I'm now at the district hospital where there is free wireless. I haven't been as happy as I was when I saw the network bars pop up on my mac in quite a while. Sad but true. The great thing is that this is just across the road from our office (more or less), so internet access shouldn't be too hard to get with regularity. This building is open all the time, too. Rock.
It took about 45 minutes to walk here. I turned down one ride offer cause I'm not quite at the hop-in-the-back-of-the-pickup comfortable here yet. And all the minibuses (I keep wanting to call them mutatus) that passed were packed. There are plenty of other people out walking, riding past, etc. I know two words of Chichewa so far: moni (hello) and azungu (white person). I used the former, and many others used the latter. It just cracks me up when kids will call to friends to see the azungu. I think that it's probably even more unusual to see many white people walking than to see them in town.
These three kids came up the hill to the road when they saw me, all of them probably under 4 years old. One yelled Azungu! and the others came running. Most say hello, if anything. These three all said, "give me some money," in the sweetest tone you could ever imagine. I couldn't help but laugh, a. since they may not even know what they're saying, and b. because it was desperately sad.
The other thing that I noticed on this walk is how beautiful the hills are here. We're sort of at the foot of a number of them, and every now and again there was a clearing to the left and this breathtaking view of the hills in the distance. In the foreground there are homes and neighborhoods, mostly brick, some with grass roofs others with solid ones. I was wondering what this small, worn clearing in the grass and a faint trail on the ground was shortly after I started walking and it occurred to me, duh, people live back there. Right. I'm having a lot of these duh/a-ha moments that are so much about re-contextualizing what's around. It's not so much that it's unique, it's just very different, and the patterns, visual cues, etc. don't really translate.
Also, I uploaded a bunch of pictures (more from London than yet of here...I feel a little weird pulling out my camera here). Click the photos tab at the top and you should get there.
It took about 45 minutes to walk here. I turned down one ride offer cause I'm not quite at the hop-in-the-back-of-the-pickup comfortable here yet. And all the minibuses (I keep wanting to call them mutatus) that passed were packed. There are plenty of other people out walking, riding past, etc. I know two words of Chichewa so far: moni (hello) and azungu (white person). I used the former, and many others used the latter. It just cracks me up when kids will call to friends to see the azungu. I think that it's probably even more unusual to see many white people walking than to see them in town.
These three kids came up the hill to the road when they saw me, all of them probably under 4 years old. One yelled Azungu! and the others came running. Most say hello, if anything. These three all said, "give me some money," in the sweetest tone you could ever imagine. I couldn't help but laugh, a. since they may not even know what they're saying, and b. because it was desperately sad.
The other thing that I noticed on this walk is how beautiful the hills are here. We're sort of at the foot of a number of them, and every now and again there was a clearing to the left and this breathtaking view of the hills in the distance. In the foreground there are homes and neighborhoods, mostly brick, some with grass roofs others with solid ones. I was wondering what this small, worn clearing in the grass and a faint trail on the ground was shortly after I started walking and it occurred to me, duh, people live back there. Right. I'm having a lot of these duh/a-ha moments that are so much about re-contextualizing what's around. It's not so much that it's unique, it's just very different, and the patterns, visual cues, etc. don't really translate.
Also, I uploaded a bunch of pictures (more from London than yet of here...I feel a little weird pulling out my camera here). Click the photos tab at the top and you should get there.
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