A St. Paddy's Day Like No Other

This week was a week to mourn death and a week to celebrate life while discovering everything in between.  I am feeling less and less like an outsider in a foreign place and more and more like a member of the Dzaleka community.  It is gratifying to wander about camp and see familiar faces light up when they see you coming.   The bonds I am creating and the relationships I am forming make me feel very connected to these people and this place. 

This week during my women’s support group I asked them to draw a specific moment in their lives when they were the most scared.  These drawings depicted horrific moments and traumatic events emblazoned on the memories of these women.  The stories shared in the discussion were unspeakable.  Unspeakable because the memories and flashbacks were things so terrifying the women could not bring themselves to speak them out loud before today.  One of the women had just finished breaking her silence when another one of our group members walked through the door.  She was physically shaken and was walking in slow motion as if in a dream.  As soon as she sat down you could visibly see all the life rush out of her body.  Her head lowered and rested on the table as tears rolled down her cheeks.  She shared the news that her one-week-old infant daughter had passed away.  Complications from malaria compounded by an understaffed clinic brought the babies life to an end before it had a chance to get started.  The stories of the past were now being highlighted by a woman experiencing real pain and suffering right here and now.  She gathered herself, stood up and walked out of the room with all the strength she could muster. 

The group made a decision to travel to the woman’s home after our group.  Together we walked through the rows of small mud brick homes, past children playing sporadic games of futbol and amongst the roving chickens until we arrived at the small one room house.  Eleven women and a sprinkling of young children huddled inside the dark, dank room. We sat together, to mourn together and to carry the heavy weight of her burden and loss together.  It was a very powerful moment.  Our support group was digging in and embodying the very thing it was put in place to do.  The silence stirred many sad emotions inside of me but I also felt honored and privileged to be a part of something larger than myself.

The loss of life was balanced by the celebration of a new life.  The wife of one of the counselors I work with just had a baby boy and I traveled to camp on Saturday to greet him and celebrate his life.  Six hundred Kwacha, three over crowded mini buses and a ramshackle, prehistoric Toyota later, we arrived.   Camp on Saturday has a laid back feeling to it.  JRS, UN and government services are not available so the hum of official business has died down and people go about other dealings and trades.  We came bearing gifts and left with stomachs full of hot chapatti, home-grown maize and a new love for Daniel Hope.  The hours spent with the family were wonderful and though the prayer before we left might have been the longest ever recorded, its meaning was genuine and brought tears to my eyes. 

I realized I have not made contact since St. Patrick’s Day so I believe a brief update on that matter is necessary.  

Don’t fear…I found the only celebration in town, danced a bit of freestyle jig with an Irish band flown in by the Irish Embassy, drank multiple beers and made a large roast beef dinner.  I don't think corned beef exists in this hemisphere.  

  

The real celebration however came when I had the opportunity to accompany a refugee I was working with to the airport.  He was being resettled to Australia after four years of living in Dzaleka.  To give you an idea of the fortune this man has, he represents one of 100 or so refugees that will be granted resettlement this year out of approximately 11,000 refugee and asylum seekers.  I was invited to see him off so I took my seat or rather my section of a seat large enough for half a cheek.  Laughter and singing erupted in the packed vehicle amongst uncertainty and apprehension.  All were excited for their brother but the expressions on the faces of the five young foster children told another story.  Legal circumstances will not allow the children to travel with him so they will be left behind in camp to live on their own. 

We parked the Land Cruiser and unloaded along with two other vehicles including an open bed truck full of people.  Photos, hugs, photos, goodbyes, more photos and then we walked inside.  In absence of a passport the man had a single page document with his picture and an official seal.  ‘Good for one-way travel to Australia only’.  Permanent.  This was it.  We arrived at the airline counter and he was not aware of the personal space rule so he proceeded to pull within inches of the man in front of him despite the ample space provided.  I found the act so innocent and charming that I choose not to say anything.  Just as soon as he was through immigration I turned to leave only to realize the group sat waiting on a viewing platform that overlooked the single runway of the small international airport in Lilongwe.  This was not just a simple flight, it was a life-changing journey and we were going to watch it from start to finish. 

