Sika | March 25, 2009
All y’all health 2009 people are probably getting a bit anxious at this point. Relax.
One of the best posts I’ve seen about what to bring is here. I disagree with some of it, but we all disagree about what is necessary and what isn’t. Everything depends on what support you’ve got back home and where [...]
Sika | March 25, 2009
There is a problem, I think, with the way we live in America. This time, I am talking about how divorced we are from the physical world in which we live. We can start with the fact that having lights on until the wee hours confuses the hell out of your body, which then fruitlessly [...]
Sika | March 25, 2009
I just ate a yummy white guava that I bought at the market when I went in on the 10 o’clock (read: 10:40. Ish.) bus. In one of my last couple of bites, I saw a brown area, which upon closer examination, was inhabited by a worm.
The worm had an interesting reddish-brown head, which contrasted [...]
Sika | March 18, 2009
This post at Shakesville honestly made me cry. It made me think about adoption in a way I never have before. It’s political, but not in any kind of a shrill way. Mostly it’s just heart-felt and heart-rending. You don’t need to have strong opinions about the matter: just read it. Maybe, like me, you’ll [...]
Sika | March 18, 2009
Lectures start up next week again. I’ve got 4 topics, but I did 2 of them last year and one of the other 2 is related to one that I did last year. For the second years, I have two topics coming up, but I’ve done both of them before, so it shouldn’t be too [...]
Sika | March 17, 2009
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never fully got into the Africa swing of things. Sure, I relax more, I trust that things will work out (or they won’t) and sweating over whether or not they will is usually futile; but when I’m travelling, I like to know how and when I’m going to [...]
Sika | March 16, 2009
There are ants everywhere in Nkhata Bay. Right now I am sitting at the table where we had lunch, watching a horde of them dismantle a drop of semi-congealed soup. There were no ants on the table when we sat down. Now there are hundreds. Most of them are pretty innocuous looking, but there are [...]
Sika | March 16, 2009
Lake flies are tiny insects that swarm by the millions in huge clouds that get everywhere and in everything. Malawians catch them and make them into cakes. You can see them in this picture to the right of the cyclone and island, just above the water: an odd shaped cloud of black.
Michelle and I watched [...]
Sika | March 16, 2009
Seafoam green with black lines
Periwinkle with blotchy black beagle spots
Yellow shading into blue-y purple front to back, or, for variety’s sake, purple-y blue shading into yellow top to bottom.
Cobalt blue so dark the only way to tell it isn’t black is by that edge where the color of the body erupts into the sky-coloured [...]
Sika | March 16, 2009
It’s so clear down here. I can see every dip and indentation of the lake bottom, looking like a buried civilization is waiting to be uncovered—miniature cliffs and canyons, the bed as if an inverted topography: the opposite world pushing through and leaving its mark. Bottom of an eggcrate lakebed, 50 feet down but still [...]
Sika | March 13, 2009
There’s a tree here at Mango Drift that is covered with weaver bird nests and filled with weaver bird trilling. The male weaver birds spend days building nests. If the female birds that strike their fancy find that the nests don’t strike their fancy, the boy birds abandon their nests and start new.
There seem to [...]
Sika | March 13, 2009
I think snorkeling may be the best way to learn pranayama. Gliding through the water, the only sound the shoosh of the waves and the your own
Inhale . . .
Exhale . . .
Darth Vader rendered benign and sublime. Automatically, the breath adjusts to the body: Stroke/inhale. Stroke/exhale. Shoosh. Shoosh.
I’ve never been swimming in Nkhata Bay [...]
Sika | March 13, 2009
Prisoners in Malawi, those serving the last bit of their sentences, at least—are often sent out on work detail. They are dressed in what seems to be one-size-fits-all, [varying shades of] white, button-down shirts and shorts. There often is only one guard for maybe 30 prisoners. The prisoners aren’t chained, and in transport they look [...]
Sika | March 12, 2009
The funny thing about the night, here in Malawi, is how quickly it comes.
We get in the motorboat to take us to the Ilala at 3. The sun shines bright enough that we feel our skin cooking, relieved only by intermittent splashes of cool lake water as the boat dips into the trough of a [...]
Sika | March 12, 2009
Beyond the connection issues and the sporadic disappearing text messages, Zain is doing two things I think are particularly nasty:
1. They’ve added expiration dates to their units. Celtel never had expiration dates before it became Zain. As a matter of fact, you can still use Celtel units to top up. People sell units on [...]