From Across the Globe

During my first week in Neno I was thrilled to find out that one of my colleagues had started an employee soccer club called the Neno Medicos.  The team is in a league with about seven other clubs in the area, and there are yearly tournaments.  Although the Medicos are no longer in this year’s tournament, the team continues to train and have weekly matches against the local teams.  Of course, I didn’t know all of this my first week, and was simply told that I could show up at the Chiconde secondary school around 5pm, and that I could play with the Medicos.  The first day I went, I didn’t know a single person, and quickly found out that most of the players didn’t speak any English.  Fortunately, the guys quickly invited me to jump-in and play.  Soccer is truly a universal game.

Since that time, I found out that, while the team was started by one of my American colleagues, he and the other hospital employees, myself included, often cannot make it to practice due to work.  I’ve been good about going at least twice a week.  However, since the team’s founding about a year ago, a group of local teenagers have joined and go to practice fairly consistently.  They are a nice group of kids, and I’m glad I have been able to meet them and spend time with them.  The Medicos have become a great way for the hospital and the community to interact.

Soccer, or Football I should say, is quite different here.  The fields are mostly dirt, generally uneven, although much flatter than any other patch of land you will find in the district, and the goals are generally made of three logs (basically regulation size).  Most of the local kids cannot afford shoes, and play barefoot or with a single shoe.  The guys have unbelievably tough feet.  The fields we play on are really not comfortable surfaces and are littered with rocks and holes.  The kids here also like to inflate the soccerballs until they are really hard and bouncy, which drives me a little nuts sometimes because the ball never settles and is just booted back-and-fourth in the air during games.

Since I’ve been here I’ve played in all three of our games.  We lost our first game to the Blue Stars, although we should have won.  The second game we lost to the Giants, in which we genuinely were pummeled, 5-1.  But, in our most recent game we won 2-0 and really played a great second half.

Our second game was, much like my first practice, a little bit of an overwhelming experience.  We played on a Saturday afternoon, immediately after a secondary school game.  The secondary school games are huge events, entire villages seem to show up.  When our game started there must have been around 200 people still watching,.  I got a few Azungu chants when I subbed in, talk about being the odd guy out.

Playing with the Medicos, I have had a couple other really memorable experiences, both on and off the field.  Our first game was played at the Blue Stars’ field, which I decided to bike to with one of my teammates/colleagues.  He owns a bike, but I had to rent a local ‘push-bike’, which are one speed cruisers with a padded seat on the back.  My teammates were jumping on the back of the bike all the way there, which was great, although the breaks on the bike didn’t work and the seat was falling off.  On the way home I gave my friend Tsotsi a ride home.  He is a local boy who has become our team equipment manager.  A very high spirited young guy who lugs around our equipment bag, a big duffle that is about his size.  We worked out a good system on the ride home where I yelled ‘seat’ each time the seat started to fall off and he would push it back into place.

Although I don’t know Tsotsi’s full story, nor am I sure this is the proper venue for details, I can say that he has lived a harder life than I could ever imagine.  I very much enjoy hanging out with him.  He has a great sense of humor, a lot of energy and is clearly knows what’s going on in Neno.  Just yesterday he showed me the best place to get a haircut, which is a little shack in the back of the market where you can get a buzz cut (They don’t do muzungu haircuts here).  Nevertheless, spending time with Tsotsi is also a very direct reminder of why I am here, how lucky I am to be here, and the goal I am working toward.

I apologize for the slow updates with the blog.  My first month here has been busy, and I have been trying to spend the bits of free time I have exploring Malawi.

Life in Neno is quite different than anything I have ever experienced.  Simply walking down the road always proves to be interesting.  At this point, many people in the area have learned my name.  Unfortunately, I have not learned all of their names, but I try.  I am staying in a small guesthouse in between two schools, the Chiconde primary and secondary school, and the Chiwalli school.  There are always hordes of children around my house, playing and singing songs.  In fact, many of the children seem to live in the Chiconde Primary school.  They stay up late at night singing energetic call and response songs, which I love to listen to as I walk home at night.

