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aceoutofplace · 6 years ago

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My first 24 hours

So.... I made it. After 3 days, 3 planes and an hour and a half car ride, I made it to Zomba, Malawi for my 9 week internship. Holy cow. I had absolutely no expectations when I started my journey, and so far it has blown my mind. As I write this, I’m sitting on my porch looking out over a lush valley. I’m playing Hozier from my phone. Birds are singing and the occasional family of monkeys is wandering by. So how did I get here? Let me just review the last 24 hours for everyone.

I landed in Blantyre around noon yesterday (Saturday) and was picked up by a driver at the airport. He was so sweet and funny. He tried to teach me Chewa, although that was for nought. All I remember is that the second part of good morning sounds like branch. We talked about customs, dress, animals, and everything under the (very hot) sun. Unfortunately, I didn’t get his name, but I hope our paths cross again. Once I got to the office, one of the interns, Bongani, gave me a tour of the office and my living quarters. She drove me to a convenience store to get some food and snacks for the weekend since I wouldn’t see anyone else until Monday. I got beans, bread, some chicken, and margarine. They didn’t have peanut butter or jelly or any sandwich meats. Luckily, I brought quite a lot of snacks and vienna sausages from home (@ Jackie). Bongani also advised me to wait to buy more stuff until I could get to a market since everything was way over priced at the store.

Once we got back to the house, Bongani left me to unpack and rest. I couldn’t take a nap until I was completely unpacked since I’m neurotic. There’s more closet and storage room than my house back in Seattle, but I still managed to use a vast majority of it... I may have over packed. Whoops. I also wanted to spruce up the place so I stole a plant from the hallway. I may have to put it back eventually, but hopefully they won’t notice. Once I finally unpacked everything and felt satisfied, I laid down for a nap. As soon as I hoped into bed, one of the legs snapped off. I’m trying not to be offended by it. I was too exhausted to do anything about it, so I angled myself in order to put most of my weight on the remaining three legs and slept for five hours. When I woke up, it was 9:30 pm. I was still tired, but I didn’t want to wake up too early the next day so I started my reflection paper for class, and called my mom and friend, Jackie. I also texted my supervisor about the broken bed. I watched a couple of youtube videos and finally went to bed at 11:30.

I woke up this morning at 5:45 am. Much to my horror, I couldn’t go back to sleep so I played some games on my phone, listened to music and chilled (diagonally) in bed. I finally decided to get up at 6:30, took a quick shower, got dressed, and then made myself a delicious and nutritious breakfast of coffee, toast, and vienna sausages. I also treated myself to a kind bar while I finished my reflection. Quality. Just past 8, I left the house and walked until I found a church. I sat through the remainder of the service not understanding anything besides amen. They did do a version of Amazing Grace that I really got into. I ooo’d harmony. It was great. The choir took up multiple rows of pews and many of them were wearing matching skirts that had the logo of the church on them. They were really official and sounded so good. Some songs had choral-ography and everything. After service I walked home. While I did really enjoy being able to experience that service for myself, I’m hoping someone from the office will be willing to take to an english speaking service for the remainder of my time here.

Something that I knew I would experience, but it didn’t really hit me until I got here, was the fact that I would be a minority in Zomba. I thought that I would be used to it since I am used to being one of the only people of color in a room or conversation. In the US really anyone not visibly white is bunched into the same category. We find camaraderie in our experience as minorities. Because I grew up understanding blackness to include a vast amount of shapes, colors, and sizes, I learned to think of other black people as the same as me. Here, however, I am so obviously not the same. People stare, laugh, and honk at me. I really didn’t think it would be so obvious that I’m not from here. Call it ignorance, but I thought mixed race people would be a lot more common here than they are. Even lighter skinned black people are rare. I’m still processing it, and I’m sure I’ll have many more conversations with people about race, skin color, and the history of imperialism in Malawi, but facing it so explicitly today, and by myself, no less, has been really shocking. Something else that I didn’t expect was the huge gender divide that exists everywhere. Anytime you see a group of people, you either see a group of men and young boys, or women and young girls. There’s little to no intermingling unless it’s a short conversation, a family, or a young boy amongst a group of women or girls. Here, there’s a very obvious separation between gender. Even in church this morning, women sat on one side and men sat on the other. I’m sure there will be many more conversations in the coming months about gender and cultural expectations in Malawi, but those have been my thoughts and observations so far.

There’s really no way that I can encapsulate my last day’s experience in one phrase, or even one post, but I think the best way to summarize it has been that everything is the same as the US, but really different.

Tiwonana,

This world traveler.

#malawi #world traveler #vienna sausage #aghca

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