Mango Sunrise

WIHTWH: Our guards

2009-07-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

We've been taking leave, bidding farewell, saying our goodbyes. When it's not past midnight on our last night of "good sleep" I'll download and let you listen to the very sweet poem Gabriel wrote for us. For now, here's just a few lines from the middle. It's really very sweet, and makes me laugh too.

...
And our Madam we really happy with her
She used to tell us stories about America
and even American soup is not strange to us.
Ho They have gone.
...

Also, this overheard through the kitchen windows:

Michael (who is engaged to be married in a month): "I consider God has done good things in my life because of knowing you. I thank God for you... (unintelligible)...

Andy: "You will remember me on your wedding night?!?"

M: "Yes, I will remember you on my wedding night."

A: (uncomfortable) "heh heh"

About last night I got really really really excited to come back to the land of plenty. Libraries. Bookstores. Cheese. Ice cream. Almonds. Mexican food. No gates, guards, "staff," or panic buttons screwed into the bed frame. Instead, new socks, big counters, my bright round Pyrex mixing bowls. Some new threads, some new music, some new toys. Fast internet. Purple mountain majesties, amber waves of grain, alabaster cities.

WIHTWH: Going to the lake

2009-07-11T02:33:00.000-07:00

Even though it means taking Praziquantel* three months later, it's still one of the funnest things to do in Malawi.

*I'll let you look up schisto (or bilharzia if you prefer) on your own; when I accidentally saw pictures in a Nature magazine right before we moved here, I just about kept us all in Idaho. I may have mentioned, worms were my greatest fear when we moved here. Seems sort of silly now. Even if we have them, which the kids at least probably have, we just treat ourselves every few months and it hasn't been that big a deal. We have taken the Praziquantel twice too, and it's not a nice drug. Only approved for animals in the US, though Andy tells me if schisto were a bigger problem in the developed world, undoubtedly there would be a more palatable way to treat it. Think HUGE pills--maybe the size of four or five Tylenol capsules, that make you dizzy and nauseated (rumour is, the more you're infected the worse you feel...I lay in bed and didn't move for four hours the last time I took it) (which is why I took it right before I went to bed last night) and the aftertaste it leaves lingers for hours, a bitter, oily, horrible thing. You have to really trust that invisible worms in your blood that want to live in your brain are worse.

Yeah. They're worse.

(Sorry, the temptation to brag about how crazy/dangerous/wild our experience has been is real. But really. See these pictures? Truth is, we're not that close to living on the edge, folks. There was the time last week we found the kids poking a little fat, square frog that seemed to be sweating drops of milky fluid on his back. Gabriel our guard informed us we should put the frog somewhere else, it's not sweat it's poison. That seemed pretty cool. But I mean, we have hobos, black widows, and rattlers back home.)

(Guess what else? BIG MOVES MAKE THIS MAMA STRESS OUT.)

Great Hair Day

2009-07-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

Andy mentioned Scout's hair a while back. She had been quiet for a while, didn't answer when I called her so I knew something was up. I found her at the end of the driveway working on her "fringe" with the little scissors. It was still very salvageable, but when I asked why she was snipping, she said, "I want to be dry."

"Like, bald?"

"Yes, bald."

It felt kind of dangerous and risky, like I might get caught breaking some big parenting rule or like I was revealing a secret of adulthood. It felt like I was passing down a rite of independent womanhood, of secret self-knowledge, of confident empowerment. I let her keep the scissors and keep working on her project.

This morning, I overheard Scout retelling the story to some visitors who hadn't seen her in a while. She finished her haircut story with, "And my mama said, 'Go for it!'"

Please, daughter, will you remember this for the next five, ten, and fifteen years?

(Break for toe inspection.)

(It feels so weird to hold a hank of hair unattached to your head!)

(Haircutting--hard to stop once you start.)

(She's willing to share her talent.)

(And how fun is it to show a new haircut to your friends?)

(She really did do it all, except for two snips in the back, "by her own". Brava!)

creme

2009-07-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

Last night of football. Brought cupcakes. Perks of playing on a women's team.

These pics from another time made cupcakes and creme. And found that two little sweet teeth had eaten the entire container of frosting leftovers on the sly, by themselves, in the deserted kitchen...

WIHTWH: you can go to the market or the market can come to you

2009-07-06T12:19:00.001-07:00

We're on the mop guy's route, but only once every two weeks or so. There is also a pot guy and a basket guy who know the kind of stuff we're likely to buy and pay us a visit every few weeks. At first it's kind of creepy feeling like your house has been staked out, and people know to knock on your gate. But you get over it and then notice how convenient it is to have this Malawi version of surprise Amazon deliveries come right to you.

Mops For Sale
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mops for sale 1.mp3 (1036 KB)

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Luke chapter 4.5

2009-07-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

And it came to pass he did head down to the shore as He had come so many times, crumbs of pale sand clinging to the dark hair of his ankles and toes. But this morning: discipleless, in silence, contemplative, combing the lumpy beach for smooth stones to skip.

And he is quietly delighted by the line of light separating from the dark sea waters; the rustle of ripe grass seeds heavy against each other, preaching in the dawn breeze; the rising sun lifting a continent of sound—warbled queries—from the beating breasts of fowls of the air, bright as a new coin rendered to Caesar.

And at his knee a hairy creature, a sincere canine, not worth mentioning by the Apostles, but true in the Wilderness, a steadfast and constant companion, who doth lift his eyes to the Master.

And Jesus, answering, saith unto him, “See here, the workmanship of mine hands.” And they stood, man and dog at the break of day, and it was good. And they did breathe deeply , gladly, paused as one for a mortal minute.

(Wendy: heartfelt thanks for taking care of Duke for us while we've been here.)
(Duke: we really hope you can adjust to being displaced by two little humans.)

WIHTWH: seasonal delicacies

2009-07-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

Dry season: mice on a stick
Boiled and salted field mice, skewered.
"Crunchy and delicious."

Rainy season: termites
Caught, drowned, dewinged, fried in oil, salted.
"Tastes like popcorn."

WIHTWH: a very supportive breastfeeding environment

2009-07-03T06:13:00.000-07:00

It's one of the profound joys I have in motherhood and womanhood, and I'll tell you, it only gets more and more fun as my babe gets older. I love being in a place where, if I'm in the middle of a Relief Society lesson, I'm not only allowed, but encouraged to multitask: stand at the blackboard with my boy cradled in one arm, calmed and stilled with warm milky familiarity, chalk or teaching manual in the other.

"It's not a problem," our Relief Society president assures me. "This is part of our culture."

ps: In the category of "odd ways to measure a life's time,"
Finn turned one a month ago. That means I've been nursing offspring for roughly ten percent of my life.

WHITHW: Mohammad's chapatis

2009-07-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting social dynamics in Malawi is the Indian subculture. Indian by genetics, tradition, and history and Muslim by faith, they dominate the trade world (ie, own most of the stores and shops) and almost all the forex offices. For the most part they have western expectations of standards of living, and unlike many of the white Malawians who go to South Africa for school, the "asian" Malawians tend to go to the UK. They don't seem to have much to do with the very transient expat community. But inevitably, some of their food culture is disseminated, and even though Mohammad says he doesn't like "Moigneh"food because it's too spicy (and he has a (perhaps earned?) grudge against Moigneh's in general, even he knows how to make one of the cuisine's non-negotiables: chapatis. You might know them as roti. We sometimes call them tortillas, but they're not, but they're the closest we come here, but I'm pretty happy with tortillas that are really chapatis that we call tortillas.

Today I share with you his recipe and technique. Mohammad promises, "It is simple," and makes it look that way. You should give it a try. Rob, I mean you. I will teach you personally when I get home if you can wait that long, but you shouldn't. It's the boiling water--that's what makes it so different from any other thin, rolled-dough thing I've made. It actually cooks the flour a little before it ever hits the pan.

Mohammad's Pot Lid Chapatis
makes about 25-27 pieces

2 heaping mugs flour (about 3 cups?)
1 tsp salt (use a small spoon, heap half of it with salt)
2 tbs oil, roughly
boiling water
a bit more oil, in a cup
extra flour, maybe a cup or two

1. Mix together flour and salt. Pour in oil.
2. Pour in some boiling water; mix it all together to make a stiff, but soft, dough. More water=softer chapatis. It will feel more like playdough than bread dough.
3. Knead this on a well-floured counter till smooth, not sticky, about 30 seconds to 1 minute.
4. Roll it into a log and cut into pieces, roughly the same length as the width of the log.
5. Make the pieces into balls; with your thumbs, hollow them into little nests. Dip your fingers into the oil, then coat the inside of each nest with oil. Mohammad does this really fast.
6. Then put a heaping half teaspoon of flour inside each nest, pinch it closed (but not sealed), and let it rest on a floured counter.
7. To roll the little guys out: open the ball, flattening the floured part out onto the counter, and roll to the thickness of a dishtowel. Thinner is better, IMHO. Mohammad flips his from side to side, moving it around and keeping the counter scraped and well floured. He cuts them into perfect matching circles with a sharp pot lid.
8. Heat a pan with a little oil to very very hot. Flip one chapati in. Once it has cooked (little black spots, gets more opaque, etc.), flip it and do the same to the other side. You only need to grease the pan once; as you cook your circles, the pan will probably get a little floury. Just give it a quick wipe off with a damp washcloth.
9. Stack them on a dishtowel so they don't get soggy while hot, but then store them in something airtight so they don't dry out.

WIHTWH: patchwork landscapes

2009-07-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sure there must be several positives to small-scale subsistence farming.

Probably.

I appreciate its organic lines.

I took these photos out the windows of the little bush plane we flew in to Zambia for Christmas. I kept looking out and seeing not rained-upon soil and maize, but quilt inspiration. When I get back to a sewing machine, I'm going to give it a shot. So help me.

Probably.

Speaking of patchwork, keep your eyes peeled for another, different, fabric event coming up in the really near future.

WIHTWH: Luwawa Forest

2009-06-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

When timed well with naptimes, three and a half hours north to the hills and woods is achievable with a one-year-old and a three-year-old.

Unfortunately, our camera (arh! which seems to be dying about three weeks too soon) only worked for about a quarter of our time at Luwawa Forest Lodge, where we

- canoed (for about ten minutes),

- played on giant rope swings

- followed trails from maps (Scout is very interested these days in directions, as in, "go to the end of the road; turn left at the t-junction; take your second right..."),

hiked in piney-scented woods,

pounded maize in a nearby village,

- saw the most amazing night sky maybe ever, crowded with stars, and showed Scout the "broad white road in heaven",
- read bedtime stories in front of a big cozy fireplace,
- visited with the travel writer whose books guided us through Malawi and Zanzibar and just maybe even convinced him to include indications for family-friendly places in his edition revisions,
- ate delicious homegrown food,
- and generally had a really really great time.

Then our car broke down on the way home, and we demonstrated how good we are at keeping our cool by staying completely friendly with each other, even though we were still 150km from Lilongwe and it may have been the most expensive day of our lives.

The car croaked at a police check.

Andy (yellow shirt) hopped on a taxi to go to the nearest town to find a mechanic.

The kids woke up from their naps. We stayed put and read stories with the spectators.

We all made it home safe and sound eventually, but it's a serious bummer to lose our car two weeks before we leave.

WIHTWH: fresh roses

2009-06-24T13:04:00.000-07:00

Mohammad tipped me off to the wholesale rose nursery just behind Area 12 where we live. They sell locally and export in season to Holland and Germany.

20 stems: 350MK (about $2.25USD)

We fill the house weekly.

(For a while there, Matilda and I were working on a rose delivery business. It was called HomeRoses. Matilda would deliver bouquets of twenty for a profit of 250 MK for the first bouquet and 50MK for each thereafter. It did pretty well as long as I was drumming up business online, but I think sort of petered out after I handed it over entirely to her. Evidence of what some people call "the digital divide." We made some beautiful bouquets though, supplemented with wildflowers and grasses blooming on the dirt road to the nursery.)

