The whole new world over the bridge

So I have now arrived in my new home, but I can’t yet describe this to you, until I share how I got there. I had only seen a snapshot of town so far, largely an unrealistic view of Lilongwe, the drive over the bridge to the other side of town included a whole new scenery and a whole new set of emotions. There were people positively everywhere, overloaded minibuses, bikes, streets lined with people walking everywhere (and I mean everywhere - a road with cars on it really doesn’t seem to mean anything) beautifully dressed ladies with giant loads of all sorts of things freely balancing on their heads. One of my neighbors is giving me lessons on carrying stuff on my head. They seriously carry bins full of water and stuff…crazy! These lessons are causing everyone a great amount of amusement, as I’m clearly terrible. I got cheers from everyone after successfully carrying 1 kg of sugar about ten metres…I have a long way to go!! Oh I lost my train of thought….oh yeah, in town there is absolutely no regard for the two sets of traffic lights in town. The red light is just for decoration I’d imagine, as it certainly isn’t used for anything else!!! The roads are bumpy and red and dusty. As the crow flies, I have now learnt that the village is only a 5 minute journey out of town, but via minibus for me it will take anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour. After boarding the village minibus where the door fell clean off its hinges as I opened it, we traveled through an industrial estate which was a long stretch of road lined with wooden shanties and stalls of furniture making, then a coffin shop, then a welding shop, then a coffin shop then a furniture shop, then a coffin shop, then a welding shop then a coffin shop and so on… seems coffins are in high demand…rather overwhelming.

They don’t have phone booths as such around here, instead they have a little chair and a little table with a phone sitting on it…..somewhere under a tree along the side of the road… and you can see a long cord trailing along the ground that has multiple extension cords leading to somewhere with a phone line. Very amusing!!

All houses around town look relatively the same, they are all on plots of land with walls surrounding them as little fences, each made of the same coloured red brick. All over town you can see people making these bricks from the surrounding ground (or dust), they then pile these up into giant stacks that have little caves underneath where they later build fires to cure the bricks before building begins. Fascinating!

Oh yeah by the way…my terrible spelling and grammar…. I don’t really care! Hehe
Theres not much time, and the l, m, and w don’t work so well on this keyboard. But even if they did work, I’d probably still be terrible!! Ahaha! I’m just writing as I think.

So anyway Christine, another AVI took me adventuring on the weekend… she showed me where and how to catch the buses, and showed me the ropes of town, which was fantastic! When we arrived, I was frantically trying to remember where the bus drops you off for later on, but where you catch them, is different than where it drops you off… of course, silly me!

The way buses work is to line up in a large flat area where buses congregate in absolutely no pattern what so ever, just about 50 buses splattered across a big patch of red dirt. The rules are simple, you must get on the bus that is at the front of the line…. !?!!??! how you are meant to work that out I’m not sure… there are no schedules and no allocated stopping points. To get off, you yell out “hey” or hit the person in front of you to pass the message along. The seats need to fit 4 across in a minibus and 5 across for one of the bigger ones, doesn’t matter what the size of the people, oh and kids don’t count as a person, so there could be four adults and a child across. Apparently this is still within the law…. HA!... that is of course as long as the driver and the front passenger are wearing a seatbelt… totally cracks me up, although its not like we need one in the back so wedged in as we are!! So a 12 seater bus becomes about a 24 seater!

Having said all of that, I havnt failed yet to have a fantastic ride, the people are friendly, chatty and there is always something to laugh about along the way!

I don’t think I could have even imagined the market to be the way it was. Street vending is now illegal in Malawi unless you have licence, which many people just can’t afford. It’s a long story as to how this has evolved which includes some tourism politics, a riot that occurred about 6 months ago where police where arresting anyone without licenses and smashing down vending huts, with many empty little brick buildings still marked with a big red cross for demolition over the next few months. Sadly though, in true Malawi style when most people would revolt against such new rules, the Malawi people simply didn’t realize the new rules, as many would never read newspapers, never watch t.v. or rarely ever come close to town to hear the word of mouth. Where for most people a “riot” would evoke fear as to potential for civil unrest, the Malawians were simply running for fear of getting arrested. Anyone who ran fast enough was not arrested. Those who were caught, happily went and as a result all (or most) of the vendors are now all located within market regions. Which are simply amazing to walk through, and amazing to see. A tiny tiny maze of all types of stalls. No pattern to how they are laid out, and no rule as to how you get in and out of the maze, just wonder and hope for the best…but be sure to stay away from the dried fish section…eeewww…although, it was fascinating to see. The stalls are lined up in order of sizes of fish. These are a common diet option for many people to maintain a level of protein in the diet. I still just don’t understand dried fish though. They look (and smell) like the drying process is just out in the sun.

We had a local friend of christine’s take us around to help me buy things for my house, and it was great having the local knowledge so we weren’t ripped off!
Things I am learning to say quickly… “no thankyou, I don’t want to buy anything today”

The Village

The atmosphere at SOS is like a giant camp. There are 12 houses, with kids ranging from just over 1 to about 13ish. Then there are youth houses which are just down from my place, and they also have young adults houses 18-25 who are on campus for the vocational training centre.

As you enter through the gates of the village off to one side is the kindergarten and main office, to the other side is the high school and primary school. There are 360 children at the high school of which about 40 live in the village, and about the same again at the primary school. There is one class for hearing impaired kids. There is a significant lack of teachers, with each class holding atleast 40-50 kids. Also many subjects are not offered due to the lack of teachers.

