At the time, I got what she said, but didn’t really agree with her vehemence. I feel differently now. It’s different, being a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, than being a Peace Corps Volunteer. It’s different and the fact that my Peace Corps experiences continue to influence the rest of my life don’t make it the same. It’s connected, sure, but every bit of our lives is connected. You can’t be who you are without having been where you’ve been. And yet the past is still past, and trying to hold on to it too tightly just stagnates the present.

When I made this blog, I was looking at the future, and it’s time to do that again.

It may look the same to my friends back home, my indecisiveness. But I can explain the difference. Before Peace Corps, if I would fail to make a decision and someone stepped in to do what I had failed to do, I would suddenly have a strong opinion. Whether that was because I didn’t feel like I could say what I wanted or because I was that out of tune with what I wanted, I can’t say. Most likely it was a mixture of both. But now, when I say I don’t care, it means I don’t care. If I say I don’t know what I want, I don’t know. I can roll a die, someone else can make the choice, or whatever I used to do to be slightly less annoying in making choices, but it doesn’t change anything because I really don’t care or don’t know. I really am just waiting for a good option to present itself. And if the option I like the best isn’t available, that’s okay, because I’ll just do something else.

I can only justify caring about things I’m willing to work for. And I can’t be bothered to work for things I don’t care about.
I’m also more confidant, although that’s in a weird way I’m not aware of. I still think of myself as being pretty shy, and in large crowds, I still feel overwhelmed and out of my depth. But, if I go to a party and I know one person, I call it good: I know I can meet other people, and if I get too shy I can return to my friend like a toddler checking in with a parent. I’ll start random conversations with people around me sometimes. I’ll continue random conversations other people start more often than that.

I was at a Yakima Valley Community College game with my grandpa for his birthday, and when we all got together again that night, my uncle commented on my fearlessness: an old umpire friend of grandpa’s was cracking jokes and telling stories with the other ex-coaches, and I kept asking for details and cracking jokes myself. I mean, come on, if you heard a story about a ball thrown to an ump asking him if he needed help because of all his bad calls, and you knew he wrote something on the ball and threw it back, wouldn’t you want to know what it said, too? Yeah, well, apparently my ears are too delicate for that information, so I razzed him a bit about not telling me.

When my uncle told my mom (admiringly? horrified?) about how I just got into the conversation, I at first thought he was crazy. Of course I did, I wanted to know what happened. But upon further reflection, I realized that before I would have wondered, perhaps made up a story to satisfy my curiosity, perhaps nudged my grandpa into asking for me. But just jump in like there’s nothing to fear in starting a conversation with random people? No frakking way.

Also, I am now very passionate about when people talk about “African culture” or “African language” or “African people.” If you’re not very clear about where the generalities of those phrases fail (which is to say, practically everywhere) don’t use them. Sure, Malawian culture has things in common with that of several other African countries. But it has more things different. And to pretend that Africa is somehow one people bound by more than their presence on the same landmass is to force yourself to completely misunderstand the entire continent.

I’m sure there are other things. The lines aren’t as delineated as I thought they would be. This whole process of returning home and returning to American culture hasn’t been what I thought it would be. I didn’t have culture shock. I sort of had a slow culture miasma. I’m still sort of having a slow culture miasma. Sometimes I think this is how it will always be. Sometimes I’m sad that it isn’t.

We also took a trip to the market, so I could show mom my regular market guys, the ones who always gave me a good deal, the ones who always looked out for me when they had broccoli and zucchini (weird azungu food), and the ones who always made sure to teach me a little Chichewa every time I was there.

Friday was our last day in Zomba, so in the morning we went to Namikango Orphan Care to say goodbye and to let mom meet them and see some of the people I had been working with. They had theirNyau dancers out, and even pulled out the really big monsters for me–scaring the frigging heck out of some of the orphans. After, Mr. Liwonde, Fred, and I talked about what and how the orphan care had been doing and what they still needed, and I explained once again how the American economic problems were affecting them.

I still had to sort some shipping stuff, and then start packing. I had meant to take a picture of the billboard that said, “Voterani Bingu ku Pulezedenti!,” which I forgot to do, and of Christmas Bingu by the Chipiku, which was gone. I really wanted a picture of the Bingu portrait, surrounded by a wreath and flashy lights, but it was not meant to be.

