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.

But it was a small town, and I did find children to play with who would then happen upon me later in the day. One day I was waiting for a lackluster sunset and these two girls came along and started to chat with me. They did the ubiquitous pen-begging, and seemed to think my refusal to give them my admittedly awesome pen was nonsensical—since obviously I had an unlimited supply in my suitcase. I asked the girls if they even went to school, and they both said yes, although later I found out that wasn’t true. One of the girls did go to school, but the reason the other was so successful at hunting me down during the day was her lack of scholarly obligations.

The girls did a lot of begging—more than I normally stand for. But every time I was about to tell them to go away, they would forget they were meant to be seeing what they could get from the rich white girl and would start to play instead. They were cute borrowing my sunglasses, and although I considered (to my shame*) they might steal my expensive polarized lenses of non-squintiness, it didn’t ever seem to occur to them. One of the girls was fascinated by my hair** and, when I said I had no hair ties on me, pulled one off her wrist and proceeded to try different styles of ponytales on me. I managed to keep her from making too much of a wreck of my hair, and just laughed when she tried to charge me US$20 for the ponytail holder (I gave it back. I would’ve given it back anyway).

Eventually the girls attracted schoolmates. Well, schoolmates of the girl whose family could afford school. Which looked like it might be an unwelcome turn of events, at first, what with the rapid Portuguese and the sheer crackling energy that multiplies and takes over amongst any group of children old enough to get into trouble on their own. But the power of the display on the back of a digital camera is an amazingly effective focusing device, and I managed to get them all to behave reasonably well by taking pictures of their silhouettes in the setting sun.

The two original girls tried to follow me back to where I was staying, but I somehow tricked them so that they didn’t know where I was specifically staying. This kept them from coming to play for about 24 hours, until they narrowed it down further when I ran into one of the girls after school, and the other was running an errand for her father that took her down an alley near Casa Branca, where I was staying. After that she just showed up on the steps to chat periodically. Chatting never lasted long, and was limited by my rusty Spanish, awful Portuguese, and her total lack of English. Inevitably there was a pen request, and a bit of a lackluster attempt at making me feel guilty for my lack of pen donations, but we had a nice time.

*When I start having uncharitable thoughts like this, the shame of thinking the worst of people—especially children—is a roiling burn in my gut while the fear that I may be overly naïve and taken advantage of is a frozen prickling down the back of my neck. I don’t know if other people have this push/pull of emotions when in situations like this, but for me it’s part of what makes traveling exhausting. Successfully navigating it all is part of what makes traveling worth it.

**While this is a semi-common experience, it doesn’t happen nearly as often as you might think.

It seemed a shame to miss the sunrise, even though it occurred even more horribly early than usual*, and so I tried to wake up to catch it. Even when it took me too long to actually get my butt out of bed, the early morning hours were magical. The sunrises, even when not terribly bright or beautiful, warmed up the island with gorgeous, cozy light.  Life is completely different in the just-barely-post-dawn light.

Women scraped the paving-stoned road free of moss and other marring substances. Silhouettes of people bent over in the low-tide flats provided minutes of entertainment: a puzzle of possible activities.

I returned to the room for a cat nap (can you really call it a nap when, after it, you still wake up before 8?), or to do some yoga, or to pretend I was going to do yoga and take a nap instead, and then it’d be time to take a walk or a dhow trip or pretend the internet will be opened, staffed, not full, and working. After the busy morning, it’s time for homemade cashew ice cream (well, until the fourth or fifth day, when I apparently had eaten it all), another walk around the island (circumnavigation took less than an hour, although I would often do half the island in the morning and the other half in the evening), or reading or journaling through the midday heat.

Another walk around the island, a shower while the sun’s heat was still held in the unheated shower-water, and dinner at one of the four restaurants in town, batting at mosquitoes, refusing offers of DEET for no known reason, ripping the heads off shrimp, and debating whether to feed the scavenging cats that populated any outdoor eating space.

I’d return to the room, read a bit, make some plans, and write in my journal until I began to fall asleep, the pen leaving odd-sized blotches on the paper and increasingly erratic and sloppy writing, some of it completely illegible. I’d turn off the light (usually), and drop off to a deep, sea-scented sleep.

I’d wake up in the morning refreshed but eased into laziness by the rhythm of the sea, ready to start it all again, failing to find the urge to leave.

*Mozambique is all in one time zone, and the country took its time zone direction from the districts to the east, so the sun rises and sets about an hour earlier once you get out to the coast.*

We weren’t there for Health ‘08’s site announcements. Health ’06 did a great event for ours, but due to scheduling problems we didn’t get to stay in Dedza long enough for the ’08 site announcements. This year, site announcement was at All-Health, like it was for us, and so we could all be a part of them. Luckily for me, I was PCV of the week in the days leading up to All-Health. Alex and I clued the first-years in on the various things we could do—sashes or crowns with site names on them, a map with volunteers on, some kind of find your sitemate/who you’re replacing game. The first years, sad about what they had missed out on (and I didn’t even tell them about the roll of Charmin Derek passed on to Michelle in an elaborate ceremony—I think they would have cried if they knew they missed out on that), decided what they wanted to do.

