My stay in village Nkata began last Tuesday. I arrived at the village with one of my coworkers after work with all of my belongings and my new bicycle. I was quickly greeted by the village headman, my host mother and father, and the 50 or so children of the village, all of whom were more than eager to shake my hand and greet me in the traditional Malawian Chichewa manner. Plans were discussed in Chichewa while I sat and smiled at the 50 children sitting and standing around me starring. I was told by my coworker that I should be calling my host mother amayi (mother) and my host father abambo (father) and that they are very happy to have me in their home. Dinner was prepared already and we sat down to eat. In the house there are my amayi and abambo and one of their grand daughters. During meals the women and children sit on a bamboo matt on the floor and the husband sits at the table with his own bowls and food. Each person gets their own dish for their nsima (maize flour cooked to a firm consistency and scooped into pieces) and the relishes (ndiwo) are communal. To eat nsima and ndiwo you take a piece of nsima in your right hand and form it into a ball in the palm of your hand. You use that to scoop up your ndiwo from the communal bowl and eat the two together. The first night we had okra, which is prepared by cutting up the okra into small pieces and adding sodium bicarbonate so you get a kind of gooey consistency, and mtemba (small dried fish that are cooked and eaten whole). During dinner the 5 year old grand daughter become too overwhelmed with an azungu (white person) being in her home and just started crying. That was kind of my first hit with the realization that the people in this village rarely see white people let alone live with them.
It was 7pm and time for bed- Malawians tend to go to sleep very early as they wake up at about 4:30 or 5am every morning. I have my own room in the house, it is about the size of a double bed plus a couple feet in the length. It has an entrance with no door and a small window. For my first couple nights I slept on a 2 inch mattress that was placed on one of the bamboo mats. I had little trouble falling asleep with little awareness of what was to come my way. At about 10pm I awoke to the feeling of a couple insects biting my face. At first I thought they were mosquitoes but soon realized that they were these awful red ants with large pincers that like to grab onto your skin and take a nice chunk out of you. I quickly picked them off of my face, assumed that only a couple were around me, and that I had gotten rid of them. However, they continued to bite, and it took me about 30 minutes of them trying to bite me before I decided to turn my flashlight on to see what was the damage. They were EVERYWHERE! All over my pillow, my mattress and my mosquito net! I pretty much leapt out of my bed and stood overtop of them wondering what I was going to do. I decided my best bet was to call my mother. She awoke and helped me bang and pick them off all my bedding and assisted me in moving into the main room to sleep for the night. The rest of the night consisted of me waking up periodically with the feeling of the ants crawling all over me, when in reality there was nothing. Definitely not the best start to my village stay.
I awoke at about 5:45 in the morning and was quickly taken to the pit latrine for my morning release of urine. Pit latrines are the village form of a toilet, and it’s not every household that has one. They are small, brick buildings with grass roves and a hole in the ground on the inside. The entrance is a short, skinny opening that you kind of have to push yourself into. Surprisingly, it doesn’t smell which is due to the strategic placements of small openings to allow for adequate airflow.
I exited the latrine and found my amayi waiting with a bar of soap and I was then brought to bathe (samba). The bathing room is a grass-walled enclosure with scattered bricks laid across the floor. To bathe, you are given a basin of warm water that you are to splash on yourself to rinse off the soap. It’s quite an art, and I think I’m starting to get the hang of doing it. The basin of water, I believe, is used for the entire family so I have to be careful that I leave enough water. I am now successfully able to clean my entire body (including my hair) with about 6 cups of water- talk about water conservation. Every time I bathe I think about how much work it was for my mother to get this basin of warm water for me. She wakes up at 4:30 every morning to go to the village borehole to fetch water which she carries back to our home on her head. To warm the water she walks to chop and collect firewood and carry it back, and then make the fire and heat the water. All of this just for 1 bath. You would think with this amount of work having to go into bathing that they would bathe rarely, but it is common (and expected) for everyone in the family to bathe twice a day- once in the morning before breakfast and once in the evening before dinner.
Next step of the morning is breakfast. My first breakfast in the village consisted of a slightly roasted sweet potato (mbatata) and a cup of Malawian tea with about 6 teaspoons of sugar. Malawians love sugar in their tea, and I’ve come to question why they even put tea leaves in it because all it tastes like is hot sugar water.
