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I guess the easiest thing to do is to just type out my excerpts from my handwritten journal here. It looks like I'll be able to get to the internet cafe at least once a week, maybe more, but that means you guys will be getting big chunks of news all at once. I'll try to include headings so you can keep up. Here goes...
New Orleans-Washington: No huge deal. Managed to photograph my own bag being loaded onto the plane from the terminal. Also saw a child on a leash in the airport... those were some really hardcore grandparents. During the flight I watched "300" over the shoulder of the 70-something man in front of me who was using his video i-pod. Really impressed with his technological proficiency. Somebody check on United Airlines' flight route from New Orleans to Washington. I really thought we overflew Pickwick, a big lake right outside Corinth.
D.C.-Johannesburg: 15 hrs and 15 minutes airtime in that plane. One flight took us halfway around the globe. Watched "Ace Ventura" cartoon and drank tiny Coke mid-Atlantic.
J'Burg overnight: Great dinner of beef curry at McGinty's Irish Pub in the hotel (Garden Court). Overheard loud bar conversation about the absurdity of putting the "Islamic" adjective with "Islamic terrorism" and interjected briefly to chat about the paper I wrote on the subject for Dr. Black. Decided not to dive into scapegoat theory because several discussion participants were several drinks into a long night. In all our time at the hotel and airport, I only saw 4 white people in customer-serving jobs. Is the demographic that skewed, or does that reflect the lingering divides of apartheid? American music is everywhere.
J'Burg-Lilongwe: 1 1/2 hour delay on runway. From air, mountains in SE Africa appear to have almost no trees... just big crinkly clay bumps seperated by deep cuts.
"my beloved in a nectarine, my granny in cinnamon, there's someone in anise... a woman in every flavour." -DJ Opperman
In-flight magazine article about native food and its tradition of recipes being passed through families.
Lilongwe: Writing from bed at Chris Taylor's house. Wow. Flying into airport from 10 miles out, these observations: Clay-red-brown roads (dirt) which just stretch on forever. Can't see towns; the roads just link small compounds. Not like flying over American roads. Here, roads stretch on for miles with no traffic. Maybe not much happens on Sundays. We'll see tomorrow. Could see ribbons of green and small bushes against otherwise dry grassland, but the rivers which left these few bands of fertile earth seem to have dried up long ago.
Maybe there are still underground springs keeping plants alive. To land, we overflew several compounds of thatch-roofed htus at just a few hundred feet (not more than 5 miles from an Int'l Airport runway). Might have overflown Kokwonko's compound from Chinhua Achebe's "Thigns Fall Apart." City means "concentration of sprawl" much more than it means city in the terms we are used to.
Wonderful young staff hosting us. Wonderful compound. Shy little dog, "Lulu," warmed right up to me, but still seems a big unsure about Katie's volume. Apparent that poverty exists. Compounds have big walls and heavy gates. One friend of Jerome's (head staffer), Chiwewe, noted over dinner that at some point we will go to the villages and see "the real Africa." Long talks about history. Taritta, J's gf, teaches piano at the school and actually began application process for 'saps in the spring; hopes to be there by next spring semester. Only 20% of Malawians enjoy this style of living. Drove past people bundling underbrush for tatching or firewood on way in. Some scenes show almost no signs of modern development at all. Here, the economic cgap manifests itself quite strongly. My bed has a really snazzy blue mosquito net above it, but nights are so cool that I don't expect it to be necessary unless the weather warms up.
Today, drove out and about a bit and got money changed. Embassy soon. Saw the "Christian Medical Alliance" compound. Jerome told me we can visit so I can talk with the staff there. Trips to the school start tomorrow. From now on, I guess I'll distinguish events by date rather than by location.
Love you all, pray for me often.
-Ben
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Danielle
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So glad you've arrived safely Ben! Your observations about the trip are already really enlightening, keep them coming. So glad you have man's best friend in the compound with you!! Love love love, Danielle