I sold Gabriel the clippers: part i

2009-06-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

Really, it’s just as well I’m put in the position to defend myself on this point, as it brings up so many of the paradoxes of living here that have been on my mind and heart—yes, I do have a heart—since I’ve been here. I’ve struggled to get it right in writing, and it’s difficult to articulate. I’ll be trying as I have time and brains, to explain it to you. It will certainly take a few days, as even after months, I haven’t got it right even for myself.

It’s actually true, everything Andy said, but (vote of confidence noted, Alisa), there is another side to the story. The awkward thing about this is that everythign I say now is going to sound like some kind of defensive explanation, so I’m going to try really hard to turn it into explanations of what it’s like to be here.

I guess I’ll start here:
Economic disparity is the first thing I noticed when we arrived, and it hits you like a wall of smoke as soon as you get off the airplane. Fellow humans in rags, dirty, skinny, stunted from years of not enough calories. Fellow humans with feet flattened and hardened from walking everywhere barefoot. Our weight limit on the airplane had been minimal, considering it was in 6 suitcases that we carried our household here. But the weight I felt stepping off the plane, the burden on my conscience of my wealth—it was much more than whatever we’d payed for in extra baggage.

WIHTWH: strawberry guy

2009-06-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

When it's not the dry season, you can see Bunda Mountain from the turn off into Area 12 where we live. It juts right out of the flatness, like a finger poking up. Matilda's village is at the base of it; she says on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, there are "a lot of muzungus walking on it, a lot of!" They grow strawberries there in the winter and spring, and we're back in strawberry season, glory be.

We have an arrangement with a guy who sells them, to come by on Mondays and Thursdays. Sometimes he'll bring fresh masala too, and tomatoes by request.

A Monday morning tap on the gate by the strawberry guy is great reason for rejoicing. Barely able to contain her excitement, Scout runs to get the basin from under the sink, then runs back out to the gate. Isabel loves strawberry guy events too.

We buy four bowls full. It's a nice, flexible way to buy and sell. Today he was a little skimpier than usual in filling them up; I think it's because my attention was distracted taking pictures.

He tolerates my picture taking.

Finn isn't allowed out on the street side of the gate...

but he was ready and waiting to see what kind of excitement would be walking through to his side.

Scout is so dilligent about jobs she feels responsibility for, like carrying all those strawberries to the kitchen to be washed.

Mostly.

Strawberries for lunch!

Missionaries, Mercenaries or Misfits

2009-06-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

They say people who live in Africa are either missionaries, mercenaries or misfits. I'm sure we have been all three at one point or another. But as we have started selling things for the upcoming move, Johanna has become much more of a mercenary.

I came home yesterday to find our guard Gabriel with my hair clippers. Johanna sold them to him for $10. His monthly salary is $90.

They happen to not work in Malawi without a converter as they are 110v and Malawi runs on 220v. But the best thing about Johanna's cool $10 profit, Gabriel doesn't have electricity.

WIHTWH: Activity Days Girls

2009-06-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

The 8 to 12 year old girls from Primary come over to our place once a month for an activity. They get to help pick it. The first one was making cake with "creme"; we decorated cupcakes with chocolate butter frosting. They wanted to do the same thing the next month, but I learned quickly to double up whatever I was doing for teen club with the these girls. In addition to making frosting, we have learned kinda-almost one-off screen-printing on fabric

and wax-resist drawing.

When I get in a technique groove, nobody is safe: we do it for Little School, visiting children must give it a try, it gets morphed into a teen activity for Teen Club, and then the girls from church give it a whirl. I call it efficient creativity.

WIHTW: No fear

2009-06-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of living in Malawi is that Scout will go to the bathroom just about anywhere. Home, yes. Fancy hotel, of course. Gas station, no problem. Village mud hole; you bet. She doesn't even need toilet paper.

Here are some pictures of Scout doing her business surrounded by giraffe and water buffalo.

We can't wait to see what she does at the Smith family country club. Can anyone say 17th hole?

WHIHTWH: Soccer Mom

2009-06-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

(See that huge bruise on my knee? And the mostly-healed scab?
Now that's what I'm talking about.)

I started playing football a couple of months ago. Before then, my total experience with the sport had been Bend It Like Beckham (twice), that's it. But my friend Jessica convinced me my total novicehood wouldn't matter a speck with this women's team. (She was mostly right, though I think me calling out things like, "So, just double-checking. My team's going THIS direction, right?" or, as I'm throwing in from the end, "Raise your hand if you're on my team!" wasn't always thought as funny as I thought it. It's a mostly-women, mostly-expat team. We even have a coach, this funny, drama-queen of a twenty-something Malawian guy who actually coaches us.

I like it because of the way it has pushed me totally out of my comfort zone. I like the way it pushes me physically (and I really love the totally drenched with sweat/drink a litre of water/purified from the inside out feeling I have when we quit), and socially (ahh! go look like a fool in front of a bunch of people I don't know!), and even intellectually, the kind of body-organising thought like when you're learning a choreographed dance. And once I got into it, I realised how much I love it just for the chance to go play for the sheer pleasure of playing, of doing something fun and challenging outside under the night sky with other people.

As if that weren't enough, as a bonus playing football reminds me that I don't need to be a pro at something to enjoy doing it, or for it to have a significant impact on me and my family. Scout and Finn both think shooting our little soccer ball up the driveway to bang against the gate is the funniest thing in the world. (And Precious, well, he's totally out of my league. In bare feet, no less!)

Moe Willem (you might know him as the pigeon guy) made this point on NPR a while back, though he was talking about drawing, not team sports. (In my family, as many of you know, a ball--especially a team-sports ball--is much more foreign and suspicious an object than a pencil or box of colours.) His point, something my own mum has taught by example for years, resonated like a good header.

Amanda Soule gives links and her take on it here. I'll defer to her links, as I am the last one up again tonight, and better than linking I like snuggling.

ps: the previous post is a picture of our Primary at church. They all got on the bus, with Precious driving, and went to the lake.

pps: yesterday I fell asleep reading to Scout at 7:45, hence no post. What with traveling and viruses, Finn forgot that he was pretty much night-weaned. Last night he started remembering again, because I want to love my family again.

WIHTH: Friendship

2009-06-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

WIHTWH: Weekly dinner dates

2009-06-16T13:59:00.001-07:00

with dudes like these, by romantic candlelight. (Truth: Missionaries aren't allowed to eat at members' homes, but we're an exception because we probably won't give them cholera. So we're extra careful to bleach all our produce on nights when we pick them up for their weekly dinner, and I try to make a lot of something that's not made of beans, mince, noodles, jello, and/or Knorr chicken-type flavouring. The trash of the kitchen at church, where they live, is usually brimming with what I take as tips not to cook up on missionary night.)

They used to have a standing Thursday night appointment with us. But then there was American Idol, so we switched to Fridays, which is better all 'round, because we're on the rotation for a load-shedding "scheduled power outage" on Fridays, but the Elders still cheerfully clean up all the dishes by candlelight.

Let the countdown begin!

2009-06-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a week in Zanzibar, our last big huzzah before we leave this part of the world. Yep, that's an announcement folks. Four more weeks left in the warm heart of Africa.*

But Zanzibar. I'll skip the superlatives, but it's a pretty darn cool place. A historic nexus of trade, both of spices and slaves, the culture is this blend of African, Indian, and Arab flavours. It's very different from inland Malawi. It's also out in the blueblueblue Indian ocean, so every meal features some kind of fish (hopefully).

We took two flights to get to the island.

The Stone Town market has a big fruit section (we tasted durani, the fruit) (BARF!@#$!--looks like a fat white waterlogged sausage, feels thick and greasy like congealed cheese sauce, tastes like bad meat that's been dipped in chemicals) and a huge seafood section.

It was really hot. We stopped for some fresh sugarcane juice. First a length of cane is roughly macerated. Then half a lime and a stub of ginger are tucked into it, and they're all pressed together. The juice is swirled with some ice, strained in a hand-held sieve, and sipped through a straw. So yum. Finn enjoyed his as you can see, but ever wary of the big D (truly the fastest way to spoil a beach vacation dependent upon swim diapers), Andy limited our refreshment to a few sips.

Stone Town was built by Omani Sultans who occupied and ruled Zanzibar till the 1940s or so.

Stone Town is also famous for it's carved doors, an Indian thing. They are incredibly ornate with flowers and designs. They have a solid post in the middle, and a "male" side and "female" side, named because of the direction the door swings open. Many of them have brass horn type things sticking out of them, decorative reminders of back home in India where they functionally decorated the doors by discouraging elephants from beating the doors in. Some of them have an eerie reminder of what we often forget: who did the grunt work for most of the world's wonders. A border of carved chain was a status symbol to show the Joneses that within these walls dwells a slave-owner.

Andy, mango loveslave, took every opportunity to pursue his mangoQuest. Because mangos are always in season on Zanzibar. Big, juicy, non-fibery ones. (Scout and I fell in love with fresh lychees, also in season. We went on a "shoki shoki" quest of our own into a little fishing village later on in our stay.)

One of the big things to do on Zanzibar is go on a spice tour (a highlight for me). Although they no longer grow for export (except cloves), we smelled and picked and tasted and saw growing: pepper berries, vanilla beans, clove, cardamom, ginger, turmeric, lemongrass, coconut, ylang-ylang, cinnamon, nutmeg, henna...

and lipstick plant.

We also tasted fresh coconut, jackfruit, breadfruit, and starfruit.

Then we went to a fancyshmancy resort on the tip of the island and played in the ocean for a few days.

We took hikes at low tide.

We inspected hermit crabs on the beach at night.

We went for a sunset cruise in a quasi-traditional dhow.

And didn't get a bit of sunburn!

*And so, to make sure we drink up every last drop of Malawi while our cup runneth over, look for daily postings of Why I Heart the Warm Heart. Same time, same place, starting tomorrow.

Matilda's Last Day

2009-05-30T01:33:00.001-07:00

About a month ago Matilda started working as a nanny for a friend of ours. It took me nine months to be able to call her our "nanny"-- I winced at what felt like declarations of implications that word held about our economic status and my view, role, and purpose as a stay-at-home mom. But by the time she left, Nanny felt like a title of honor. I didn't realise until she was no longer around just how much I leaned on her for help with our household, my children, and for her cheerful company. We miss her. The kids, especially Finn, really love her, and she really loves them--especially Finn--too.

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Matilda's Second Song
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Matilda's second song.mp3 (2268 KB)

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Let this be a Lesson for All of Us

2009-05-25T11:16:00.000-07:00

Read the package insert before you give your child malaria prophylaxis for a year.

Words of wisdom from Matilda:

2009-05-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Children need only two toys: soil and water.

(Meet Kelvin, Matilda and Mohammad's baby and Finn's idol.)

Tech Question:

2009-05-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

Martin or Chris, can you splain me this? How do I post .wav files? Do I have to make them mp3s first? Do you know an easy way to do this?

I want to post Gabriel’s song he was inpsired to write when I handed him the recorder last Saturday as he day-guarded.

Big Mama, little Grace, old shoe, new shoes

2009-05-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

The entrance to the clothing market down in Area 2, "across the bridge."

A picture to show a bit of the shoe market.

A picture to show the cleaning touch-up I requested for Scout's almost-steampunk new(ish) mary janes.

Big Mama (occasionally little mama) and little Grace are frequent personalities at our breakfast and lunch tables. Scout sits in my chair beside Finn, uses a big spoon and tall glass cup, decides who says the blessing on the food, speaks in a kind ordering sort of way, serves up the food, puts small pieces of food on Finn's tray.

Grace began as a little blond friend at Kindermusic, but her personality has grown enormously when a little role-reversal is required. She shows up whenever Scout needs to be authorized to be in charge, and it's not a bad trick. (Bailey, Bodean, and Francisca who also began as Kindermusic friends are triplets, sometimes in utero, sometimes as needy tiny babies, sometimes they're learning how to walk, sometimes they're astonishingly matched in accomplishments to Finn.)