An hour and half later he was visible on the tarmac waving both hands side to side.  In return thirty of us stood up and waved both hands.  Again, when the bus took him to the plane and he began ascending the stairs he paused in the distance and waved a final goodbye.  When the plane finally took off and was visible over the forest of trees lining the runway everyone clapped and waved one last time.   ‘Safe travels my friend’, ‘God bless you’, and ‘Goodbye’ could be heard in multiple languages.  A great moment.  Never before had I watched a plane off the ground and shared such an experience with a group.  It was a St. Patrick’s Day celebration unlike any other.  My Irish pin and green attire come out every year for the holiday but the Malawian twist on my tradition made it that much more special.  May the luck of the Irish be with you always Claude*. 

Dome’s Favorites:  Made in Malawi: ‘Garlic Nali’ might be the best hot sauces ever produced.  The flavor beats that of Saracha, a former favorite, and the heat is just right.  I am generous with the liquid delight, so much so that I am asked it I would like food with my Nali? Thank you, I shant.

      

A Typical Sunday

8:15-Wake up and remove mosquito net from around my bed while humming ‘Danny Boy’ song stuck in my head from the Irish festival concert last night. St. Patrick’s Day is a comin’! 

8:20-Eat a bowl of corn flakes with sliced banana & soy milk (some things never change).

8:47-Read and prepare for upcoming support group.  Remembrance & Mourning this week means the women will share the most traumatic stories affecting their lives.  Note to self: Remember Kleenex.

9:15-Tea time.  Raab’s Classic, Malawian grown tea.

9:30-Move six cases of empty Carlsburg beer bottles into the pantry for refill discount.  Birthday bash last weekend=successful.

9:35-Climb rickety ladder up avocado tree in backyard to harvest fruit.  Why is it that the best avocados are always just out of reach?

10:00-Bleach shower and tub until they sparkle.

10:45-Hand wash clothes with warm water and detergent in large green bucket.  Rinse in clean tub.

11:40-Ring wet clothes and hang to dry on line outside. 

12:15-Dance around empty living room to Outkast, Atliens album while eating straight from the peanut butter jar.

12:17-Protasia joins in on the dancing.

12:48-Boil pot of water for drinking. Mimi once said a watched pot never boils so I removed a dirt termite tunnel being constructed on the cement wall as I waited.  Dear hollow headed termites, don’t you eat wood?  

1:30-Eat boiled green beans and carrots with onion and tomato for lunch. More peanut butter. More tea.

2:51-Watch swallows dive through the afternoon sky from my patio. 

3:17-Stare at the branches of the palm trees as they sway in the breeze. 

3:33-Imagine what funny animals and objects the clouds in the sky resemble. Listen to the slow relaxed beat of my heart.

4:01-Walk 2.5 miles to the store for freshly baked bread.

5:40-Iron dried clothes to rid them of the larvae the flies may have laid on them.  Apply bug spray.

6:15-Consider eating cookies for dinner.

6:16- Wait for a stove burner to become available.  With three burners on simultaneously the fuse box will begin to buzz as warning of impending shut off.

6:20-Use my better judgment, decide against cookies and boil rice and vegetables for dinner.

7:30-Throw kernels of corn into hot oil for popcorn and episodes of ‘The Wire’, season 1, episode 5.

9:30-Read finale of Steig Larson trilogy by the light of a small Mag Light.   

9:59-Lay head on silky pillow. Sleepy time.

Heaps of Sardines

Malawi is what you would call a sunset lovers paradise. The brilliantly colored skies that say goodbye to the day and hello to the night cast warm hues over the landscape and fill my heart up with all things good.  Since I was small I have always had an affinity for watching the sun slip into sleep and give rise to the moon.  I have honed my sunset watching skills on the beaches of San Diego and from the waters of the Pacific.  With all of this diligent practice I might even consider myself amongst the best viewers and oohers and aahers of sunsets.  

