Like a Hurricane

Unlimited electricity. Huge towering buildings. Elaborate dances on 4-lane highways. Trees and roads in close harmony. People wearing whatever they wanted and not whatever they had. Incandescent stores of plastic electronic gadgets. My list could go on but I don't know yet where to put things. The hole in the middle of my chest is equal to the things that people have that don't grapple with necessity. The coming back has been one of the hardest things I've ever done and I haven't finished yet. I left some. Ignorance is bliss. That means something to me now. If I thought my life and mind in Malawi was a whirling storm, I've stumbled into an earthquake. I find it hard to look into the mirror. I find it hard to be around people, not only because they bring up too much to think about but because they remind me of too many things I wish I could forget. That I don't know if anyone cares about. I don't really wish I could forget any of it, but the deep chasms it has left are being filled with things now that don't seem to matter as much. What hurts the most is watching my life that I engulfed myself in slowly waft away like memories. That it seems I could choose to forget it like a middle school dance if I wanted.
I found myself on the porch of my house of the past 2 years unable to talk. Unable to think really. Surrounded by people I know but unable to relate to how I knew them. It's like a light switched was turned off and instead of stumbling in the dark hitting furniture I just stood in place. This place that by all grand standards hasn't changed is an imitation of the ideas of my home that I carried with me.

An idea of Malawi I'm taking with me is a weekend before my last I'm awoken by my housemate in the middle of the night desperately bantering on her phone. I'm told her car has been wrecked by our guard while returning from taking some friends home and seeing as she's on medication it will be me to wrangle in the wreckage. While contemplating the early morning of work I have scheduled, I try and collect something to pull the 'stuck' vehicle out of whatever situation it's fallen into before contacting our neighborhood friend for a favor of a ride. If I had known the night's unfolding events I would have made different arrangements. Driving by the ambassador 'resorts' of Area 10 I see the car half-lodged in the sunken bricked ditch and its two road-side tires pointing to the trees and a crowd of a dozen men standing around the calamity on an otherwise quiet night. It is a sheer miracle that this car didn't end in rolling flips but managed to stick two tires into the foot cavity of the ditch. If it weren't for the mass of men that either stopped or walked from their nearby guard posts to help, the car was never going to free itself from the crevice, and we all put our full might into lifting the car out its frozen mid-flip stage and back onto the road. Thanking everyone for their efforts and seeing the stopped cars off I drifted to bed myself when I'm met with the armed police-guards arguing with our own car-wrecking guard. The sight of guns in Malawi are so few, select to only the military, that having one a mere foot from me as a man calmly and defiantly requests payment escalates everything in my body. The hours spent in this night issuing calls for compassion are met with opportunistic greed as the two machine-gun toting guards and their posse refuse to let us leave; leaning against the dented car claiming their obligation to receive payment for their work, they've no notion of 'do a good turn'. As the hours toll by and I lose my temper repeatedly, I look on at my friend who also has an early work day ahead and begins to fade physically but mentally is ablaze with adrenaline. His girlfriend has to sit in their car for the latter half of the engagement for fear of passing out. No amount of logic or decency or hope will pry these six men in total from their perceived payout and almost helplessly I continue arguing in English to the few that could understand. Finally with the last legs of my sanity their determination begins to fade and a phone call to my housemate who tells them of their fruitless efforts in Chechewa relaxes their hold and they 'allow' us to leave tonight but only if we come back tomorrow with the money. We're off. I'm exhausted.

On the way to the Lake to finish up my work in my last Malawian weekend, the driver absent-mindedly hit a goat. I watched it trot across the road and before I knew it we had spit its lumbering body out the side of the car with the driver indifferent to the minor jolt. He just stared unflinchingly ahead with a look on his face that seemed a resigned sigh of shame. That moment will live with me for the rest of my life. In reflection over what it posits as a contrast to my own culture and it is that Malawians and assumably others in Africa are not divorced from death. Not built up away from the earth and the animals that are no less a part of it. Like the days and the seasons, the lives that grow in this land pass and rather than glossing over this natural process with parking lots of plastic supermarkets, technological innovations and thousands of moving pictures, and most dulling the silence, one is grateful for the day, aware of the efforts necessary to sustain and comforted by the moment. The two differing concepts of time refer to living in the moment, whether your life is busy calculating the future or the past, a work of tabulating perceived expectations or if your life resides in the five senses bombarding you with pleasures and worries enough that there's no need to go look for them elsewhere in time or space. What does your business meeting in 10 minutes compare to beholding a friend amid transit, words and smiles exchanged on top of red sands wriggling with ants and life and beneath umbrella canopies of birds, chirps, petals and seed pods.

