Apart from finding an awesome trip, I felt mostly annoyed this past week. The DHL didn’t arrive until Friday, meaning no mid-week callage with Joe. But it was nice once it did arrive. Wednesday was an insanely long day. We got out of the door a bit late, and then everything just took forever. The community-based org was really far away, and then we made a huge giant circle to two villages that were far apart. In fact, we noted that the second village was actually much closer to the nearer CBOs in that area… which meant we had to go all the way back far out to drop the CBO guy off at the end of the day. Super lame. Also we were doing the diaries + discussion arm for both groups, which is the longest condition. So we didn’t get back until almost 5, meaning I couldn’t check my email or do anything productive in the afternoon.
One hilarious thing that happened though was that on the way to the second village, we passed by all these kids who shouted in greeting, “How much?” The girls just cracked up and went on to repeat the phrase all week. Apparently, this was how the kids thought people said hello in English.
Wednesday may have also been the day I woke up and there was no water. I thought at first the toilet was busted, because the sink was working, but that was just temporary until the lines were emptied. Lame. I guess it adds variety from the usual routine of no power.
A major theme of the week was how to deal with the fact that the driver, who is a nice guy I have no interest in getting into trouble, was roughly doubling the mileage through some sort of driving shenanigans between when he left us one afternoon and picked me up the next morning. I suspect that perhaps he was running a little taxi service on afternoons when we returned early. Anyway, the girls said I should call the company. I had the office manager bug them, since she negotiated the contract with them. I suspect that this is common practice and that the company does not really discourage it, but will not charge for the extra if someone notices. On Friday, I just told the driver that the office wanted me to track miles each day and not by week. Of course, there’s still an issue with me paying for fuel and that being insanely expensive. But to a certain extent, I don’t care to fuss too much because it’s not even my money. Still, I don’t like the dishonesty. I was glad the girls agreed with me, so I didn’t feel like some sort of stingy foreign bitch.
It hasn’t rained in weeks, and the air has gotten a bit ooky. Between the dust, smoke from trash and maize husk fires, and car pollution, things have been a bit hazy.
One thing I noticed weeks ago but I think neglected to mention is that the sun is mostly north during the day and the stars look all wrong. Whoa, southern hemisphere.
I obtained a rod of sugarcane and a bag of groundnuts this past week, which I have been enjoying. I finished the sugarcane today. It was pretty thick, so the skin was hard to get off… I generally peeled it off with a knife because I didn’t want to break my poor teeth. Once you get the outside off, the rest is pretty easy. And tasty. It tastes a bit like watermelon, which is a testament to how much sugar is in watermelon. G, the office driver, told me that when he was in Blantyre with K earlier in the week, he saw a place that makes sugarcane juice so you can just drink it. It kind of takes the fun out of it (fun being doing something to stave off the mindnumbing boredom of living here), but I can see how it provides more immediate gratification. I still have lots of groundnuts. They’re nice and rooty and covered in soil. Not quite what you get at a baseball game.
I also ordered dinner Friday night, as I was really hungry. I got chambo, which is a type of tilapia from the lake, not to be confused with chamba, which also comes from the lake area, but which is pot. It was quite tasty and came with rice, vegetables, and a cole slaw that was actually really tasty.
Saturday was fucking annoying. I thought there might be fun happening, but K didn’t have her phone with her and never called me. Instead I went to the police station. Some cop came by on Friday while I was at work to say I should go over there because they had some guys. I thought perhaps they had recovered some of my stuff. But, no, they just had a bunch of guys they’d arrested for robbery in City Centre and wanted to see if any of them had robbed me. At first they tried to tell me that no one was around who was dealing with the case, so I should come back early Monday morning. I explained that I had no transport that early and I had taken a taxi over extra special for them. They found a CID officer, and so he got like 8 guys and lined them up in this weird outside hallway that reeked of urine. They sat up against the wall and I just stood in front of them and looked at them. There were two that maybe could be the guy, one of whom didn’t seem to want to look at me like the others. But he also appeared to be the youngest and was probably scared shitless about the whole thing. There was no way I was going to be able to positively identify any of them. Without any kind of evidence linking someone to me, I’m not just going to identify someone, because there’s just no way for me to remember accurately enough. The guy who robbed me was really just about as generic a young man as you can get. The CID officer said if they caught anyone else, they’d let me know, but I wanted to tell him not to bother… it’s a waste of time for me to try to identify someone without other evidence. So I left feel grumpy and depressed about the whole thing.
