After being in Malawi for two months, some people and places are now familiar to me. I’m able to conduct myself on the street and in public places with enough coolness and firmness to not feel harassed by vendors and attention seekers, but enough respect and sensitivity that I can still connect with people. I understand Malawians much better when they speak English: their intonations, accent, and expressions. I can fluently exchange greetings and say “thank you” and “sorry” in Chichewa. I can even stumble out a few words in Tumbuka, one of the languages in the northern region.
Clearly, these are all indications that I feel more comfortable here. What I also notice is that I experience two persistent currents of discomfort.
The first is the discomfort I experience when I am on the streets, in the markets, or in local accommodations. Here I am very conscious of being different and out of place, not speaking the language, being unintentionally rude, not knowing how things work, making mistakes, and being either a disturbance or a novelty. I sometimes question whether it’s possible to be here at all as a wealthy white person without having a negative effect.
The second is the discomfort I experience when I am in Savanna Courtyard, at a resort on the lake, or in another environment that approximates what I might experience in North America. In these places I find it easier to speak, move, understand people, and do “normal” things (normal for me), but I feel very conscious of being a member of a small and highly privileged group of people who are having an experience that is not available to the vast majority of people here, including the people working in the housing compound or resort.
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| My room at Nkhotakota Pottery Lodge |
Discomfort #2 is certainly the more seductive. My home in Savanna Courtyard is simple, but very comfortable. I could choose to only shop in malls, to drive a car, and to live my life behind gates. Many people do that. Even on my monthly volunteer allowance, I can afford to occasionally treat myself to a restaurant meal that costs MK6,000 to MK12,000 (CA$10-20) – one or two weeks’ pay at minimum wage here.
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| With fellow volunteer Briana at Nkhotakota Pottery Lodge Resort |
But as pleasant as these environments may be, they are protected by walls, gates and security guards, sometimes even German shepherds. On my first road trip here, I saw a large complex surrounded by cement walls topped with barbed wire, with several low buildings and a large water tower inside. I was about to ask my colleagues whether it was a prison, when I saw the entrance flanked by the sign: “Grand Palace Hotel”.
When I’m in these places — even when I spend too much time at home — I get a sense of disconnection, separation, defensiveness, and misalignment. If I genuinely want to reduce poverty, improve nutrition, and restore dignity to people, why am I separating myself from them like this?
Conversely, as taxing as it can often be, the richest and most rewarding experiences I have are when I embrace Discomfort #1.
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It’s my first morning staying at Aaucha Lodge in Mzuzu. I’m sitting at a small table covered white and blue cotton table cloths. All the chairs are covered in white cotton, too. Men are eating their breakfasts at two of the four tables along the opposite wall. The door to the kitchen is behind them and across from me. There is a small bar near the door, and two other tables between it and the table at which I’m seated near the back.
The room I’m staying in here is almost completely taken up by the mosquito-netted queen-size bed. There’s a plain wooden armoire built into one wall, a flat-screen television mounted high beside the door, and just enough space at the end of the bed for me to roll out my yoga mat. The bathroom is very narrow and completely tiled, a toilet at one end, a shower at the other, and a sink in between. There’s no shower curtain. In front of the sink, a tiled threshold keeps the shower water (or at least most of it) out of the toilet floor area. A large pair of flip-flops are provided for entering the bathroom post-shower. In all, it’s very simple but clean, and cheap enough to be covered by the per diem for this trip. There aren't any other white people staying here, but by the vehicles in the parking lot I know there are other guests also working for international NGOs.
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While waiting for the server, I review the menu: beef, chicken, or chambo (fish) burgers; pizza; T-bone steak, local chicken, or hybrid chicken; beef stew with rice, nsima, or chips.
After a few minutes, a small, serious young woman comes out of the kitchen and over to my table. She greets me, asks for my room number, then goes back in the kitchen and calls to the cook, “Thirteen!”
A few minutes later, she returns with the omelet I ordered, chips, white bread, a sausage, a large bowl of cornflakes, juice, and a bowl of sugar. I send back the cornflakes and juice, and tell her I don’t need the sugar either. “You don’t want tea?” she asks, surprised. I say that I do, but I just take my tea plain. “No milk?” she says, now more surprised.
I eat the omelet and the chips, then wait for twenty minutes until she finally brings the hot water for my tea. She tells me the cook was using all the burners on the stove, but the other diners have left, and there’s no one else in the restaurant. Afterward I sit outside in the verandah enjoying a couple tangerines and a banana to round out my meal.
