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.