I got on a minibus and went to town. I had run into my jewelry-selling friends during the week, and they’d given me a couple of bracelets as “gifts” with the mutual acknowledgement that I’d probably be buying a few more items before I leave. I was hoping not to run into them because of my sour mood. I got off the bus further down than they usually hang out and planned to check out a street I hadn’t yet investigated. But I hadn’t gotten 50 feet before they came up to me. Ugh. I hoped if I humored them for a while they would eventually take the hint and leave (I kept mentioning things I intended to do that day), but they would not just go away. Eventually I just decided to chat with them and not fuss about it, but then eventually they broke out their wares. They wanted me to take some of it back to the US, and then once I sold it I could wire them the money. I had already suggested that there might be stores or websites that would open a larger market to them, but they didn’t seem to hear me. They also didn’t seem to hear me when I noted that they hemp bracelets and stuff they wanted me to take were not going to be easy for me to move, unlike the nicer beaded stuff they had. Finally, I was like, guys, I’m not a salesperson and I have my own crap to deal with this summer, I don’t have time to try to sell things you give me to take back. After a while they relented and then tried to sell me some things. I let this go on for a while as I felt like I probably did want a few more items, but the whole process of buying things here fucking annoys me. First the seller goes on about what a good price you’re getting because you’re friends and a nice person. Then a price gets quoted that isn’t that amazing at all. And then what? I’m supposed to bargain, apparently. But I was hot, tired, thirsty, uninterested, and there were ants crawling on me, not to mention I wasn’t really carrying a lot of money, so finally I was like, I’m leaving. The whole thing was just so annoying. I’m just so tired of being a means to an end for people I interact with here. It’s almost worse when people pretend they just want to hang out with you when really all they want is for you to do things for them. I don’t mind helping if it’s not incredibly burdensome, but there’s no way I’m going bring back a bunch of stuff to the US that no one I know has wanted since they were 12 and spend a lot of time trying to sell it. If they were willing to send me along with good stuff, I could easily help them; I don’t blame them for wanting to hang onto the better stuff, but come on. It was all just annoying.
So Sunday I just felt really annoyed. I hadn’t managed to do anything productive or fun in town, like get postcards or groceries or just sit in a nice restaurant and be fucking left alone. But I decided to venture back for groceries. I didn’t run into them, I got food and wine, and while I was waiting for the minibus, I ran into the office driver, G! G is really awesome. He’s the first person I met here when he got me from the airport, and he’s just always great. He manages to help me out without making me feel inept or awkward, which few here have been able to accomplish. He suggested we grab a minibus going the other way so I could get my bus at the main depot and be assured a seat; apparently full ones also sometimes bypass the shopping area. He had been at working cleaning out the car because he’s driving someone to Salima tomorrow morning ass early. It put me in a good mood to see someone I liked, and there was a cute little girl on the minibus who grinned at me the whole way home, and I actually managed to get the minibus to stop at my road, so it was a great trip and made me feel loads better.
I’ve been watching a lot of BBC Food. I think I find it way more fascinating since I have no kitchen. It makes me want to cook exciting things this summer. My diet here has just been lousy, and I want to totally detox once I get back. It’s funny, though, because there are shows devoted to desserts and fatty meat plates and these things, but then there’s this one show called “You Are What You Eat” on fatties who need to diet. I watched one with this mother and daughter who were both giant and drank a tank of alcohol a week and ate all kinds of hangover fried crap. The fascist nutritionist woman took samples of their “poos” and had this whole hilarious conversation with them about how she’d looked at their poos and they smelled awful and were the worst poos she’d ever come into contact with. So funny. Brits are great.
Monday after being in the field I went to the tour company place to pay for my trip. But, right now it appears I’m the only person signed up for it and there needs to be 4 people to go, so they guy suggested I wait. I will be super bummed if this doesn’t happen. I can go to Zambia for four days for the same price around the same dates and then maybe add a trip to the lake. But I really prefer to see more of Malawi while I’m here. But there’s still lots of time, so maybe people will sign up. I hope so. It’s like the one thing I really wanted to do that would make this trip fun.
I got a bunch of sound files from my friends at school, which was nice. The plan was to send something shortly after I got mugged, but it was right at the end of the school year so it took a few weeks. :) But it was nice to hear people’s voices. Only 3 more weeks until I return!
It looks like I’m going to go camping this weekend at the lake, which is good. Gives me something to do and then I’ll definitely get to see the lake if my trip doesn’t work out. I still have to look at some other options.
Showing posts with label Chichewa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chichewa. Show all posts
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Donors wanted
Tuesday the most exciting thing that happened was that I figured out I could connect to the printer in my office using a USB cable, thereby bypassing the network, since I can’t seem to connect that way. It seems to confuse the printer a little bit and takes a while to switch back to accepting jobs from people on the network, but people seem to be able to deal with it so far.
Wednesday was the first official day of data collection. We got out the door in good time, but then things slowed us down. People’s didn’t have a bottle opener (“But you sell bottles!” I told one of the employees), so we had to stop at Likuni market and wander around until we found one. Then the CBO head was late because he’d gone to town to pay for an examination fee and was taking the minibus back. It’s too bad we didn’t know that, since we, like, came from town and could have picked him up there. But S and I talked to a woman from the CBO about how undereducated girls are, because as soon as a family is short on school fees they pull the girls out of school. Lame. It’s yet another big issue that makes me wonder why I’m exerting energies on a radio program; then again, this is an issue that can be partly addressed through a communication campaign, so I guess I shouldn’t rag on my project too much.