Anyway, when the mama-switching began, it was revealing how Scout described her mama self. "No, I'm a big mama. I use a big spoon." or "See? I have big feet!"

In fact, her feet have grown. Outgrown, in fact, all the cute shoes Auntie Brooke has provided us with for the past three years. A friend from Germany was going to pick up some leather shoes for her own kids while she was there for a few days and was ready to choose some for Scout too--traced foot in luggage!--but her 30 Euro price guess nearly (politely) choked me. I decided to give the big secondhand clothing market a try.

I'd only been once or twice--honestly, it's a big deal to get there, and sticking out like a money tree and being offered terrible deals isn't great fun. But I went with a Malawian friend, who lead me down an avenue of detailed used shoes to old shoe heaven. The place where all good shoes (and some really beat up ones) go when you think they've died. Probably two acres of stalls, with shoes of every size, shape, colour. (Not a lot of snow boots, but some!) The best shoes are cleaned, polished, buffed, stuffed hard with plastic bags, and displayed. See those in the picture? Those are all used shoes. Those are literally the shoes we get rid of, because all these are from bales sent out from the rich west.

The shoe market is built up a hill, and in the top-most corner are three guys and a bucket of water and rags and brushes. Each shoe seller has their own cans of black shoe polish (everything close to black gets it). Those not deemed good enough for refurbishment get left in piles you may pick through. There's general calling and excitement when a new bale gets opened--kind of like when they bring out the new rack of unsorted stuff at the DI.

All it takes is to say what size and kind you're looking for, and enterprising young men scamper off to scour the place for you. After two trips and four pairs of shoes, Scout--I mean Big Mama--is now reshod. In little blue leather Puma sneakers, sparkly black leather Mary Janes for fancy, and a pair of flashing LED StrideRite sneakers to grown into. Hot dog! That's what I call a haul!

ps: bonus picture. Just had to show how artfully everything is displayed to sell. Toothbrushes and toothpaste and washclothes for crying out loud! I'm impressed.

Lemonheads

2009-05-13T12:38:00.000-07:00

We have four, count'em f-o-u-r, lemon trees on our compound, and last month was harvest time. They became our Malawi equivalent of August zucchini. You come to visit, you leave with a jumbo of lemons. We visit you, we bring you a jumbo of lemons. No, we insist. Of course you can think of something to do with 35 pounds of ripe lemons!

I thought of lots of ways to use up lemons, but sadly, only about three are worth repeating. I had grand visions of preserving them in all kinds of ways, but the slices I tried to candy were way too bitter. The peel I saved for candying molded before I got around to it. I actually forgot about the simple lemon syrup I was so excited to try; it boiled over, leaked into the stove's electrical shorting the earth wire, and tripped the main breaker every time I turned on the burner.

However, lemon curd was a success, as was lemon cake, and some surprisingly amazing doughnuts I tried on a whim with a recipe from an old Martha Stewart someone gave me. I include recipes and instructions for all three, below.

Baby Lemon Curd
(ie, even a baby could make it.)

In a cold pot, thoroughly mix together roughly these amounts:

1 c sugar
3 eggs
2/3 c lemon juice

Put the pot on a low-med setting, and stir mixture until it thickens. You'll know it's ready when it changes colour, to a bright yellow, and it gets thick enough to coat the spoon when you dip it in. Of course, the longer and slower you cook it, the thicker it will be. The two biggest things to avoid are not mixing the eggs enough, so you get flecks of cooked egg-white, and letting it boil and/or burn on the bottom of the pan.

Once you've taken it off the burner, mix in:

6 tbs butter, cut into little cubes

I made a lot of double batches and froze the stuff; it freezes well, and makes impressive last-minute pastries when spread on puff pastry.

Hagson's Lemon Cake

Hagson, the cook at a friend's house, made this wonderful cake today. It's moist, but not spongy--makes nice cakey crumbs. The thin layer of tart/sweet lemon "creme" really nicely balances the lemon-zesty cake part. You should know before you start this, that Hagson admitted he doesn't like to use books while cooking so much as common sense. I encourage you to also use yours while following this recipe, which he stood and pulled from the air while I followed him around Kirsten's kitchen.

2 1/2 c flour
1 1/2 c sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking pwd
1/4 tsp soda

Mix these together.

Add, making a crumby mixture:

1/2 c butter or Stork margarine, cold.

Beat together and add to floury crumbs:

2 eggs
1/2 c milk
zest from 2 small lemons, or 1 big one, or basically "1/2 c lemon skins"

When all mixed together, the batter should be quite thick. This is so that your cake doesn't grow grow grow and then flatten in the oven. Bake at 350º F (or perhaps something like 210º C) for 25 to 30 minutes, depending on when your cake is done.

To make creme, mix nicely until smooth:

1 c icing sugar
1 tbs butter
1 drop lemon juice (this is where he advises common sense. You don't want your creme runny; just add the right amount.)

Lemon-Ricotta Fritters with Lemon Curd
(thanks MSL, May 2008)

Liz, this one's fried; this one's for you. For old time's sake.

4 cups vegetable oil, for deep-frying
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon coarse salt
4 large eggs
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 pound ricotta cheese, drained
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Heat oil in a medium saucepan to 350 degrees. Sift flours, baking powder, and salt into a small bowl.

Mix together eggs and granulated sugar in a large bowl until just combined. Add ricotta, lemon zest, and vanilla, and stir until well combined. Add flour mixture, and stir until smooth.

Using an ice cream scoop or a tablespoon, carefully drop a few balls of dough into oil. Cook, turning 2 to 3 times, until golden brown on all sides, 2 to 3 minutes total. Adjust heat as necessary to maintain temperature of oil. Drain on paper towels. Repeat with remaining dough. Place on a plate, and dust with confectioners' sugar. Transfer curd to a serving bowl, and serve with fritters.

Helpful Hint

Do not crowd the pan; cook only a few fritters at a time. They taste best when served immediately after frying.

Also, don't be worried if they look flat at first; they puff into little round balls while they fry. And I think I didn't drain the ricotta, so I ended up adding a little extra flour so the batter was less runny.

Honestly, it would be best to make these when there's a crowd. Otherwise you'll end up eating them all yourself. In one sitting. Yep, that yummy.

The Wonder of Birds*

2009-05-06T10:25:00.000-07:00

Not sure of a better way to celebrate mum in spirit, than by getting up as the reclined silver cup of a moon is just slipping out of the trees to climb the brightening sky, to give thanks to God for beauty and domestics, and do something personal and creative before my family wakes up.

The first bird this morning was Finn, who crowed, “Errh. Errrrh!” for his 4:45 warm milk snack. Then, as I lay in bed debating sleep over personal time at the break of day (my body said sleep, my mind said “mornings this beautiful with no sandpaper eyelids are a gift. Don’t refuse.”)… the next bird to wake up was the muezzin a couple areas over. The mosque is just the right distance away: if I listen in the morning, I can hear call to prayer; if I’m sleeping, it doesn’t wake me up.

And then roosters--stewbird or make-new-bird birds.

And then songbirds. I never ever get tired of them. Chirps, twitters, calls, whistles, chatters, slide-whistle sloops, trills, pops and croaks, purrs and hoots. The insects have quieted down now that we’re through the rainy season, but the birds, gratefully, have not.

You know, all you Northern Hemisphere types, that this half of us down here is not rejoicing over returning signs of spring and lengthening days. Night is coming noticeably earlier where we are, the sun is coming in the windows at new, oblique angles. Those trees that do are dropping faded leaves. As our guard John says, “Now is the time of year when we are rushing to the coldest months.”

It’s so fun to have a reason to wear socks in the morning and make rice milk Rooibos chai (from a powder mix I bought in South Africa—they don’t make that sort of thing here).

A List to Keep Things Organised:

1.Happy birthday, Mum. I wrote this back on Your Day a couple weeks ago when you turned SIXTY FIVE. oxox.

2.The ingredients on the (now-empty) instant rice-milk chai bottle from Cape Town: organic rice milk powder, Rooibos tea, black pepper, cardamon, ginger, cloves, curry leaves. In that order. And Laura, I add sugar fyi.

3.If you’re at all into birds, you should check out these the collections of these two photographers: Layzeboy and Dave Appleton.

4.Mental note: remember how great this was on the big screen? Joh: watch this again when you get back to the US.

5.The dazzling loveliness of even the most common yard birds is almost as wonderful as their names: firefinch, blue waxbill, whitefaced whistling duck, blue-eared starling, sacred ibis, masked weaver, black-bellied bustard, freckled nightjar, ruddy turnstone, little bee-eater, honeyguide, tinkerbird, and of course the lizard buzzard .

6.Andy’s twittering. If you look on the right side of our blog, you’ll notice his updates as he twitters throughout the day. It's his solution for trying to find a way to write about his patients and experiences as a physician here in a way that doesn't overwhelm the reader or the writer (120 characters max!). I suspect you’ll be as interested as I am to find out what he actually does in clinic for eight hours every day. Feel free to chatter back about his twitter. And if there’s something you’re wondering, ask away. I’m probably wondering the same thing.

7. If I had to give Andy's Twitter a bird name from my Zambian safari list, it might be something like dark-capped bulbul. Or African stonechat. I suppose after a few days in Zanzibar he might be a sunbird--scarlet chested or violet-backed, though not if I know Andy and his sunscreen habit. No, much more likely to remain a white-rumped swift or simply a red-necked spurfowl. It'll be several years before he's anything close to wattled starling, unless this unexpectedly becomes a tropical boubou.

Folks, it's 11:30pm my time, and as much fun as I'm having cracking myself up, as you can see if I don't stop acting like a white-faced scops owl and and put my bird list away for the night, I'll be a red-faced mousebird by morning rather than my usual laughing dove personality.

Good night(jar)!

*Ms. Melin, I have you to thank for introducing me to the band I've ripped this title from.

Rob: thanks for the recorder

2009-04-28T15:02:00.001-07:00

Part I

Part II

In a land far far away, where there is no such thing as video games

2009-04-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

Place them all face down.

Flick them with your fingernail. If they flip all the way over, you keep and keep on going. If they stop on their edge, you lose your turn.

ps: As you might predict, I object to A's characterisation below. I mean really. It' not TV if you're watching it on YouTube, right?

pps: A eats garlic almost every day, and sometimes doesn't even notice it.

a sign of the apocalypse?

2009-04-23T08:44:00.001-07:00

Our fearless leader and anti-television advocate has finally joined the rest of us. She is obsessed with Su san Boyle from Britain's Got Talent and a regular viewer of American Idol. Oh, how hard the great ones fall when they finally fall!

And did I mention

2009-04-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

that this one is a walker now?
No?
Mmmm, must have been blog-neglecting. (I've missed you.)

Three is a magic number

2009-04-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

We prepped for the big day for several weeks.

When I admitted to myself I wouldn't finish making Baby KhaKah a new wardrobe by hand in time, I borrowed a sewing machine from a friend and hired a tailor for the day, who freehanded two dresses, two pants, a skirt, and a matching apron and hat that look suspiciously like an antique uniform. Scout was enraptured.

For little school we made a pinata, one layer every day.

Finally, we picked candy and stuffed it like a turkey.

But oh, disappointment! The morning of the party, Scout crawled into our bed with a fever, then slept the entire day.

Precious, who had been as excited by the preparations and the promise of the candy you get to collect, as I think a seven-year-old can be, had to settle for playing in a bucket of water with the little boys while Scout slept on.

But it did happen the next day, and a couple friends could even make it despite the changes.

Dear Scout, your birthday will also always be my birth day, and I love April 21st for both inseparable reasons. Most of all I love you, my girl, inseparably, beyond reason. ox, Joh

Why it's been so quiet 'round these parts.

2009-03-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

We've been vacationing.

In Cape Town.

And now we want to emmigrate.

I didn't forget.