Since the first-years were in their midservice sessions, and Alex and I were PCVs of the week but were often chilling out while waiting for the trainees to be in a session for which we thought we might have useful contributions, we decided to get started on the sashes. Alex is a much better artist than I am—eventually I started finding excuses for Alex to draw the pictures on mine so when they compared sashes, the trainees wouldn’t think we loved some of them and hated others. Alex labelled the appropriate sashes “Tonga Alliance”, over which Dawn, because of her jealousy over speaking Tumbuka instead of Tonga, drew the Chitipa Wrecking Crew symbol.

We were so full of stealth. When the trainees came out of their sessions, we were like ninjas—folding up the sashes* so sneakily and yet innocently there’s no way they knew we were up to anything at all. When Alex and I had to go back to the village with the trainees, the first years finished everything we started and continued with all the other awesome plans they (*cough*Judy*cough*) had come up with.

When it finally came to the end of the week and time for All-Health and site announcements, we were all thrumming with excitement. Ken was the only one who got the list of who was assigned to which site before the announcements started. I told Edith she was smart not to tell the rest of us, because I knew I’d tell—and I’m not the only one. I’m good at keeping secrets that need to be kept, but I’m no good at keeping happy secrets. Just ask my mom what happens when I get her a present early.

At first it seemed a bit of a letdown to have to hold the actual announcements after we ate chicken and sausage and cheese(!) and drank minerals and beer and had the cakes the first-years made and danced and sang along to Bohemian Rhapsody.

Eventually the site announcements were made. I think, although everyone was equally excited before, in the end only those of us being replaced or getting sitemates had that excitement satisfied. The newbies got their sites, but didn’t know what it meant, and wouldn’t until site visit.

We had regional group meetings, North, Central, and of course the best: South, so the trainees could learn more about the region at least. Bryce expounded in a Bryce-like way about why we the south didn’t need a name—like Tonga Alliance or Chitipa Wrecking Crew. He made sense, and is probably right, although he was obviously making up everything—even his position on the matter—on the spot. But it’s an irrelevant point of view. We are, always have been, and always will be, the Dirty South.

Then there was more dancing and gift giving (from Health ’07 to Edith and Cornelius) and the newbies had to go back to the village. Transport to Lilongwe was leaving for the first and second years, and for the first time I had to really say good-bye to people in my group. I surprised myself and everyone else by bursting into tears. I blame Bryce: he was nice to me. Well, nicer. Well, Bryce-nice, which is close enough. Becky thought it was hilarious and for the rest of that day and up until we got to Balaka the next day would periodically yell, “Cry, Sika, cry!” Which didn’t work, much to her disappointment.

The next day Peace Corps transport took the 4 of us going south and dropped us at the Dedza roadblock, to start hitching home.

*and later the map, which originally was going to have a little dot for every volunteer, and then just for the health volunteers, and then, eventually, just the first-year health volunteers.

The stuff I won’t miss though, is not what I think of first or last. What I think about the most is the things I will miss. I keep remembering that although I will take lots of pictures when my mom comes, I don’t have enough of other seasons. That I may never see a woman cracking sugar cane over her knee again. That I won’t have impossibly sweet and creamy avocados melt on my tongue. That chickens won’t wake me at 4:30am. That I’ll have to go out in search of places with little enough light pollution that the sky can be black black and freckled with abundant stars, or where I can walk home by the light of the full moon without even a torch, playing with the reflected shadows. That people won’t walk by my windows, speaking the now familiar sounds and rhythms of Chichewa, laughing, and singing. That I won’t hear the shh shh of dirt-sweeping in the mornings, or the call to prayer of the muezzin. That I won’t be able to listen to the music of a wedding celebration throughout the day, then the drums beating the wee hours of the morning, then the PA system crackling in the morning with more Lucius Banda and Bujo Mojo. That I won’t watch the earth change from sere red-brown and cracked to abundant with green. That I will inevitably lose contact with most of my Malawian friends, who have been my rocks in the last two years.

While I am absolutely ready to move on to whatever’s next in my life, I am also greatly saddened that this new phase requires leaving the last one behind.

When I went to Kory´s site in Liwonde, we started talking about Peace Corps, other volunteers, and Malawi. She apologized later for talking my ear off but I told her sincerely that one of the things I have become acutely aware of is that I won´t have anyone once I get home with whom to talk about the last two years of my life.

Sure, I can Facebook my PC Malawi friends and maybe even call some of them occasionally. But there´s no easy outlet for those random, “Hey, remember that one time, with the thing, back when we had transit houses?” thoughts. 