The CBO head arrived and then we drove for about a million years down a dirt road all the way to Kamuzu Dam and beyond. I have to say, though, both villages were up above this green valley and the view was gorgeous. I feel like I just relaxed in paradise all day. In the morning, we had men listening to the radio diaries. That was fine, and then it was time for interviews and I went to the truck to get drinks. When I returned, all the men who were not being interviewed were sitting around reading these HIV booklets we’d brought for folks. I thought, oh, how nice they have something to read while they wait, but then I thought, oh crap, HIV booklets! Hello, they haven’t been interviewed yet. I don’t think it matters terribly, but I was peeved about it for a while. I got myself unpeeved before mentioning it to S, and she totally got it right away and said that we should hand them out after. Yeah, no kidding.
The other thing that peeved me in the morning was that I’d only put 2 boxes of cookies in the carton instead of 4, so each group had to share one measly box of cookies. Like I don’t already feel enough like an asshole for not having real study incentives.
The afternoon village was women, listening to the program and then having a discussion. It seemed to go well, and the women interacted even though one was more talkative. She was particularly funny, making me sad that I can’t understand any of the jokes here because I only know like 15 words of Chichewa. All in all, the day seemed to go very well. We dropped off the CBO head and went downtown so I could hit the money bureau again. As if getting a ton of money in 500 kwacha stacks isn’t bad enough, they only had 200s. I really could roll around in the stuff. I ran into my pals George and Brian as I headed back to the car and told them about getting mugged. They keep saying I should go up to the lake and they’ll be my guides some weekend, but I just can’t convince myself that’s a good idea, even though a lot of perfectly nice folks do that kind of freelance guiding for tourists.
Back at the office I furiously checked email and printed surveys in my half hour before going home. If we ever get back too late to do that I’m either going to have to stay late and get a taxi home or come in really early the next day. I thought about trying to come in Saturday to work, but I think I volunteered myself to go to the one-day training for the household survey interviewers before they take off for the districts on Sunday, which is work that turns out not to help me at all. I feel like I should go, though, since I was at the rest of the training, and R isn’t around for this one. At some point I desperately need to go grocery shopping because I have no food at all.
Wednesday I had three new food experiences. One I actually didn’t quite experience yet, but I figured out a curiosity I’d had. I’ve seen people on the road doing something that looked like eating big sticks, which I thought seemed odd. Turns out that they are actually peeling the outside off with their teeth, because the inside is this fibrous material that gets waterlogged, and so people suck the water out of it. I figured that this was an easy way to get water on the go, like the water bottle of Malawi. Turns out? It's sugarcane! So now I really have to try some. Everyone thought my excitement about this was really funny, since people grow the stuff for personal use pretty much everywhere. The second thing was ground nuts. A guy came over with what looked like a big pile of weeds with peanuts dangling on the ends as roots. The nuts themselves were more rooty than nutty, and I think they’d be better roasted. The third thing was cooked pumpkin. The secretary took one of the pumpkins home and brought me some that she’d cooked. It was darn good. I just ate it, I didn’t put anything on it. It was a pleasing thing to scarf down as I was scurrying around at the end of the day.
Thursday we were mega fast and were back at the office by 2:30. It was awesome. I had time to print surveys for Friday and check my email a bit and then I told Joe to call me when he came online at 4. I hadn’t talked to him on the phone since I got mugged, so it was great to talk to him in better spirits. He’s sending me another phone he got from a friend, so I will be hooked up again next Tuesday or so.
I left work and there was no lift, so I took the minibus with the secretary. It took forever to get one that wasn’t jammed full, and it was getting dark when I arrived home, to my displeasure. I really had no food, but I had one package of ramen, and a migraine was brewing. I grabbed the water kettle to fill it, and the power went out. Fuck. I ate a candy bar, but it didn’t help, so I just laid around in bed until the lights returned and I could eat. I felt much better.
I’ve been feeling a little irked while being out with the research crew. I don’t expect them to speak English the entire time I’m around since I’m the only one who doesn’t speak Chichewa, but I wish they’d let me in on the conversation a little bit here and there. You know, like every hour or so give me a sentence or two summary of what’s going on. Sometimes based on the little I do understand I suspect that I’m being mocked, but maybe I’m just paranoid. Talking to Joe Thursday he said that he expected that around halfway through my trip as I am, I’d be really into being here, and maybe when I get back I’d miss it here. I don’t really think that’s going to be the case. I’m not really in love with this place. It’s okay for a visit, but I don’t think I’ll be eager to come back.
Today the CBO guy, M, that was our guide brought with him a list of things that the group would like to have to do more in the community, for my reference if I can help find donors. It reads as follows:
PROBLEMS MASUNA FACED AS A CHARITY ORGANIZATION
1) Lack of Child Based Community Care (CBCC): as a result, children/orphan learn(?) on the ground (I guess that means no school? I’m not sure. Anyway, every group that does orphan care lacks enough money to really do it well).
2) Lack of entertainment materials such as football, netball, basketball that can make our youth busy instead of indulging into bad behaviour.