2009-03-09T02:24:00.000-07:00

When Shira arrived, she had an extra piece of luggage just with stuff we'd requested (funny to see what you want after months of no access to it). For instance: good quality dog leashes and collars (we could only find cheap chains that keep breaking). Re-placeable artists tape ('cause we've been wax-resist maniacs around here--pictures to come). Dried fruit. Nuts. Unscented baby soap and bum cream. Magazines!

When she left, the bag was stuffed again, but with fabric this time. She and I have the same taste in souvenirs. We spent a lot of time in the market looking over zitenge. (That's plural of chitenge, by the way.) Also stuffed in there were several cut, folded, and tied packets of fabrics in blues and greens. I'm writing "were" as though something happened to them, which is not the case. There they are in Florida, waiting for addresses to be mailed to by the self-proclaimed postal princess. (Shira claims she's done experiments to see exactly what will get through the postal system unwrapped. She's been successful with blocks of wood, unwrapped cds, a shoe...) I

In the end I sent home more than one to mail out (I hate the thought of some of you not getting a surprise in the mail), but it does make me wonder: which is worse, knowing your odds are 1 in 16 and not getting something in the mail, or knowing your odds are 4 (or 5? or six? can't remember) in 16 and not getting something in the mail.

These are the things that keep me up at night. (Ok, Finn too.)

So, I've just paid a visit to the Random Number Generator. Would the following people please email me your snail mail address at the email listed to the right?

Emily B who said, "Or me :) I would love to play with these fabrics! Nothing against Amy Butler but isn't everyone getting tired of the same prints showing up on everything? Unique is good!"

V and Co. who said, "thank you for the link! i think what you are doing is super awesome! i'm off to check more of your blog (sorry it took me till now to get over here!) -v"

Angie who said, "I want them! PS I love your blog. Pretty please, tell Leslie to put it on the Segullah sampler?"

rusted sun who said, "I miss you guys. I would love to win your beautiful fabric....it is a part of you and a part of the world. I've finally decided on a theme for the babies' room- Children of the World....I didn't realize I needed one, but I've decided it would be fun to decorate their room. I want to put up all our globes and fabrics from all over the world. we would love to win your fabric."

"Willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light"

2009-03-06T01:39:00.000-08:00

He calls us bwana, boss. Scout has been known to call him mamamohammad. And we now also call him brother.

(Congratulations, Mohammad, on your baptism last Saturday.)

Kamuzu Central

2009-03-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

Right next door to my usual clinic, The Baylor Children's Center of Excellence, sits Kamuzu Central Hospital. It is one of the 4 largest hospitals in Malawi and acts as the referral center for the Central Region. The past two weeks, I worked as the HIV consultant for the hospital caring for between twenty and thirty children.

I'm often asked what it is like, but I fear that I would not serve anyone well by writing a blog post about the experience--most importantly the patients. I'd like to find a way to tell their stories without trivializing or over-dramatizing them. No doubt it would be easy to fall into quick cliche.

In the mean time, below are pictures a wonderful medical student took of the hospital as we worked together. Working at Kamuzu has been the most rewarding time I've had in Malawi and also the hardest.

The Baylor Children's Center of Excellence

Between the three children's wards of Kamuzu Central Hospital, the central courtyard serves also as a playground.

During malaria season, the hospital doubles its capacity and often 2-3 children share a bed.

This is ward A where the sickest children stay.

They come to the treatment room to get any procedure done. Most of these patients are receiving IV quinine, the treatment for severe malaria.

A teacher hold schools each afternoon in the courtyard for those children who are at the hospital for long periods of time. Usually, they have cancer or TB.

This is what I see every morning coming into the hospital--moms washing clothes

and babies.

Family Manifesto: 3

2009-02-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

Nurture curiosity. Cultivate a sense of wonder.

Chitenge giveaway!

2009-02-23T04:25:00.000-08:00

Remember a couple weeks ago when I mentioned a way to get your hands on some funky, colourful fabrics from here?

Ok, I’m ready. It’s time. I’ve gone to the market a couple times and gathered up a nice selection of blues and greens

that go well together. I’ve bundled together a kind of fat quarter (don’t quote me on dimensions, though you can trust they’re all pretty much the same size) of each colour, and tied it pretty into one bundle and have it ready to ride back to America (or Canada or Sweden—hi my dear friends) with Shira, our mule for the occasion.

Yep, you got it, I’m entering the world of blog giveaways! Why?

For fun. Spread the word! Share the love!

Bold, bright, jazzy, versatile and completely authentic. As funky as Amy Butler, but these aren’t fabrics you’ll find at Moda (and I love much of Moda and Amy Butler). These aren’t fabrics you’ll run into again in your BFF’s living room. These are the real deal. Used to carry babies on your back. Or to swaddle them. Or dry them off. Or to lay between your baby and the ground. Or to make into a cheerful skirt. Or just wrap around the skirt you’re already wearing to let people know you’re married. And that’s just what you could use them for if you were a Malawi woman!

Think quilts, rag rugs, funky skirts, cloth napkins, jammy pants, pennant garlands, couch or floor cushions…

How to get these delivered to your mailbox? Leave me a comment. By next Saturday, the 28th. Your time. Or my time. Somebody’s time. Do it before Sunday and it counts. One person will be the lucky winner; I’ll contact you for you snailmail addy, and Shira (bless her dear willing heart) will mail it to you when she gets back to Florida. (I’d do it from here—stamps are cool—but it’s a bit on the pricey side, and there’s no guarantee when or if it would actually arrive.)

FYI, the ladies I bought these from at the market:

New Unders

2009-02-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

(A years-later edit: After looking over the stats of this blog for the first time in two years, I got freaked out by how many people are finding it looking for the words I just changed.)

Our friend Shira brought Scout 9 pairs of brand-new unders. What is a girl to do with so many unders? Why not wear them all at once?

Scout can tell you why not. That many unders are hard to take off when the moment comes. And then you have 9 pairs of brand-new-soiled unders.

(Unwilling to wait to wear them until laundry was done on the family schedule, Scout took her unders to the bathub, scrubbed and wrung them out herself, then pinned them to the line to dry. Then put them all on again while still damp. Pretty new unders! Who doesn't love 'em?)

A Trip to the Village

2009-02-22T12:22:00.001-08:00

Some of our friends came to visit us from the States, and we took them to visit Matilda's village.

Finn was his usual cool king of the village.

Scout led the other kids in a round of "Do as I'm Doing."

Family Manifesto: 2

2009-02-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

Give--and enjoy--the time it takes. Quality and quantity.

Family Manifesto: 1

2009-02-14T00:05:00.000-08:00

Be encouraging. Be supportive.

(thanks Amanda for the inspiration.)

Picky about Protein part i

2009-02-13T01:29:00.000-08:00

Whenever someone is about to tell me they live in Area 23, they preface it with, “Oh you won’t know where it is,” noting with their eyes the details of my affluence—glasses, shoes, car and all other obvious evidences of muzungu status.

I assure them of course I know where it is, like I drive the half hour on pitted dust roads (that’s Brit speak and I like it; roads are either dust or tarred, not dirt or paved) through high density villages all the time. Or every week, as Sister L and Sister F do for church. Sometimes Sister F will miss because she doesn’t have transport fare—400 kwacha round trip. It’s only 30 K to go to the first transfer, but 100 back and there’s one other 100 K transfer (and the 20 minute walk) to get to the church building from her house.

But I’m getting to know Kawali and Area 23 a little better after making an official Relief Society trip to Sister L’s home. Zione and I (second and first counselors respectively in our Relief Society) were on the errand of angels; President Ntholowa had asked us to fill a food order for Sister L. There was enough fast offering money to pay her 2000 K rent (2000 K=about 14 dollars) and 2000 K for food.

Bumping and lurching over potholes and swerving to miss the folks on bikes and aggressive combi drivers, we pulled up to the main T intersection. It was almost late afternoon, and the sun was hot, but I was grateful it wasn’t raining; I don’t think I could have managed the drive had the roads been slippery. Directly ahead of us was the market and lining the street in either direction were the stores, tin roofed square cement jobs stacked with a handful of simple goods behind floor-to-ceiling metal gates inside.

We’d been given the green light to get half a bag of maize, 500 ml cooking oil, two packets soap, a packet of salt, and a packet of sugar. When I had mentioned this to Sister L on Sunday and asked if there was anything else she might need, she had asked if she might possibly also get beans or carpenter fish—some kind of protein.

Zione and Sister L led the way into the market, looking for a good deal on maize flour. The ragged stalls providing shelter from the sun were full of women—old toothless ones and younger ones with babies, chatting and braiding hair, or bored and sullen, or just quiet and waiting for a customer. I keep twisting Finn back and forth to keep the most bold of the interested hands from touching him. Everyone likes a little personal space, you know? Wherever we walk together, people are calling out “muzungu!” and “hello mama” and “oh, mwana!” (child). One man leaps up from the stack of bagged cement powder he’s reclining on and gets in my face with a tirade that L translates a little embarrassedly: “He says he wants to be your maid.” Right. Talk about embarrassed. Noting the giant smiles and laughing as we pass through, Zione tells me (and I can’t tell if she intends the irony and is trying to be kind, or if she really thinks this), “Muzungus make people so happy!”

We walk in a line, stepping carefully down the “aisle” over the ubiquitous shreds of plastic that seem to be the national flower of undeveloped countries. Zione and Sister L are eyeing every stall we pass, while I watch the ground to keep my footing and avoid the smears of rotten lemon or avocado, and other suspicious moist spots in the hard-packed lumpy dirt.

No maize flour to be found. We’ll have to try looking in the stores. But my two sisters ahead of me have found a woman selling beans for the right price—a cupped handful’s worth for 50 K. They fill a small bag, and then a grocery size bag with firm tomatoes. For the branch’s record keeping, we’re supposed to make sure we get receipts for everything, but of course there are no cash registers spitting tongues of paper beside these careful mounds of veggies and grass baskets of beans. They ask for the woman to sign a paper as a receipt; she won’t or can’t, so Zione just writes her name beside the list she’s carrying around: tomatoes 100 K Mrs. Girety; beans 200 K Mrs. Girety.

I’m not sure what the price for flesh protein is (Mohammad has told me it’s jumped steeply in the past two years), but I’m acutely aware of it’s smell and I try to hold my face in neutral as we walk back through to get to the stores. I hate that these sellers know I’m not looking at their goods to buy. They don’t even attempt a pitch; two goats disassembled and piled in parts, their heads arranged to the side and cloudy eyes open—I’m not their market, and they know it. I don’t know why that bugs me. I’d like to be less predictable in my preferences maybe.

At any rate, I think I would have surprised Andy and the missionaries that evening when we were gathered around our own table, if they knew about the extra protein they were eating in their chicken soup.

It’s surprisingly hard to find whole grains here, but I had found some 500 g bags of pearled wheat at Shoprite. My plan was to throw it in the soup, though ordinarily I would have thrown it out once I noticed the little black bugs floating to the surface as I rinsed it in the pot. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it after shopping for L’s food order just earlier in the afternoon. Instead I rinsed and rinsed until no more bugs floated out three times in a row, then I cooked it in the soup and no one was the wiser.

Except me, I feel wiser.

ps: any food themed post is enough reason for me to put up these pics of Finn, who is serious about eating. "By his own," thank you very much.

New Shoes

2009-02-12T11:46:00.000-08:00

I picked out new shoes at the market today.

They're pure rubber,

burka approved,

and 100% kickin' Malawi style.

It was you, you put the fun in thirty funderful

2009-02-02T12:39:00.000-08:00

I feel so spoiled! Thank you thank you each of you, for the birthday presents, you moondoggies too. I’ve been grinning like a hyena nonstop since the 29th. In fact, I’m so inspired, I have party favour gifts for each of you too:

Liz, a cashmere knitted cap (warm brown, with a pink stripe and a yellow one around the bottom) with a point at the top and and pompoms that hang off the cozy earflaps by your chin. And a matching one for that amazing Grace.

