Deeper Down the Rabbit-Hole

So months have come to pass since last entering something of my thoughts. I'm sitting at a makeshift desk of a bookshelf feeling the strongest sense of being settled after over a month so full of calamity and the amazing. I can hardly remember myself from the last post I made, I'm scared to think of the collision of myself with the me I left in the United States. Thoughts of home have bubbled up as of late, as I'm nearing the expected end of this trip, the conflicting thoughts of leaving home to go home. With the recent visit of Lauren to my daily life of staring in wondering awe at acts of necessity and the varied landscapes of this rift valley country, soaking in the words and presence of incredible people, and living with the pace of the sun and the unpredictable reliability that comes with this non-immediacy, I've come to notice a little of the ways I've grown. Home may have to wait, though I have to wait for the Malawian government to take its time in deciding what they want in public health media. A potential side project outlining Nutrition and HIV/AIDS would offer me the opportunity to travel more of this country collecting/spreading the knowledge and work being done in these sectors, but more importantly giving me access to ministers, officials, and other individuals whom I would not have been able to reach for my own documentary. After turning in a proposal to the government and being met with favorable responses, I am again and often in this 'waiting' that I've found to be a wonderful part of life here in Malawi... unless you're trying to get something done on a non-pliable schedule.

We had the surprising pleasure to drive north to Kusungu to be met with hundreds of running children yelling 'azungu' and meet the innovative William Kamkwamba, whom I've mentioned before for his windmill exploits in his rural village that brought electricity and irrigation to his family. We were escorted by William around his schoolyard and the library where he first discovered the picture of a windmill, shown the solar lights recently outfitted in one of the schoolrooms and allowed a brief Q&A before walking down the rocky road to meet his mother and see the towering structures that propelled him into global recognition and a current Ivy League instruction at Dartmouth. In these rainless winter months, his family has a field full of green maize stalks in a sea of brown. His story is a benchmark for the efforts and motives of all people, a testament to the power of people to make their lives better despite these constructed ideas of capability.

The necessity of our move from our recent home illuminated some things for me. Obviously the problem of getting decent housing in Lilongwe without having someone else's taxes paying the bill has been an issue I discovered quite quickly and we struggled to find an available house that didn't come with inconsistent landlords who want money more than they want to do good business. The house we landed in gave the immediate impression of a posh dream home of plastic 'marble' floors and granite counters and came with the developing issue of water pouring through light fixtures in the ceiling, coupled with nearly half of the house fuses miswired. The landlord, a Malawian-prejudiced Ethiopian with a permanent scowl scrawled across her face, blamed these incidents on us irresponsible 'backpackers' with no knowledge on how to operate her house and unkindly sent a mechanic that had no intention of fixing anything for this woman with human-rights issues in her history. Having talked our way out of the 1-year contract we signed, the struggles to relocate quickly has impacted my experience here for the good and bad. A clarification of people's role for me while doing this project and in my life. Of my goals. An opportunity to meditate on my place here. An introspective journey through my purpose with this project mixed with an uncomfortable slice of reality.

Concerning other projects, I finished up the DVD for the U.S. Embassy here, so gone are the days of security check-ins and American-standard offices with my own cedar desk space. Gone are peering through hours of Americans talking about what they do here in Malawi, and why you should want to come and work in the Warm Heart of Africa. This work gave way to finishing up a piece detailing the scholarship program of Asheville's own World Camp Malawi as a favor to my friend Katy. World Camp is a wonderful organization that facilitates short educational programs for primary schools across Malawi utilizing volunteers from around the world in addition to a new scholarship program that provides the means for a half-dozen women in this country to attend secondary school, equal to high school, when the rates of attendance are a staggering 13%. Next on the list is finishing the promo-video for Bua River Lodge, monkeys and crocodiles and thatched roofs and all. It feels good to be completing work, affirming some of the time I've been here. But there is plenty more to come, besides constructing and completing the mozambique expedition, we now have a Peter Mawanga visit to the States that I could potentially be there to document as well as some more subsequent audio recordings with American singers. The project has been shifting its focus from the receptive approach of listening to people describe their lives and the issues they face towards the outward expressive of music creation and the impending recording. For me it's all been receptive, watching how people deal with things, good and bad, and how life in a seemingly foreign place is after all.. still Life. Alas, the end is nigh.

One of our latest narratives is someone who every person on this planet should know about. It's impossible to express how inspiring Mara Kumbweza Banda truly is, but her strength and fortified grace in the face of ugly stigmatization and ignorant social awareness blew us away. From our introductory meeting her presence was felt immediately, someone who fought for those that can't fight for themselves, this person who redefined the role of her community in combatting the terrible of her time, who disregarded the status quo and instead speaks out against the 'business' practices of aid organizations, this woman who 'couldn't sit around and do nothing' but stood up and made some noise. Completely mesmerized by her by the end of our session, I left my jacket and some spare tapes in her office, which she kindly returned to me that same evening. That same evening, like a good news toll, we encountered a darker truth beneath the blue glaze of a near-full moon on our way to an embassy to watch a world cup match. Straddling the road ahead of us was a fallen branch with no immediate trees in sight and were it not for Finn's lightning maneuvering around our roadblock through the ditch, the car behind us would have blocked us into a carjacking with blades and hands waiting in the dark. Life oftentimes seems to appear more raw here, not blurred by comfort and technology. Opportunity means something a little different. So does desperation.

