch program each Wednesday, and the day has been dubbed “Joanna day”. The one day students all come to class. Funding is running out, so she must make another request to her friends and family. Sasha went around to take photos of the students lining up for lunch, getting lunch, and goofing off afterwards. A teacher had pointed out that many people with English as a second language are pretty good at speaking in an official sense- they can learn in it, they can take a test or fill out a government form in it, but it is very difficult to chat. If they chat, it is in Chichewa (or one of the other many many languages).
It took a week and a half- but we finally got settled in and unpacked for the first time in a month and a half and it felt so good to finally have a place for everything that wasn’t the bottom of a backpack that you would have to repack the next day. We finally got around to defrosting and bleaching the freezer, and hanging all letters from our friends and Ryans Family. Our enjoyment was short lived as the very next day we got a text from Patrick saying that we would need to move out of the Bishops house to the mothers union. The ceiling had started to fall down and upon further investigation it was discovered that the beams of the roof were so badly damaged by termites that some were no longer there. So we need to move out so they can do some emergency repairs before it comes crashing down on us in a heavy rain. We were able to do one more movie night before we left. We had two teachers this time and watched Men in Black. Its easy to not think about it if you aren’t paying attention, but most movies are filled with white people. It’s a bit of a struggle to find movies with a black person as a leading character.
The rainy season continues and some of the storms are simply awe inspiring. The thunder shakes the whole building sometimes. The rain usually starts around 3am, and goes by the time the sun is up but sometimes it does last into the early afternoon. We have discovered some great new dieting methods- eat nothing but eggs rice and beans
Ticket to Anywhere 