In the evening, we went with Kris to have dinner with the Gondwes. I had been very worried somehow it wouldn’t happen, but we made it work. It was probably the most bittersweet thing that happened, saying goodbye to the Gondwes. Even if Abambo Gondwe told me he’d keep my plot for me up north, and Thoko promised to come with me until I learned Tumbuka. Because obviously this going home thing was just a fad. Mom finally got to eat nsima, so that was good. And I got lots of cuddles from Memo(ry) and Wezi, which was even better.

When Derek got home he was being a manic goofball: starting silly shit with me; then grabbing me to dance around the living room; stealing my camera and taking pictures of his feet, or rolling around like he wanted to take action shots, only he had the camera and never took the pictures until he was done rolling about.

Mom kept looking for the great emotional import in whatever I did, which made my great emotion mostly annoyance.

The next morning, after an early wake up call to finish packing, Scona arrived to drive us to Lilongwe. He wasn’t going to take us—his buddy was, and when Derek was seemingly being overly picky and bwana-ish, he noticed that the car did not have a taxi carnet and that the side of his driver’s license with the picture had been chopped off and taped back on. So, we decided that mom was dating Benson, the driver, and Derek thought to specify that any bribes were to come out of Benson’s money, not ours. I was very grateful, as that never would have occurred to me.

I took pictures of the road along the way, and made it to the airport in time, with no problems at the roadblocks. Our flight was uneventful. And that was the end of my time in Malawi.

After lunch, mom, Marla, Kristen, and I went up to Zomba Plateau. I drove in Derek’s car, and we got a guide to ride with us and keep us from going down the wrong tracks. We meant to go to Chingwe’s Hole, where they used to dump lepers, alive, but after just going to William’s Falls, and finding out those were the “good” roads, whereas to Chingwe’s Hole there were “bad” roads, we decided to just go to Queen’s View (the Queen Mother) and Emperor’s View (Haile Selassie). Off roading was fun, especially since I had finally gotten the hang of driving on the wrong side of the car, and I was sweaty, tired, and felt like I had a major workout after. I was pretty proud of myself; some of the rough bits we looked back at and couldn’t believe I had managed to drive nearly vertically, and to not bottom out while I did so.

At some point during the day, I was talking to a gay Malawian I know about how he was having troubles in his marriage. He blamed his wife, because if she just hadn’t tried to figure out what was wrong, she never would have discovered he was having sex with men, and then there wouldn’t have been a problem. When Malawians talk about how there is no homosexuality in Malawi, this is what they mean. I don’t think they realize this is what they mean, but this is what they mean.

That night, mom wanted to take Derek to dinner, so we decided to go to Domino. Domino has very sporadic service. Sometimes it’s decent, and other times it’s awful. This time, Derek ordered a pizza, and about 45 minutes after we got our chicken and rice and the waiter had told us the pizza was coming, they told us the pizzas were finished. I was sort of glad, because that was a frustrating Malawian experience I was worried mom wouldn’t get, along with all the other frustrating experiences she was going to miss out on. Now, though, I wonder why I felt the need to make sure she saw the negative bits to have an accurate picture.

On Thursday morning, mom and I headed to Liwonde for a boat safari through Chinguni Lodge. I felt more comfortable with the car after the offroading and the increased experience with goats, and I even went fast(er) for a few km.

On the boat safari, we were able to see a small herd of elephants closer than any I saw on the game count. I learned the funny yellow trees are acacia, and elephants like acacia so much they knock the trees over. Seems very human. Kory told me once that there’s a plan to move some of the elephants because there are too many for the area they’re living in right now. I was glad they hadn’t done it yet, though, because we might not have seen them if they had.

There were a lot of poachers fishing in the Shire River where they weren’t supposed to be. The guide said they don’t report the poachers because they used to and the poachers would yell at them when they were guiding and use “very strong language,” which would be pretty upsetting to the guests. That seems like a crap reason to abet poaching to me, but what do I know?

Once we got to Nkhotakota, we stopped at one of the brick-fenced resthouses, figuring it would be cheaper than being on the lake. But singles were K2950, and for some insane reason a twin room for two people cost K6000/night. I, as I do occasionally, spent some minutes futiley trying to convince the guy how stupid it is to charge more than double to change from a single to a double, and to charge the same for two people in a room as they charge for two people in a chalet. Eventually Kris made me stop, because, well, futile.