Heidi, three big clay pots, built from red soil and fired on the ground in a village a couple kilometers from the road. One is full of lumpy, ripe lemons, one holds smooth-skinned avocadoes, and the third I’ve filled with compost; it will sprout masala and basil in a few days. Do you have a sunny spot for it?

Nan, a potty-trained little bushbaby; generally she will enjoy just hanging out on your shoulder with her big eyes closed, though just for kicks, you should try taking her out at night and shining a flashlight on her;

Willisfam, a garland of pink species tulips to drape on your porch railing or over your kitchen entrance. I gave them a good big drink before I strung them, so don’t worry about them wilting—they’ve got a good two weeks in them;

Mum, an installation art piece for your living room: a round skylight kaleidoscope that throws geometric rainbows of light and colour all over your furniture when you spin it;

Jeanne, a pair of round steampunk sunglasses, dark, with metal frames yeah just like those ones! And a stunning red, printed head scarf to wear with it, just for contrast;

Martin, a great big ant farm with some of these crazy huge ant families here—the kind of ant farm sandwiched between two layers of glass, but a really big one. And it lets you see the interaction between ant species. Actually, can we share this?;

Sage&butter, a couple bushels of apple drops, rich and juicy and only slightly bruised, from that orchard near the bottom of Mink Creek. If you bring them by my place, I’ll transform them into cider and tuck them into the back of your car in green glass jugs to swig down in February when the days are getting longer;

Fig, a tall pair of soft black leather boots—just below or just above your knees? You decide—with a good sized stack of chunky heel in back and a rounded bit of patent toe up front. That stitching and detail work? Yes, the same pattern as on the entrance to that little mosque in Morrocco;

Melissa, a book contract—of your own!—and a studded union jack pen to sign it with;

Daffodil, sparkly mood lipstick (non-toxic of course. And nonstaining, Becca);

Edie, a flying carpet—soft and plush, with a cozy cushion on one end should you choose to just hover somewhere and read. If fact, if you lift the pillow, you’ll find a couple excellent books you’ve never even heard of before;

Soren, an overnight in a treehouse—but better bring your stuff in a backpack, because it’s really high and you have to climb a rope ladder. Which you then pull up behind you for total privacy! And don’t be worried about being too high to see anything interesting; there’s a big chest of bird whistles and slide whistles you can use to call them (and whatever else) to you once you get settled up there;

Becca, a stack of 1/2-yard pieces of local chitenje fabrics in a rainbow of colors and all woven from or printed on linen. With some silk pieces and velvet pieces thrown in too. Why not?

Andy wished me comfortable bedtimes and nighttime nursing, when I came home and discovered he had had this rocking chair made and delivered all without me suspecting a thing. It’s delightful and the details are perfect: wide enough seat, low enough arms, high enough back rest for my head too.

And as if that wasn’t enough, I finally finished binding (and signing!) this little quilt I started for Finn last April with mum.

(None of the fabrics are from here, but if you've a fabric habit as I do, stay tuned for an upcoming post about getting your hands on some chitenje fabric, or "colourful utility blankets" as Andy calls them.)

Of Sleeping Toddlers and Autmoatic Weapons

2009-02-01T12:53:00.000-08:00

The President

The Accomplice "Miss Lovely"

The sergeant and I were of similar minds. Two trips around the presidential circle would be quite enough.

Scout often struggles taking a mid-day nap; refuses would be a more exact phrase. And yesterday was no different. Our usual approach is to bring her on an errand with the hopes she falls asleep in the car, a not uncommon trick for many desperate American parents. But by Saturday afternoon, we had run all of our errands. Yet she was recalcitrant, beyond sleep.

We live close to the Malawi President’s mansion. It is at the end of a long beautiful tarmac road without a hint of pothole. In fact it is the nicest road in Malawi. Best of all, the five kilometers is bookended by two round-a-bouts. One takes you into town. The other is a semi-circle directly in front of the President’s gate. You can keep going and going. There is no braking; it really is the perfect sleep road. But yesterday, one loop wasn’t enough for Miss Lovely.

On my second advance to the mansion, I decided I would return home with a completely awake Scout. If sleep couldn’t win after two loops, it never would. She would be victorious yet again. But as I cornered the President’s circle, Scout finally knocked off. Suddenly, three camouflaged bodyguards from the Malawi Defense Force’s Presidential Security Detail stopped me cold with their automatic rifles directed at the tires.

Pointing to the back of the Hilux, I did the universal sign for sleep. The sergeant approached our car and in clipped English started interrogating me about why I had driven to the mansion, not once, but twice. I quickly shssed him, again pointing to the sleeping devil in back. Warm heart of Africa, he was not.

The others’ rifles were now raised to the windshield. I was desperate that the sergeant didn’t wake Scout and contemplated making a run for it when he wouldn’t lower his voice despite my desperate shssing.

When he finally recognized Scout asleep in the back, he raised his voice even louder. I think that for him the bigger offense was, not driving so close to the mansion, but cruising my daughter to sleep in an air-conditioned SUV listening to new age lullabies while living in the 3rd poorest nation on earth during a diesel shortage. What could be more repulsively excessive, base and shelfish?

The standoff continued for about 5 minutes before the sergeant bored of me. Finally, he took my address and sent me home.

They have not come to find us today so I think we are safe. Scout, of course, slept through the whole affair.

31-derful

2009-01-29T01:18:00.000-08:00

The year I turned 25, Bethany gave me a giant bowl of fresh red raspberries for my birthday. For someone born in snow, it was the ultimate luxury. Nevermind the fact that it was an imaginary bowl of raspberries; when she gave it to me over the dinner table at the Laird House with ripe and juicy descriptions, encouraging me to eat them all at once, no don’t freeze them for later, I could feel their weight in my cupped hands, and taste indelible summer crushed between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. In fact, I’ve eaten them again every birthday since!

At the time, B introduced the tradition as something African—Sudanese maybe? there were quite a few tall, strapping, Lost Boys reasons to have Sudan on your mind at the Laird House—though I’ve never been able to find mention of giving birthday wish presents anywhere since.

Sudan or no Sudan, African tradition or not, Nannou and I have made it ours and kept it alive these past years. This year she gave me:

“a luxurious swim in Waimanalo Bay in the summertime when the water is warm and blueblueblue. There would be no jetlag, and travel would be an instantaneous and free thing. You see, you'd have wormhole portals that were powered by a bicycle, and as your birthday present I'd ride the bike to power it so you could get here. And, you'd have a super chic bathing suit that made you feel like a million bucks. And then we'd all (everyone would be here of course with free instantaneous travel) go eat Indian food at Maharani and then have a second course down the street eating Thai food at Chiang Mai. And maybe take a hike in between.”

Did you hear that!?! She’d even ride the wormhole bike for me. Baby sister, boy howdy, I DO feel like a million bucks!

So here’s my shameless birthday request: would you leave me a birthday wish in my comments? If you don’t know me outside of blogdom, don’t be shy: just take a swing at it. I’m not picky about presents. ☺ It would totally make my day. Just for fun. (Am stopping now before you can call this begging.)

(photo by Robby Garbett via here.)

Shutter Fly Scout

2009-01-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

The ever lovely Scout has added photog to her list of precocious skills. A sampling below with captions by her parents.

Finn strapped in tight.

Mama in her Sunday best

"Sneakers" A Self Portrait

Finn with 4 days of fever and a big ball of wax.

Angels delivering angels

2009-01-22T12:20:00.000-08:00

A happy birth story. (One of my own!) Can you hear too many of them? Nope. They're good for something deep and real inside you.

Go ahead. Read it here. (Turn to page 10, folks.)

(Still want more? Read my first take on the whole concept here (or here).)

Punks and Liars

2009-01-22T10:56:00.000-08:00

It’s official: I’m official.

The first hour of Teen Club is mine, the hour while kids are still arriving and settling into cliques in the waiting room. Woohoo! It’s been awhile since I was in charge of a bunch of teenage girls in our Salt Lake City ward and I forgot how much I love those “punks and liars,” as Andy calls them.

From the scrappiest, dirtiest, quietest non-English speaking boy by himself on the bench, to the smartiest smart-aleck in a hoodie with earbuds in, pretending not to hear me, I love them.

This week they drew each other’s profiles. We snagged some paper from CC’s table (“I don’t go through it very fast because I just let the kids stay on their mother’s lap. Unless they’re really sick, and then I’m like, ‘Ok, I gotta feel that.’”) and taped it up on a couple doors in a dark area of the hall. One kid held the flashlight, one held the pencil and drew, and one tried to stand still and not smile. I asked them to write things they like about themselves and their families inside the profile. I think that mostly got translated to “What do you want to be when you grow up.”

I know I overuse the word “poignant,” both in my own head and on paper here, but I’ll say it once more: those shadowed profiles of beautiful children’s faces, dancing in front of a jittering flashlight: as poignant as all get out.

(I’d love to hear your ideas for art/craft/music/dance ideas to do with these kids for an hour or so…)

Little School

2009-01-19T00:54:00.000-08:00

This year I’m resolved to making home patterns and schedules. In the afternoons (right after an attempt at Quiet Rest Time—any tips on making this quiet and/or restful appreciated) Scout and I are doing Little School.

It’s a current-generation rip on what my mum did with my older siblings; fun learning stuff at home with toddlers.

It’s taken a bit of ingenuity, as it’s difficult or impossible and expensive to find common art and crafting materials here, but that’s good too. Don’t you always find you come up with some of the best stuff when you have the most limitations? You’re forced to think more creatively.

We started by making books to add to the stash we brought with (and the delightful refill Amy brought at Christmas—thank you!), modeling them on our favourites. (So fun to be making books again!) Since Scout is in love with letters, we started with an alphabet book. She folded and helped cut the papers (scrap, so we wrote around the printing; she didn’t seem to mind) and helped cut a Rice Crispies box into a cover. She helped measure out and cut the string, though I did the two stiches it requires to sew the book together. That was boring for her.

But then we wrote a letter on every page and it was fun again. Next we came up with a word to draw that started with the letter.

Finally, a few weeks later, we went through and hid Waldo on every page.

Inspired by this mention of a book about children’s book illustrators, we also made our own Brown Bear Brown Bear, except it was Black Puppy Black Puppy. And even though it has yet to be bound (this one originated as a sit-still help while eating out—Ethiopian food), she has loved reading it as a bedtime book, maybe more than the original.

Little School starts with a song. It’s all I could think of and not terribly inspired: “Here we are together together together, oh here we are together in our Little School. There’s Scout and mama and mama and Scout”…you get it. But just like our scrap paper and cereal box books, it doesn’t seem to matter much the quality of the material, but that we’re doing something novel and together.

Morning Suprise

2009-01-13T12:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I met a 6 week old infant who comes from a home with a universal story. At four months into the pregnancy, the father left the mother and four other children.

Now the mom has nothing, including no breast milk and no way to get formula. (A month's supply of formula is about $50. The average Malawian makes much less.)

I didn't notice, but apparently the baby also had no clothes. She was wrapped only in a chintenje, best described as a colorful utility blanket. First thing this morning, I caught our translators organizing a baby shower for the mom complete with a collection of their own children's clothes. Simply wonderful.

Another face at the clinic

2009-01-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

(Photo is of the kids meeting TV star of Big Brother Africa at the Christmas talent show during once-monthly Teen Club.)

***FYI, this is another kind of depressing post. We'll try to be better about posting the joyful things in Malawi too.***

Walked in to clinic last week with my beautifully fat baby on my hip, feeling as conspicuous as I would with a fat diamond on my finger. His head was tucked in, miserable with a fever, so we were there for malaria smear #2 of this round of fevers. CC, one of Andy’s colleagues, was in the little phlebotomy room talking to a young woman, probably 14 or so, seated in a chair against the wall. Like most people, her head was mostly shaved, to about half an inch, but she wasn’t wearing any fancy extensions or a wig. Her face was puffy. Her eyes were wary. CC was giving her directions for making sure all her labwork was done. “You’ve met T, right?” she said to Andy, “Non-Hodgkin lymphoma?”