3) We have resources in our community or catchment area such as land/dambo that we can cultivate and doing wintercropping but we are failed due to lack of agricultural inputs ie seeds, fertilizer, treadle pumps.
4) Lack of real income generating activity that can make our charity organization to be sustainable. (I was telling the guy that while some of these needs are easy to fill, I have no idea how you take a society where no one has money to buy things from anyone else and make the economy work… it seems like a lot of money has to be infused and jobs created all at once, and you need a stronger government or private sector for that).
5) We have a big catchment area; as a results, we failed to visit some areas due to inadequate transport, ie bicycles or motorcycles.
6) Difficult to transport our clients (people with HIV, from what I can tell) to the nearest hospitals due to lack of ambulance bicycles.
In addition to this list, M introduced me to an older man in the village whose legs are all screwed up from polio. He would like a bicycle; they have these ones here that work by hand crank for people in his situation. He currently repairs shoes but only gets like 2 MK per pair for that, which is way less than a penny. He wants to open a food shop. I think getting him the bicycle is easy enough, but I don’t know that it will help him make any more money. There are plenty of able-bodied people that can’t find work around. If people are only paying him 2 kwacha to repair their shoes, there is a bigger issue here than him not being able to get around as much as he’d like.
So, being here has made me see that there are lots of little things that people would like to make life easier. But there are major systemic problems that require smart solutions that can help whole communities get on their feet. It’s good to know about these things, even if currently I can only think of ways to address the small stuff. Maybe by putting these issues out there also, someone with more resources or ideas will come upon them.
Wednesday was the first official day of data collection. We got out the door in good time, but then things slowed us down. People’s didn’t have a bottle opener (“But you sell bottles!” I told one of the employees), so we had to stop at Likuni market and wander around until we found one. Then the CBO head was late because he’d gone to town to pay for an examination fee and was taking the minibus back. It’s too bad we didn’t know that, since we, like, came from town and could have picked him up there. But S and I talked to a woman from the CBO about how undereducated girls are, because as soon as a family is short on school fees they pull the girls out of school. Lame. It’s yet another big issue that makes me wonder why I’m exerting energies on a radio program; then again, this is an issue that can be partly addressed through a communication campaign, so I guess I shouldn’t rag on my project too much.
The CBO head arrived and then we drove for about a million years down a dirt road all the way to Kamuzu Dam and beyond. I have to say, though, both villages were up above this green valley and the view was gorgeous. I feel like I just relaxed in paradise all day. In the morning, we had men listening to the radio diaries. That was fine, and then it was time for interviews and I went to the truck to get drinks. When I returned, all the men who were not being interviewed were sitting around reading these HIV booklets we’d brought for folks. I thought, oh, how nice they have something to read while they wait, but then I thought, oh crap, HIV booklets! Hello, they haven’t been interviewed yet. I don’t think it matters terribly, but I was peeved about it for a while. I got myself unpeeved before mentioning it to S, and she totally got it right away and said that we should hand them out after. Yeah, no kidding.
The other thing that peeved me in the morning was that I’d only put 2 boxes of cookies in the carton instead of 4, so each group had to share one measly box of cookies. Like I don’t already feel enough like an asshole for not having real study incentives.
The afternoon village was women, listening to the program and then having a discussion. It seemed to go well, and the women interacted even though one was more talkative. She was particularly funny, making me sad that I can’t understand any of the jokes here because I only know like 15 words of Chichewa. All in all, the day seemed to go very well. We dropped off the CBO head and went downtown so I could hit the money bureau again. As if getting a ton of money in 500 kwacha stacks isn’t bad enough, they only had 200s. I really could roll around in the stuff. I ran into my pals George and Brian as I headed back to the car and told them about getting mugged. They keep saying I should go up to the lake and they’ll be my guides some weekend, but I just can’t convince myself that’s a good idea, even though a lot of perfectly nice folks do that kind of freelance guiding for tourists.
Back at the office I furiously checked email and printed surveys in my half hour before going home. If we ever get back too late to do that I’m either going to have to stay late and get a taxi home or come in really early the next day. I thought about trying to come in Saturday to work, but I think I volunteered myself to go to the one-day training for the household survey interviewers before they take off for the districts on Sunday, which is work that turns out not to help me at all. I feel like I should go, though, since I was at the rest of the training, and R isn’t around for this one. At some point I desperately need to go grocery shopping because I have no food at all.
Wednesday I had three new food experiences. One I actually didn’t quite experience yet, but I figured out a curiosity I’d had. I’ve seen people on the road doing something that looked like eating big sticks, which I thought seemed odd. Turns out that they are actually peeling the outside off with their teeth, because the inside is this fibrous material that gets waterlogged, and so people suck the water out of it. I figured that this was an easy way to get water on the go, like the water bottle of Malawi. Turns out? It's sugarcane! So now I really have to try some. Everyone thought my excitement about this was really funny, since people grow the stuff for personal use pretty much everywhere. The second thing was ground nuts. A guy came over with what looked like a big pile of weeds with peanuts dangling on the ends as roots. The nuts themselves were more rooty than nutty, and I think they’d be better roasted. The third thing was cooked pumpkin. The secretary took one of the pumpkins home and brought me some that she’d cooked. It was darn good. I just ate it, I didn’t put anything on it. It was a pleasing thing to scarf down as I was scurrying around at the end of the day.