Or maybe it's the overabundance of information being fed about a life few may actually realize of wealth and convenience, where one need only focus on accruing success by the approved steps of school, college, work, money. A word-perfect plan if you have the initial capital to invest, if you have the food to sustain long seemingly fruitless days, the ability to spend time on abstract growth rather than tangible sustenance. Another image that stuck with me on my lake ride was that of a dozen men spread out along the center of the highway hand painting the white lines. Men carrying buckets and brushes straddling the middle of the road painting lines with cars whizzing by on both sides. A different vibe rules the day and now I'm stuck trying to squeeze two into one. I used to wear 3 or 4 shirts to school because I couldn't pick one. I like Anthropology because it incorporates every discipline. It's much harder to put this into practice, and every food purchase, every transport decision, every greeting or meeting of eyes, every cloud and every tree... every moment reminds me of the life I was in. I can't compare the two lives that I have. I find it hard to talk about anything that truly impacts both sides. Of course I've managed to get my two-line summary down to the necessary question, "How was it?".

I'm sitting in a minibus on the way to the market contemplating a myriad of things, feeling the side of the minibus flex under my ribs. The rusted trunk held down by a rope and my bag resting unaware in the back. I glimpse at stickers plastered to the inside while I listen to Snoop 'tell it like it is'. Remembering the children of Likoma dance and rap, enraptured by flute and English, the sight of Micah holding my camera and looking at the grass dance in no way he's ever seen before, his eyes watching me sail away on a boat, a shaking grin hanging on his face, the long talks with Kindness in my yard about plants and welding and babies and history, the walk down Zomba st. past guards and children with afternoon mischief on their minds, the dusk fireworks exploding over barren fields and lonely trees...

In the last hours of Malawi it's as if the city had to mark my passage. Cell phone coverage was shut off indefinitely shortly before I needed to talk to people, and as I've grown accustomed to doing I just leaped into rather than feeling out my landing. My housemate's rental car decided it wanted to stop working for 10 minutes after packing up my things and I'm already at the wire so far as time. Get to the airport with my bulging bags and the desk proceeds to tell me I can't bring 2 bags on a plane in South Africa even though I later saw, again, half the people boarding with a couple bags apiece. Then charging me for overweight fees, I have to leave the exhausting line to use an ATM machine that doesn't work because the cellular network is down. Manage to arouse the interest of a bank teller and withdrawal enough money to cover my fees and after waiting again I'm brought to an office on the opposite end to write a receipt for my cash payment, even though they don't accept credit cards. Get back in line to get my ticket printed and thankfully swiftly move through immigration and security before immediately boarding my plane and leaving this beautiful country with the sun shining through puffy clouds and gravity pulling my heart down with it.

My layover in South Africa was but a glimpse of the alarming shift I was embarking on. Back in organized, orderly, thorough, and it's just South Africa. A shock of how exhausting things have been, even the simplest of things. The sheen on everything is addictive, the clear air punctuated by a collage of lights, blinking and moving and scattered in depths. Floor tiles and designed wall colors distracted even a stroll to the bathroom. It's like seeing a contemporary art museum after a month of camping. I was not doing anything like camping but I never forgot that I'm a part of the earth. Because you're in the middle of it, cause you see the lives that rely solely on it, no glitter to blind the seriousness of survival. Now having stumbled into a mirage I'm surrounded by creatures basking in their comforts. Old ladies changing their glowing white socks into the same. Steaming cauldrons of food cooked and waiting before anyone has issued their hunger. People wearing neck pillows in case they may want to lay their head down at a moment's notice. I'm alone. Or maybe I'm just reeling from the selfish desire to have my experience matter, of having those experiences I only glimpsed at mean anything more than something to sigh or laugh at. Just something to pile away in my story pile. If I seem angry in my thoughts they are self-directed, putting my own frailties and faults in relief to the guilt I harbor. This experience was more than a document but a perspective. To borrow from my friend Joe Pug, I went "to test the timber of my heart". I came back not knowing how I fit.

On the flight back to American sentiments, I watched the only thing that seemed appealing on the movie list. Alice in Wonderland. I still don't know if the flight was me tumbling down or crawling out of the rabbit hole. A different place with different rules, different values, different goals, different on so many levels yet undeniably still part of the same. Still familiar but presently foreign. My first two weeks back were a blur. I felt like a child let loose in the city. I walk into the coffee shop where I work after 2 days back and what do you think is hanging up on the wall? A global calender with each month a different city in the WORLD... it's currently a picture of a couple getting married with the tagline below reading, "Lilongwe, Malawi". I felt like I was colliding with everyone I met, with every routine and habit I left.