Thank goodness my mom is coming: she´ll at least have some frame of reference We´re doing semi-bwana traveling, though. She won´t know what it´s like waiting for a minibus to fill when you know you´ve got to get somewhere in ever decreasing time. She wion´t know what it´s like worrying about how ridiculous you look clambering up into a lorry (and then realizing you should´ve been worried about injuring yourself instead of about something silly like how you look).

She won´t (I hope) have any funny stories about trying and failing to aim in a chimbudzi.

Or understand the frustration of having the power go out every day just as you start to cook dinner.  She won´t get the should I/shouldn´t I light the mbaula dilemma.

She may or may not see goats in various stages of being slaughtered, but she won´t have time to get inured to it and then be surprised and disturbed by it all over again.

She may find the turns of speech and the signs amusing, but it won´t be with the affection many of us have who´ve been here a while: I laugh when Musi says stuff like “She wasn´t all that dead. Then she wasn´t all that alive” because I love how Musi- and Malawi-like the phrase is, not because I think it´s worthy of making fun.

If my mom had come during my service, we probably would´ve stayed in Malawi and I would´ve had a house and the chance to show mom what my daily life is like. Not that any of it is anyone´s fault;I understand why no one was able to visit me during my service. It just means that those bridges, between my old life, my current life, and my future life have not been built. Without the bridges it´s hard to reconcile each of those stages with the others.

But there’s also the reaction of people back home. People are “proud” of us (something that seems strange when the proud people have only the most tenuous connection). They’re “impressed” or, even worse (to me), “awed”. They say they couldn’t do what we’re doing–as if doing Peace Corps requires some specific, intrinsically morally superior gene rather than just a desire born out of any number of good or bad reasons.

Over time, we get used to this. What once might have been uncomfortable (I, for one, don’t know how to deal with compliments period, much less compliments I’m unsure are justified) becomes uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time. We get used to everything we do being automatically important and interesting. We get used to being impressive and awesome (although definitely in a non-scary way) without actually having to do anything to earn the accolades.* We get used to being worthy of attention. We get used to being able to be “exotic” and interesting when we want to be, but still being able to be “normal” when that seems better. Our specialness becomes a fancy coat** we can throw on when the occasion calls for it, and leave in the closet when it doesn’t. But we always know it’s there.

And then service ends. And we can talk about that awesomest piece in our wardrobes–the piece we used to have, that pulled everything together and always made us look perfect. We can even show pictures of how perfect we looked in the coat, and bore people with our insistence on talking about that coat “I had that one time.” But everyone has their own version of the coat that was perfect, and having had one once is nowhere near the same level of cool as parading around the actual coat, looking perfect. It’s barely worth a mention.

I think some of us who come back to our countries of service aren’t doing so out of love of the country (although we may also love the country) or a desire to be in the country. I think sometimes we’re just searching for that perfect coat, the one that makes everything we do impressive and everything we are important, just because we’re wearing it.

*Don’t get me wrong, many of us do things that are impressive, it’s just that the actual doing of things is not necessary to the impressiveness.
**you knew I’d get there eventually, didn’t you?

I was nervous though: I live in Zomba. I almost always speak English. There are words I learned in training I couldn’t remember now if you offered me a million dollars. And yet here I was going back to a village—one similar enough to Mterera, where I remember being out of sorts, out of my element, and always worried about being out of line.

Communication has always been a problem for me, and while other volunteers told me being PCV of the week was much better than being in training, they lived in villages. They practiced their language. Ok, maybe they were good at Tumbuka instead of Chichewa, but I wouldn’t let facts like those get in the way of a good “oh woe is me.”

But then it turned out the others were right! For one thing, I barely had time with my host family at all, much less enough to wonder how they got a 2008 Chishango* calendar on the wall. For another, I had a cell phone and service, so I could ask David his opinion on whether I should kill the spider between my mattress and the wall or allow it to continue to eat the ants that were taking apart the mat my mattress was on, one minuscule bite at a time. I could text Kris to gossip about the trainers and the newbies.

Also, I was only in the village for four days, so if I screwed up, I’d be out of their hair in no time. But, most importantly, I could hold a frigging conversation in Chichewa!** Not a long detailed one, or a complicated one, but it still helped pass the time somehow besides uncomfortable silences and staring at each other’s hands.

Homestay this time around was a breeze.

*a condom brand
**Anyone who says you don’t need to learn the language to be a PCV in Malawi is wrong wrong wrong. You don’t have to learn the language, and most of the educated Malawians we deal with speak at least some English. It is in some ways, harder to learn Chichewa because it’s so easy to fall back on English. But my relationships suffered because of difficulty in communication and I have to believe my work would have only been enhanced if I knew more Chichewa.

At our COS conference, there was a Yao dancer with his locally-available-resources-band. Since it was too dark for movies, I took pictures and recorded some sound files instead. I’m not sure this post is going to work the way I want it to, so if it doesn’t, I’m sorry.

Yao Dance

Yao Dance2

Yao Dance3

ETA: I couldn’t embed the sound files, so you have to clicky. Sorry.