After 6 days of intense learning in Toronto, about 30 hours of traveling over 6 time zones, 2 more days of intense learning in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, I finally arrived in Ntchisi, my new home town, on Monday may 12. The moment I've been working towards for the last 4 months.
All my senses are doing over time as my body tries to absorb my new surrondings. The smells, the wind, the sun, the stars, the bugs, the architecture, the open fields, the food, the clothes, the people, the language....
The language is the hardest part for me at the moment. There are too many ways of saying "Hello, how are you?" for the different times of the day, that I just get confused. At least my attemps make people laugh, and the kids never tire of correcting my pronunciation. I find it hard to sit in a meeting and have four Malawians speak in English just so I can understand. But the people here are too nice and so accommodating that I'm already feeling at home.
The climate here is fantastic! The day starts with a burning sun (without the humidity of Montreal) and ends with a cool breeze for easy sleeping. It's the dry season, or Malawi's "winter," so it's cold enough at night to wear pants and want a nice blanket to sleep with. Dry season also means fewer mosquitoes!!
The food is quite different, but pretty good. Breakfast is usually either bread with margarine or boiled sweet potato*. For lunch and dinner, it’s always nshinma** with two other dishes: a leafy green relish made from either pumpkin leaves or rape leaves, and a meat dish (goat or fish, so far). I like everything so far, except the fish -- it's just a little too fishy~
The adventure of getting to this town from Lilongwe, drove home the logic of not driving after sunset. The roads are narrow and they wind through the hills; add the people, bikes, ox-pulled wagons, dogs and goats, and you've got difficult driving even in daylight. Bring on the darkness…well you can just imagine.
*Sweet potatoes are kinda yellow and yams are orange.
**Nshima is made from either corn flour or cassava flour. The flour is added to boiling water and stirred and stirred and stirred over the fire into a dough-like consistency. You really get a sense of how strong the women are when you "try" to stir the nshima the way they do, at their impressive intensity... it's very thick which is good -- because it sticks to your stomach.
* Photo by Duncan McNicholl
No comments:
Post a Comment