Thursday we were mega fast and were back at the office by 2:30. It was awesome. I had time to print surveys for Friday and check my email a bit and then I told Joe to call me when he came online at 4. I hadn’t talked to him on the phone since I got mugged, so it was great to talk to him in better spirits. He’s sending me another phone he got from a friend, so I will be hooked up again next Tuesday or so.
I left work and there was no lift, so I took the minibus with the secretary. It took forever to get one that wasn’t jammed full, and it was getting dark when I arrived home, to my displeasure. I really had no food, but I had one package of ramen, and a migraine was brewing. I grabbed the water kettle to fill it, and the power went out. Fuck. I ate a candy bar, but it didn’t help, so I just laid around in bed until the lights returned and I could eat. I felt much better.
I’ve been feeling a little irked while being out with the research crew. I don’t expect them to speak English the entire time I’m around since I’m the only one who doesn’t speak Chichewa, but I wish they’d let me in on the conversation a little bit here and there. You know, like every hour or so give me a sentence or two summary of what’s going on. Sometimes based on the little I do understand I suspect that I’m being mocked, but maybe I’m just paranoid. Talking to Joe Thursday he said that he expected that around halfway through my trip as I am, I’d be really into being here, and maybe when I get back I’d miss it here. I don’t really think that’s going to be the case. I’m not really in love with this place. It’s okay for a visit, but I don’t think I’ll be eager to come back.
Today the CBO guy, M, that was our guide brought with him a list of things that the group would like to have to do more in the community, for my reference if I can help find donors. It reads as follows:
PROBLEMS MASUNA FACED AS A CHARITY ORGANIZATION
1) Lack of Child Based Community Care (CBCC): as a result, children/orphan learn(?) on the ground (I guess that means no school? I’m not sure. Anyway, every group that does orphan care lacks enough money to really do it well).
2) Lack of entertainment materials such as football, netball, basketball that can make our youth busy instead of indulging into bad behaviour.
3) We have resources in our community or catchment area such as land/dambo that we can cultivate and doing wintercropping but we are failed due to lack of agricultural inputs ie seeds, fertilizer, treadle pumps.
4) Lack of real income generating activity that can make our charity organization to be sustainable. (I was telling the guy that while some of these needs are easy to fill, I have no idea how you take a society where no one has money to buy things from anyone else and make the economy work… it seems like a lot of money has to be infused and jobs created all at once, and you need a stronger government or private sector for that).
5) We have a big catchment area; as a results, we failed to visit some areas due to inadequate transport, ie bicycles or motorcycles.
6) Difficult to transport our clients (people with HIV, from what I can tell) to the nearest hospitals due to lack of ambulance bicycles.
In addition to this list, M introduced me to an older man in the village whose legs are all screwed up from polio. He would like a bicycle; they have these ones here that work by hand crank for people in his situation. He currently repairs shoes but only gets like 2 MK per pair for that, which is way less than a penny. He wants to open a food shop. I think getting him the bicycle is easy enough, but I don’t know that it will help him make any more money. There are plenty of able-bodied people that can’t find work around. If people are only paying him 2 kwacha to repair their shoes, there is a bigger issue here than him not being able to get around as much as he’d like.
So, being here has made me see that there are lots of little things that people would like to make life easier. But there are major systemic problems that require smart solutions that can help whole communities get on their feet. It’s good to know about these things, even if currently I can only think of ways to address the small stuff. Maybe by putting these issues out there also, someone with more resources or ideas will come upon them.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Cha bwino
I had another thought of Chichewa I can actually remember. Cha bwino is basically the same as esta bueno. It really means "good thing," but same timing.
Week 2: Faster than the first
First off, thanks to another benefactor, Jenn, for adding to my sister’s contribution of a Flickr pro account. I’m good for two years now!
Monday was quite busy! I went to my meeting, where we made lots of changes to the survey, which I then had to actually make in the document. Then I went to lunch with my advisor and one of the women in charge of the project at this place that was totally the Malawi version of every fast food place in the US that makes wraps and that kind of thing. Heavy on the chicken, because that’s the most popular meat here. It was the ultimate in non culture shock, but they did make it pleasantly spicy, and there was a bottle of peri-peri (hot spicy herb sauce that is way better than Tabasco) for dipping the French fries (chips) in.
We then trekked out to the workshop to start going over the survey with the interviewers. The place was in the southern part of town, and we drove down this road that had tons of furniture along it! Like, tons of booths with bed frames and poofy couches and chairs. Some of the booths sold coffins; apparently not too long ago pretty much all the places along there sold coffins. Apparently there is less demand for coffins, or some people decided to move their skills to furniture. The poofy couches are all kinds of wonderful garish colors like deep fuchsia velvet. I’ll try to take a photo of the lobby furniture at the hotel, which is more of a gold color.