“Yeah, I saw you last week, right?” he says to T. “I think it’s grown since last week,” he says to CC, and to T he asks, “Is your face bigger this week than it was last week?” She nods kind of.

Suddenly I get it.

Andy’s holding Finn while he gets his finger stuck to get blood for his smear, and I step out to make some space in the cramped room. When Finn starts wailing, I go in again, ready to nurse. CC is finishing up. “We’re going to keep on with chemo,” she tells T as she hands her a couple papers to hold onto. “I just hate cancer!” she says looking at me, mock punching T’s cheek as she walks out.

The forced cheerfulness, the casualness undoes me. I walk to the corner with my back to Andy, the visiting resident, T, and pretend I’m arranging things in my bag while I regain composure. “Don’t put your bag on that counter, that’s where they put the blood,” Andy says.

I meet CC in the hall later. “You ok?” she asks. “It’s so crazy. She’s just this normal teenager, and she’s really smart. I can hold it together here pretty well, but sometimes at night I just go home and cry.” (We both are again by now.)

They’ve used a large guage prick to stick Finn, and his little finger won’t stop bleeding, so while Andy goes to look for some tape, I try to hold a cotton ball to his finger and nurse in an empty room.

“Are we going to treat him?” I ask Andy when he comes back in. Even though fever with no other cold symptoms is usually what you need to suspect malaria, Andy’s holding back. “By now he’s only had a fever for 24 hours, and both smears have been negative. And he just doesn’t seem that sick. I think we should keep watching him for a while.” How should sick should he be if he does have malaria? Andy showed me to a room on our way out and told me to peek in. A small girl is quiet on the bed, either sleeping or unconcious, and her mother is sitting beside her. “That’s malaria,” Andy says, “probably.”

***update for Finn’s fans***
Fever broke after four days, no malaria. Yay.

Sunday in Lilongwe

2009-01-11T11:38:00.000-08:00

For the first time in her life, Scout finally ate. I found her in Primary happily munching on a bowl of noodles and singing "I Love to Read the Holy Scriptures" today. Scout was not the intended diner of these noodles; not that she noticed. They were the daily meal of a 6-year-old Harare transplant who arrived in Lilongwe last week after a several day journey in the back of a pick up. She walked two hours to church today.

I later caught Scout in the branch president's office eating his son's lunch. When I told Scout to stop, the president thought it was because I was afraid of what she was eating. He told me not to worry--that is was just homemade corn bread. People make it all the time with cornmeal and water when they don't have enough money to buy real bread.

President Natholawa often understands the awkwardness and paradox of our presence in the branch. But his eyes could not hide the injury when I suggested that Scout shouldn't be eating the other children's food because she has never known hunger. I quickly learned that children will be children and charity knows no bounds.

New Members of the Family

2009-01-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

After lots of soul searching, we adopted 2 dogs. Everyone here has dogs, and everyone says we need dogs.

They are part of the security system. First we have an 8 foot high brick wall. Second our wall is topped by razor wire. Third we have two guards every night coked up on black tea and the threat of termination if caught sleeping. (We make them text us every hour to prove they are awake while we sleep.) Fourth are the new dogs to wake the guards who probably sleep anyway. And finally if all else fails, we have panic alarms that send in pickup trucks full of machete wielding security guards who roam the streets at night daring the burglars to attempt something silly. This isn't Johannesburg but we do take precautions.

Meet the new members of our family-Sarah and Claire-two fly bitten Malawi muts who, importantly, are very mild tempered despite their constant barking. The perfect watch dogs for a Malawi ex-pat family.

Note to mothers and potential visitors: It is actually very safe here. Almost no violent crime. But security is a case where you have to keep up with the Jones. If everyone else is doing it, we don't want to be the runt on our street.

Mad Skillz

2009-01-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

I told Matilda that even though we weren’t willing to give she and Mohammad the big loan they asked for, I would still love to help her in some long term way that would help even after we’ve left. I asked if she could think of anything I might know that she doesn’t that I could teach her. I know she wants to be a police woman, but she has also told me that she has no special skills to use to make money. (She also wondered if I would ask Scout’s Daddy about getting a job cleaning at the hospital when we leave.)

My ideas:

Tutor her in some subject; I know she wants to go back to school to get her highschool certificate. (Her answer, sure, how about math, the one subject she didn’t pass. And shoot, the one subject I probably couldn’t be of any use in.)

Sewing: When I had a borrowed sewing machine, we worked on that for a day, learning how to thread it and wind a bobbin and sew straight lines to make bags. I couldn’t tell if she was sewing because I asked her if she wanted to, or if she really had an interest in learning. (Her answer: that would be good, there’s lots of need in the village for sewing.) However, I don’t actually own a sewing machine here, and you can only borrow for so long.

Driving: Learning to drive would theoretically be helpful, but knowing that alone wouldn’t make her competitive; she doesn’t have a car, and there are lots of experienced drivers looking for work. Also, Mohammad has been paying for lessons on the weekend and at lunch hours hoping to up his chances of us letting him become somewhat of a driver for us, improving his resume and diversifying his skill set and increasing his employability. So he’ll get first dibs on the driving edumacation.

Using a computer: I could teach her to type, use some software, use the internet. But practicing etc, at internet cafes is so expensive, I’m not sure how she’d ever be able to keep doing it. (Her answer: yes, it’s important, because all the jobs for newspapers require that you have experience with computers). This one is at least within reach.

So I’m hoping to pick your brains. Can you think of anything I could teach? I feel stumped. What good is a liberal education?! I/she/we need things we can DO, not just know.

Hey, it's you again!

2009-01-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to let you know we've missed you, and even though there's something about our Google access here that very rarely lets us respond to your comments (we can read them--when we can access email--because we forward them to our email), we sure love reading them. FYI, we're working with our internet company on the Google thing. I mean, how can you live without Google?

Happy New Year!

Fat Some Day Soon

2009-01-08T06:14:00.000-08:00

For the past two days, I've been struggling with a sick child. His medical problems are no more complex than many others-prolonged fever, severe malnutrition, untreated HIV-but deciding how to manage it has been much harder. He is 6 months old and only 3 kg. We would usually admit him to the hospital for feeding therapy. But admitting a child to the hospital means admitting his mother as well. Hospitals are so crowded that nurses are limited in the care they can provide, and mothers are enlisted as nursing assistants for their children.

My patient has two brothers--one six and one three--and no father. He left once he learned the mother was positive. Of course, he refused to be tested and has gone on to find another wife. The mom is left cleaning up the mess as he potentially destroys another home.

And so for the past two days she has carried her baby to the clinic because we can't admit him to the hospital. Despite the struggle, moms always find a way. What is amazing is that many of these sickest children get better. As my translator told the mom, he will be fat some day soon.

Christmas in Malawi

2009-01-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

We've uploaded some pictures from our Christmas Vacation. We went on a safari in Zambia and spent New Year's on Lake Malawi. Here is the link:

Follow me, where I go

2008-12-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

It's been tricky to feel the holiday spirit here, even though it's cooled down a bit because the rainy season has started. But I know what I've not got this year because I've felt it other years.

"It was nearly ten years ago at Christmastime I had an experience that only in the past year have I’ve been able to make sense of and make peace with."

Follow me here to find out what it was.

ps: oh shoot. It's too late this evening to try and reload that picture. Just tip your computer and it'll look right.

Smudge, Fleck, Dimple

2008-12-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

Mum,

Finn turned half a year old today. His eyes resolved into their resting colour a couple months ago. Fast, it seemed. Nondescript dark to a dark blue, kind of like mine. But also kind of like yours and kind of like Dad's because his left eye has a single brown fleck, on the inside towards the bridge of his stubby nose. Sometimes I forget to call him Finn and instead carry Fleck around all day. Do you remember telling me that time about how, to your in-love adolescent mind, it was "a sign" that you and Dad both had the same middle name, and both had a brown fleck in your blue eyes?

I've loved that little fleck because it's a little something permanent in this boy who will be nothing but change for years. And also a sign, a signal to me that I'm just as in love with this kid as I have been with that other one. A sign that even though I've engraved it in permanent ways much less than I did with Scout, the details of Finn's babyhood are important to me. For some reason I need to tell him and me (and you!) I notice them, notice them and love them.

He has started crawling. He has two teeth. He's an expert at juicy mouth noises. He's dimpled on every surface you'd expect a little baby pucker and some you wouldn't. A few patches of his baby hair never fell out, so there are these long whisps that curl out like loose downy feathers. Sometimes I can get freaked out by the way these kids act like hourglasses to my life. I push for them to get to some milestone, and then mope at the end of an era. Case in point: For the first time ever, Scout slept through the night by herself last night. (Can I hear a whoop whoop?) But both Andy and I have already expressed regret that we won't be cuddling her to sleep anymore. (Obviously not enough regret to not teach her to sleep through the night.)

I know he won't remember anything distinct about this time of life, but I wonder in what ways the smell of wet pavement, damp earth, sweat and soured butter; the night music of frogs and crickets and howling dogs; the soft sweetness of fresh ripe banana and mango; the sight of warm, smiling African faces pushed into his; I wonder how these will affect him. At what point, when he's eleven, or nineteen, or thirty-two, will a sight or smell or taste trigger the faded outline of a shadow's shadow of a memory that he can't even remember from these months here in Malawi. He'll be sitting on a bus somewhere and hear a voice that he remembers but can't place. He'll wonder if it's a case of deja vue or the memory of a dream.

And me? What will I remember? That's one reason why I have to write, and why I have to be as honest as I can. I end up believing the words I've written. I end up forgetting everything but the words I've written.

If Finn is ever going to be anything but the person he is at that moment, I have to record it in detail right now. Even then it's no guarantee. I barely remember anything about Scout from this last Spring, as impossible as it seems.

Thanks for calling on Thanksgiving. Sorry I couldn't talk. Tell Dad I hope his green chicken turned out as fabulous as his green turkey last year.

Love Joh

Oh yeah, THIS is why we came here

2008-11-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

Mango season is moving north.

Each of these women is a private contractor, and they arranged it so that each of them got part of the cut from our purchase. Those piles of yellow mangoes up front? Each one was 100 kwacha. 1 USD = 145 Kwacha = one very excited Joh in extreme-glean mode. We got enough to eat like mad, freeze, give away. Anyone have any good mango recipes? Please share!

Of course, we all had to try one right away, tearing the skin off with our teeth and squeezing pulpy gold mash under our fingernails and up to our elbows.

So these guys let us share their well to rinse off.

Also didn't want to drive the hour and a half back to Lilongwe with muddy feet.

Crazy orphaned baby weekend

2008-11-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

First we went to check out a couple of little four-week old rescue pups. We’re thinking about dogs again; some friends’ place was robbed while they were out of town, so we’re upping our security measures a little.

Dogs are part of the security apparatus here, so there are lots of great big dogs that are just fed, kept kenneled or tied during the day, and expected to be alarm barkers at night. One of the hazards of being an outside alarm dog is poisoned meat that burglers throw over the compound walls.

There are no dog trainers in Lilongwe, though, and Annie, I’m serious, you would make a good living even just training basic “don’t jump on me; come when I call you; I know you’re happy, but don’t chew on me” commands. Really. We’ve talked to people about getting a group together to pay for your ticket here in exchange for some dog lessons. TiVo-ed copies of “The Dog Whisperer” get passed around here. Of course, unless you had more than two weeks to spend here, that would mean coming all the way to Malawi and then spending your time with out of control dogs. (What do you think? Wanna try?)

There’s a surprisingly active SPCA in Lilongwe, and with so many expats coming and going after short stays (shorter than the length of a dog’s life, anyway), I’m glad there’s some kind of organisation taking care of animals too. But it’s also just another one of those weird things about being in a developing country. On the one hand, its odd to see these muzungus (white foreigner) give food and protection and a place to live and care from the vet to these animals when there are children and other humans who don’t have that. On the other hand, you can’t have a place where people are taken care of and animals aren’t. Even though we value animal life lower than human life (ok, a whole ’nother bone to pick and chew together), you can’t isolate taking care of the one from the other. Certainly not when it comes to food, but even in the sense of developing a respectful, caring civilisation. (Is that what we have in the US?)

