Last week I had my COS (Close of Service) Conference, We went to Nkhotakota Pottery on Monday and came back to Lilongwe on Friday. The Close of Service conference is about learning what paperwork we have to do, and how to exit our communities gracefully. After all, it’s tough to adjust to a place where you don’t have to ruthlessly pick out and exterminate mosquitoes inside your bed net. Or shower three times to remove the ingrained dirt after a long day of hitching. Or of knowing the people from whom your food comes.
When I was home, I had a moment because I panicked because I was leaving my laptop plugged in overnight. If I’m watching something on my computer at night and know I’m going to fall asleep, I still have my fan as an early warning system: It goes off when the power goes off, and since the danger period for electronics is if the power surges when it goes back on, the fan going off wakes me up and then I unplug the computer. So, I panicked for a bit—trying to figure out if the bedside lamp going off would wake me the way the fan does, when suddenly I realized that the power wasn’t going to go off*.
There were a lot of other moment when I was home that came back to me at the COS conference. When we had our session with returned volunteers they talked about how difficult stores and things could be. I thought, well, gee, I didn’t have any problems. Then I realized that I went to the grocery store about twice and the drug store about twice, clothes shopping once, and the book store once. I didn’t go to any of them during peak hours. Except the clothes shopping, there were items at every single one of the stores that I suddenly decided I didn’t need. And there were other things I decided to go without, rather than take another trip to the store.
I wasn’t thinking about these reactions even as reactions—but now that I look back I think my subconscious was protecting me from the too much.
We were also warned about how different things may be with our families—they think they still know us, we think we still know them, but we’ve all changed. Teasing based on assumptions from before can fall flat or even wound because of one or the other people feeling they’ve changed, but not having that change recognized. Behaviours don’t necessarily fall in line with what we may feel we have a right to expect.
We were told repeatedly how we are going to be asked for the two minute version of the last two years. And how people probably won’t want to sit through “just another 3000 pictures and 4 hours worth of stories.” Can’t imagine why. I actually experienced some of that when I was home. My dad asked me some very sensible leading questions. Some of them I didn’t like because they were too broad and didn’t give me any place to start. Others were like, “what was the best thing,” or “what was the worst thing?” I found those so confining that I became very frustrated. You’ve probably noticed that I’m a big fan of shades of grey. But under the influence of those types of questions I found myself painting a picture all in black and white and then getting upset at my dad for understanding what I said because what I was saying wasn’t what I wanted to be saying.
Also, there’s something exasperating about trying to sum up 2 years in a sound bite. It makes it feel separate, as if there’s my “real” life and then also this weird, aberrant thing I’ve been doing for the last two years. And it’s an impossible task: try to sum up your own life in the last two years in detail. It has to be more than 3 sentences and less than five minutes. Now, think about every sentence, every word in your explanation that relies on your listener being conversant with shorthand or slang or a shared understanding of what things mean. Now, do it again, getting rid of all the shorthand. Now, think about how your words may be mistaken by someone who has different shorthand. Ok, so fix all of those. Now try to make it interesting.
Yeah, so.
The best time I had talking about Malawi was when I’d be talking about something random and it would spark a conversation. Like, one time I mentioned my watchman, and Jo or Stefan said, “wait, you have a guy who watches your house?” and I said, “It’s more like he sleeps on my front porch,” and we were off and running. But since after a relatively short time at home, all my talk about Malawi this and Malawi that is going to become unbearably pretentious to everyone around me, I’m not sure how long that tactic will work.
I guess the take home lessons are, “We’ll see,” and “It’ll be tough on everyone.” Sorry.
*Derek showed me the most awesome news article ever the other day. There is a consumer organization in Malawi I had never heard of before who is suing and says Escom has two weeks to remove their fallacious slogan, “Power all day, every day” from all billboards, buildings, and advertisements. The only problem I see with this is the stripping away of one of the best games. I call it, “Let’s come up with more accurate Escom slogans!” Derek’s favourite is, “Power all day, every day. When we feel like it.” Mine is, “Power most days, for at least a few hours. C’mon, get off our backs.”
I’m wondering if this might cause enough problems for Escom that they be able to get out from the contracts that have us selling non-surplus electricity to Zambia. That might help.
A little over a year ago when I left Malawi the first time, I hyperventilated in a Barnes & Nobles. And it wasn’t just the bad anti-union policies and corporate stench either.
Your average store doesn’t matter so much – I always hated the big boxes so the newfound “I’m stunned” aspect was just moving down a continuum I was already on. But it’s the stores that you actually liked, for me bookstores or indy music stores, that will FUCK YOU UP. Watch out for that, you go in to be comforted and suddenly your head is between your knees and you’re trying to throw yourself at the nearest exit.
That a no one (NO ONE) cares about Malawi. They’ll ask about Madonna. Some of the enlightened ones will want to have their assumptions about Africa that inspire them to care (the fly-covered starving child aspect) reinforced, and your close friends will want to know about YOU in Malawi, your most personal quality-of-life stories, but no one will be able to handle the confluence of the larger reality of just what it is like here and how that combines with how it was like here for YOU. Malawi is much more than a state of mind.
I’ve already had problems trying to figure out how to represent Malawi because nothing seems true, if that makes sense.
My mom says she can see me having the same issues when I get back–and she is generally better at knowing how I’m going to react in those sorts of ways than I am.
I wrote a whole long reply, but firefox crashed and it got et, and now my brilliance has left me.
If I remember what I was saying before, I’ll post.