The workshop was interesting. We had both the Chichewa version of the survey (which was unfortunately at least 2 iterations old in terms of numbering and coding, and also we had new questions) and the English version, and we were going through the instructions in both languages. People would pipe up with questions and issues with the translation, and it was lively, considering how boring it actually was. We didn’t even get through the first section of the survey, but it’ll go faster tomorrow.
I used the minibus to go home for the first time Monday. The new secretary lives up the street from me, so she showed me the ropes. We stood on the side of the road until an Area 12 bus pulled up (that’s the area just past 11). Some people got out, but there were still many people in there. Tinkhani and I crammed into a seat that normally would fit one. Another couple of people crammed into the seat in front of us. All of these seats were rickety, which served to be able to move them a bit to cram more people in more efficiently, but made sitting kind of precarious until everyone got in to balance them. Once all the seats were full, like three more guys, including the money collector, just kind of crouched inside by the sliding door. We stopped at the gas station to fuel up, all crammed in. A few people got off south of City Centre. Then we got off right at my street. Tinkhani told me that when we got off, they said that one munthu and one mazungu were getting off. She said that munthu means person, and mazungu means white, like white folks aren’t people. I thought that was kind of funny, even though I guess it’s probably totally offensive.
So, the minibuses aren’t so difficult, even if they are insane. They’re a very efficient way to move people around the city!
I got home Monday to hear the news that one person had been killed in two shootings at VA Tech. After about an hour, the press conference happened and the numbers shot to 20+ only to go above 30. It was definitely one of those freaky news-watching experiences, esp with the time difference and all this happening during the evening news here.
The international news coverage of this incident has been really interesting. In addition to CNN, which was mostly US feed for the first couple of days, I watched BBC and Sky. These guys are really the liberal media! BBC had a guy on that was basically like, yeah, the US has lots of crime and we’re sadly kind of getting used to these kinds of shootings. Both networks have been talking about gun control in the US in this mystified kind of way about the culture of gun rights, with a tone that this should *obviously* lead to some kind of serious discussion about guns with a realization that it probably won’t. The CNN feed, on the other hand, has mostly focused on the need to improve security on campuses, with discussions even of things like random bag searches and metal detectors. Yeesh.
And then of course there was the whole news of like 200 people being blown up in Iraq, but somehow that seems less worthy of attention because it’s become so common. I think the shock over the VA tech incident has been about right; it’s our lack of shock over these other deaths that is a problem.
Joe called late Monday night to say he was getting calls from the media to comment on the story. He taught during winter term and will teach during summer term a course on school and youth violence, which includes a class on rampage school shootings. So he’s something of an expert. He wrote a column in the Sun for Thursday, and Baltimore folks can see him on WBAL Saturday morning. I’ve had the strange mix of feeling proud that Joe gets to talk about something he knows about and sadness that this expertise is useful at such a terrible time!
Tuesday, I took the minibus to the office. It picked me up right near the Villa, and it wasn’t even full! But soon it was, as they pretty much make stops until it’s crammed beyond belief. I was sitting in a seat shoulder to shoulder, and we still fit another person (a girl who appeared to be at the workshop, oddly… I should have just followed her all the way in). The driver came to pick me up from the officce and told me he’d gone to my house first… oops. People keep telling the poor drivers different things, and they end up with the wrong directions. He took me to the workshop, where it seems they had barely started.
Listening to people speak about half the time in Chichewa was interesting. I didn’t really pick much up, but it’s funny how the patterns of speech are similar and different from us. There’s much more coordination of responses like yes and no (yes being a sort of affirmative sounding grunt, no being “ayi”) than there would be in a similar group in the US. But when there is discussion or joking around the cadences are similar. Actually, Chichewa reminds me of Spanish or Italian a little because the ways vowels and consonants alternate. But there are a lot more m, n, k and z sounds.
We went to lunch at this delicious Indian place that has several branches throughout Lilongwe. It’s good, but we ate there like every day this week, so I think I’m good for a while.
After more workshopping, Rajiv wanted to grab a beer after work. I’m not one to say no to beer, so I went with him and the driver to his hotel, which is much nicer than mine. We had a beer, but we weren’t exactly chillaxing because first we went through the survey to make cuts (it’s hugely long in English, which is even longer in Chichewa since there aren’t simple words for things like “never” and “feelings”). I grabbed a cab home; I expected to pay about $10, but it was more like $6, which I thought was a bargain. There are no meters in the cabs here, just negotiation. But the guy offered 1000 kwacha, and my hotel was kind of far, so I just didn’t even bother to bargain.