Even now, months past, I still haven't left Malawi, and a part of me knows I never will. My mind has been stretched and my soul has been tattooed. Watching the 200 hours of footage I've brought back is like flying away to Mzuzu. I escape to Kumbali for afternoon coffee and music before riding with Finn back home. The market din speckled with children in NY shirts, the trees and hills in full 'fall' bloom. I have a fever, and the only cure is Nali. Here is where I conclude but I have no conclusions. Perhaps the ellipsis will do. The unsaid, the unfinished, the expectant, the hesitant, the calm, the careful, that which can only be experienced, that can't be spoken, that won't be left out, that won't fit in, that encapsulates and says nothing, or everything...

(http://vimeo.com/15467043)

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.

This is Africa

June 11,
I'm not even sure where to start. I'm not gravely surprised but it startles me at my realization that I've known only three homes in my life. Raleigh, Chapel Hill/Carrboro, and Lilongwe. Having gone away from home and everything that has been my life for almost 2 weeks I arrived back from Mozambique stretched from an experience that will color the rest of my life. Sitting on fresh golden sands in paradise, watching stoic villagers watch me and twenty-odd white travelers gourge our exhausted bodies in front of their rural homes, pushing my aching limbs up seemingly endless mountains and flying down scarred pavement amidst a vibrant rolling countryside, having the constant unsettling experience of moving 100km every day for almost 2 weeks, continually being reminded that what I'm experiencing is wildly unique and will never be recaptured. Going into this adventure I had in my mind that this was a convenient vacation to a neighboring country that I would never have been able to see but it turned out to be a sometimes grueling but always interesting workload that included cooking 30-person meals at 5am and 8pm daily and always having my camera and shot ideas in mind.
Mozambique is a vast country that envelopes the eastern side of Lake Malawi in mountains but its particular village differences from Malawi are subtle despite the portugese sounds that curious people would bellow from the side of the road. Business in Malawi is an uncomfortable combination of Malawian unreliability and greedy managers that don't understand the basis of American 'customer-comes-first' service. Watching Finn argue in the waining light after an absolutely exhausting day with the stand-in manager of a lodge about being charged to use the two lightbulbs in their bare 'kitchen', or to use the electricity to cool the beer we went to buy after their bar ran out of beer in 10 minutes, or to use a dusty pot from their packed storeroom even though it would be returned cleaner than we found it and it didn't appear that they'd used it in weeks. All of this headache stemming from the manager residing in the hospital for the past month after agreeing to all of these simple accommodations when they booked the place. I got the feeling at each location that they forgot they booked a 30-person trek a month in advance and what followed was painfully redundant.
I biked one day with the group and an albino kid in Mozambique stood with his friends on the side of the road as we took a break. One pair of pink eyes shaded by a ballcap in between a hundred dark curious faces. As the moments passed I saw his friends steadily pick on him more as he watched what could very well be the first white people to walk around his village square. It was a strange feeling as I stood there catching my breath. What should I have done? An equally powerful counter to the local treatment was this crowd of English charity-giving individuals that noted the 'dirtiness' of children who play soccer with balls of plastic bags and complained about the incongruence of their experiences here with their home lives. It has got to be hard to leave successful lives in one of the most expensive areas of the world where comfort and preference rules your life and come to one of the most undeveloped and poor places with the knowledge of collectively raising over $100,000 for 'poor Africans' and cycling a trek that got harder and hotter every day. I watched spirits collapsing under the weight of unreliability and aching muscles. I however was reminded of what I have been away from for months. Not having to filter and constrict my language, unafraid of sarcasm and humor getting lost in translation. It hurt at times to be back in familiar cultural territory in the middle of my own journey.