Then there is the medical centre which includes the childrens rehabilitation program which is where I am based. The medical clinic includes the skin clinic, laboratory, medication dispensary, medical clinic, social centre, HIV testing and counseling room, xray department and…hmm.. I think that’s it.
There are 8 ARV (anti-retroviral therapy for HIV Aids) clinics within Malawi that are funded by the international Aids Africa program toward managing aids, which is having good success so far, with over 700 patients currently on the ARV treatment managed from SOS alone. There is an extreme shortage of doctors, with a physician only visiting for half a day a month, with the remainder of the massive clinic run by nursing staff and Clinical Officers (which are malawi’s doctors who have done about four years of training, but are not actually doctors) we have three of them.

The CRP is also understaffed. Mostly due to a massive lack of funding to pay staff, as SOS is a NGO and is funded by donations only. There are over 1000 active clients currently, but not all of them have case workers. Infact only about 300 do.

The service is free, unless private therapy is requested in which case they are charged a rate of 250 kwacha per session ($2.50) but this is rarely possible, so most attend groups. Often the kids are able to attend up to 3 times in a week. Mothers always attend with their children and participate in therapy.

So after the medical clinic and all that’s associated with that, there is a massive long driveway that divides the village down the middle with the 12 childrens houses each with 12-13 kids plus a mother and assistant mother in each. On the other side there are two youth houses, and houses for the youth leaders, social centre staff and myself. Currently I’m the only international volunteer, all the other staff are local Malawians.

There is a massive sense of community in the village, There’s games being played, squeeling, laughing, all different sports, tyre spinning is a favourite, singing and music.
Each house is given an allowance, they are to decide how it is spend as a group, they have the food and house hold items that is arranged by the mother and assistant mothers.
Interestingly there are no fathers. Apparently they couldn’t decide between having a male role model present or eliminating any possibility for domestic violence, which I thought rather sad that they were the choices.

When I leave work or walk outside of my house for any reason I have children yelling out my name and asking me to play! In chichewa all “r’s” are essentially replaced by an “l”, which is not only a speech pathologists nightmare, but makes my name “tamala”

Some of their names are so bizarre, from chisomo, taquilla, koomkan, mwayi, mpaso compared with ruth, loz, wilson, john, steve, paul and then the very interesting names like blessing, noel, gift, patience, goodwill, innocent, happy and trouble (who is a very polite and well behaved little boy!)

Loz, positively melted my heart. Everyone is shy initially until you say hello, lots of them take some time to warm up to you, as long as you make the first move it is ok. But not loz. She is just older than 2, and I hear this little hello hello hello and looked over to see a beautiful little girl running towards me with her arms outstretched, she just jumped into my arms, and didn’t leave my side until dinner time. She constantly touches my face and arms and hair, she is just amazed. I am hoping to attach a photo of her so you can see for yourself how cute she is… as are all the children! I’m amazed at how few photos I have taken, but there is also not often the opportunity, I am trying very hard to not be a tourist, so it will take some time to get the photos that I want..!!

Something I was thinking about today actually….. everyone that I know could play a massive role here at the village in some way, there really is a place for everyone! whose interested? Hehe!

The sunset is more beautiful than I have ever seen, and every night the same! Amazing!! A giant big red African sun which glows from the film of smoke and dust over the horizon. Just before 6 in the evening the light is breathtaking, everything just beautiful.

I have made a new friend with a girl next door to me who is taking me to a whole lot of different churches over the next few weeks. Very amazing story how I met her, just perfect timing when I really needed a friend! She laughs and laughs and laughs all the time! I love it!

The people are so joyful. The amount of laughing that I have done in the last few days has amazed me. They really know how to laugh, I mean laugh laugh, not chuckle or a quick and very occasional smile and amusement in something. Just finding joy in things and celebrating together over things that make you happy. I feel silly describing it, cos im not sure I am explaining it right. At work there is just laughter and story telling and joy all the time. But from people who have in no way lived without pain and sadness.

Maybe because they have lived through such hard and hurtful experiences they have learnt to be thankful and find joy in the simplest of things and in day to day activities. I think it’s a big dose of perspective, priorities and most importantly hope
One of the most common questions in first getting to know someone is to share about your family, to ask if you are married and how many children you have. I simply hate asking this question now, as the number of times that young women have shared yes I was married, my husband died last year, or yes I am married, and we had 4 children but now we have only two. Or I had 3 brothers and 1 sister, now only 2 brothers. Its just so very common. And its just so very heartbreaking. But they take it in their stride. So far I have been so inspired by peoples attitudes.
I have started work, but so far I have done pretty much nothing! It has been holidays and the normal program hasn’t been on, but its been a great chance to meet everyone and build relationships with people, I am quickly learning Malawi time… There are no appointments in Malawi, there is only morning, afternoon, and evening. If someone does make a time or agree on a time, then you allow an hour or two either side. You have to know how to sit and chat and just enjoy doing nothing or enjoy doing things slowly! FINE WIH ME!!! Love it!

Oh wow. How long was that! I’m sorry it was so scattered! Just so many new things to share. Im going to try and attach some photos… we’ll see how we go!

Till next time
tionana

Tamala (hehe)