Sometimes I have these flashbacks of my first days (more like months) in Malawi and I remember just how harsh and foreign the conditions can be. The days of building fire. Unsuccessfully. Of hovering by a candlelight. Of drawing water from a water pump. Of my hands numbing from washing my clothes in the freezing cold water. Of bathing with cold water.
It all started with a man’s $7,000 mistake (cutting down a tree by himself instead of with others) resulting in destroying our whole mission’s electricity transformer… meaning I don’t have electricity. Yes, I know, it’s a privilege taken for granted all too much, but sadly, I actually rely completely on it since I have no alternative mean of cooking and heating water without it. Usually, I would stress, but it has happened so many times (that is… black outs, unpaid bills by the mission, bad wiring, melting sockets, etc., but not a destroyed transformer) that I have resorted to just shrugging and telling myself, Oh well, I’ll figure something out.
Even though we were told the transformer would be replaced in two weeks’ time, I somehow doubt it will be. Another site about 16 kilometers has been waiting three months… and the site where my friend is located 8 km from me has waited two years. It doesn’t surprise me, since Africans don’t have a good sense of time… even if they are the only electric company in Malawi.
I’m starting to contemplate the idea that I might have to live my last year of service without electricity (which was what I thought coming to Malawi anyway), so I’m trying to adapt as quickly as possible. The first thing I did was, after a week of waiting for market day (Tuesday and Saturday), buy a charcoal stove... which I still have to master. (It can’t be harder than building a fire… can it?) I’ve been making paper briquettes, so I don’t have to use regular charcoal… which is just too expensive and too detrimental for the environment. I just have to pretend that I’m camping everyday!
And I’ve resorted to taking cold baths… even though it’s winter (which was exactly what I had to do last year when I first moved to my site). It’s not the most pleasant experience, but I’ve learned little things like… NOT pouring cups of cold water on myself! Instead, I’d scrub myself with a loofah while squatting to maximize contact with my body heat. And I’ve mastered washing my hair without touching my face and body. Granted, I’m not as clean as I’d like to be… but I figured it beats losing all my body heat through the water vapors. (By the way, if you don’t know this already, I do bathe outdoor.)
But in all honesty, it wasn’t that fun losing electricity. It’s one thing to not ever have electricity and become accustomed to building fires and all that good stuff, but it’s another issue to be totally unprepared when you rely completely on electricity.
My situation really isn’t that bad, but the unfortunate issues are:
1) our health center operates completely on electricity, so it’s crippled without it,
2) our water taps also depend on electricity, so our whole mission is crippled without water, forcing people to walk to further to water pumps, which might cause…
3) the water pumps to dry out earlier than usual since it is dry season and is currently overused by my mission
Other than the electricity ordeal, I also had these other moments. I had become so accustomed to the lifestyle here that I have forgotten so easily how strange they once were to me. I tried to think… if YOU were here, what would stick out to you? I thought of things like… the roosters crowing at the break of dawn and often at my door… the hens and chicks parading around, digging into my garden… the Land Cruisers (private vehicles) and Toyota caravans (public vehicles) rumbling over the rocky roads and kicking up dust… men on bicycles carrying their usual katundu (“parcels”, i.e. firewood, boxes, chickens)... women carrying buckets and pots of water or vegetables on their heads… the children running around barefoot twirling some old bicycle tire… the pounding of maize and women’s heaving breaths before the sunrise… the overwhelming smoke and smell of burning plastic and leaves… the eee and the ah-ahhhh and the ohhoooo departing their mouths… the tinsmen pounding into the metals fashioning watering cans and charcoal stoves… the acapella chorals reverberating in perfect harmony in an abandoned house on a Sunday morning… Palibe wina opanda nanu…
Amazing, isn’t it? They created this… indescribable feeling within me. There are some days when I feel at such a loss about why I’m here or what I’m really doing… some days when I’m bubbling with anger within me… some days when I just yearn to be at home in my own bed eating watermelon… some days wishing that I could do away with all the guilt within me… some days wondering if I should be doing something more than just reading and thinking… some days when I think that people just have absolutely no idea… But when I stepped out of my own shoes for a moment – just a moment – to see the little niches of Malawi that makes it special and my life different, all I can think is, Life ain’t a cakewalk, but right now, it’s worth the walk for a piece of that cake. :)