In many ways I can't relate to this big group of comfortable Brits traveling on holiday around some of the most beautiful places in one of the poorest countries in the world, can't sympathize with having to spend a couple days without a shower when we're flocked and waved on by people that may get a full meal today, can't be irritated by spending a day boating down the beautiful lake when there's nothing to be rushed to when we hit land. This is a valid but retrospective feeling now that I've arrived back home and I'm pouring myself into my work now. However throughout this trip I lost myself. I'm losing myself every day. I don't know what will be left of me when I return to the US. Some mornings I wake up in my empty new house in a sleeping bag surrounded by piles of my things on the floor, slowly move about my faux-marble floor and crisp white crown molding and groggily dress myself for working in the US Embassy making a recruitment/educational video about Malawi, and the blinding glare of privelege doesn't hamper my ambitions. But inevitably I start thinking about why I'm here and what I can do to leave this place better than I found it or why I shouldn't feel ashamed to listen to my ipod. How can the people living in huge non-profit or embassy mansions with a hand-full of Malawian servants sleep at night? Some mornings I wake up with music in my head, stretch out and eat a full breakfast before talking for hours with intelligent, articulate, inspiring, and compelling people while trying to keep up with a culture I'm slowly deciphering. Like a sculpture I'm carving away misunderstandings and misconceptions, the reality of life in Malawi slowly coming to form. My camera as my blade is becoming easier to wield, I feel my hands anticipate things happening, my mind looking around for light and movement. Some times I catch myself moving through this beautiful dance. I'm starting to hear the music.
Being run through the rigorous security measures daily to enter the US Embassy gives me time to note the 3 frames hanging on the wall. One with beautiful photographs of bald eagles. One with cowboys strolling through New Mexico. And one with a stern but accessible President Obama. Is this my national identity? Is this what we want to tell Malawi it means to be American? Along the way I guess I'm redefining myself too. Maybe clarifying is more appropriate. I struggle constantly with seeing and hearing of a lack of motivation within many Malawians and then noting this same lacking within people I know. Maybe there's some truth behind some of it but to accept the blanket accusation perpetuates it. People do what they need to take care of themselves so there's a reason why some people don't give the 110% attitude I was told as a child. Maybe the first 60% rotted away when your dad raped your sister to get rid of his disease of infidelity... Maybe you had to leave it at the door with your school books to make room for raising your 12-year old brother when your mom left you for another life... Maybe just because you gave your body to someone for a meal that will eventually kill you doesn't mean you don't wish you were already dead? But it's easy to generalize Malawians to be lazy and unmotivated drivers of their own destiny when you hear of night-shift midwives in the hospitals who view their 6-hour workshift as an opportunity to sleep rather than deliver babies or save women's lives. It's simple to write-off musicians that play around for a nominal payout but think nothing of this idea of professionalism. Simple answers sometimes just show simple minds. Minds that don't feel like implicating themselves. I feel like a criminal when a man in a suit knocks on my locked and barb-wired gate to ask for a job. How many more gates will he have to knock on to get an opportunity to prove himself?
I feel like a phony basking in the warm amber rays on a luxury thatched-roof porch overlooking a fantastical spread of crocodiles bathing on river rocks and monkeys squirming in the trees. I'm here in the wildlife reserve to film a promotional video but I don't deserve this. I run off poachers two days in a row in the first splinters of sunrise as I'm lugging my camera around to capture that perfect shot of rippling water and light and bending branches and cloudbursts. They're younger than me and fearlessly scamper off through the infested waters reminding me of a fresh story of a poacher that wasn't so lucky in this same spot and never made it back from the river. I see the river begin to bleed red, but thankfully it was merely the sunrise this day. I confiscate burlap bags left behind with a brewing fire and have a tough time blaming people whose families were kicked off their prime land 50 years ago and told to make a new living somewhere else so Europeans and rich people can 'safari'. I'm told that in a month elephants will begin making treks across the river and onto the islands. I watch an eagle swoop down and catch a fish from the river teeming with crocodile. Families of Baboons sit on the river's edge and groom one another in the afternoon. But this is just as routine as cars lining up at the drive-thru. Except this reserve of nearly 1800 Square Kilometers is managed by mere dozens of people on foot while ministers of forestry and lands in Lilongwe get new SUVs to drive around the city. The park manager of Nika National Park flicks a match into flame and lights a few drags before shrugging wistfully out at the river. "This is Africa"... What does that mean?
Visiting one of the street kid projects that ActionAid is funding I'm confronted by Master Banda, a boy the Chisomo Project is supporting. He's quietly but ardently begging for shoes and money in the face of these people giving sporting equipment, bikes, shirts, and funds to the Chisomo Project. Of all the people present, I'm the youngest yet he confronted me most likely because I had the biggest camera. I restrained my inner screams, I felt violated, completely side-swiped to see that despite these minimal but incredible efforts, that kid is still going to beg from the richest looking people he can find. That's his job that he's trained for his whole life. It seems to work because he guilts someone else into giving him shoes. How many pairs of shoes does he have now? What do you do? Scold a kid that determines that the best way to survive is to rely on the guilt of others? One big shining example of what aid does. Give a man a fish and he eats today. Then tomorrow he asks you where his fish is. If you're not there to teach him how to catch his own fish, he'll go ask the next person that looks like you. If every person is unique and special and has something to teach you, I shudder to think about which lessons I'm missing on a daily basis. Or the fact that many days I learn more than I can remember. Too much truth and reality to digest.Despite the hardship that I stare down every day in my luxury life of a fridge and electronic equipment, I am completely in love with this place. I'm becoming more and more enchanted by making a big portion of my life here in Malawi. Part of this is a selfish desire to be in this breathtaking country. Part of it is the refreshing welcome of the people here that don't care how many people know your name or how 'successful' you are but will gladly shake your hand for an opportunity to smile and say 'good day'. But increasingly it's the desire to help and matter. I want to help bring bikes, a vital and expensive work expense, into Lilongwe as part of the Africycle charity. I want to bring solar ovens into the surrounding villages and income-generation programs and curb the decimating crisis of deforestation. I want to facilitate the brewing of artistic talent that explodes in bursts of incredible live shows or amazing painting exhibitions that happen to fall into our laps. I want everyone here to realize that they can make Malawi into whatever they want it to be and not listen to their own criticisms. In order to envision the success that will rightfully come here, people need to see the examples of Malawi succeeding in something. I too doubt myself on a daily basis but I'm learning how to ignore my pride. How to make myself into an instrument I've spent my whole life tuning. This journey is my effort to hear other people make the music. You create your own happiness. This is Africa.