The pups were tiny, sweet, scabby on their heads where they'd been abused, and had little black muzzles. After hanging out with them for almost 40 minutes, the little girl warmed up enough to come play with my hand, chewed and flipped on her back, chewed and flipped, chewed and flipped. I had told Scout we were going to see some puppies, but she fell asleep in the hot car on the way, so I let the babes sleep on.

***

Later in the evening, one of Andy’s colleauges was having “a braai”—South African for a BBQ. A visiting NICU nurse had brought a tiny little girl to the party. Three months, orphaned, and poignantly, negative. The nurse had been volunteering at the Crisis Nursery when they got a call from a village an hour away about this baby. There was no formula, the dad couldn’t take care of it. The nurse had Zuone, the baby, at her home for the weekend, had a little tiny bottle to feed her, had made a bed for her in a basket on the floor (“I felt so weird putting her on the floor, and then I was like, ‘Oh yeah, she’s been sleeping on a dirt floor under a grass roof with goats until now’”) but ended up putting her in bed beside her. It's hard to resist sleeping in bed with a baby.

Orphan can be a misleading word here. Orphan can mean that the baby has no living immediate family members. Or it can mean that just the parents are dead. Or it can mean that just the mother is dead. Kids stay at the Crisis Nursery until they are weaned, about six months, and can then be sent back to their father or grandmother, who wasn’t able to come up with formula for them. Seems like most muzungu families that live here any length of time wind up adding a little Malawian baby to their family tree, and most often that little twig comes from the Crisis Nursery.

Adoption is not an easy process here though (“unless you’re Madonna,” is the required qualifier), and I’m pretty sure to adopt you have to live in the country for 18 months. That’s what everyone has said. Yes, I’ve looked into it.

Zuone is like something miniature. She maybe weighs six pounds, like a newborn, but she’s interactive and interested like a three-month-old. Her beautiful little head is fuzzy, and her eyes are huge and bright and like to look at faces. Her tiny fingers grip around your finger, and someone has already started training this baby to ride a woman’s back, because her legs instinctively spread and cling. She’s really really pretty and everybody wants to hold her. One woman whips out a massive-lense camera and starts snapping pictures with a flash in her face.

And that’s when my mama bear, who has been curled inwards snuffling the hairy offspring of my own belly, catches wind of something off. She rears on two legs. It is SHE, I, who should be holding this child. This baby needs a protector, and it should be me. Mama Bear is genuinely distressed. Sure, there’s a bunch of pediatricians at this party but who’s the one keeping the flash out of this baby’s face? Saying, “No, that’s enough passing around for now.” Telling all the good-intentioned women (who are maybe feeling a bit territorial as I am? Surely not.) to stop jiggling her so much, babies are ok just sitting still too. I have this biblical yearning to draw her to my bosom and nurse her. This baby doesn’t need a bunch of well-intentioned, muzungu professionals. She needs a mama bear.

***

Saturday Andy arranged to have a little premature baby moved from Kamuzu hospital to ABC Clinic, a privately run missionary clinic on the outskirts of town. There’s surprisingly little coordination between the different medical efforts here in Lilongwe.

His mother died a day or two after he was born, of some kind of cancer, but little tiny one-kilo Dickens, born at 28 weeks, made it somehow, ten days in the village before his grandmother brought him in to the clinic. He’s negative, but of course, HIV would have been the least of his challenges right now. I’ve asked Andy why go to great lengths for this one? There are relatively a lot of resources being devoted to this child. Not only that, but there’s a black-hole part of me (it’s gotten kind of bigger since we arrived here) that occasionally tries to suck the life out of living, that asks, “wouldn’t it just be better to let the kid die?” His prediction: Dickens will still die, despite going the the little building with warming beds and nurses, called the NICU. And also, “But this kid’s a fighter. He made it ten days in the village, so you’ve got to try, right?”

Dickens has no one but a grandmother who can’t care for him. We’re debating bringing him home to our house, if he does live. I’m not sure how long he can stay in the NICU at ABC. Andy warns of two things if we bring him home: 1. He would require full time care; we’d basically have to hire two people to take care of him. 2. He may still die anyway, and we would be attached, and we’d have to explain it to Scout. (Scout is already learning about death; it started this spring with bugs, and continued this summer with her great grandmother. She sort of gets it, sort of doesn’t. She told me yesterday, “I’m dead. Look, my legs aren’t moving. I died.” This after stomping on an expiring locust whose legs were still twitching.)

For now, tiny, delicate Dickens remains at ABC. Wide-eyed little Zuone is at the Crisis Nursery. Word from the SPCA lady is that those two tiny puppies have been deemed well enough to be vaccinated; things are ok right now for the orphaned babies in our lives.

***update***

Dickens is still alive, and looks like maybe his family will be interested in taking him back when he’s weaned after all.

The Lilongwe SPCA has had a devastating blow: two of the puppies they adopted out last week have rabies. Had rabies when they adopted them out. Andy made me make some frantic phone calls to find out about the ones that were mouthing me. Looks like I'm safe, but I doubt those canine babies will be coming home here.

***more update***

So, candor isn't always the best policy, see? So I've changed some names and deleted stuff and hopefully made this a less critical post.

Also, I forgot to point this out: check out the way Finn and I are doing the same wierd thing with our mouths in the picture. Awww!

A Malawi Hug

2008-11-11T11:41:00.000-08:00

"What's it like on Matilda's back, Scout?"

2008-11-10T04:48:00.000-08:00

"Tight."

Freedom from fear

2008-11-05T05:41:00.000-08:00

Andy couldn’t sleep last night—was nervous and excited. While I bed hopped with children, he hopped back and forth between the couch and bed, knowing he would have to go to work today and keep fighting off this nasty cold that has left him voiceless. Larygitis on election day didn’t stop us from voting of course; in fact, we voted weeks ago like all the other absentees.

I drove Andy’s ballot to the American embassy where I picked up my own too. Two guards stopped me before the parking lot, made me turn off my car and pop open the hood. Then they walked around looking under the car with a big mirror on the end of a pole. When they were through, they closed the hood, I started the car, and they opened the gate. Once I’d parked and gone inside, I have to show my passport, sign my name and address and phone number, have my stuff scanned, turn off my cell phone and leave it there. Then I go to a different building to cast my vote and give it back to mail in the diplomatic pouch.

But when Finn and I woke up this morning at five, we rushed out to the living room ten minutes before they announced a winner. And though I couldn’t help letting out some whoops and joyful strains of “God bless America, my home sweet home,” it was when John McCain gave his concession speech that the tears started flowing.

What a gift he gives to his country to gracefully accept defeat and to pledge his support to “the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.” Watching the news here in Malawi, where so much of the continental political news is about rulers unwilling to part with power except through violence, I was deeply moved by it, by what my brother Martin calls the genius of the American system: that there’s a campaign, there’s voting, and then we all get up and have breakfast the next day, just the same. (Mart, I got the jist of what you said, yeah? I was running with babes in arms to the gate to meet the carpool when you said that part).

We didn’t have TV for the first presidential debate that happened while were here, but Andy managed to solicit an invitation from a Baylor administrator who works here, to watch it live at 3am in his living room. We were new to the country, to the socioeconomic caste system here. We invited Mohammad, our housekeeper, to come too. It was an awkward mistake, we learned.

But one we repeated willingly this morning just before the Obamas walked onstage. Unbolting the door, Andy ran out on the condi shouting for Mohammad, who at six thirty, was already working around the yard, moving the hose, whacking the hard red dirt with a homemade hoe.

“Do you want to see Obama?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Come and watch. He’s about to speak.”

Mohammad moved to the windows, so he could get a good view of the TV from outside the house.

“No, come inside,” we urge him, and he comes to the living room and stands to the side, behind our furniture.

“Please sit,” we tell him, clearing off pillows and shushing him at the same time because president elect Obama has walked out and is starting to speak. And I love this man who has inspired us, and the Malawian man daring to watch him beside us. Tears stream down our cheeks again because we feel in our hearts the truth he is speaking:

“And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

“And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

“For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

Americans and America can change; the whole world can change. Social caste systems can change. Malawi and the rest of Africa can change too, I want to believe. Even Mohammad can determine his own future, have a chance at liberty and opportunity and unyielding hope, I want to believe.

Equal Time for Finn

2008-11-02T07:48:00.001-08:00

In response to complaints from friends and family alike, here is our lovely ball of butter Finn.

Halloween

2008-11-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

I was a fairy butterfly for Halloween.

I like to play on the front porch, but in Malawi I call it the condi.

A fairy butterfly's best friend

Sometimes fairy butterflies forget the basics.

Swingtime

2008-11-02T05:57:00.000-08:00

If you're not subscribing to Poky's daily

2008-10-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

you missed this a week or two ago. Hot damn my fella can write! In the paper, it ran with photos by award-winning photo journalist Smiley Pool.

(many thanks to Ian Fennell, managing editor at the Idaho State Journal for the opportunity)

The Baylor Children’s Center waiting room fills to capacity by 8 AM. Its vaulted ceiling and tasteful artwork do little to camouflage the overcrowding. So many of the children are stricken with diarrhea and vomiting that the room’s central feature is a large red plastic bucket continually refilled with oral rehydration solution. In fact it is not so much a waiting room as a bus terminal that happens to be the entry point to Malawi’s premier center of pediatric HIV care. First time visitors invariably stagger when they realize that almost every person on the benches is infected with HIV. And those who are not infected are the aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers now caring for a generation of orphaned children.

In a country where almost 15% of the population is positive and the average life expectancy has dropped to below 35 years, HIV has bullied Malawi into submission. Now a decade deep into the crisis, the nation is starting to fight back.

The two newest and nicest buildings in Malawi’s capital city, Lilongwe, are both dedicated to HIV. The National AIDS Commission occupies a brightly mirrored glass structure surrounded by manicured lawns. The other, the Baylor Children’s Center, sits kitty corner to Kamuzu Central Hospital, Lilongwe’s main referral center. The two’s juxtaposition illustrates where Malawi has been and where it could be going.

You could claim Kamuzu, a place where you are reminded that smell is the most powerful of senses and also the hardest to forget, sits at the front lines of Malawi’s HIV crisis. Fully 70% of the adult patients and almost one-third of all infants have HIV. But for too many patients Kamuzu is actually the end.

Two years old, Baylor retains the freshness of energy and big money. Exam rooms are indistinguishable from any pediatrician’s office in developed countries. The young, imported physicians Baylor employs decorate them with toys from their last trip home.

Shira is typical of many of Baylor’s patients. Until this year, she had never been sick, but by the time she arrived, she had been seen seven different times at the local health center for fever. Her decline was now accelerating despite a range of treatments.

Shira’s mother knew her own status, positive, and also her father’s who had died the year before. But denial is a basic instinct that is only strengthened in the face of repeated tragedy. Enabled by health care workers who had pushed--but not too hard--for the child to be tested, Shira’s mother had ignored the obvious. HIV comes to a boil slowly over years. Its gradual consequences are often missed or disregarded until it overwhelms the body’s immune system.

Like most parents, Shira’s mother stoically received the test result she already knew. Her eyes quickly darted to the ground. Complete silence followed. Outsiders explain this as cultural. I wonder if it is a protective response: quick acceptance of what must seem an inevitable part of life.

Shira will wait several more weeks to start her HIV treatment. Before her mother is allowed to give the medicines to her daughter, she will be required to attend classes, meet with counselors and physicians multiple times, and demonstrate an understanding of the treatment her daughter will take for the rest of her life.

At first, I thought it cruel to make patients like Shira wait for life sustaining medicines. The medicines, known as highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART, will transform her HIV into a chronic but manageable illness. It is an understatement to claim HAART is life altering.

