Wild Wild East

My first week of work with World Relief in Salima has been maybe one of the coolest weeks in my life. Since my host dad and supervisor here in Salima, Mr. Nyamulani has been gone from Monday the 9th until today, the 13th, I have been tagging along with Chifundo Banda as I stated in my last post. Here I’ll try to elaborate on what it’s been like. “Try” is a key term here, since it’s been a pretty multi-sensory thing (perhaps a Multisensory Aesthetic Experience, anyone?).

Maybe I should take this time to explain my picture policy here since I’ve been getting some complaints and requests for more photos. It’s true that I have been taking pictures conservatively, but know that I will have a great deal of pics for everyone when I get back. The truth is that I have actually been refraining from posting too many pictures and the ones I am posting have been carefully selected. Nothing I post will really exactly describe what Malawi is like, so instead of going for photo-realism, I’m pursuing a “thick description” approach (Geertz would be so proud) in which I’ve been trying to extrapolate on feelings and thoughts as well as sense data in order to give you the space to create your own rendition of life here. Think of it like impressionism in painting. It’s not realistic, but it does delineate a likeness that puts one’s own mental “lenses” into play. You also might have noted that there’s often lack of people in the pictures. One of the most interesting things about Malawi is how deceptively desolate it appears, hiding how densely populated the country really is, a sentiment I hope to communicate in my pictures. I hope to write about people in such a way as to populate the pictures with the people who live and work in the photographed environs without having to digitally abstract their likenesses. Wasn’t there some tribe somewhere that thought pictures would steal your soul? Well, I might sort of believe that, and I’m trying to take it seriously.

But yes, I’ll have a bunch of normal pictures when I get back. Don’t worry Mom…

Anyway…

My work uniform has changed from a collared shirt and slacks to ripped jeans, a t-shirt under my zip hoodie and a backpack and an old open-faced cycler’s helmet. I now resemble a slovenly sidecar gunner or perhaps a homeless skydiver, one of the two. I’m once again cultivating on my chin-scruff. Man, I love this job. Hopping on the back of Chifundo’s motor bike and zipping down the roads passing Baobab trees, fields of yellow grass and mud huts with the big green phiris (mountains) looming in the distance gave me a thrill that I had not felt since driving through Hwange Nat’l Park many years ago. Africa by motor vehicle is an elating experience, particularly on a motorcycle or from the back of a land-cruiser since it’s open-air. Somehow every acre of the bush is so full of its own wonders (strangely beautiful trees, deep red earth, dappled shrubbery) that blowing through it at 70 kph is like a drug; (or perhaps a ‘tonic’ as they would say in Zim). I personally am very susceptible to the orbital quality of high-speed travel and it makes me feel so oddly comfortable, as if my only true home is that weird space in-between boundaries and states, over land and under sky.

Our first journey was about 23 K to Chipoka, a little town in the south Salima district, to visit St. Matthew’s Anglican Church (pictured here and in the previous post), a little parish that is going to get a new building soon. In late July, a mission team will come from Switzerland to build a new sanctuary just a few feet away from the former one so we were surveying the grounds and introducing the parishioners to Mr. Nkhosi, a former WR employee who will be organizing the operation. Tear Fund is a Swiss organization that funds World Relief Malawi as well as sending missions teams to do construction every year for different churches that are connected with World Relief.

Tear Fund does not operate through any specific church, but instead connects different churches in the interest of supporting WR’s operations in Malawi. As a result, the missions team that is coming will not be from any one church, but from a number of them. I’m not sure what it will be like, but the whole church connection thing sounds cool since it could mean that this team may not be a bunch of giggling pals from some youth group, but an actual team serious about building a church in seven days. Their endeavors in the past certainly seem to have worked out. I visited a couple of sanctuaries they have built and they definitely stand out. The teams are well known around Salima, and most people are aware of the work they do with World Relief. On many occasions when I have met someone for the first time I will be asked if I am from Switzerland. The first few times it happened (before I’d heard about Tear Fund) I was like, “uh…no I’m not actually. You know there’s actually a few other countries with white people in them.” Okay so I didn’t actually say that, but then when I discovered how frequently the missions team comes I understood just how important the Swiss are to Salima’s development. Just last year two Swiss volunteers, Rachel and Dianna, who are spoken of quite frequently, came to work with World Relief for six weeks.