If I had a Hammer...

May 1st,It's been so long since I've written; complications of too much work and too much travel. I literally can't sleep in past 8am in this country despite late evenings trying to soak up every moment in fullness. Well enough seeing as I have so much filming, editing, managing, scheduling, brainstorming, and experiencing to do. Just a few days ago I landed home from a holiday weekend in the big city of Blantyre. As we drove through mountains and hills covered in baobab trees and splotchy cement buildings silhouetted by dark figures waiting and watching, I fell in love. We stayed with the Malawian middle-class family of one of our new friends Z, and were treated with so much welcome I forgot I was in Africa. Treated to home-grown Avocados, Mangos, and Tangerines and home-made jelly, Shepard's Pie, and smoked beef brisquet, I'm coming to terms with the stratified lifestyles in a breath-taking country. We discussed some of the woes and difficulties of the educational system here, political and economics reasons for the previous and current fuel crisis, and the reality of witchcraft that pervades this society. We walked through the city streets, meeting Fred, a filmmaker that could find me a job working in the Malawian film industry or connections to market the documentary on this continent. Huge glass complexes constructed around winding streets bordered with massive African trees and fragrant flowers. I love it here. Not that I need cities to survive, in fact the commercial goes against the core of me. Watching marketing and materialism infiltrate traditional Malawian villages and families gives conflicting feelings.'Development' is one of the best ways to reduce infectious diseases biologically but I feel is also one of the best ways to increase infectious diseases socially. This past week was drenched with dreary weather and I think it has started to infect some of my mood. What hasn't is Peter Mawanga getting his non-profit registration certified, an organization called Talents of the Malawian Child, which offers workshops and training for child artists and musicians and eventual festivals to promote and develop the talents inherent in young Malawians. Or Q Malawezi agreeing to collaborate with me on the documentary project, something I am so excited for. Growing up in a family of the ministry(government), he's become an educated and engaged artist who produced one of Peter Mawanga's albums, writes poetry and is an amazing spoken word performer. I'm so pumped to have his eyes guiding this project, his voice narrating the way, and his friends filling in where an American can't understand or contact.
What I can't seem to understand is how to correct a corrupt car-less police force that waves you for speeding on ill-marked roads and demands cash immediately ('because they don't have a National Bank branch in Dedza to cash a check') or after an hour of arguing insists on an open check. Finn having an embassy badge seems to sometimes help but that underlies the issue of diplomatic power in a country swarming with foreign aid groups and businessmen. One could argue that they're kinda the same thing. Trying not to let all the injustice taint my daily experience but when it's glaring at you from behind the beaten brow of a street kid, as you drive through the embassy district mansions, as you're prompted as 'boss' from a stranger twice your age because you might offer him a job...
But each day starts fresh and bright (this week) and it's a welcome relief to our complications last week when we went to Balaka to meet a traditional healer who supposedly has cured 800 people of AIDS. Complete with documentation and pictures of his patients, this was a golden opportunity to show a crucial perspective in this culture but after our 4 hour journey on cracked and pot-holed pavement awaiting a doomed flat tire that could leave us stranded for hours, we were left waiting at Balaka for a man that would never show. In exchange for a failed trip, we visited with the biggest pop star in Malawi, Lucius Banda, a personal friend of Peter's who welcomed us with conversation for a couple hours. Offering us any help he can in marketing or distribution for the album, we discussed the Malawian music industry and the social strifes they face. Before we left his relaxing home, I heard Lucius mention 'I hope I'll live to see my 3-year old son make music'. This is a man that lives comfortably, travels and plays music around the world, yet faces the harsh truth that he may not live to see his children's live's unfold. Some children I see walking home from school on the side of road strike me as odd. They're not children, they're people. These mature little lives amble along knowing more about life than I suspect most people I've seen in college.