When motivated, I have been going for jogs around sunrise before heading to work.  I usually run to Donda village, which is a densely packed village of small straw-roofed huts.  Initially, my hope was that going early in the morning just after the sun had come up would be a quiet time in Neno, but most people already seem to be up and going.  The children do one of two things; they either line up and stare, or they wave and yell, ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, to practice the little bit of English they have learned.  I always get a few ‘Azungu’ (‘white person’) calls as well.  One morning a girl ran out from her house as I was going by, ran up next to me and tried to imitate me.  She certainly had the goofy white-guy jog down: knees up, fists pumping.  I slowed down and jogged through the village with her.  We were both laughing hysterically.

My experiences here with the local children will likely be some of the most memorable moments of my time in Neno.  About two weeks ago I was walking to the office when three children started following me.  They were laughing and talking in Chichewa, which I am still not very good with.  I said hi to them and asked them how their day was.  Eventually I arrived at the office and had to go inside, although the children seemed set on following me.  So, I said, “Tionana”, which means, ‘goodbye, see you later’, and waved my hand.  Apparently there was either something very funny about the way I said it, or I have been renamed, but every time that group of kids see me they yell “Tionana”.

I had a similar encounter a few days later when walking to the district assembly office.  Two children, a brother and sister were walking with their mother.  They ran right up to me and we started walking along the road together  I would guess they were about 5 years old.  As I made my way down the road towards the office they held my hand and trotted along with me, again chatting in Chichewa about who knows what.  Both kids were very amused when I bent down and hi-fived them.  When I arrived at the gait of the assembly building neither of the two children seemed to have any interest in leaving, and in fact, followed me right through the gate.  The guard smiled, apparently not worried about the young children coming into the district assembly office, but I decided it wasn’t a good idea to show up with two young children.  So, I tried saying goodbye and then asked the guard what was going on.  He said the boy and girl were refusing to leave.  At this point each child was holding onto one of my pant legs.  I reached down and took each of their hands and walked off in the direction their mother had gone.  Both seemed perfectly happy to be hanging out with me.  When I finally figured out which house their mother had gone to I went around the back and told her I needed to go.  She laughed and said the children wanted me to give them some things and didn’t want me to leave.  As I turned to go, the boy and girl each wrapped their arms around one of my legs and had to be literally pried-off by their mother, at which point they started sobbing.  A little confused and disappointed by the way things ended I headed back to work.

Over the last couple weeks I have also had the chance to drive through much of the Neno district for work and I’ve also biked and jogged around some of the local areas.  There are roughly 130,000 people in the district, which covers an area of land that I think is actually fairly small, but very mountainous.  Transportation always proves to be a challenge, and we haven’t even gotten to the rainy season, which I am told starts in November and lasts through February.  Traveling through the district, the terrain changes significantly, there are wide spread seemingly barren areas, lush patches located adjacent to the rivers, and patches of forest reserves (I will discuss why all the forests seem to be reserves in a later post).  Even the temperature varies greatly going from a place like Nsembe, which is located at up in the Kirk mountains, to the low lying areas such as Magaleta.  Much of the area I haven’t even explored yet, and I know everything will change when the rains come, so I have much to see.

The young children here warmly proclaim, “Hello”, “How are you” as I walk from place to place in Neno.  Many of them seem thrilled simply to see me and get very excited as I wave to them.  They are everywhere, and like all the Malawians I’ve met so far, are very warm and welcoming.  One aspect of Malawi that has amazed me since arriving is just how many people there are in such a small place.  In fact, I have difficulty thinking of any moments since I’ve been here where I did not see or hear other people.

After landing in Lilongwe, the capitol of Malawi, on the morning of August 1^st.  I set-off on the five and half hour trip down to Neno.  Driving through Lilongwe was far from what I had expected.  The city very spacious with mostly very low buildings.  I have heard that it was modeled after Pretoria when Malawi had ties with Apartheid South Africa.  The layout was designed to reduce the potential for riots and civil unrest.

