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Published: June 30th 2010
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A true adventurer I am not. Though I love the experience of living in new places it is not the thrill of discovery that keeps me coming back, but the feeling of comfort that comes with having settled in a foreign environment. With each new temporary life I build, I confirm something I should have admitted to a long time ago: that I live for the establishment of routine. And so it is that I happily report the very boring and every day accomplishments that have helped me weave my own pattern of life in Lundazi.
The first of the successes was liberating myself from the paved road. Lundazi has only one of these, and in my first few days of living here I could pretty much only get myself from one point to another if the route primarily involved this arcing road. After a few daring explorations—only once getting so lost that I managed to walk myself beyond the border of town—I have finally figured out the backroads short cuts. To get to work from my house, for example, I head toward the police station, turn left down a dirt path and pass the house with the massive outdoor
Fascinated by the Muzungu
These kids found me very interesting, though they maintained a considerable distance and backed away if I got too close. grill that always smells like roasting corn. Crossing the soccer field I come to a small stand of trees where there seems to always be a scattering of sugar cane sticks that are free for the taking (a mystery I have yet to solve). Keeping the big blue roof of the tobacco warehouse to my left I eventually turn right down the road where most of the wealthy Indians live. Sometimes at the end of the road the children from the wealthy Indian households—including one girl who is so small her head-covering engulfs her backpack—wait to be picked up and taken to the private school for Indians just outside of town. It is there that I make a left on the paved road that heads out of town before I turn into the office.
I could spend every day choosing a new dirt road to walk down in Lundazi, but instead I’ve found my favorite morning walk/run path and stuck to it—running east from the paved road toward Malawi and then turning into orchards and bicycle paths to angle back toward the water tower. Morning excursions here have perhaps permanently raised the bar—the air is perfectly cool, the landscape
Mwase Lundazi
That's it for the "town" where our clinic and our project are based. open and inviting, and the people so friendly that I invariably start the day in a good mood.
I’ve even started to be recognized by some of the rural women who walk the same path into town each morning, and can finally negotiate the various permutations of greetings that we make to each other in Chichewa and Tumbuka. (Unfortunately I’ve also already reached the point where my ability to greet and respond gives people the false impression that I actually speak either of these languages. My satisfaction with being able to say “Good morning” was short-lived and quickly replaced by the frustration of having to shrug and throw my hands up when people responded to my greeting by yammering away in a language I don’t understand.)
Communication barriers haven’t stopped me from bonding with my favorite housemates, Granny and Anya Zulu. Granny isn’t actually anyone’s grandma (she is the woman of the house’s aunt), but she certainly plays the part—dividing her time between shuffling about the kitchen (she loves cleaning and putting away dishes) and sitting in a chair in the sun; usually emitting a perfect old lady cackle when she spots me bumbling about the kitchen. Anya
Zulu speaks only a few words of English (“water,” “yes,” and “fatty,” among them), but she is incredibly animated and has done a very good job of putting up with my attempts to use charades to act out questions like “Where are the measuring cups?”
In the kitchen I’ve also found my answer to the country’s love for maize meal: samp(o). Unlike the national food nshima—a porridge of fine ground maize meal (corn powder) that is served in fist sized blobs—tsampo has texture and flavor. It is a porridge (surprise) of hominy-like corn kernels that is boiled with ground nut powder. Somehow I feel a large burden relieved by the fact that I can honestly profess a taste for something made of ground corn. It would have been a shame to have lived briefly in Zambia without ever coming to terms with the country’s love for the white powder.
Though I love markets, they have a way of making me feel even more the confused and obvious white girl (a role which, by now, I should have embraced, but which funnily enough still kind of terrifies me). Wherever I live I often am quick to find my favorite
stalls or vendors and give them my faithful business. At the market here I’ve found my favorite fruit shop, run by a teenage boy who seems to always be laughing at me and also himself. I’m making my way down the list of strange produce he carries (small white cousins of eggplant, bitter; spikey cucumber that looks like a green blowfish, lemony and delicious; pumpkin leaves, furry).
I have permanent Birkenstock lines on my feet—not from the sun but from the fine orange dirt that is everywhere. I have given up trying to scrub myself clean of the Lundazi dust, but am also strangely happy when I look down and see the lines. Like the freckles that are multiplying and blending on my temples, they are another sign of my settlement—of the temporary life that I have built myself in this part of the world, and of how fortunate I am to call yet another place home.
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rhoda rafkinr
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thank you
Cant tell you how much I enjoy your blogs.thank you so much