We ended up at Nkhotakota Pottery, even though the Spectrum book didn’t mention it at all (it’s one of the most well known hotel chains in Malawi, so that’s sort of ridiculous), and so we had to ask directions because neither Kris nor I remembered it being so far south from town and Ndala hadn’t been paying attention when he got the instructions.
The next morning, mom wasn’t feeling any better, so Kris and I did some nkonde (porch) yoga, ate breakfast, and took pictures of Lake Malawi while mom went back to sleep. Since mom still wasn’t feeling well, we decided to head straight back to Zomba instead of stopping in Liwonde. We dropped Ndala on the road near his house, and I drove to Annie’s lodge, scaring my mom with my tendency to forget where the left side of the car was. She apparently objected to me running over people on the sides of the road. I thought they’d get out of the way. And also that my left side should end in a different place, too.

Annie’s was full, but they had a room in their new annex that was available. It ended up being tiny, largely airless, and not properly cleaned: the shower had damp, muddy footprints, even though it later turned out the guesthouse had no running water. I felt bad because I know the wife in the couple who owns Annie’s, and I like her quite a bit. Mom and I decided to bail anyway.

I had wanted a quiet place in the morning so my mom would be able to sleep in, that was the point of staying at Annie’s, but instead Derek had already arranged anyway for Honi (who had started her OSCEs, the leaving exam) and Jason to stay with D’Lynn.

Nyika was beautiful. It was a long, dusty drive up there, using up nearly half a tank of petrol from the nearest petrol station. We sent Ndala back down the mountain to stay because the prices had recently changed and there was no cheap option for him. It used to be the chalets were hired out as a whole, but now there’s a per person charge with a minimum, and so we couldn’t afford to let Ndala stay up there with us. I felt a bit bad, but mostly about the whole weirdness of having a driver. Ndala was awesome, however, and very helpful. Just as we were heading up the mountain to the plateau, I was thinking, I could’ve driven this. And then we wouldn’t have to worry about all this driver-related stuff. Then we hit several km of road I really don’t think I would’ve made it through. And it wasn’t even rainy season.

The chalets are gorgeous, if simple, and we got our own helper, Jeremiah, to keep the fires lit and to even cook for us. Kris and I both enjoy cooking, and so I think we asked him to help us by starting something that was to take a long time to cook one time when we were going to be out on a hike, but other than that, we did our own cooking.

I spent a lot of time with my new camera—mostly using the aperture priority mode, since aperture priority means practically nothing when the glass in your camera is tiny. Kris would name some of my pieces of art: the still life with a coffee press was renamed “Carafe full of Happiness,” and the picture of her phone receiving no service was called “My Anxiety.” Of course, that made sense as Kris received about 100 million calls from work on our way up, and the calls started again less than five minutes after we regained service when we were leaving.

Mom was sick most of the trip: a 36 hour journey to Africa, followed by two days of several hours of driving, followed by a cabin filled with woodsmoke, will do that to a person. So that slowed us down a little. I think mom was the most upset about it, though. She wanted to be out, and doing stuff, whereas Kris and I were content to do our yoga and pilates, take little walks, read, patch clothes, and take pictures. Well, Kris was less than content about how many pictures of her I was taking, but, NEW TOY! I had to! I just deleted most of them and agreed not to upload most of what was left.

The way the cabins were set up were amazing. There was only electricity during a few hours each night. It was solar powered, and was just enough to charge mom’s laptop, or batteries for our headlamps.

All our cooking was done on an awesome wood burning stove, and while it was a bit tricky to learn when it was hot enough or too hot, which parts of the fire to stoke to keep some burners cooler than others, and that kind of thing, I think were were catching hang of it by the end.

The hot water came from a geyser outside with a fire set under it. The geyser was even big enough I took a huge, hot, slightly soot-flecked bath, and there was still loads of hot water for other people to wash up.

Vegetables were kept cool not in a fridge, but in a “fridge,” a mesh sided box suspended in the shadows under the porch roof out the back door. It worked pretty well, keeping nearly all our vegetables fresh over our time there.

Kris and I went to explore the upscale lodge that had been built and abandoned. The cabins maintained privacy too well, so we couldn’t really see what everything looked like. The walkways were falling apart—wood planks melting into soppy nothingness, but everything else still seemed to be in good shape.

