I was warned, so I knew the time would come when my life in Malawi didn’t seem so rosy. EWB calls it culture shock. Megan (my coach who lives in Ntcheu) says it is caused by reacting to a whole bunch of specific things that you don’t even realize until you break down. All I know is that when I burst into tears in front of one of the administrative staff at the Dedza field office of CU where I work, I knew something was up and that I needed to figure out what I had been bottling up / avoiding in favour of being completely optimistic about everything that I encounter.
I like making lists, so I figured that sharing some of the reasons I’m at a low would perhaps make certain aspects of Malawi a bit more personal to those back in Canada.
* Three people died this week, although I don’t personally know any of them. What I do know is that people around me are enduring an incredible amount of loss and grief.
o The first is the young child of a guard at CU – the child choked on something and could not be saved in time. Some office staff were away today to attend the funeral. I can’t imagine how terrible it would be to lose a child.
o The second is a person I don’t know, but whose family spread two lines of leaves across a dirt path upon which we travelled on the way to a meeting yesterday. The two lines of leaves signify that a death has occurred at a household somewhere between the two lines, and that vehicles should slow down in passing as a sign of respect.
o The third person is one of a few Malawians who have been killed in South Africa by a few resentful people who want foreigners out of the country (they believe foreigners are taking job opportunities in South Africa that should be reserved for South Africans alone). A CU co-worker was friends with one of these Malawians killed, and walked around the office this week looking very lost.
* I have yet to find a family to stay with. I never expected this to be a problem, but with every day that goes by, and with every night spent in a sketchy, gloomy, concrete guesthouse room with nothing to do except to go sleep at 6:30pm because it isn’t safe to be out after dark, I get more and more anxious. It’s much more difficult than I anticipated to walk into a nearby village and tell everyone that I’m looking for a family to live with for the next few months. I’ve spent a few nights with friends I’ve met, here and there, but I don’t want to couch-hop for too long. I’d like to settle soon. And not having a family is lonesome, isolating, and probably a major contributing factor my current (but hopefully temporary!) state of distress.
* Explosive diarrhea. I know this sounds funny (and before it happens to you, I fully understand how the concept is rather hilarious). But frankly, if you had lined my intestines with firecrackers and set them off, it would have been better than whatever bug was trying to exit my system in what felt like an Indy 500 race. Not to mention that it occurred within a few days of beginning work in the office, while I was still trying to meet everyone… Well, sprinting to the office toilet with an intense, panicked expression will make anyone look like an otherworldly freak of nature in a professional office environment.
* The poverty in Malawi is simply widespread. There really is no other way to describe it. So far, I’ve been absorbing the positive side of poverty: the collectivist / sharing nature of communities, the hard-working attitudes, and the close ties to extended families. However, the negative side of poverty have been creeping up on me, and up until now, I’ve been pushing them aside: poor sanitation, malnutrition, lack of access to clean water, vulnerability to weather that causes poor harvests, a parent’s inability to fund their child’s education, a variety of diseases that are rare in the developed countries, among others. These are all factors in a cycle of poverty that so many organizations are trying to help people break themselves out of. And the determination is there; it is alive and abundant in all aspects of people’s lives. It is just frustrating to see people’s determination being blocked by barriers supported by the very same countries funding aid organizations.
I know that these issues rank very differently on the worldwide scale of importance. Nevertheless, they each are a struggle, so my hope is that the beauty of Malawi will once again shine and bring my motivation back up to normal levels.
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