internet has been down here since last week. the hospital's connection is off (apparently it's a billing issue), so now I'm on the front porch of an office of an NGO that some of the UPenn folks' started using wireless from this other NGO's office about 10m away. I tried yesterday to get on and could for about 5 minutes, so it’s definitely not a very strong alternative. It apparently tends to crash by 9 am, so we’re heading down early to try to catch it.
For backlogged updates:
Field: I went to field last saturday. I sat in on three interviews which consisted of getting dropped off in the middle of a field and walking varying distances to someone’s house. Often we walked through a number of villages, which are essentially very small clusters of houses (like any more than 4 will count). Other times it was literally walking along this little worn path through grasses taller than I. It is another world, and probably a truer representation of Malawi than anything I’m getting here in town. Down to cell phone coverage in the middle of the bush. Poor by our standards doesn't even describe it.
And yet, again, people are just people. The first interview was of a 21 year old woman who had two small kids and a 23 year old husband. The last one was of a 32 year old man and his 27 year old wife who had three kids. I tend to think very abstractly about this work and forget that many of the people are about my age. Families by that description are totally universal; it’s no different here. But they were clearly just barely getting by. The first interviewee and her mother and sister-in-law were husking and pulling corn from the cob while the husband was in the field working. The third interviewee had to be called from the field since his wife didn’t want to talk to us alone. Their clothes are clearly western cast-offs (the sister-in-law was wearing this yellow business suit from the 1980s) or old chitenje (a piece of cloth that is a wrap skirt, a head wrap, a baby carrier on ones back, and myriad other things) and it seemed clear these were probably their only change of clothes. The little girls at the third house were wearing these little dresses that were torn; their father’s shirt was tattered and his pants had clearly been mended multiple times. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that people were happy, but kids are playing and most peoples' spirits are okay. The middle interview was totally fine - there was a big family in what seemed like a nice house (it was concrete with a tin roof, slatted windows and a door with a lock v. clay/mud houses with thatched grass roof).
I still can’t get over the animals: at the first one three guinea fowls came up to me; at the third there were goats and pigs roaming around. They’re just everywhere. Half way through the interview I noticed that one of the pigs had gotten muddy, by the end of the interview all of them were covered in mud. Awesome. Chickens and roosters are ubiquitous. (I also saw a couple of donkeys eating from a pile of trash, and some cows munching on tree leaves in a front lawn on the way to town this morning.)
Speaking of animals, I didn’t take any pictures because it felt too much like treating peoples’ homes like a zoo. But there was plenty that was picture worthy, like the well in the last village that was literally a board covering a hole and a pail with a rope on it (note: I am grateful for running water). I’m going again Friday and Saturday, and Monday if they team isn’t finished by Saturday, so perhaps some more pictures then. I’m not going to be sitting in on many interviews – my presence skews things quite a bit – but I’m going more to hear what people are hearing once they’re back in the truck to get a sense of where I should head, who I should talk to, and what questions I should be asking in the next bit of work.
C and the other intern both left Tuesday. The study team is here until Saturday (or Monday) and then it's just me. It was a little weird when they left; I was surprisingly sad. Their presence was a great transition and way of easing into things here, and now I have to hit the ground running. I think this next phase will really be where I get going and learn a lot. It helps that I have a better sense of what I need to work on in the next 6-7 weeks; I was able to get some one-on-one time with C before she left and have a good handle on things. I’m basically going to be going all over the district doing formative work for the qualitative component of the evaluation. I’ll draw up the sampling scheme, listing out people they should talk to, and interview guides and protocols. (Basically it’s Theresa’s class for real. For real?) Naturally, it involves a lot of the stuff that I need to practice (networking, asking for help and favors, etc.). It’s still a little scary and uncertain, but I came to have my world rocked, and so it is/will be. In the meantime, I’m in good shape. I’m just taking action as much as I can each day and using the different networks already here (our study manager, some people at the district office I’ve met, some of the Penn folks’ colleagues here). I’ve had to get better at reigning it in when I get too ahead of myself and into the big picture; the mental energy for worrying is a luxury that I really don’t have here.