Wednesday morning, the driver came to get me to take me to the workshop. We finished going through the survey in the morning, and then in the afternoon we went out to a village called Maenje or Mnchezi, not sure, in the Traditional Authority (kind of like a county) of Chitukula. It was just past these giant maize silos that are near the airport. The juxtaposition of the giant shiny metal silos with the short scrubby mud color of the town was quite something. I took a few photos of the place. I was the most popular visitor; my advisor, being Nepali, has somewhat darker skin and was less obviously out-of-place than I was. I’m pretty dang white. So all the little kids stared and followed me around like I was from another planet. They were fascinated. I helped G through an interview, taking notes along the way about things we needed to change or reword. I thought the village was kind of awesome, but maybe that’s because most of the buildings were tiny like me. They were close together and laid out very differently from modern towns.
Last night I watched the news and when it got boring, I tried to get inspired to do something. But instead I fell asleep at around 7:30, with all the lights on, for about two hours. Then I got up and went to bed. Seriously lazy. But when you get up at 6:30 every day, there are limited ways to get in 11 hours of sleep. Thursday was more workshop, to see how interviews went and to make final changes. Today I’m back in the office and trying to catch up on all my email, blogging, and photo postage.
Now that the survey is going forth, I will turn to working on my study. In the course of visiting the village, I realized that you don’t have to go very far from Lilongwe to be in a really different place, and maybe I can do my study in the outskirts. This has a major advantage budgetwise, in that we can leave and come back every day, so there will be no accommodations to worry about. We have contacts in the surrounding areas, so I can get in touch with them to help me find rooms and help recruit. One disadvantage is that people are close enough to the city to get, like, every radio station, making it possible for them to have listened to the program, but I think that there’s probably so much competition that this is not a problem.
Speaking of the radio, I learned several useful Chichewa words while going through the survey this week. Wailesi is radio… it’s basically wireless pronounced the way they pronounce things here. Same with EZDI, which is AIDS. The ‘i' on the end is pretty silent… just a lift from the ‘s’ sound. Pologalamuyi is program; a lot of the time ‘l’ sounds like ‘r’, and they add vowels, so this crazy-looking word sounds pretty much like program. I have also learned that first person verbs start with ndi and second person is mu. I also learned that the way I say twenty is really twenny, which our translator mocked me for, as people in Malawi actually bother to pronounce t’s. Stop being a British colony already!
Okay, time to do some work before I knock off for the day.
Monday was quite busy! I went to my meeting, where we made lots of changes to the survey, which I then had to actually make in the document. Then I went to lunch with my advisor and one of the women in charge of the project at this place that was totally the Malawi version of every fast food place in the US that makes wraps and that kind of thing. Heavy on the chicken, because that’s the most popular meat here. It was the ultimate in non culture shock, but they did make it pleasantly spicy, and there was a bottle of peri-peri (hot spicy herb sauce that is way better than Tabasco) for dipping the French fries (chips) in.
We then trekked out to the workshop to start going over the survey with the interviewers. The place was in the southern part of town, and we drove down this road that had tons of furniture along it! Like, tons of booths with bed frames and poofy couches and chairs. Some of the booths sold coffins; apparently not too long ago pretty much all the places along there sold coffins. Apparently there is less demand for coffins, or some people decided to move their skills to furniture. The poofy couches are all kinds of wonderful garish colors like deep fuchsia velvet. I’ll try to take a photo of the lobby furniture at the hotel, which is more of a gold color.
The workshop was interesting. We had both the Chichewa version of the survey (which was unfortunately at least 2 iterations old in terms of numbering and coding, and also we had new questions) and the English version, and we were going through the instructions in both languages. People would pipe up with questions and issues with the translation, and it was lively, considering how boring it actually was. We didn’t even get through the first section of the survey, but it’ll go faster tomorrow.
I used the minibus to go home for the first time Monday. The new secretary lives up the street from me, so she showed me the ropes. We stood on the side of the road until an Area 12 bus pulled up (that’s the area just past 11). Some people got out, but there were still many people in there. Tinkhani and I crammed into a seat that normally would fit one. Another couple of people crammed into the seat in front of us. All of these seats were rickety, which served to be able to move them a bit to cram more people in more efficiently, but made sitting kind of precarious until everyone got in to balance them. Once all the seats were full, like three more guys, including the money collector, just kind of crouched inside by the sliding door. We stopped at the gas station to fuel up, all crammed in. A few people got off south of City Centre. Then we got off right at my street. Tinkhani told me that when we got off, they said that one munthu and one mazungu were getting off. She said that munthu means person, and mazungu means white, like white folks aren’t people. I thought that was kind of funny, even though I guess it’s probably totally offensive.
So, the minibuses aren’t so difficult, even if they are insane. They’re a very efficient way to move people around the city!
I got home Monday to hear the news that one person had been killed in two shootings at VA Tech. After about an hour, the press conference happened and the numbers shot to 20+ only to go above 30. It was definitely one of those freaky news-watching experiences, esp with the time difference and all this happening during the evening news here.
The international news coverage of this incident has been really interesting. In addition to CNN, which was mostly US feed for the first couple of days, I watched BBC and Sky. These guys are really the liberal media! BBC had a guy on that was basically like, yeah, the US has lots of crime and we’re sadly kind of getting used to these kinds of shootings. Both networks have been talking about gun control in the US in this mystified kind of way about the culture of gun rights, with a tone that this should *obviously* lead to some kind of serious discussion about guns with a realization that it probably won’t. The CNN feed, on the other hand, has mostly focused on the need to improve security on campuses, with discussions even of things like random bag searches and metal detectors. Yeesh.