By 6:40am I was ready to head out to work. My amayi walked with me along the paths to the main dirt road (main dirt road is njira in Chichewa) to ensure that I wouldn’t get lost. There is one stream that I have to cross to get to work, and I have just mastered the art of carrying my bicycle while stepping on the wobbly rocks to cross it- there’s been quite a lot of wet feet while learning this process. It takes me about 20 minutes by foot and about 10 minutes by bike to get to the main dirt road. From there I ride my bicycle for about 25 minutes (mostly uphill) to get to work. Bicycles are one of the main forms of transportation in Malawi; they are used to get to and from work and the field and to transport goods. Leaving so early in the morning, I pass the Malawians carrying large bags of charcoal to sell in the market on the backs of their bicycles, I pass children walking in purple and blue uniforms to school, and I ride alongside men riding to work and various other places.
I was able to spend the next few evenings in the village with some of the children. The eldest grand daughter of my host parents, Doris, is a 14 year old girl who is so full of energy and positivity that you just want to smile every time you are around her. She is one of the lucky girls, in that she has had the opportunity to attend school. She is currently in Standard 6 (the equivalent of our grade 10), and has learned enough English in school that she is able to communicate with me fairly well. She has made sure to include me in all of their skip rope games (these kids are intense skip roppers- I pretty much made a fool of myself) and has taught me some of the Malawian hand clapping games. I’ve even been invited to play football with them one day, which I’m pretty pumped for. Doris’ little sister is the girl that is staying in my home, so after she saw that her older sister was getting along with me, she thought I was pretty alright. Now she greets me every time I come home, dances around the house and has a constant smile. The children are awesome at encouraging me to learn Chichewa. They get a huge kick out of teaching me how to say things, and giggling when I try to pronounce the words they are teaching. I’m starting to learn a lot from them. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but my host mother speaks almost no English and my host father can only speak basic sentences, so learning Chichewa is going to be a necessity.
Last Friday I got pretty sick. I ended up vomiting every 15 minutes from about 7-11pm and my mother slept in my room to make sure that I was alright. It’s taken me up until Wednesday to get back to normal and I’ve been sleeping at my old host mother’s house since Saturday. There are so many exciting, interesting, and eye-opening things to learn in the village, but I’ve realized that it may come at a price. My organization, Freshwater Project, is working at promoting sanitation in villages, but most village households still have so far to come. The use of soap, something we almost take for granted, is simply not understood. The thought is; why would we pay to buy soap to wash our hands, soap is for washing clothes and your body. Hands are simply washed with warm water in a communal bowl before and after eating.
I’ll be moving back to the village when I return from my Engineers Without Borders retreat with the other Junior Fellows in Malawi on July 2nd. This time I’m going to have to pay extra close attention to the foods that I eat and how they are prepared to ensure that I don’t get sick again. There’s no way a few days of sickness is going to stop me from having this remarkable experience though!
Some other exciting updates:
I went to a Malawian football game last Saturday with a few of my coworkers and Binnu: Malawi vs. Egypt. From what I hear, it was a pretty important game. The stands were packed full of energetic, rowdy, and cheering Malawians and you could pretty much pick me out of the crowd from a mile. We ended up scoring the only goal in the last 5 minutes of the game and the crowd went crazy. Everyone was singing, clapping, dancing, and screaming. We basically had to push our way through the crowds to make it back to the car. People were running down the streets screaming. Definitely an interesting and once in a lifetime experience.
It was 7pm and time for bed- Malawians tend to go to sleep very early as they wake up at about 4:30 or 5am every morning. I have my own room in the house, it is about the size of a double bed plus a couple feet in the length. It has an entrance with no door and a small window. For my first couple nights I slept on a 2 inch mattress that was placed on one of the bamboo mats. I had little trouble falling asleep with little awareness of what was to come my way. At about 10pm I awoke to the feeling of a couple insects biting my face. At first I thought they were mosquitoes but soon realized that they were these awful red ants with large pincers that like to grab onto your skin and take a nice chunk out of you. I quickly picked them off of my face, assumed that only a couple were around me, and that I had gotten rid of them. However, they continued to bite, and it took me about 30 minutes of them trying to bite me before I decided to turn my flashlight on to see what was the damage. They were EVERYWHERE! All over my pillow, my mattress and my mosquito net! I pretty much leapt out of my bed and stood overtop of them wondering what I was going to do. I decided my best bet was to call my mother. She awoke and helped me bang and pick them off all my bedding and assisted me in moving into the main room to sleep for the night. The rest of the night consisted of me waking up periodically with the feeling of the ants crawling all over me, when in reality there was nothing. Definitely not the best start to my village stay.
I awoke at about 5:45 in the morning and was quickly taken to the pit latrine for my morning release of urine. Pit latrines are the village form of a toilet, and it’s not every household that has one. They are small, brick buildings with grass roves and a hole in the ground on the inside. The entrance is a short, skinny opening that you kind of have to push yourself into. Surprisingly, it doesn’t smell which is due to the strategic placements of small openings to allow for adequate airflow.