That night when I place my breakfast order, in addition to placing a checkmark beside the omelet, I cross out the sections of food I don’t want and write, “No” beside them. When I give the woman behind the counter my order slip, I ask whether the cook could add a piece of fruit or tomato to my breakfast. She smiles and says something vaguely affirmative. But the next morning, the server tries to give me a bowl of cornflakes and glass of juice again, and there’s no fruit or tomato. When I ask for a second teapot of hot water, she seems annoyed. I pour it into my Neoprene bottle to drink later.
On my third and last morning at Aaucha Lodge, my plate of omelet and chips comes covered in plastic wrap. Although she’s given me the breakfast I’ve asked for, I now have the sense that the server thinks that I think that she and the Lodge are not good enough for me. I feel sad about that, but none of my attempts to better communicate with her seem to have helped.
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Four weeks later, I’m unexpectedly back in Mzuzu for a three-day training session. When I arrive at Aaucha Lodge the first evening, the woman at the reception desk remembers me. “You left lotion,” she says. At first I don’t understand. She reaches over, opens the drawer beside her, and pulls out a plastic bag with the travel-size shampoo and conditioner that I forgot in my room the last time I stayed here. I’m so surprised they would have kept them in case I returned — how kind!
This time when I place my breakfast order, I choose the Spanish omelet. The next morning, my breakfast comes wrapped in plastic wrap, as it did before, but when the server brings me a pot of hot water, she also takes my water bottle and brings it back full of boiling water, too. I thank her enthusiastically and she’s obviously pleased.
The women at the reception desk start teaching me how to say a few basics in Tumbuka, the primary language in this region. I stumble over “Mwa kauli” (Good morning) “Muli wuli?” (How are you?) and “Ndili makora, kwali imwe?” (I’m fine, what about you?” “Yewo” (Thank you) is easier.
On the third morning, even though I haven’t said anything at all, there’s no plastic wrap over my plate, and the cook has added — coleslaw! My face lights up and my eyes are almost teary — what a surprise! The server grins, delighted.
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Walking past the bustling market on my last evening in Mzuzu, I stop to buy cassava, something that I don’t see back in Lilongwe. I hand the vendor MK200 and say, “Yawe,” realize I’ve mixed up my vowels, laugh, and quickly correct myself: “Yewo!” She laughs, too, and hands me a smaller piece of cassava saying, “You get prize!” I walk away with a huge grin on my face, touched by her kindness.
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A few weeks after I arrived here, I decided to rent a post box so that I could receive mail. (Malawi has no formal street address system, and even couriered deliveries have to be picked up at the courier office.) The woman at the counter told me they didn’t have keys available for any of the mailboxes there, so she would assign me a mailbox at Crossroads Centre, which is a little further away. But since they didn’t have keys for the mailboxes at Crossroads, I could just come to this post office to pick up my mail.
That was confusing to me, but renting a post box is much cheaper than using a courier. I decided to trust that somehow the system would work.
Two weekends ago, I went to the post office to ask whether I'd received anything. The woman at the counter said they would send someone to Crossroads to check, and would call me if I had any mail. That seems like a very indirect way getting mail, but since Crossroads is further away and many people might not be able to get there easily, I thought it was kind of them to offer that service.
After not hearing anything from them after a couple weeks, I decide to cycle to Crossroads Centre, find the post office there, and check for mail myself — but when I get there, I can’t find the post office.
After cycling through the complex a couple times, I approach the bell hops in front of the Crossroads Hotel for directions. They consult each other, and then refer me to the staff at the reception desk inside. The staff at the desk talk amongst themselves, and finally one man says, "I'll walk you over." We walk out of the building, turn to go behind the Standard Bank building next door, enter the staff parking area, and there he shows me a stand-alone bank of post boxes.
So, in fact, there is no post office at Crossroads, only post boxes for which there are no keys for the owners. And this is why I have to wait until one of the postal workers checks to see whether I have mail (after another postal worker has delivered it to these boxes? But that seems to be how bureaucracy works here). If I do have mail, then they call me to come pick it up.
When I relate this to a friend, she laughs and says, “It’s like some magic system that has a key that has been lost or hidden, and part of the deal is having to find the key before you are worthy of receiving a letter. It reminds me of that old video game, Myst.”
Yes, it’s true! It’s as if I’ve entered a live-action adventure game; another world where I have to figure out what things I have to gather, and what exactly I have to say and do to get the next magic (post office box) door to open – or to get my phone to work, or to renew my wifi access, or to have my visa extended, or to order food at Aaucha Lodge without offending the server.
When I think of all this as a game I’m playing, I suddenly feel much happier, and more victorious and optimistic, too. I realize that I don’t have to take all of this so seriously. I am learning. Why not have fun while I’m doing it?
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| With Esther in front of the booth where she took the photo for my temporary resident application |
Copyright © 2019 Lynn Thorsell, All rights reserved.
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Please note that the views expressed here are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cuso International.
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