I've come a Lilongwe

Ok peoples, I iz here! After a grueling 48 hours of transit and layovers, weird plane-buddies ("did you know I worked on planes like these back in '53?"), wading through packs of uniformed short-term missions teams (The whole time I wanted to go up to one of them and say: "ha, I'm soooo much cooler than all of you! Your matching T-shirts seek to carve out sacred space in a profane environment preserving and importing your western cultural assumptions rather than allowing yourselves to be transformed! Fools! My professor is totally writing a book about how lame you all are. HAHAHAHA" Good thing I didn't say that.) I'm glad to report that I'm now safely in Lilongwe. The 45 minutes that I have heretofore spent in Malawi have been splendid. The people are that particularly African brand of genial; the kind that makes you feel human rather than objectified. Traces of it still remain in the American south despite the interloping of liberalism, Midwesterners and New Yorkers. Here however, it comes in large dollops. From handshakes and laughter and other expressions of welcome. The land looks like a slightly dryer version of Zimbabwe. Brown-green shrubbery and grasslands stretch out for miles with shallow hills and sparse mountains in the backdrop. There are the familiar corn-roasters on the side of the road, white mini-buses, kids playing soccer and ladies with large bundles of all sorts of things on their heads. The trees are all twisty and beautiful with interesting leaves and oddly shaped trunks. Everything is so strangely familiar. I'm very happy to be back in southern Africa again.

I'm sitting in the World Relief offices right now. All of the employees are very professional and striking people. They are happy to see me, but also very hard at work so I'm trying not to disturb them until I go to my supervisor's house. They've all got that "hellooo Mr. Intern" look. I better start shaving the time off of my laps to and from the coffee maker. (When I interned at Charlietango I had it down to 1:30 flat). Maybe I'll be fetching tea here though, hmmm.

I'll be staying in Lilongwe for about a week before going to Salima. Stay tuned for more information and pics.