Because They're Burning Bricks

Posted By Sika on June 13, 2008

It occurs to me that I am inclined to write about the things that deviate from my routine, like the concert going and birthday parties I had last weekend. But these are the things that are most like home* and are therefore probably not of interest to you lot.

The bits of Africa that come through these experiences are slight and often negative, even though my experiences as a whole are not negative. So, anyway, here we go, me doing my best to portray an accurate picture.

Last Friday I walked to David’s and we walked to Sarah and Denise’s where we drank gin and tonics until Wanangwa and Innocent showed up and we rode in the back of Innocent’s pickup the short distance to the Mulunguzi cottages, where the Malawian band the Black Missionaries were playing. The concert started out better than when we went to the same place to see Lucius Banda; for one thing there was efficient taking of money and stamping of hands, and for another, more important thing, the opening acts were really really good. Lots of reggae and other force-you-to-shake-your-booty music.

It quickly became apparent that the presence of David, Wanangwa, Innocent, and later James (drunk and showing off with his sword in a cane though he might have been) made a huge difference in how we were treated. When we saw Lucius Banda, we couldn’t get rid of the drunk men. Picture this: a drunken man, swaying with every movement, bending his knees in sort of a squat and coming up within a couple of feet behind you, doing what might have been gyrating if he had a little more control of his body. After a few minutes of being ignored, he walks away, looking self-satisfied as if he just danced with an azungu woman. Part of it was also that more people were more drunk at the Banda concert than at the Black Missionaries concert. And that might explain the completely drunk guy chastising the other complete guy trying to “dance” with us when obviously we didn’t want to. But part of it was our guy friends insinuating themselves between us and the annoying, and part of it was the freedom having those guy friends around gave us to be more forthright and forceful with our rejections.

One guy, after being danced out of our circle several times, kept coming back. Eventually, I told him to go. And the, when that didn’t work, that he was too much drunk and we don’t like too much drunk and he should leave and then finally resorted to, “Iwe, choka!” He tried to stare me down, but I felt safe enough with the other guys around that I could stare back just long enough so he’d know I wasn’t afraid of him, and then I looked away so as not to escalate things. He stared for a couple more minutes but eventually couldn’t stand all the ignoring and left and didn’t bother us for the rest of the night.

And overall we had a great time. It was nice also that Innocent stayed stone cold sober since he was driving, something even most azungu here don’t do.** When he was giving me a lift home, Innocent was having a hard time understanding my English, which is a common problem here: Sarah from England, Denise from Holland, David from Scotland, and I all have drastically different English accents and that can be hard for people to pick up on when they didn’t learn English as their first language. So Innocent asked me to speak Malawian English and subtract Americanisms like “You’re going to go straight for a ways.” So I said, “Ok, turn light here, then the next light, then turn reft.” Innocent cracked up, but also entirely understood me.

The next day was David’s birthday party at Sarah and Denise’s. I christened David’s new countertop oven with his birthday cake and then we went for the braai where Erin, Linda, and a grad student named Rebecca, and I were the only Americans surrounded by a sea of mostly Brits. There was much razzing over the English language until we came to the same conclusions we always come to (Rocket is better than arugula. Cilantro is better than coriander. We’re willing to deal with tomahto if they’re willing to deal with baysil). Eventually we headed to Club G String (No, we don’t know if the owners understand the name of their bar) for some dancing. The dancing was fun and was marred by no more than the usual level of assholish behavior you expect at a bar-y/club-type place. Most of the guys were polite enough. At one point I went outside to sit on the benches and wait until they stopped using the smoke machines and a guy leaned over 3 feet to look down my shirt, but that was so ridiculous I couldn’t decide what proportion of me was offended and what proportion pitied him for being such a lame ass.

A song started playing with an infectious beat and a lyric telling us to jump up. I’m a sucker for songs that tell me to jump, so I excused myself from the conversation I was having and ran back into the club. I didn’t feel like fighting my way to the rest of our group, though, so I just started bouncy-dancing (and jumping up when instructed, of course). One guy was dancing with me, but not in a bad way, and then the other Malawians behind me were tickled by the azungu dancing with them and not just in a rock-rock-left foot-right foot kind of way. It was incredible. So much fun. But again, the presence of many azungu and especially the presence of several guys helped me feel safe enough to explore out of my safety zone a bit.

*Believe it or not, most of my life here is not noticeably strange (except possibly the pure joy that comes from a hot shower in cold season, a treat that is unparalleled anywhere or anyhow else), and I constantly worry about how to portray the differences without making everything I write all about them. It’s so easy, and sometimes satisfying, to portray the otherness of living in Africa. But that isn’t the main truth of being here.

**Many azungu know that drinking makes Malawians bad drivers, but assume they are somehow immune.

Categories: Updates
Tags: Black Missionaries, going out, Lucius Banda