St. Matthew’s is a tiny parish in the south just about one klick from the lake. Like most of the churches outside Salima town, it’s just an oblong brick building that one might pass by without noticing yet it is the communal center of a group of over a hundred people. This is how most of Malawi lives, away from cities and often even far from any main roads. Entire lives are spent on one arbitrary plot constrained by invisible boundaries delineating specific ownership rights. Although the countryside appears free and wild, it is actually finely divided. This is part of the reason that subsistence farmers continue producing the same meager quantities of food instead of expanding into commercial enterprise. It’s tough to produce a surplus when all you own is a little plot of land, but they are doing their best.

The other half of the equation is farming materials and strategies. This is the area that World Relief is helping with. They loan materials like irrigation pumps and send people like Chifundo, an educated agriculturalist, to teach simple farming strategies like making compost and planting strategically. On the eleventh we took a trip to Chikumba in the west. I watched Chifundo teach the farmers how to make compost and took pictures (which I actually deleted on accident and I don’t want to hear it ‘cause I’m still mad about it ooookay?). It was great to watch Chifundo work. I couldn’t understand…well…any of the Chichewa but the rhythm of his speechmaking itself is impressive. He jokes, answers questions and persuades with a casual ease that inspires confidence. The farmers themselves look like all the pictures you’ve seen. Tattered T-shirts and secondhand pants all caked with soil, the women carry the babies on their backs and the children play around the wells with frightening carelessness, but it’s their speech, their motion that I wish I could show you. It’s really not as foreign as the photos make it seem.

These are the ‘folks’ of Malawi, the families that lie at the roots of most every family tree. Even the educated came from the villages and I have heard most everyone in the Lilongwe office talk about life back in “my village”. This is a context in which the family unit is of paramount important. Watching them work together gave me a distinct sense that they were all in this together. The women farm alongside the men and children that couldn’t be more than four carry sacks of maize on their heads. It certainly isn’t an easy life, but they seemed to represent a very basic component to human togetherness. They also work hard and know it. One lady had me pick up a hoe and start tilling, laughing at my overzealous strokes and sensing my desire not to be shown up. She chattered at me in Chichewa, I looked at Chifundo for help. “She’s telling you that you should learn to work the land” he. “You’re right, I should” I said, and meant it. All I had to do was take a few swings and there was still an acre to till. The lady gave another jolly laugh and got back to her whacking. I felt like a mayor taking one of those ceremonial shovelfuls of earth to christen a building site, pausing for pictures, while all of the construction workers stand around rolling their eyes. No contempt from these folks, though. No sour faces, just smiles and laughter. How funny I must seem! All pale and fragile, hands without calluses, such a stranger to the land under my feet even after living in the country with ample opportunity to acquaint myself with it. Later, after putting away my camera, I jumped in to help with the compost mixing. It was an unexpected move and everyone chuckled, “so the azungu is getting his hands dirty, eh?” The compost, a mixture of manure, ash, charcoal, yeast and grass was black and cool, staining my hands. Afterwards, one of the women offered a bucket to wash my hands off with. This is a customary thing in Malawi, so I accepted it willingly. The server holds a basin under the recipient’s hands with one hand and pours a pitcher of water over them with the other. “Zikomo wambiri” I said (thanks very much) and dried off my hands, again white and clean.

The families take care of themselves with the resources they are given. Like the so-called ‘hillbillies’ of the Appalachians and the ‘hicks’ of the American south, there is little connection to the world beyond their plot, but who is it that has severed this link? It is certainly not some kind of cultural snobbery nor a distrust of outsiders. The farmers among the easiest people to engage, even with a language barrier, evoking a social ease that is even richer and less stilted than the people of Salima town (if that’s possible). Perhaps these people are simply not allowed to connect due to land barriers, or the centers of commerce and connection have not found it profitable or worthwhile enough to enter the worlds of these ‘virtual landless’. World Relief is working to bridge that divide and bring those forced into the fringes into interaction with markets. There is considerable risk involved since financial success and even the production of food for themselves relies so much on the rains and other various weather conditions. They are the poor, a noble poor, a fighting poor and most prominently, a faithful poor whom I suspect could tell us a thing or two about peace behind the monotony of daily chores, calm in the midst of difficult labor, freedom in spite of the silliness of claustrophobic land rights and the Jesus that smiles behind their welcoming grins.