I exited the latrine and found my amayi waiting with a bar of soap and I was then brought to bathe (samba). The bathing room is a grass-walled enclosure with scattered bricks laid across the floor. To bathe, you are given a basin of warm water that you are to splash on yourself to rinse off the soap. It’s quite an art, and I think I’m starting to get the hang of doing it. The basin of water, I believe, is used for the entire family so I have to be careful that I leave enough water. I am now successfully able to clean my entire body (including my hair) with about 6 cups of water- talk about water conservation. Every time I bathe I think about how much work it was for my mother to get this basin of warm water for me. She wakes up at 4:30 every morning to go to the village borehole to fetch water which she carries back to our home on her head. To warm the water she walks to chop and collect firewood and carry it back, and then make the fire and heat the water. All of this just for 1 bath. You would think with this amount of work having to go into bathing that they would bathe rarely, but it is common (and expected) for everyone in the family to bathe twice a day- once in the morning before breakfast and once in the evening before dinner.
Next step of the morning is breakfast. My first breakfast in the village consisted of a slightly roasted sweet potato (mbatata) and a cup of Malawian tea with about 6 teaspoons of sugar. Malawians love sugar in their tea, and I’ve come to question why they even put tea leaves in it because all it tastes like is hot sugar water.
By 6:40am I was ready to head out to work. My amayi walked with me along the paths to the main dirt road (main dirt road is njira in Chichewa) to ensure that I wouldn’t get lost. There is one stream that I have to cross to get to work, and I have just mastered the art of carrying my bicycle while stepping on the wobbly rocks to cross it- there’s been quite a lot of wet feet while learning this process. It takes me about 20 minutes by foot and about 10 minutes by bike to get to the main dirt road. From there I ride my bicycle for about 25 minutes (mostly uphill) to get to work. Bicycles are one of the main forms of transportation in Malawi; they are used to get to and from work and the field and to transport goods. Leaving so early in the morning, I pass the Malawians carrying large bags of charcoal to sell in the market on the backs of their bicycles, I pass children walking in purple and blue uniforms to school, and I ride alongside men riding to work and various other places.
I was able to spend the next few evenings in the village with some of the children. The eldest grand daughter of my host parents, Doris, is a 14 year old girl who is so full of energy and positivity that you just want to smile every time you are around her. She is one of the lucky girls, in that she has had the opportunity to attend school. She is currently in Standard 6 (the equivalent of our grade 10), and has learned enough English in school that she is able to communicate with me fairly well. She has made sure to include me in all of their skip rope games (these kids are intense skip roppers- I pretty much made a fool of myself) and has taught me some of the Malawian hand clapping games. I’ve even been invited to play football with them one day, which I’m pretty pumped for. Doris’ little sister is the girl that is staying in my home, so after she saw that her older sister was getting along with me, she thought I was pretty alright. Now she greets me every time I come home, dances around the house and has a constant smile. The children are awesome at encouraging me to learn Chichewa. They get a huge kick out of teaching me how to say things, and giggling when I try to pronounce the words they are teaching. I’m starting to learn a lot from them. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but my host mother speaks almost no English and my host father can only speak basic sentences, so learning Chichewa is going to be a necessity.
Last Friday I got pretty sick. I ended up vomiting every 15 minutes from about 7-11pm and my mother slept in my room to make sure that I was alright. It’s taken me up until Wednesday to get back to normal and I’ve been sleeping at my old host mother’s house since Saturday. There are so many exciting, interesting, and eye-opening things to learn in the village, but I’ve realized that it may come at a price. My organization, Freshwater Project, is working at promoting sanitation in villages, but most village households still have so far to come. The use of soap, something we almost take for granted, is simply not understood. The thought is; why would we pay to buy soap to wash our hands, soap is for washing clothes and your body. Hands are simply washed with warm water in a communal bowl before and after eating.
I’ll be moving back to the village when I return from my Engineers Without Borders retreat with the other Junior Fellows in Malawi on July 2nd. This time I’m going to have to pay extra close attention to the foods that I eat and how they are prepared to ensure that I don’t get sick again. There’s no way a few days of sickness is going to stop me from having this remarkable experience though!
Some other exciting updates:
I went to a Malawian football game last Saturday with a few of my coworkers and Binnu: Malawi vs. Egypt. From what I hear, it was a pretty important game. The stands were packed full of energetic, rowdy, and cheering Malawians and you could pretty much pick me out of the crowd from a mile. We ended up scoring the only goal in the last 5 minutes of the game and the crowd went crazy. Everyone was singing, clapping, dancing, and screaming. We basically had to push our way through the crowds to make it back to the car. People were running down the streets screaming. Definitely an interesting and once in a lifetime experience.
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