If you Build it...

April 20th,
Each day drifts along slower than the last until I sit down to look at my calender and realize I've covered three weeks here. The Malawians have this concept that a day and a night are two days. Someone sentenced to two years in prison spends one calender year behind bars, the most common egregious crime being theft. This is remarkable seeing as Finn and I watched a dozen people scattering from a depot with bags and luggage in hand having stolen the storage from a travel bus and all the onlookers watched and laughed. Even our adolescent guide chuckled as he told us what we were watching and proceeded to request payment with outstretched hand after showing us where the bus station was. The droves of people that coalesce around me after exiting any bus or car in the city is becoming an old joke. That and the countless people that daily exclaim muzungu at the mere sight of me and Finn, no matter if we're walking the streets or riding in a car.

Riding on the way to Liwonde National Park in a crowded bus packed with the smells of oranges and the clamor of voices, hands and produce and crackers fill the bus windows at every stop. An incredible countryside of orange and green tipped with exposed rock, a sweet much-needed breeze, and we're off to the meet the logistical coordinator and various individuals of the Clinton Foundation. Connected to the area hospital, we have access to names and numbers of possible interview subjects and we end up retrieving one narrative from the head of the AIDS support group with more possibilities to come soon. The main reason we've arrived four hours from the capital is to visit Finn's friend Sarah, a peace corps volunteer that lives with hippos grazing her front lawn, elephants leaving dung behind her home and baboons stealing pots of food from her backyard. She was relocated to a home on the park property after her village home was broken into by six men wielding blades. They managed to get away after leaving permanent scars on her village mother and son, who fought off the opportunistic assailants with their hands and arms.

This brings up the bitter memory of listening to the younger Madalitso a couple days ago share with us how he was robbed in the middle of the night. Making an already painful and difficult life harder is a handful of guys breaking into your humble home with knives saying 'I'm going to kill you' to you and your 12-year old brother. After slapping him to the floor they took everything he has except the mattress. All of his food, clothes, mosquito net, ARV's! How can anyone with a soul take a boys medication, a drug to keep him alive long enough to make something of a national average life expectancy around 40-years? He needs to find somewhere else to live. I get the feeling that he's not going to find anything on his own soon. He needs a break. I can't imagine living in his shoes. I listen to his dreams of seeing America, of paying for his younger brother to finish school and become a doctor but, 'having no money he suffers'; how he doesn't like Malawians but likes "white men from England" even though it was one of these same men that took his mother away from him. I have too many contradictory emotions swelling inside of me. I have to reassure myself that there are good things that can come of suffering. I have to remind myself that I can't live anyone's life but my own. I have to do something...

America is fast and quick, an ego-driven teenager that believes it has it all figured out. But I can hope to understand the system and there are things I can count on. Malawi is gentle and steady like my grandfather, but sometimes I feel like I'm at a party I wasn't invited to. Like I'm witnessing this elaborate dance but I don't hear the music. Eight months ago, there were no city road signs, no billboards, and a few years ago Lilongwe knew no traffic jams. Now the radios sing out auto-tuned Akon imitators from Zambia who see a computer making digital noise as a price reduction to spending a fortune to buy instruments. Talking with a fluent Chechewa-speaking Sarah about her two years of observations within a village and the town of Liwonde and I feel like I'm listening to a tale of a spider eating its own young, caught in a web of the historically oppressed stepping on one another to rise above what financially is 'poor'. What good is money when you grow your own food, don't pay rent and have your family and friends in walking distance? I literally see Coke signs every 15 minutes driving along rural highways watching thatched roofs and rust-colored concrete blocks bearing names like 'Thanks Grocery'. A boy shoving chips into our bus wears a shirt that reads "This is what a feminist body looks like". I want to believe he can read English.

I want to believe that somewhere quality can overcome quantity. Meeting up with Hilda I discover that her daughter has a secondary certificate in hand but can't afford to complete her public health masters in a country that has 1 doctor to every 50,000 citizens. Her tuition cost is 85,000 Kwacha. That's $530. Can't her government do something when President Bingu orchestrates a K300 million wedding and charges the stadium full of guests 1,000 Kwacha each? I'm angry but what am I going to do. I want to believe that music and art can change the course of history. A couple of guys from the Kumbali band went to the market with Finn and Andy with their instruments and the response was startling.



I listened to Peter Mawanga and Finn jam together a couple days ago and I could barely keep my camera steady. Inside I wept for hope... for love... for suffering... for living... for being a kid that stares at clouds.