In Blantyre we met an 11-year old boy begging on the street in the cusp of a dazzling sunset who told us of how he and his brother sleep outside the city in an orphan center. He stared at us with a battered expression in his eyes that told me more than his timid voice could. He stood next to a middle-aged man who relentlessly tried to sell us postcards and beaded necklaces for mere fractions of a dollar and I had the eary feeling that I was seeing the same person spread out over two generations. The 'businessman' told us with darting opportunistic eyes and loneliness on his face how he lost his wife 6 years ago, an experience I hear all too often here. From what? How long does he have? Are these terrible thoughts or the reality of this place? I drift into a depressing ride home contemplating my own privilage at not having a monthly funeral to attend, overwhelmed by the opportunities that I have to give, grappling with my deficiencies in language and the automatic divide that exists in any relationship that I develop with a local here.My daily interactions include numerous expatriots and the degree of international mixing within most every interaction is bizarre. In my month of being here, I've met only two other Americans within hundreds of expats. Language once again shows how pivotal it is to people and how paramount its power is in this life. My efforts to communicate through images doesn't work without some communication through language. I get lonely sitting in Mubuya Camp's bar watching a football match surrounded by a dozen young adults, all with unique nationalities and accents, but it gives me time to think of music video ideas for Peter Mawanga's new album. My skills are becoming an amazing catalyst for experiencing and seeing more of this country. I've been in meetings with Nhkotakota Wildlife Reserve lodge director who has offered to put us up in luxury tents on a river island only accessible by a suspension bridge in exhange for filming and editing a promo video for their website. That's still in the planning stage but this weekend we're heading to Mozambique on a 9-day charity biking safari along the southeastern shore of Lake Malawi on an all-expenses-paid wilderness safari trek. I've been commissioned to film the biking Brits, the cathedral in Mozambique and the alluring Lakoma Island as well as keeping the portugese-translating, fiddle-jamming Finn some company.We're both really excited, me especially in the wake of yesterday's experience walking through the Malawian Refugee camp. Setup in 1994 against the backdrop of a Rwandan genocide, the 12,000 person village is contained by military personnel wielding menacing guns in case anyone tries to infiltrate any other part of Malawi besides their dusty barren slum of a town. With a booming HIV rate occupying an otherwise bored diversity of southern Africans, the excited ministers we met with were patient and kind and grateful to have someone come and potentially help their desperate parish. What can a camera do to help these people? What can I expect twice translated words of hope to accomplish for people that have no lands or stability to speak of? Money won't help these people. How can pictures help these people? Even if an infinite surplus of food suddenly appeared, what is there to occupy the soul? I feel desperate to offer an answer that will give a future to some people living in scrap sheet metal stamped with 'USA' and cardboard guarded by uniforms with machine guns. But this is MY worldview and MY life watching, something I wrestle with constantly.
Just when things begin to become too overcast and hopeless I'm inspired by the phenomenal people that populate my life for months to come. Like my nightly impressions of looking up at thousands of glowing stars that I knew were there but I've never experienced, the continual feeling of meeting amazing individuals is always surprising. Weekly I meet incredible artists here who have so much ability but lack the resources or venues to develop a brimming art scene here. I feel the obligatory responsibility to do what I can to help. Amid the slow hum of tires to tarmac a typical sunset begins to spill over this African landscape. A deep red shoots over a jagged horizon blossoming into orange and a blue that can't decide where to put the purple clouds. Along this gradually browning countryside are various smoke signals from burning trash that mingle with the car dust. This return trip is the first of six bus rides to be frustrated by the unreliability that's commonplace here in Malawi as we're sidelined for a flat tire. Children relieve themselves on the side of the road without shame and our smoke-filled bus takes on the odor of tar and earth and fire. I take a nap with bodies resting against mine in a bus packed past standing-room capacity. I'm like a kid. I finally arrive back home to a house without power and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made in the dancing flicker of candlelight comfort my swirling head. Each day ends with humility and aspirations of doing more than I can. I wish I was more. Or better. Or enough.