One of the people from the district building is this guy Z who helped us out last week. Part of our current questionnaire is about food and non-food expenditures and C had me and the other intern price all of the things in our market so that we know how much things cost. We found this guy, Z, to come translate, explain what we doing, and make sure that we were getting the non-azungu price. It was a great way to see the market and the town. We went in almost every store along the road and throughout most of the market. One of the stores I still can’t get over: it’s a plastics store. Seriously, EVERYTHING here is plastic. Chairs in the conference room are all like the white stackable plastic chairs for your backyard. Trash cans, cups, drums and pails for water, and on and on…all plastic. Benjamin, the future really is in plastics. Anyway. We even went back to the maize mill and watched people processing their maize (you have to pay a fee and we needed to know how much the fee was). There are some things in the market that I just don’t quite understand, like the huge section in the back dedicated to dried fish (you can imagine how it smells) or the bike that had four live chickens tied together and to the handlebars. But otherwise it’s pretty straightforward stuff: food, clothes, household goods. And interestingly, most everything is priced universally. Some things might be inflated for me, but because it’s so not a tourist destination, it’s not really an issue. Not bargaining at the market was a little counterintuitive at first, but now sort of makes sense. Z’s a good guide, about my age, and will probably be a good ally while I’m here. He’s introduced me to most of the people around the district office building, which will likely be key people to talk to in the next phase of things.
Sunday night, I cooked dinner with the other intern which was really nice. Beans out on the fire outside; the rest (rice and greens) inside on the stove. It was good to feel productive again and like i’m at home. C came out to see how we were making out and we all had a long talk about food while we were eating with the owner of the inn at the fire. She mentioned all of the foods she wanted to cook but couldn’t because she was still in a year of mourning after her husband died. The way she spoke of him and how hard it’s been was heart breaking. That’s another story altogether. But the conversation must have put the thought in her head because the past few days have been full of western food (goatburgers with cheese, which were delicious; some weird sausage-in-a-pastry thing that I called a Malawian Hot Pocket; mashed potatoes; pancakes). I'm still digging the greens (rabe), but not so much the nsima (basically cooked flour in the size of a brick). I’m pretty happy with a totally Malawian diet, but a little variety can’t hurt.
Two other staple of the Malawian diet are sugar cane and peanuts. We came back from the field with 6 stalks of sugar cane under one seat and this 3 foot tall bag of ground nuts strapped to the top of the truck. I mentioned that I’d never eaten sugar cane and a stalk was quickly peeled and put in my hand. It’s really hard to bite through (it was suggested I take smaller bites), and was hard to eat in a confined space. I kept having to spit out the residue cane into my hand and throw it out the window. I also couldn’t get much leverage on the cane to get good sized bites, so it took me about 30 minutes to eat one segment. By the end I had sugar juice all over my face, hands, shirt and pants. It wasn’t so much my thing, and it showed – one of the interviewers told me that it wasn’t punishment, that I didn’t have to finish. But everyone here’s eating it, mostly because you can grab a stalk from just about everywhere. The roads and things are covered in the leftover stalks to prove it.
In other firsts, I took a bike taxi into town this morning. It’s only MK50 (like, $.35) to center of the boma, so it’s not like it’s going to break the bank to do it more regularly. I’ve been getting rides in most mornings, so I haven’t needed to bike taxi. Plus I’m a bit bigger than the average Malawian, so the idea of me on the back of someone’s bike making them do all the work seemed a little cruel. The others here who take them more regularly say that goes away, so I’ll believe them. It was actually a nice ride; cool, morning breeze as we went down the first hill, going too fast to hear “Azungu! Give Me Money!” even if it was shouted. People look at me like I’m crazy when I say I actually like walking to and from town. Walking is the only exercise I get here, so I try to take advantage of it when I can. I do wish I’d been able to find room in my suitcase for running shoes, but oh well. We figure it’s probably about 2 or 2.5 miles to town, which isn’t bad.