Tonight’s sunset was no exception to the sunset greatness Malawi has to offer.  It was as if Rumpelstiltskin had thrown golden bricks into the sky that stretched out over the horizon.  The billowing clouds were so fluffy I wished I could curl up in one for what I would have imagined to be the best night sleep ever.  On my journey home from the store I had to stop and admire how all the colors of the rainbow were soaked up in the clouds that were then reflecting colorful happiness back at me.   I took some deep breaths and took stock of just how fortunate I was, and am, to be here under the Malawian sky. 

I stand approximately 5’5” tall.  As we come to the close of the rainy season here in Malawi the maize stalks are inches over head and the grasses used for thatched roofs have grown feet above my head, although now they are bowing under the their own weight.  The termite hills are waist high, as are the tobacco leaves that will soon be hung to dry and sold at auction for export.  The chickens that were hatched months ago in back of the JRS office are now shin high and eat the grasshoppers that can jump as high as my thigh.  I am working with many school-aged children who are mostly shorter than me but if you were to measure their spirit and curiosity it would reach higher than all the peaks in Africa. 

The support group I am facilitating with the youth in camp has continued to be a highlight in my week.  Even at fourteen and fifteen many of the kids are well beyond their years.  Most of them have been forced to grow up and take on adult roles and responsibilities due to circumstances beyond their control.  I believe there are a few kids in our group who, in their past lives, lived to be old and grey and now their young bodies carry around old souls that are all too wise.  My inner self feels about twelve years old so this clash of internal ages always makes for a dynamic out of the ordinary.  I am working toward pulling out the inner voice in some of the introverted girls in the group but we are moving in the right direction and the conversations are always interesting.     

As for the women’s group, today we worked on ways in which to cope with the symptoms of trauma.  The visualization exercise went over pretty well until I had a woman admit that when she closes her eyes all she can think about is dying and death. Next.  The deep breathing exercise was all right.  I felt as if most of the women were holding their breath.  That may or may not have been due to the smell of gasoline that was wafting into the room.  The termites burrowing into the support group room door apparently warranted a gasoline bath.  Next.  “Let’s move outside to the fresh air.”  As soon as I pulled out some music from a famous Congolese artist faces started to perk up and hips started to sway.  The next thing you know we were all dancing in a circle in a half way finished brick building, throwing our arms side to side.  High-pitched sounds of excitement coming from the women’s mouths let me know they were enjoying themselves and focusing on things beyond their trauma memories.  Done.  No one ever said dancing was not a way to release stress.  Afterward, I got a chance to walk to the Tuesday market in camp before our afternoon awareness training. 

The market is a wide-open dirt area where people have laid down blankets in order to display their produce for sale.  Towers of tomatoes, stacks of potatoes, bunches of bananas, piles of green lemons and swarms of flies hovering around the small heaps of sardines.  Women hold umbrellas to block the hot sun and sit over buckets full of Mandazi balls (fried dough), while men roast large maize over open fires.  People scramble about sorting through loads of used clothes, buying bars of soap for bathing and measuring cups full of cowpeas to take home.   I wandered about carrying on as usual as if this was a normal occurrence when all of a sudden I looked up and realized where I was and how foreign my surroundings were.  A small crooked smile crept up in the corner of my mouth.  Amazing! 

Afterward I was invited into the home of a woman in camp for a waffle.  A waffle?  It was my first experience inside a home in camp and I felt honored to be invited.  The house consisted of two very small rooms with walls constructed of mud brick.  A wooden table with bench seating pushed against the walls of the small room making it hard to stretch my legs under the table.  This particular woman has a job within camp and her husband and her are single so they are able to afford some material items that most families cannot.  We had a conversation about music, fashion and culture.  Then we spoke about hope, or perhaps the lack there of.  With all the waiting and hoping, hoping and waiting for resettlement many people are tired of hoping and have lost faith.  It reminded me of a quote that a good friend always shared with me, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies.” –SR.  I can only hope the refugees here in camp hold on to that hope until they can begin anew. 

Dome’s favorites: Who knew a game of thumb war could be so fun. Thank you JP.