Housing and the extended family in Malawi

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Emma is Mindy and Megan’s internship supervisor. She’s amazing! She knows everyone, and more importantly, they know her. She is a force for human rights and one of the toughest, yet most compassionate people I have ever met. All four of us are staying at her one floor, 4-bedroom house, so even though Dave and I work elsewhere, we’re all getting to know each other really well. That’s just what happens when you’re living on top of one another in an area where the sun sets around 5:30pm and in the absence of street lamps, you’re not advised to wander the streets alone at night.
Then there are the blackouts – every Tuesday and Thursday evening from 5:30-8, the city loses electricity. They can be expected Saturday evenings as well. Not too long ago, they began at 6:45pm and ran an hour and a half. Even since we arrived, we’ve seen them come earlier and last longer.
This may be a good time to point out that while I recognize I’m not in China, I want to be careful with how much I post on the internet. It seems it’s too slow for anyone to be monitoring it, but just in case, I’ll reserve certain observations/explanations for emails or conversations when I return.
Anyway, the blackouts leave us with little to do but sit around, talk, and learn more about Malawi than we ever could from any guidebook.
I’m not very good with dimensions, so I can’t tell you how big the house is, but envision a modest cottage by the lake. Small bedrooms, small foyer, one bathroom, a nice sized open kitchen, and a living/dinning room. When we first arrived, there were 7 of us staying in the house. Now, there are 9. Plus two people who live in the little house in the backyard – Richard (a different one) the houseworker/guard, and Isaac, Emma’s nephew. Alice, her 20 year old niece, and Kevin, her 8 year old nephew, stay in the house with us. Last week, her sister Victoria and niece Toko also came to stay. No indication of how long they’ll be here, but it means that Alice now sleeps on a thin mattress in the foyer and Toko is on the loveseat in the living room.
Trying to get a good sleep the first week was nearly impossible, since I think I was still catching up from having not slept for the 50 hours before we arrived in Malawi. (In other words, I may reconsider the financial savings of taking the 9:30pm bus to DC from Pittsburgh should such a need arise later.) It’s getting better, but I am often woken by either the “dog chorus” or the “dog orchestra.” You would think the difference between the two is the amount of dogs involved, but such is not the case. In fact, there are 2 dogs who bark like Sophie – beautiful mezzo-soprano/baritone howls that add a light melody to the otherwise staccato barks of the others.
Then there are the roosters, who sometimes have the nerve to start their vocal warm-ups at 3:30am. Unacceptable. The night guards (who bring the dogs who bring the noise) occasionally shout to each other at random times. Not sure if that’s their way of staying awake or if they’re trying to ward off would-be robbers. Then comes morning…
Normally, I like a little background noise in the AM, be it a radio or the tv. Here, there’s both. For a household that otherwise tries to conserve electricity, the radio and tv are frequently on at the same time. I should actually back up. Alice (and while she’s here, Victoria) will wake Kevin at 5:45am. He takes a bath with the door partially open and enjoys splashing about and talking to himself. He then has no qualms about yelling to Alice/Victoria in the kitchen when he gets out. This wouldn’t be so bad except that the pointless glass window just above the bedroom door doesn’t completely fill the space, so we hear everything. As Toko awakes, and the door to the kitchen isn’t always closed, it gets to be quite loud. It’s a bit too much for me to handle at 6am, but when I leave the house around 7:30am, I am greeted by the comparative peace and quiet of the world outside.
Occasionally we receive visitors – all part of the extended family idea. Sometimes a brother or brother-in-law will drop in, other times a friend. You never really know when anyone’s coming. It’s fun, though English greetings quickly switch to conversations in Chichewa and while I’ve learned a few things, I certainly can’t understand a conversation yet.
I imagine by the end of my third week here, I’ll have forgotten that I once shared an apartment with just one other person and that I usually had my mornings (and a room) to myself. For now, living with 10 other people takes some adjustment. I’m also adjusting to having my wings clipped. Even together, we don’t leave the house at night and when we go out over the weekend, we travel together and have to pre-plan how we’ll get somewhere and back. We’ve mastered the minibus to/from Seven Eleven and Crossroads (a nearby shopping center), but nothing beyond that. Taxis apparently exist, but I haven’t actually seen one and as Emma once pointed out, we wouldn’t be able to direct it home. Street names aren’t really known here. For example, my address is Area 47/3/167, Lilongwe. That means Area 47, Sector 3, house 167. But what street? Who knows. To catch the bus back, we say “Area 47, small world,” whatever that means. I imagine that we’d actually be able to give the driver directions once we reached a certain place, but Mama Emma isn’t quite comfortable with that idea yet. I’m chaulking this up to the adjustment period as well. Hopefully in another week or so I’ll be able to write about all sorts of places we’ve managed to go and people we’ve met. Meanwhile, I can’t help but recall with great fondness the solo flight I took from Shanghai to Kunming, followed by a 30-hour bus ride to Laos, where I stayed all by myself for an entire week, as well as my solo week-long trip to Malaysia. Oh well, safety first.

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