But taking HAART is also complex; even more complex are the politics surrounding it. So much so, Malawi has only been offering HAART to children for three years. Three years ago, Shira would have died within months.

*****

When I started medical school in 1998, America was crippled by the AIDS epidemic. Parents were still boycotting schools if one of its students were infected with the virus. Medical professors filled their lectures with HIV, and AIDS patients packed the hospitals of major cities. We learned more about AIDS than any other disease.

Today medical students learn about HIV from a decidedly different perspective, and absent the urgency of crisis. Ignoring that we have yet to develop a vaccine which prevents transmission of HIV, treatment of the virus stands as a triumph of modern medicine. HAART can make HIV undetectable in the body, and patients can lead essentially normal lives. Infected American mothers have less than a 2% chance of transmitting the virus to their babies. This is the HIV of America. Sub-Saharan Africa tells a different story.

Drug companies and policy makers resisted sending HAART to countries like Malawi during the late 1990’s and early into this decade. Various excuses were offered, but most revolved around the thought that African patients could not be trusted to reliably take their medicines. Since even a few missed doses a month makes the virus resistant to medicines and much harder, if not impossible, to treat, executives convinced themselves that withholding treatment from a continent was paternalistic benevolence. In retrospect, most everyone recognizes such rationalizations as greed cloaked in the patronizing remnants of colonialism.

I recently met an orphaned 14-year-old who had been on HAART through the Baylor Children’s Center for two years. Now living with her uncle, Limbandi had just finished Malawi’s equivalent of junior high and was waiting on her final exam scores, which would determine the high school she attended. Industrious and resourceful in ways only survivors are, her future plans included studying to be an engineer at a foreign university.

Like most adolescents who were infected at birth, Limbandi wears her HIV status conspicuously. She is stunted, maybe the size of an American ten year old, and her face is covered with flat warts. Scars from a prolonged case of shingles cross the right side of her face and extend into her eye. But these are past problems. Instead of focusing on her illness, Limbandi is now able to concentrate on the universal theme of adolescence—fashion. She came to her appointment wearing a perfectly fitted leather jacket and brownish wig, both of which are currently the rage in Lilongwe.

What so many thought would be too complex for the average African patient to understand, Limbandi finds absolutely simple. She knows that by taking a single pill twice a day and never missing a dose she is no longer sick.

*****

Yet HIV treatment in Malawi is complex. Not because the patients are too uneducated or simple to understand, but because HIV is not simply another epidemic.

HIV amplifies all of the other diseases of poverty. Combating malnutrition, which in the past consisted largely of providing food, now is also a fight to rebuild the body’s immune system. Tuberculosis rates skyrocket as HIV spreads. At a minimum, one-third of those with HIV also have TB in sub-Saharan Africa, and recent reports put that number much higher.

Hospitals, already overcrowded, are now flooded with patients. At one regional hospital, a single pediatrician oversees the care of 200 patients per day. She describes stumbling over children who sleep on the floor during malaria season when the children’s ward census often doubles. HIV is not the only culprit but it is clearly the major contributing factor.

HIV also accelerates poverty among the already impoverished by disproportionately attacking young adults. In fact, 1 in 4 working adults in Malawi are infected with HIV. As the workforce dwindles so does Malawi’s tax base. In a country that already struggles to feed itself annually, HIV treatment must compete with every other crisis for attention and resources.

The issues surrounding breastfeeding in positive mothers illuminates both the effect poverty has on HIV and the effect HIV has on poverty. HIV is transmitted through breast milk, and breastfeeding essentially doubles the risk of an infant acquiring HIV. Because of this, in developed countries, positive mothers are counseled not to breastfeed. However, in developing countries, formula fed babies are actually more likely to die. Sadly, the best way to prevent transmission of HIV actually increases an infant’s chances of dying from other diseases.

Breastfeeding is but one of the many compromises made in combating HIV under the stresses of poverty. If only treating HIV in Malawi were as simple for the nation as it is for its individual citizens. Limbandi takes one pill twice a day and her life is now transformed. Every morning, the waiting room fills with similar patients seeking such hope. They know that treatment is available and wonder why it has yet to reach them. If we don’t offer it to them now, we will lose an entire generation waiting for an answer.

Sleep is for the birds

2008-10-23T02:49:00.000-07:00

At some hour last night, I heard a little cry from the next room over, then the quiet slap of Scout’s small feet as she came into our room. It’s a testament to just how tired he is that Andy is not enforcing the “sleep in your own room” rule. He pulled her up and she climbed over him so that the lineup in our double bed was now: daddy, Scout, Finn, mama. Once situated, tucked under Andy’s arm, she reached out take hold of Finn’s hand, stilled, and fell back asleep.

We’ve been playing the bed shuffle game every night since we got here, since that first night when I was so freaked out by the darkness of unfamiliar night and I wanted all my chicks nowhere else but under my wings.

That night every sound was sinister, and all the warnings and suspicions and fears I’d absorbed and recycled in our planning and preparation to come here, clotted and lay thickened on my sleepless chest. What might just be the quiet scrape of dry avocado leaves on pavement was more likely the rasp of huge insect legs, or the scuff of an intruder’s heel. Every creak and groan of our house contracting in the cooling air made my heart freeze momentarily. I heard a bruised, tapering canine whimper somewhere nearby and knew someone ruthless had just picked off one of the neighbour’s dogs so he could come in and…

I forced myself to follow every morbid line of thought to its bloody conclusion so I’d be prepared to protect the kids.

The only way I can describe my sate of frozen alertness that night is to compare it to the way I used to lie awake in bed after I woke up from a nightmare as a child. Any movement would resurrect whatever evil had woken me up in the first place; there was nothing to do but lie there and listen in stiff terror, trying to keep my chest from moving as I breathed.

Then I heard a twitter, and all at once a rush of calls and chirps; and hopefulness arrived with feathers. It was impossible to stay afraid during the dawn bird chorus. Soon the sky was getting lighter, and then suddenly the sun was streaking orange light through our curtainless windows.

The bed shuffle now is more about nighttime nursing and teaching Scout to sleep through the night again. It doesn’t take a parent to tell you (though every parent can attest) that lack of sleep can really discolor reality. The basics of happy family living, let alone doing something Good for Humanity can seem unfindable in the dark of exhaustion.

Last night, peeking out from sandpaper eyelids, I looked down at my family before I relinquished our unintended family bed to go sleep in Scout’s now vacant one with Finn for the last few hours of night. Like some “armpit snuggle” variation on nesting dolls, they were tucked one into the other in descending order; Scout’s head snuggled in Andy’s, Finn’s head in Scout’s. Keeping each other close under tight, sleeping wings. Feathered things after all.

This is like summer camp

2008-10-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

-Wood smoke hangs in the damp night air.
-Showers are a luxury even if you never feel completely clean.
-Clothes dried in the sun are either crusty dry or slightly mildewed.
-Bedtime is often by candlelight.
-Exhaustion hits in the midday heat.
-Every moment feels like the makings of a memory.
-And there's horseback riding.

She's something else

2008-10-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

Scout may be the most independent two year old in Lilongwe.

Yesterday at the pool, she walked across the deck to the bar and must have asked for a soda pop. By the time I caught up to her, the bartender had leaned across his bar and handed her a Fanta. The waitress then popped off the top, and Scout was off again.

Just slightly more dangerous: We have a fifty foot metal tower in our yard that allows us to connect to the world wide web. It's big and green and dangerous. Today, I found Scout about 10 feet up it without a care in the world.

Last Patient of the Day

2008-10-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

About 30 minutes before we closed, I grabbed what I hoped would be the last patient for the day. I groaned when I realized it was a family of three, and they were all new to the clinic.

At best a visit like this takes an entire hour. But if any of the children are sick, it takes much longer. Reality check: everyone who is new to the clinic is sick; otherwise they would be at home or at school or playing soccer.

The family consisted of four children and a mother; I was only seeing three. The three-year-old won the lottery today. He was the only one of his brothers and sisters who tested negative for HIV.

It's easy to assume that this family would collapse with the news. But I've now seen their stoic response many times. Parents accept the diagnosis of HIV like any other--an ear infection, pneumonia, appendicitis. This mother can't collapse because she still needs to figure out how to feed her children tonight.

And what about the staff? They can't collapse either despite doling out tragedy on repeat. So of course, they'll rush me to finish. Tomorrow we'll do the same thing again and again. The bus leaves at 4:30.

I've found myself moving on as well. My baseline is slowly shifting to a new reality.

familyhood: Part I

2008-10-08T07:01:00.000-07:00

Scout: "When Daddy's not around, I like to know where he is."

Welcome to Malawi

2008-10-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

Hello, I'm your tour guide, Scout. Welcome to Malawi.

My family moved here in August. We brought my baby brother Finn. My mama calls him a stick of butter.

I hope this blog lets our family and friends back home know that I'm having lots of fun in my new house . . . when I'm not in my new time out chair.

Breastmilk to peanut butter

2008-10-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

My last patient of the day was weaned from breastmilk to Sobo at six months. Sobo is Malawi's Sunny Delight on steroids. So packed with sugar and artifical flavoring, it's only palatable diluted 1 to 5. Except in cases of severe hypoglycemia, Sobo is absent any nutritional value. But the children love it, just look at their teeth.

When Blessings tested negative for the virus one month ago, his mother faced the devil's bargain: Wean too early and children die of malnutrition and diarrhea. Wean too late and the baby is more likely to become infected with the virus.

His twin sister lost that bet just last week when she died from diarrhea.

His full 7 pounds was hyperalert for any food with eyes wide and darting. And then we gave him some.

Malawi provides vitamin fortified peanut butter to the most malnourished. Everyone wants chiponde because it tastes just like Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Though the aftertaste has the grit of a Jamba Juice with the vitamins. Blessings ate his chiponde like a rock star.

He'll go home today with 4 jars of peanut butter and hopefully make it back next week.

Two reasons to celebrate:

2008-10-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

1: the postal system works here! My editor tested it out by mailing me my author copy of

2: The Mother in Me, a beautiful book of essays about the gritty, lovely, rich and affirming role of everyday motherhood.

We celebrated by feasting on Indian food, and later on I sat quietly weeping as I feasted on the poetry. I just love these women.

Home is where the Hilux is

2008-10-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Truly, Lilongwe took a step closer to becoming our home when we finally found a car to buy. Bravo to Andy who also learned to drive stick, driving on the left, in Africa traffic!

We live in a large compound surrounded by brick walls and razor wire. The yard is green (because we water like crazy) and filled with fruit trees--mango, papaya, avocado, lemon, orange.

Scout has turned some developmental corner and is now a kid who likes to play with other kids. She spends every moment he's willing with Precious, who lives on our compound too.

We sleep under bed nets so we don't get malaria while we sleep.

Michael, one of our guards, told me tonight that one of the best things about going to church is speaking in tongues. Here he is at our gate.

We live in one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Lilongwe, just down the street from the vice president's compound. When the rains start in a few weeks, there will be leaves on these trees.

Our dining room

and the compound within our compound, where Precious lives with his parents, Mohammad and Matilda (known as Potato for pronounciation reasons in our houshold). Mohammad is our housekeeper, and Potato watches Scout a couple hours a week.

Because they cook on an open fire (and for lots of other reasons I'll tell you about at length in future posts) we've made the rule that Scout can't just go and hang out at Precious' house. But if we can't find her, that's where we first look.

Leaving, Going, Landing, Adjusting

2008-10-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

It's true that the pace of life is slower here (un-automated everything will do that to you). But time doesn’t seem to pass any slower in Malawi, much to our surprise. Hard to believe it's been close to two months since we moved to Lilongwe, Malawi, and almost three since we left Idaho (our home there has ripened in our memory to near-perfect). So to catch you up, here’s where we’ve been and where we’ve landed as we moved through western America's summer to south east Africa's winter.

We left here,

passed through here,

and here,

reunited with Andy here,

then did a lot of this (and this),

and finally landed here.