Welcome to Salima where the players play...

...and we eat nsima like every day. Well okay that last part's not true, we've had rice the past couple of meals, but I feel like that may only be because I'm here. Nsima is the main Malawian staple food. It's a dense cornmeal dish like grits. It's pretty bland, but it's a filling base on which you can put sauces and meat and vegetables. I think people automatically assume that I don't like nsima because I'm white. They're not exactly wrong, but I don't dislike it, it's just a little hard to manage with my fingers.

I've been here in Salima three full days now staying with Richard Nyamulani and his family in a little brick house just off the main road. Salima is a sea change from Lilongwe. Calling the place "semi-rural" as the World Relief handbook described downplays Salima's distinct "ruralness"..."rurality"..."condition of being rural", whatever, it's rural. Salima town is basically a tiny cluster in the middle of the many hectares of low-lying grasslands that make up the Salima district. The population of the entire district is about 250,000 while the town is around 40,000. Salima is the photo-negative of Celeste, TX. It's weird, but I get such a familiar vibe from the whole place. I'm starting to see the same people every day, and the vacant stares that come with being an "azungu" in a town of blacks are beginning to turn into hellos (or "Muli Bwanji?" as people are realizing that I'm trying to speak Chichewa). A railroad track even runs through a part of the town. Once when Chifondo and I were driving alongside it and came to a crossing it looked so much like a particular part of Celeste that I had to blink a few times. There are a few major differences though, one of them being that despite it's size the place bustles with energy. People don't stay put here. They are active, always moving, always doing something, but at an easier pace than Americans. Here the American extremes of "working" and "resting" are blended into a steady hum. The days here are relaxing and productive at the same time.

Chichewa has become my primary challenge. I still don't understand about 98% of the language and it's about 98% of what people speak here. No one is letting me get away with any English either. People in Salima are Chichewa evangelists, insisting that I be fluent by the time I leave. It's a lot of fun at times, but also taxing (generally later in the day when my brain is tired). It saps mental energy like exercise does for the body. I'm getting better though, and it is beginning to feel less like an insurmountable obstacle.

Mr. Nyamulani has told me that I would be most helpful in the Youth for Life and Child Development areas since there isn't a full time employee in those areas. I'll be going around meeting youth groups and talking to them about health and success in school. Scary! Exciting! I'm supposed to be a role model!

Work here at World Relief Salima is also very different from Lilongwe (and a good deal more fun). Office work is kept to a minimum while most of the day is spent driving around on motor bikes to different field sites to check up on the operations there. The three regular employees here are Chifondo, Steve and Mr. Nyamulani whom I live with. I've been hanging out with Chifondo who works in agriculture this week since Mr. Nyamulani is gone to Lilongwe all week for a training and Steve isn't here for some reason. Chifondo is totally cool. He's 26 maybe and really chill, but he's been working here for a few years and he's really good at his job. He's the young guy here, but he's probably the most experienced. He's really fun to hang out with.

We've been visiting the chicken pens that WR has set up in different churches around the district. These churches are anywhere from a few blocks down the street to kilometers away in the different parts of the district. Here's how the ag-shop works here. World Relief will loan agricultural materials, mostly chickens, to churches that wish to participate in the program and are willing to keep the project going. The money they get from selling the chickens and eggs are used to pay back the loan (with a 10% interest) and buy more chickens or other materials to sell. The idea is to start creating wealth instead of depending upon benefactors and subsistence agriculture for survival. "Malawians are not very good at business" Mr. Mziska once told me. Indeed, a lot of the bigger shops and supermarkets tend to be run by Indians and Arabs instead of local Malawians. These people are farmers being schooled in small business practices. Unfortunately, the global market has advanced to a stage that has no place for subsistence farming and the rampant AIDS pandemic is creating a high demand for Anti-Retroviral medications. Simply put, survival is getting more expensive, and people need to be taught how to create wealth.

It's kind of sad really, being forced to start down that path, living in a world where if you don't get your economy ahead then others will come in and overtake it. I know it's lightyears away from the capitalistic decadence of America, but it's the philosophy of the thing. One of the things that I have enjoyed so much about Malawi has been its subsistence philosophy. People here know what they need to do to survive and aren't in the habit of taking extra. It's not like people don't dream of a better life, but they also don't have such voracious appetites for entertainment and comfort that Americans do. In a way I feel as if the education that Mr. Nyamulani wants me to bring to the youth is laced with the slightest poison. I want to be careful what I say because in a sense, some things are better here than in America. Contentment can be found in a filling meal and entertainment in conversation. There is value in togetherness as opposed to individual pursuits.

Internet costs money here since the office doesn't have any so I'll only be able to get on a few times a week instead of the once-a-day luxury.