The night before we left, we went on a night game drive, the best part of which was finding a gorgeous leopard. For 15 minutes she tried to figure out why we wouldn’t leave her alone, and, if we insisted on hassling her, was the car at least edible? At one point she rolled on to her back as if to say, “See, I’m so cute, you should come over here and rub my tummy. Rub my tummy! Rub my tummy so I can EAT you”

We did not rub her tummy.

Kris so enchanted Samuel, our guide, with her Chichewa, that he agreed to take us out to Chosi point the next morning before Ndala came to pick us up. Chosi point offers a lovely panoramic view of plateauness, and we saw many impala and other antelopes and such on the drive. Samuel seemed to think our deadline was a fluid thing, and so we had to gently remind him a few times that we really needed to get back to Chalet 3 so Ndala wouldn’t be left waiting.

Eventually Samuel brought us back, and we were off for the next part of the trip.

The trip up there was, um, interesting in bits. I didn’t want to drive all the way to Nyika in the little time we had, and so Derek let me hire away his driver for a few days. Traveling with a driver and a car is a far different experience than traveling without a car.

For one thing, you’re far more likely to attract notice at the roadblocks. There’s something you should know about me: I can’t lie. Maybe, if I was paid a million dollars, maybe I might manage a semi-convincing whopper. So, when the police at the roadblock started asking about the car, figuring that the car was a hire without the for-hire license. When I said that the car was Derek’s and he loaned it to us along with Ndala’s driving, the policeman was less than believing. He kept asking stupid, irrelevant questions like, “if it’s not a hire, who is paying for petrol?” Finally, in response to that most idiotic question, I said Derek had actually filled up the tank to start. So the police officer got a leering look and said, “Oh, he’s not your friend, he’s your husband. He obviously didn’t mean husband.

Traveling with a car and driver, you have to think about where you want to stay before you get there. You have to know if it has a brick fence, if there are cheaper rooms for your driver to stay, and if the place is actually secure. Figuring all this out without good phone numbers and up-to-date guidebooks was difficult. More than once, we ended up paying extra for Ndala’s rooms just so we wouldn’t have to add having another, cheaper, resthouse nearby to our factors to consider.
Traveling with a car and driver you also meet far fewer people, and when you do meet people, the power and privilege imbalance is much more obvious, harder to refute, and harder to move past. Kris’ much better Chichewa was helpful in getting past that barrier in some ways, but still, it changed things.

As annoying as delays and problems traveling are, it is in those issues that a lot of the actual traveling, the part that makes traveling better than just buying a postcard and saying you went somewhere, happens. I do like to have breaks from minibus travel and hitching, though. I’m not so hardcore that I don’t tire from working so hard just to go from point A to point B, and I do, at times, enjoy the easy life. But I do think it’s important to recognize the trade-offs I make when I make seemingly easy choices.

Gama didn’t really want to give a speech, and I didn’t really want him to, but since he’s Dean of Students, neither of us could avoid it. What he said was nice, though: He said that the students were upset I was leaving, and that they said my office was a place to go not just when they had problems, but also to learn new things. Ferestes, as acting CD, gave one of those classic Malawian speeches that always make me giggle but also wonder what I did wrong. She said it was possible I had offended people or people had offended me, and she hoped I’d forget that and only remember the good stuff. That was so much better than at Jackie’s leaving party (my first exposure to these speeches) where Matron asked every one who may have offended Jackie to stand u and beg forgiveness,

I felt really guilty because I wrote thank you cards to many staff, but ran out before I got to Matron. I told her I’d send a postcard, and she seemed to take that ok.

The present they gave me was a painted bag that says “Malawi.” I really liked it, but Matron didn’t believe me. When she came to tell me how hard she worked to get the function organized, she begged me not to give away the bag. I said, of course I wouldn’t and she said, “You can even use it.” I said, “I know, I am using it” and she said, “No, you really can use it, please don’t give it away.” It was weird all around.

Another day, I had lunch with Kris and Ben, and Ben told me about how Thoko calls him a a lazy boy. But, after she burned Memory’s birthday cake, he has the the perfect response: “At least lazy boys don’t burn birthday cakes.” I had fun organizing my days around seeing all my friends and always pretending I would see them all again so I would never have to say goodbye.