The team will be here and working this weekend. Last weekend we had a party in one of the huts on the far side of the inn’s property, which was a lot of fun. The manager of the inn got apparently got a kick out of watching me and the other intern dance. Everyone on the team wanted to know if I could dance. I tried to explain the white-boy-shuffle, but it didn’t quite translate without demonstration. It was such a classically Malawian thing: first the power was off for a few hours so we figured we’d have to postpone; once it came back on, people went looking for someone to play DJ, and got two random dudes, their CDs of Zambian and Malawian reggae and a stereo that consisted of two boomboxes, a receiver, a few cords and three un-matching speakers. But it all worked and we danced until well past 1am, which is like 4am for Malawians. The owner of the inn’s son and his girlfriend are Rastafarian and from what of their practicing I hear quite good reggae musicians. (also, Rasta = Dreds, for those who know what I’m saying). Anyway, they’re going to walk across Africa or something, so this is supposedly a benefit for their cause. They played in Lilongwe last weekend and I missed it by staying here for our party, so I’m looking forward to seeing them.
For the rest of the weekends, I'm going to try to get out of here and see other things. There's a town in the northern part of the central region, Nkhotakota, that's along the lake; there's another place just south of Lilongwe that’s in the mountains that’s supposed to be nice. Both should be easy day trips. A bunch of the Penn folks are going to be working in Salima, also along the lake, and there will probably be a trip to go see them. There was talk of a Zambian game park trip, but the visa alone is $100 (apparently Zambia charges Americans what we charge them), and I don’t really need to go on safari again, so I'll probably just chill in Malawi and see what’s here with my free time. In the meantime, I'll probably go into lilongwe in the next week or so just to get out of here for a bit. need to see some people in there as well.
still dreaming of starbucks and miss home.
For backlogged updates:
Field: I went to field last saturday. I sat in on three interviews which consisted of getting dropped off in the middle of a field and walking varying distances to someone’s house. Often we walked through a number of villages, which are essentially very small clusters of houses (like any more than 4 will count). Other times it was literally walking along this little worn path through grasses taller than I. It is another world, and probably a truer representation of Malawi than anything I’m getting here in town. Down to cell phone coverage in the middle of the bush. Poor by our standards doesn't even describe it.
And yet, again, people are just people. The first interview was of a 21 year old woman who had two small kids and a 23 year old husband. The last one was of a 32 year old man and his 27 year old wife who had three kids. I tend to think very abstractly about this work and forget that many of the people are about my age. Families by that description are totally universal; it’s no different here. But they were clearly just barely getting by. The first interviewee and her mother and sister-in-law were husking and pulling corn from the cob while the husband was in the field working. The third interviewee had to be called from the field since his wife didn’t want to talk to us alone. Their clothes are clearly western cast-offs (the sister-in-law was wearing this yellow business suit from the 1980s) or old chitenje (a piece of cloth that is a wrap skirt, a head wrap, a baby carrier on ones back, and myriad other things) and it seemed clear these were probably their only change of clothes. The little girls at the third house were wearing these little dresses that were torn; their father’s shirt was tattered and his pants had clearly been mended multiple times. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that people were happy, but kids are playing and most peoples' spirits are okay. The middle interview was totally fine - there was a big family in what seemed like a nice house (it was concrete with a tin roof, slatted windows and a door with a lock v. clay/mud houses with thatched grass roof).
I still can’t get over the animals: at the first one three guinea fowls came up to me; at the third there were goats and pigs roaming around. They’re just everywhere. Half way through the interview I noticed that one of the pigs had gotten muddy, by the end of the interview all of them were covered in mud. Awesome. Chickens and roosters are ubiquitous. (I also saw a couple of donkeys eating from a pile of trash, and some cows munching on tree leaves in a front lawn on the way to town this morning.)
