Leaving Malawi, Part I
Posted By Sika on September 3, 2009
I haven´t written about my last weeks in Malawi partly because I still don´t have pics uploaded for some posts I´ve already written, but mostly because I´ve been in a serious state of denial: refusing to say good-bye to people I know I won´t see again; planning multiple trips back to Zomba so I can´t know I won´t see them again. The whole process has been surreal–all I know is that I don´t know anything.
When I went to Kory´s site in Liwonde, we started talking about Peace Corps, other volunteers, and Malawi. She apologized later for talking my ear off but I told her sincerely that one of the things I have become acutely aware of is that I won´t have anyone once I get home with whom to talk about the last two years of my life.
Sure, I can Facebook my PC Malawi friends and maybe even call some of them occasionally. But there´s no easy outlet for those random, “Hey, remember that one time, with the thing, back when we had transit houses?” thoughts.
Thank goodness my mom is coming: she´ll at least have some frame of reference We´re doing semi-bwana traveling, though. She won´t know what it´s like waiting for a minibus to fill when you know you´ve got to get somewhere in ever decreasing time. She wion´t know what it´s like worrying about how ridiculous you look clambering up into a lorry (and then realizing you should´ve been worried about injuring yourself instead of about something silly like how you look).
She won´t (I hope) have any funny stories about trying and failing to aim in a chimbudzi.
Or understand the frustration of having the power go out every day just as you start to cook dinner. She won´t get the should I/shouldn´t I light the mbaula dilemma.
She may or may not see goats in various stages of being slaughtered, but she won´t have time to get inured to it and then be surprised and disturbed by it all over again.
She may find the turns of speech and the signs amusing, but it won´t be with the affection many of us have who´ve been here a while: I laugh when Musi says stuff like “She wasn´t all that dead. Then she wasn´t all that alive” because I love how Musi- and Malawi-like the phrase is, not because I think it´s worthy of making fun.
If my mom had come during my service, we probably would´ve stayed in Malawi and I would´ve had a house and the chance to show mom what my daily life is like. Not that any of it is anyone´s fault;I understand why no one was able to visit me during my service. It just means that those bridges, between my old life, my current life, and my future life have not been built. Without the bridges it´s hard to reconcile each of those stages with the others.
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