Because They're Burning Bricks

Saturday I finally met the mfumu, the chief or village headman, of Matawale. I had asked the Campus Administrative Officer*, Jeremiah, if he could introduce me to the mfumu, but he had never met him. So I asked my landlord, Mr. Makato, and he said he could arrange it. So Saturday at 8:00am, Mrs. Makato came by my house to pick me up. On our way to the chief’s, we chatted in Chichewa, as much as my limited language acquisition allowed. And here’s where we see how bad my intuitive understanding of Chichewa is, because for the life of me I thought Mrs. Makato said that she was the daughter of the chief. When we got to the chief’s house, it turned out that there was actually a mfumu wamkulu (big chief) and an mfumu waang’ono (little chief). The mfumu wamkulu was Mrs. Makato’s great aunt, but she was getting too old to do all of her duties, and so Mrs. Makato’s son was the mfumu waang’ono. I had misinterpreted what Mrs. Makato had said: she hadn’t said that she was the child of the chief, she had said that the chief was her child. So I guess I asked the right person for an introduction.

They were about to start a meeting because the Matawale Housing Board had taken the houses of two families without compensation. I was not clear why. I sort of wanted to stay, but if the meeting was all in Chichewa I would understand very little, and if the chief had to translate for me, I would prolong the meeting exponentially. So I gave the chiefs a bag of sugar and a postcard from Seattle and made my way home.

Then I made dinner for my neighbors, the Chinombas, and for Jeremiah’s family. I made gumbo and hush puppies (sort of. I used mgaiwa, which is similar to but is not exactly cornmeal). A while ago Jeremiah asked me if we had okra in America. I told him yes, and tried to explain gumbo, which really went about as well as could be expected. Eventually I just decided that I would make him gumbo, and it seemed that would be the perfect time to thank the Chinomba family as well. So when I was back home I went to Market Spice in Pike Place and bought some filé spice. I had mom ship it to me along with the most awesome Christmas present, a basket of spices from pearl, because taking various powders and leaves through airport security just somehow made me a wee bit leery. Once my spices arrived, I made plans for gumbo night.

Moses and I spent most of yesterday cooking. I asked Moses to get two chickens and some sausage from one of the stores (Metro or Shop Rite) in town on his way to my house. He said that the chickens didn’t look good at Metro, and there was no sausage, and so he bought three live chickens instead.

Two things about live chickens: one is that I really want to slaughter one myself before I go home. The other is that in order to do that I really need not to be expecting store bought chickens: I need to have time to prepare myself first. Luckily, I had Moses to slaughter, pluck, and dismember the chickens for me.

I wrote before about the awareness that comes with being more connected to your food. I didn’t talk about meat because I pretty much don’t eat it. At least not if I have to prepare it. I don’t have a refrigerator, and plus, meat here isn’t sanitized, made unrecognizable, and packed into plastic. It’s kind of messy. When I started peeling the chicken meat off the bone to drop it into the nearly completed gumbo, Moses looked at me like I was crazy. “Mukuganiza ndili ndi misala? (You think I’m crazy?)” He said yes, because Malawians would have dropped the drumsticks, the wings, the breasts (the back, the neck, maybe even the feet) into the gumbo intact.

It occurred to me, both during this exchange and while I was picking hearts and lungs off the bones of the chickens before starting to cook the meat I wanted for stock: not only are we wasteful, but we go for the easiest eating experience possible. No cartilage or bone shards or bits of anything that might cause a pause in mastication get in the way. Not that I really have a problem with that. I quite prefer not having to pick little bits of unidentified from between my teeth. But doesn’t it do something to us to have our food sanitized, cleaned, made neat and packaged for us**? We are charged more when our produce is pre-wrapped as though the plastic itself has somehow become an integral part of the value of the produce.

So anyway, Moses and I had to scrounge for enough plates, spoons, cups (we didn’t have enough: had to tap into Derek’s nalgene collection) and hope that people didn’t mind sitting on the floor even though I don’t own a mat. Even though I should. But the night, I think, was a success, not the least ‘cause I loaned out smut magazines to everybody there. After Jeremiah and his family left, Dennis said he was upset because I am here in Malawi and it should have been his and his family’s role to make dinner for me first.

I tried to explain to Dennis that Zione had invited me to dinner, several times, when I first got here. But a combination of my feeling so unsure of myself, so foreign, and not being used to open invitations (I explained that in America we make appointments to see our friends), meant that I never took her up on the offer.

I also told Dennis that if his house is my house and my house is his house, then his Julia (his amazing 1-year-old daughter) is also my Julia. He agreed, too. He’s crazy.

Today, I caught up on the laundry I didn’t do yesterday. Actually, I was pretty proud of myself because by god the last thing I wanted to do this morning was laundry. Especially my sheets, the cleaning of which becomes quite a production due to the layer of dust and grime that tenaciously clings to the skin, undislodgeable by any means other than contact with sheets.

I did an hour and a half of yoga (the easy stuff because yesterday I barely got through the podcast I had selected even though I had wanted to do it before I started.) and then pulled my laundry in off the line just five minutes before the rains started again. I gave the dogs the chicken bits they didn’t get yesterday: heads, feet, and guts. I drew David, the new VSO, the map of Matawale I wished I had when I got here and took my bike over to his house, where he wasn’t, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to meet him.

When I got back home, I felt as though there was something I was forgetting to do, something in my grand plan for today that I had missed. And then I remembered. I have set myself the task of learning to climb the guafa (guava) tree in my yard. It reminds me of when I used to go to the rock climbing gym, trying to figure my way to the top of a climb that was just beyond my ability or my height. Only without ropes to protect me from gravity. Which is Good For Me™ and for the irrational fear of falling from which I am attempting to free myself. I pulled myself up about 4 feet off the ground three times, got stuck in three different places (although each place was on approximately the same level as each other place), and got back down three different times without breaking my neck or any other part attached to me. So I count that a success.