Speaking of animals, I didn’t take any pictures because it felt too much like treating peoples’ homes like a zoo. But there was plenty that was picture worthy, like the well in the last village that was literally a board covering a hole and a pail with a rope on it (note: I am grateful for running water). I’m going again Friday and Saturday, and Monday if they team isn’t finished by Saturday, so perhaps some more pictures then. I’m not going to be sitting in on many interviews – my presence skews things quite a bit – but I’m going more to hear what people are hearing once they’re back in the truck to get a sense of where I should head, who I should talk to, and what questions I should be asking in the next bit of work.
C and the other intern both left Tuesday. The study team is here until Saturday (or Monday) and then it's just me. It was a little weird when they left; I was surprisingly sad. Their presence was a great transition and way of easing into things here, and now I have to hit the ground running. I think this next phase will really be where I get going and learn a lot. It helps that I have a better sense of what I need to work on in the next 6-7 weeks; I was able to get some one-on-one time with C before she left and have a good handle on things. I’m basically going to be going all over the district doing formative work for the qualitative component of the evaluation. I’ll draw up the sampling scheme, listing out people they should talk to, and interview guides and protocols. (Basically it’s Theresa’s class for real. For real?) Naturally, it involves a lot of the stuff that I need to practice (networking, asking for help and favors, etc.). It’s still a little scary and uncertain, but I came to have my world rocked, and so it is/will be. In the meantime, I’m in good shape. I’m just taking action as much as I can each day and using the different networks already here (our study manager, some people at the district office I’ve met, some of the Penn folks’ colleagues here). I’ve had to get better at reigning it in when I get too ahead of myself and into the big picture; the mental energy for worrying is a luxury that I really don’t have here.
One of the people from the district building is this guy Z who helped us out last week. Part of our current questionnaire is about food and non-food expenditures and C had me and the other intern price all of the things in our market so that we know how much things cost. We found this guy, Z, to come translate, explain what we doing, and make sure that we were getting the non-azungu price. It was a great way to see the market and the town. We went in almost every store along the road and throughout most of the market. One of the stores I still can’t get over: it’s a plastics store. Seriously, EVERYTHING here is plastic. Chairs in the conference room are all like the white stackable plastic chairs for your backyard. Trash cans, cups, drums and pails for water, and on and on…all plastic. Benjamin, the future really is in plastics. Anyway. We even went back to the maize mill and watched people processing their maize (you have to pay a fee and we needed to know how much the fee was). There are some things in the market that I just don’t quite understand, like the huge section in the back dedicated to dried fish (you can imagine how it smells) or the bike that had four live chickens tied together and to the handlebars. But otherwise it’s pretty straightforward stuff: food, clothes, household goods. And interestingly, most everything is priced universally. Some things might be inflated for me, but because it’s so not a tourist destination, it’s not really an issue. Not bargaining at the market was a little counterintuitive at first, but now sort of makes sense. Z’s a good guide, about my age, and will probably be a good ally while I’m here. He’s introduced me to most of the people around the district office building, which will likely be key people to talk to in the next phase of things.
Sunday night, I cooked dinner with the other intern which was really nice. Beans out on the fire outside; the rest (rice and greens) inside on the stove. It was good to feel productive again and like i’m at home. C came out to see how we were making out and we all had a long talk about food while we were eating with the owner of the inn at the fire. She mentioned all of the foods she wanted to cook but couldn’t because she was still in a year of mourning after her husband died. The way she spoke of him and how hard it’s been was heart breaking. That’s another story altogether. But the conversation must have put the thought in her head because the past few days have been full of western food (goatburgers with cheese, which were delicious; some weird sausage-in-a-pastry thing that I called a Malawian Hot Pocket; mashed potatoes; pancakes). I'm still digging the greens (rabe), but not so much the nsima (basically cooked flour in the size of a brick). I’m pretty happy with a totally Malawian diet, but a little variety can’t hurt.