We set-off from Lilongwe down the M1, Malawi’s main north-south highway, a one-lane tarmac.  The drive was both beautiful and startling.  It was my first experience in Africa, and my first experience in a developing country.  Development indicators use a range of data and formulas to show that Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, but one could easily come to the same conclusion passing through the countryside, which I am discovering is only a superficial glimpse into how hard life can be for Malawians.

We passed many people riding bikes and women carrying beautiful cloth-wrapped babies on their backs.  Eventually we made a stop at a road-side farm-stand where people were selling all sorts of produce, all of which looked great.  I recommend the carrots and grilled corn-on-the-cob.

As the sun was setting, after about three hours of driving, we pulled-off onto a dirt road that snaked through hills and valleys toward Neno.  Our four-wheel drive landcruiser rumbled over the rough dirt road, often having to come to a near stop to crawl over rocks and holes in the road.  This was definitely up there with one of the bumpiest drives I’ve taken, and certainly the only one that lasted near two hours.  However, I did get to see a lot, including the very odd baobab tree.  The landscape here is not what I expected.  The Neno region is mountainous, harsh and awkward with patches of forests and crop fields.  The land also seemed somewhat barren, very dry and dusty, although many people were clearly growing produce. 

We drove through many small villages with brick or mud walls and straw roofs.  People seemed be everywhere along the drive from the tarmac all the way to the remote Neno area.  The young kids all seemed to be up to something, either herding goats along the road or pushing a tire in front of their house.  They would turn and watch as we drove past.

As strange and new as my drive to Neno was, I was immediately welcomed into Neno upon arriving and feel very much at home.  The Malawians I have met are more warm and caring than I could have ever expected, which will undoubtedly be a future blog topic.  Thanks for reading. 

Graduation has come and gone and I am one week from departing for Malawi.  I have been hesitant to start a blog, or a journal for that matter, but here it goes.

Beginning August 1^st I will be volunteering in a health clinic in southern Malawi (Can be found on Google Earth, although shockingly the images are not very high res…).  I am extraordinarily excited to see Malawi and meet the people there.  I have high hopes of learning a little bit of Chichewa, the local language.

Malawi seems to be a country that rarely makes the news, and that most people, myself included, don’t know a great deal about.  Regardless, Malawi has a great deal to offer.  After all, the famous explorer/missionary/anti-slavery campaigner David Livingston spent time in what is now called Malawi.

I can start by giving a little bit of background about the country (just a little bit of what I’ve read), which I will surely elaborate on as I learn more.  Malawi, which was formerly known as Nyasaland, was a British colony, although prior to around 1889 the Portuguese had strong influences in much of the country.  Malawi remained a British colony until 1963, was declared a republic a few years later and Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda was declared “president for life”.  He remained in power for 33 years before the country became a democracy.  Since that time two democratically elected leaders have served, Bakili Muluzi and Bingu wa Mutharika.

Like many African countries, the slave trade and colonization had a devastating impact on Malawi, disrupting conventional social structures and agricultural practices.  I have read that in drought years, where communities would have normally been able to migrate or transition to alternative methods of food production, the slave trade and colonization made these practices impossible and famines ensued.

Following the end of colonization conditions there may have initially improved, but over the last 20 years things have gotten much worse.  The level of poverty has increased and life expectancy has fallen.  I don’t yet know enough about modern history and politics in Malawi to discuss the current situation.  I hope to learn more about this from talking with Malawians when I arrive.

During my time in Malawi I would like to get a much better understanding of Malawi’s history as I think it’s important to keep in mind when doing any kind of service.  Certainly the present state of affairs cannot be examined without understanding historical factors.  The long history of western involvement in Malawi, with many negative impacts, is in the front of my mind right now.

Anyways… I am really looking forward to learning more about Malawi and seeing the country, which I understand is absolutely beautiful.  I am about a week away from leaving and very much ready to go.

-Dave