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.

There and Back Again

April 9th,
Too much to say. Many times this past week I've been reminded of Bilbo Baggins, my mind and body "spread thin like butter over too much bread". My place in this world seems to be becoming more clear. But this world unfortunately is not. More than any other place, I've seen the stratification of people as a wide gulf between those that have and those that don't. It's so difficult to be open and present in the tiny sofa-sized apartment of a 17-year old boy who's positive because of a tainted blood transfusion for his heart condition. With no family to speak of he now raises his 12-year old brother by himself. The smell in his dank clay structure couldn't overpower my complete feeling of helplessness, I could only sit there and smile, trying to bring some kind of warmth to a boy that shouldn't ever have to deal with frequent agonizing pain and insurmountable odds. To hold back tears as I write this I think of the smile that painted his face when Finn mentioned that the boy would be able to sing for his track on the concept album. He just glowed. His name is Madalitso, which means 'blessings'. There are things here that I don't know how to process.

Another man by the same name also echoed this feeling I've been trying to suppress about my own role here in Malawi. He's been working as a translator for Finn during some of the narrative collections and is currently a translator for the documentary crew filming a piece on William Kamkwamba. You may have heard of 'The Boy who Harnessed the Wind', an amazing story of a boy who built from a picture and junk parts a few working windmills producing electricity and pumping water for his family and village in a rural Malawian village. This elder Blessings was a teacher when he met and encouraged William in school and now has the opportunity to facilitate a broader telling of his story. But in spending time with Blessings at his home something he said struck the heart of me. 'These men from America come here and make a movie and then leave Malawi and don't come back... but for what'. I can feel the distrust, the difference between how he relates to Finn and how he relates to me. Maybe it's a matter of spending time with someone and getting to know them but I can't help but think that the camera will always make me something I'm not. Or maybe I am...

The difficulties of the lens has grown so that I feel torn, stretched between a human being here to see and share and relate, and an idea. A multitude of ideas actually. The idea that I'm capturing a part of the people I want to share. Commodifying and exploiting, for what purpose is open to numerous opinions. That I have come and will go potentially to never return shades a different light than this is my home that I work for. I'm not someone that is talking or giving music but I'm taking with the assumed gurantee that I'm planning to give back later. I'm still choking on the truth he sees, the weight of trying to comprehend the mashing of two cultures. The reality of my task is settling. I feel the compulsion of an artist that wants to help smacking into the expense of some westerner 'coming to the rescue' of a situation that is more complex than words or moving pictures can relate.

My being an 'other' has become increasingly clear. The language barrier alone creates a dissonance between me and the people, except those educated few that I feel can confidently understand both my words and the context. In a way, I've become increasingly bound to Finn to navigate through so many daily instances. His linguistical abilities(Chichewa, Portugese, French) are a blessing but highlight my inability to be natural with people, unable to communicate or be real, to inquire or to share. To look someone in the eyes and smile sends only the message the receiver wants to receive. We go to the market to buy fruits and vegetables and to approach a stranger we're overcharged as much as 400%. Finn bargains down to the delight of Malawian onlookers who smile and laugh at the fact that we azungu end up paying almost double what we're told we should pay. Maybe that's the upcharge of history. Maybe that's the price of someone else's greed. I feel dirty and deflated walking back to the car while brooms and pirated dvds and stolen hubcabs are shoved in my face. I'm an opportunity, I get it. I still feel like a jerk putting on my sunglasses as I try and ignore the stink of burning trash and desperation.

The next minute I'm sitting in the welcoming home of a woman that gave herself the nickname of Finn's 'African Grandmother' because of identical names and no doubt a sign of the sweet and endearing woman exuding gentle wisdom before me. Hilda shows Finn, Andy and myself the proper way to make nsima and prepare some relish. She calms me effortlessly, just spending time in a small kitchen stirring boiled maize. We listen to her story of infection and subsequent diabetes, about the children she teaches and the HIV presentations she is in charge of, we talk about the market and her family, we discuss President Bingu's wedding that is to take place this weekend and how we're fleeing the capital to miss the congestion disaster a stadium wedding will pose. I'm here. I'm well. I'm looking forward to coming back next week and spending some more time with her, listening to her stories, working up some more nsima, maybe a mini-Chichewa lesson.I came here to share and augment the work of Finn and I have no doubts in my ability to do this. There are those moments that level me. There are those moments that shake my core and dissolve any stability I've manage to culture over the past 25 years. Then there are moments when I'm sitting on the couch of the former Minister of Lands witnessing part of a life that has survived wrongful imprisonment, 30 years of exile, the death of three children to HIV, and a breaking of political silence that prompted Africa to listen. I'm in the presence of greatness. Sacrifice. I have dreams. Rather, I have responsibilities. Time will tell. Many may listen... but who will do?