And then of course there was the whole news of like 200 people being blown up in Iraq, but somehow that seems less worthy of attention because it’s become so common. I think the shock over the VA tech incident has been about right; it’s our lack of shock over these other deaths that is a problem.
Joe called late Monday night to say he was getting calls from the media to comment on the story. He taught during winter term and will teach during summer term a course on school and youth violence, which includes a class on rampage school shootings. So he’s something of an expert. He wrote a column in the Sun for Thursday, and Baltimore folks can see him on WBAL Saturday morning. I’ve had the strange mix of feeling proud that Joe gets to talk about something he knows about and sadness that this expertise is useful at such a terrible time!
Tuesday, I took the minibus to the office. It picked me up right near the Villa, and it wasn’t even full! But soon it was, as they pretty much make stops until it’s crammed beyond belief. I was sitting in a seat shoulder to shoulder, and we still fit another person (a girl who appeared to be at the workshop, oddly… I should have just followed her all the way in). The driver came to pick me up from the officce and told me he’d gone to my house first… oops. People keep telling the poor drivers different things, and they end up with the wrong directions. He took me to the workshop, where it seems they had barely started.
Listening to people speak about half the time in Chichewa was interesting. I didn’t really pick much up, but it’s funny how the patterns of speech are similar and different from us. There’s much more coordination of responses like yes and no (yes being a sort of affirmative sounding grunt, no being “ayi”) than there would be in a similar group in the US. But when there is discussion or joking around the cadences are similar. Actually, Chichewa reminds me of Spanish or Italian a little because the ways vowels and consonants alternate. But there are a lot more m, n, k and z sounds.
We went to lunch at this delicious Indian place that has several branches throughout Lilongwe. It’s good, but we ate there like every day this week, so I think I’m good for a while.
After more workshopping, Rajiv wanted to grab a beer after work. I’m not one to say no to beer, so I went with him and the driver to his hotel, which is much nicer than mine. We had a beer, but we weren’t exactly chillaxing because first we went through the survey to make cuts (it’s hugely long in English, which is even longer in Chichewa since there aren’t simple words for things like “never” and “feelings”). I grabbed a cab home; I expected to pay about $10, but it was more like $6, which I thought was a bargain. There are no meters in the cabs here, just negotiation. But the guy offered 1000 kwacha, and my hotel was kind of far, so I just didn’t even bother to bargain.
Wednesday morning, the driver came to get me to take me to the workshop. We finished going through the survey in the morning, and then in the afternoon we went out to a village called Maenje or Mnchezi, not sure, in the Traditional Authority (kind of like a county) of Chitukula. It was just past these giant maize silos that are near the airport. The juxtaposition of the giant shiny metal silos with the short scrubby mud color of the town was quite something. I took a few photos of the place. I was the most popular visitor; my advisor, being Nepali, has somewhat darker skin and was less obviously out-of-place than I was. I’m pretty dang white. So all the little kids stared and followed me around like I was from another planet. They were fascinated. I helped G through an interview, taking notes along the way about things we needed to change or reword. I thought the village was kind of awesome, but maybe that’s because most of the buildings were tiny like me. They were close together and laid out very differently from modern towns.
Last night I watched the news and when it got boring, I tried to get inspired to do something. But instead I fell asleep at around 7:30, with all the lights on, for about two hours. Then I got up and went to bed. Seriously lazy. But when you get up at 6:30 every day, there are limited ways to get in 11 hours of sleep. Thursday was more workshop, to see how interviews went and to make final changes. Today I’m back in the office and trying to catch up on all my email, blogging, and photo postage.
Now that the survey is going forth, I will turn to working on my study. In the course of visiting the village, I realized that you don’t have to go very far from Lilongwe to be in a really different place, and maybe I can do my study in the outskirts. This has a major advantage budgetwise, in that we can leave and come back every day, so there will be no accommodations to worry about. We have contacts in the surrounding areas, so I can get in touch with them to help me find rooms and help recruit. One disadvantage is that people are close enough to the city to get, like, every radio station, making it possible for them to have listened to the program, but I think that there’s probably so much competition that this is not a problem.
Speaking of the radio, I learned several useful Chichewa words while going through the survey this week. Wailesi is radio… it’s basically wireless pronounced the way they pronounce things here. Same with EZDI, which is AIDS. The ‘i' on the end is pretty silent… just a lift from the ‘s’ sound. Pologalamuyi is program; a lot of the time ‘l’ sounds like ‘r’, and they add vowels, so this crazy-looking word sounds pretty much like program. I have also learned that first person verbs start with ndi and second person is mu. I also learned that the way I say twenty is really twenny, which our translator mocked me for, as people in Malawi actually bother to pronounce t’s. Stop being a British colony already!
Okay, time to do some work before I knock off for the day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)