A couple weeks ago I'm sitting crammed in a bus seat at the depot for 2 hours listening to a boisterous preacher in a suit going on in Chechewa with ardent conviction and angry shouts, glad that I don't understand what's being said. Numerous times I've looked around at the muslim passengers, surprised to see their peacefully indifferent expressions, and wondering how much longer will the cracking and strained voice hold up. Some quick jerks of the bus and the preacher clamours from the back to the front shoving money in his pocket. On to the next bus. I've had a lot of these transport stories to digest lately, like a trip down south to the dense city of Blantyre to see a Jackaranda School Benefit featuring their very own chorus and band. Singing songs they've created themselves, akin to our project of creating songs to tell someone else's stories, the sounds exploding from these 30 children with swaying arms and beaming smiles before a packed dimly lit gymnasium poured over me and I felt like I was floating in my skin. Or taking a week-long trip to quickly relax in the breathtaking chalets overlooking Nkhata Bay before journeying further up to the northernmost reaches of Malawi. A sunrise stroll through the chilly streets of Mzuzu, uncertain of our transportation prospects north into Karonga, and the foggy-blotched landscape penetrated by a glowing orange orb gave me this comforting life-affirming moment of clarity. I'm in love. The experience of being one of 19 or so passengers of a mini-bus (minivan) barreling down coastal and mountain highways to the northernmost lakeside city of Karonga ceases to phase me and my reading diet has increased with my recent trips. We met with an organization that networks community-based projects in the north implementing songs, dances, theater, and video to spread education of HIV-AIDS, nutrition, and gender equity. I listened to the calm and confident story of a widowed woman who lost her home and assets to the patrilineal tradition common in the Timbuka of the north, and began selling her body at the bottle store to support her children. The bottle store is where she met her husband-to-be, who has helped her to become one of the most outspoken women in her community, involving herself in dozens of organizations and traveling to neighboring villages to help educate about sex-work and HIV.

But still I'm startled when I'm standing in line at one of the local grocery stores with bread and juice in hand and watch an 11 year old boy grab 4 packs of cigarettes and begin fumbling for matches on the counter. The cashier, unphased, opens a carton and hands the boy 4 packs of matches and rings him up. The equivalent of $4 and he saunters off. Weeks later I'm sitting congested and exhausted in the car waiting '15 minutes' for an appointment in the gas station parking lot and a couple pre-teen adolescents confront the car with an outstretched hand empty of the spent liquor bottle in their other hand. Obviously there are things that will always jump at me while I'm here, but it's those moments when you realize that had our 'shoes' been switched and I was faced with this situation, I can't say that I would have done differently. This experience has speckled my concept of privilege with a sobering sample of comparisons. Has witnessed the effects of vastly different social upbringings and trying to come to terms with this. The seeing things from here rather than my own. It's punctuated by watching my favorite tree, a tall canopy of vein-like branches so iconic of Africa, crash to the ground on my daily walk from home to internet, grocery, or minibus with a crackling thunder of progress. Things are changing here on an incredible pace and it's impossible to expect everyone to ride along with it. Later on in this walk a man stops me with a friendly greeting and proceeds to ask me, "Will you be my boyfriend?". I'm not sure if he means this with some newfound courage after the pressure-induced presidential pardon of a 14-year prison sentence of two gay men in Blantyre or if his term corresponds to the common sight of men walking down the streets holding hands in intimate friendship that I can only wish was a part of my own prejudiced culture.

While acclimating to my latest residence and reflecting over weeks and months of an experience, something I've been pondering while sitting in my garden amid the flowering chirps of birds and children, "We are to a greater extent than we realize, the authors of our own life design and of the shape of reality itself, and that we are by nature meaning-making creatures. Literally thrown against our will into a universe which possesses absolutely no meaning in or of itself, therefore we must set about making or constructing our own meaning. - Tim Quinlan" Not to say that there's no meaning in all this, but that we're here to drive it. If I thought that this project was going to be a rollercoaster dive with hands freely catching the wind on the way down, then i was half-right. Like the rolling dips of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the fall, our northern trek saw a spread of mountain colors that made me remember things I've forgotten. My life is telling me something in the dust kicked up by school children in grins running from classrooms with crumbling paper notebooks in their hands. There's something I'll never be able to relate to, something I'll chide myself for not being able to express, something that just hits me every moment that I'm here. Maybe it's just a part of growing up, but sometimes it's hard to digest the fact that there's no going back, that, "a mind stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension". But if it was easy, it wouldn't be worth it.

Man and Tree - R.S. Thomas

Study this man; he is older than the tree
That lays its gnarled hand on his meagre shoulder,
And even as wrinkled, for the bladed wind,
Ploughs up the surface as the blood runs colder.
Look at his eyes, that are colourless as rain,
Yet hard and clear, knotted by years of pain.

Look at his locks, that the chill wind has left
With scant reluctance for the wind to bleach.
Notice his mouth and the dry, bird-like tongue,
That flutters and fails at the cracked door of his lips.
Dumb now and sapless? Yet this man can teach,
Even as an oak tree when its leaves are shed,
More in old silence than in youthful song.