I asked where I could legally change kwacha to meticais, and as there was nowhere, and a big sign said changing kwacha to metacais was illegal with any of the thirty money changers outside. But, either the immigration guy was really nice or corrupt because he arranged to have some moneychangers come and change enough money to get me to an atm. I figure corrupt, because the rate they gave me was poor—although it was nice not to be mobbed while dealing with money, and perhaps I was just paying for that pleasure.

Generally I find that the best people to get prices from, especially in tourist gouging situations, are the people who have nothing to benefit from giving you azungu-price. I asked Salady, one of the moneychangers, how much for the bike taxi, and he gave me a price significantly lower than the ones the bike taxi pedallers had been giving me when they and the moneychangers were mobbing me. Turned out he got me again, though, because the was just giving me the price to the border, and I had to pay his friend separately to actually take me to Mandimba.

I got on the back of the bike while other bike taxi pedallers tried to insist that no, I had agreed to go with them, some of them even trying to take my pack to cement their ownership of my custom, until I said, loudly and firmly, “Don’t touch me.” That’s the nice thing about Malawi, though: every single one of the people bugging me backed off and some of them even helped Salady.

I tried to trust Salady enough to keep my feet on the pegs, which is more difficult than it sounds, especially when you’re not moving yet and every instinct you’ve trained into yourself says bikes that don’t move forward fall over. I tried to keep my hands on the seat, off Salady’s butt, and unentangled in the seat springs, ‘coz I figured that would hurt. It added to the oddness of the situation when a friend of Salady’s, running behind us, pushed us up a few of the hills. Also, I’d never heard of that, although I had heard of walking up hills that are too steep for the bike taxi to continue up.

When I got to the border I had to stop and chat with the gate guards. One of them asked if I had brought him anything and I honestly couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or asking for a bribe. So I offered him a carrot. That started a whole discussion of what a carrot is, since the guard didn’t know the English word, and then when I showed him, a discussion of how the words are the same in Spanish and Portuguese. I asked him if he really wanted the carrot. He looked at me strangely, said yes, took the carrot, looked at it strangely, and then put it on the bench beside him.

The only trouble getting my visa at this crossing was waiting 10 minutes for the bwana in charge of stamping the visas to get back from tea. And then waiting for 20 minutes for him to place the stickers, stamp things, record other things in books, stamp more things, stare into space, and then stamp and write some more. There was a Mozambican little girl irritating the hell out of her brother or uncle, who was just trying to get their passports sorted, and that kept me entertained while I waited. The bwana handed back my passport with the visa in before he ever asked about money, and I sort of idly wondered what would happen if I just took off with a free visa. But saving $20 was not really worth being shot at, so I didn’t find out.

I called Debbie from the train back to Liwonde. She very graciously said I could stay and sent a co-worker just leaving work to come and pick me at the station. I was very happy that the return trip from Nayuchi was considerably shorter than the trip out—about 3 hours. So I even had time to wash the ground in grime from my face and body before dinner. Since the power was out when I got to Debbie’s house, I felt like I was at home, just like in Zomba.

The next morning Debbie and her driver gave me a lift to Ntaja. They were willing to give me a lift to the Mangochi turn off instead, but we figured Ntaja was closer to the border at Chiponde, which should make up for any slower traffic. For the most part it worked: I waited about 5 minutes for the minibus that said it was going to Chiponde to fill a bit more, and then we were off. Only because the minibus wasn’t completely full, I had to switch minibuses in Nselema.

The minibus driver in Nselema went back and forth over the same 300 meters repeatedly, trying to convince us he was just about to leave while waiting to fill some more. Apparently the bus stand boys got fed up* because they started yelling, “nthawi yatha!” (time is up!). The bus stand boys and all the legitimate male passengers disembarked and stood around, pretending there was more traffic they could threaten to get on instead. It worked, in spite of the obviously bluffy nature of the manoeuvre. I got to Chiponde, finally, about 2½ hours after leaving Ntaja. Almost immediately I was approached by someone ready to take me on a bike taxi over to Mandimba.

A note on bike taxis: For over two years I have avoided taking a bike taxi anywhere. I have even walked 6km to avoid taking a bike taxi—something about riding pillion at the mercy of someone you don’t know just struck me as a BAD IDEA™. But here I am, still in my first week of not being a Peace Corps volunteer, and I have to get my butt on the back of a bike taxi.

*My guess is they weren’t going to get any more money for staying in the minibus all morning than they would for 30 minutes.