Two other staple of the Malawian diet are sugar cane and peanuts. We came back from the field with 6 stalks of sugar cane under one seat and this 3 foot tall bag of ground nuts strapped to the top of the truck. I mentioned that I’d never eaten sugar cane and a stalk was quickly peeled and put in my hand. It’s really hard to bite through (it was suggested I take smaller bites), and was hard to eat in a confined space. I kept having to spit out the residue cane into my hand and throw it out the window. I also couldn’t get much leverage on the cane to get good sized bites, so it took me about 30 minutes to eat one segment. By the end I had sugar juice all over my face, hands, shirt and pants. It wasn’t so much my thing, and it showed – one of the interviewers told me that it wasn’t punishment, that I didn’t have to finish. But everyone here’s eating it, mostly because you can grab a stalk from just about everywhere. The roads and things are covered in the leftover stalks to prove it.
In other firsts, I took a bike taxi into town this morning. It’s only MK50 (like, $.35) to center of the boma, so it’s not like it’s going to break the bank to do it more regularly. I’ve been getting rides in most mornings, so I haven’t needed to bike taxi. Plus I’m a bit bigger than the average Malawian, so the idea of me on the back of someone’s bike making them do all the work seemed a little cruel. The others here who take them more regularly say that goes away, so I’ll believe them. It was actually a nice ride; cool, morning breeze as we went down the first hill, going too fast to hear “Azungu! Give Me Money!” even if it was shouted. People look at me like I’m crazy when I say I actually like walking to and from town. Walking is the only exercise I get here, so I try to take advantage of it when I can. I do wish I’d been able to find room in my suitcase for running shoes, but oh well. We figure it’s probably about 2 or 2.5 miles to town, which isn’t bad.
The team will be here and working this weekend. Last weekend we had a party in one of the huts on the far side of the inn’s property, which was a lot of fun. The manager of the inn got apparently got a kick out of watching me and the other intern dance. Everyone on the team wanted to know if I could dance. I tried to explain the white-boy-shuffle, but it didn’t quite translate without demonstration. It was such a classically Malawian thing: first the power was off for a few hours so we figured we’d have to postpone; once it came back on, people went looking for someone to play DJ, and got two random dudes, their CDs of Zambian and Malawian reggae and a stereo that consisted of two boomboxes, a receiver, a few cords and three un-matching speakers. But it all worked and we danced until well past 1am, which is like 4am for Malawians. The owner of the inn’s son and his girlfriend are Rastafarian and from what of their practicing I hear quite good reggae musicians. (also, Rasta = Dreds, for those who know what I’m saying). Anyway, they’re going to walk across Africa or something, so this is supposedly a benefit for their cause. They played in Lilongwe last weekend and I missed it by staying here for our party, so I’m looking forward to seeing them.
For the rest of the weekends, I'm going to try to get out of here and see other things. There's a town in the northern part of the central region, Nkhotakota, that's along the lake; there's another place just south of Lilongwe that’s in the mountains that’s supposed to be nice. Both should be easy day trips. A bunch of the Penn folks are going to be working in Salima, also along the lake, and there will probably be a trip to go see them. There was talk of a Zambian game park trip, but the visa alone is $100 (apparently Zambia charges Americans what we charge them), and I don’t really need to go on safari again, so I'll probably just chill in Malawi and see what’s here with my free time. In the meantime, I'll probably go into lilongwe in the next week or so just to get out of here for a bit. need to see some people in there as well.
still dreaming of starbucks and miss home.
Haha! I'm glad you're getting to experience the animal life of Malawi. That's what you get for dissin' on us farm kids. I read your blog on my breaks from writing my interview protocol and planning my interviewee list (thanks Theresa Betancourt!), so thanks for keeping me entertained. I love the kids-shouting-white-guy thing...it's like how everyone hitch hikes on the rez and just the other day I saw a white hitch hiker and had to exclaim, "Whoa, what the hell is a white guy doing hitching on the rez!" Haha!! Take care Ben! - Deana