A World Within a Week

April 5th
It's only been a week. That's incredible to think. What has felt like months; what has squeezed aside this whole lifetime before it to make room for 'Muli Bwanji's, Kwacha-conversions in tumultuous markets and grilled chip stands (fries) at 'luxury' hotels, daily pills that make me extra-sensitive to sun and sunscreen applications in a 90 degree African sun that burns brighter and hotter than I've known before, and the throng of people I meet daily that are genuine and calm and wonderful... this all has come to pass over the span of a mere week. There is so much to speak of and not time enough to share everything, but I guess that's why I have a camera with me.

The first thing I noticed while shopping that still kinda creeps me out; long-lasting milk from Zambia that stays good at least until November without a fridge. Complement that with malnourished eggs that come out of the shell a pale faded yellow and there are some things that food-wise take a little time to get used to. Like nsima, the staple dish of every Malawian made from boiled maize flour and water. If a Malawian is offered every dish imaginable and gourges their bellies without scooping by hand this porridge-like substance, they would relate that 'they haven't been fed any food'. They had plenty of relish but no food. Granted, I've never been opposed to eating weird, dull, or monotonous; like sustaining on crackers and cheese religiously on Scouting camping trips. But it should be noted that cheese is super expensive here and cream cheese is a distant legend. It's like trying to explain what snow is to people that have only felt the luxury of ice and the blessed season of torrential rain. What they do know are 20-minute sunrises and sunsets that demarcate your day making 9pm feel like midnight, and the danger of walking about in darkness first for the desperate crimes that occur in an otherwise gentle city and second for the malaria that decimates your health to feverish and nauseous pain on the rate of seasonal allergies. Milky and creamy whites of eyes are the fated labels of this lifetime of mosquito transactions.

What I've come to learn is the pleasure from an afternoon breeze wafting through your house when every window is screened and open and the sweet smell of vegetation and chirping of birds that replaces those of industry. Or the mass cultural acceptance of children in the villages, having mastered the thumbs-up and 'hello', come and run to greet the rare foreign visitors that are walking around their yards. There are those things that are unreliable like electricity or the prices for some who see my skin as an invitation to temporarily ease their lives. But on the whole of those locals that are greeted in Chechewa, I am met with smiles and a warmth that Carrboro has on its best days.

My days have taken on the mold of rising with the heat of the sun around 7am and preparing my gear to follow Finn and his visiting friend Andy. They've developed a bit of a jamming relationship with the Kumbali village band, a group of self-taught and dedicated Malawians who have taken to the generous instrumental and managing offerings of the village's director Scott Gray. It's been incredible to hang out and listen to this improvised mix of styles, some of them hearing Appalachian or Irish tunes for the first time and laying afro-rhythms on top. I've witnessed this fusion of musicians on such a regular basis. It's incredible how music in this first week has brought so many people together. It inspires my work on this project, compelling me to double my efforts and shed as much of myself as possible for the sake of presenting a fuller picture.

If music be the thread of this Malawian story, then the individuals are the knots that bind and strengthen their communities and my hope for a world too often jaded by bad press. The more one explores ways to improve a given situation, it's tempting to stop short at these negatives and egocentric criticisms that isolate and distance rather than unify. But our trip to Senga Bay gave witness to Richard, an unabashed and courageous man whose status presented him with an opportunity to travel the numerous villages surrounding his home and spark dialogues on this epidemic. He has since, from years of work, created a nutrition center for dozens of infected children that provides three meals a day as well as teaching means of artistic expression like songs or theater. He brought us through 4 villages and introduced us to some of the children and their families including some that Finn has collected narratives from. I can't describe these lives nor can I speak clearly of my feelings as we were ushered from home to home. Smiles and deep eyes, me a western male carrying a shiny plastic camera, homes built of necessity and earth, collections of curiosities tailing our tour, sounds I can't translate and words I can't produce....
We leave this place to step onto the tickling sandy beaches of a hotel that is hosting a concert starring Peter Mawanga, the socially-conscious Malawian musician whose collaboration with Finn on an AIDS stories album has brought me here. I look out past the 40-foot boulder stage backdrop onto sparkling waves beneath golden(magical) african clouds and wonder what the Mozambique mountains on the horizon see when they look back at me. I lay my sunburned body down inside a mosquito net and sigh. I'll sweat but I won't dream.