The Bar and Africa

I failed the Georgia Bar and really have no cheery or upbeat comment. Hopefully it won't take me as long as JFK, Jr. to pass. In our tri-weekly teacher morning prayer meeting, I asked everyone to pray for me as I received the results today at 10:30 pm Lilongwe time. My exact wording was "At the expense of public embarrassment, I will remind everyone that I find out about the Bar today." One of my favorite teachers, Gail Goncalves, who is from South Africa, piped up after an awkward silence and said "the bar?" With my phrasing about public embarrassment and mentioning a bar, she just figured I had an embarrassing incident at a bar (which is against the rules for the staff anyway) and wanted more details about it! I think failing the legal test is actually far more embarassing than most embarrassing bar stories I can think of, but it's funny how many cultural barriers there are here which we come across every day. This is not the first time having such a large distance between myself and the United States has been such an enormous blessing and a curse. I am glad to have space from everything to mourn my failure but so frustrated that I won't be able to take the test again until July, most likely. Thank you for your prayers.

CCAP-the presbyterian church

This post is about a week old. I wrote it at home and am transfering it now. Sorry for the delay!

This Sunday was my first Presbyterian church experience in Lilongwe. To begin, the service was three hours long!!! I have heard missionaries explain that in African cultures, the services or meetings will last as long as it takes to accomplish the agenda, not necessarily within a set schedule. If certain people aren’t present, the meeting won’t begin until they arrive, late or not. Those missionaries weren’t exaggerating.

Despite the length and my musings afterwards to my housemate, Charisa, that I could have flown nearly from Atlanta to Los Angeles in the span of the service, I left thinking the service had only been an hour and a half before looking at the clock! And Charisa and I weren’t even on time! The worship begins before 7am and we arrived at about 7:15.

But I savored every minute in that house of God was precious to me that my attention span allowed. Our sermon was on Leviticus 8 describing Moses’ brother Aaron and the station of the priesthood. The preacher reminded the congregation, in his rather high pitched voice on a microphone system that didn’t work, that we no longer need the priests and sacrifices in the same fashion as the Israelites did. Jesus fulfilled the first commandments God gave the Israelites by becoming the perfect sacrifice, freeing us from those laws with a new commandment to love God with all our hearts, minds, and bodies and our neighbors as ourselves.

The church building itself is one of the oldest in town. It is shaped in a square cross, all arms the same length. The walls were unappealingly dirty peachy paint and even more unattractive next to the beautiful, honey colored wooden cealing. There were a few panes of colored glass that could have passed as the beginnings of stain glass windows. The congregation divides during worship, males on the right side of the preacher on one arm of the cross, females on the left, and married couples in the middle.

The three elements of the service that contributed to my amazement and enjoyment of all three hours were the worship team, the satisfaction of the congregation, and the outdoor environment. About 6 men and 4 women sang in the adult church choir while there was also a younger person’s choir. They all looked about the same age to me. But the older choir was amazing. I would have paid the same money to see a play in New York or London as to hear them sing. The irony is that the sweetness of their performance is in the remoteness. It is even better that I can’t pay anything to hear them except the price of taking time to discover their country and culture.

The lead singer was tall and thin, wearing traditional Malawian garb which is colorful cloth cut in a long, fitted skirt and shirt with sleeves that look rather 80’s-ish with poofs about the shoulders. She looked young and thin, with gentle curves of a healthy woman, and she had a wide, strong mouth. When she took the microphone, standing at the right, front corner of their rectangle of assemblage, she set the pace, swaying gently, from one foot to the other. (The swaying here and even the more energetic bending and step-dancing is so obviously the authentic origin of our rapper style performance, but when the singers dance here, the movement seems natural and soulful rather than showey or tacky). Her voice was strong and sweet, calling out the melody while the rest of the choir echoed. The lyrics were in Chichewa, so I didn’t understand. But their performance spoke to me the colors of their skin and the hardships of the dry season and the goodness of worship and the enjoyment of being in the house of God all morning long.

Even after three hours, I am looking forward to my next Sunday at the Presbyterian Church!

Life in the Fast Lane

Life in Malawi is deceptive. Even though the level of technology and transportation limits how quickly things get done here, I am amazed at how I feel I am living life in the fast lane. Even waking up at 5am, which is what my schedule requires since classes start at 7:15, my day seems short. One problem is the heat. No one gets much done in the middle of the day. Kindergarten dismisses at noon. It’s all I can do to avoid melting from that time until about 5pm.
Several of you have requested that I put pictures on the blog. Unfortunately, my internet access is at an internet café. It would take entirely too long for me to post the pictures, not to mention that I haven’t got the means of downloading the pictures from my camera to my computer. But the school is getting wireless internet equipment, which has actually arrived in Lilongwe. We’re just waiting to get the gov’t to waive the $7,000 duty they’re trying to charge. So it may be a month before I’m able to sit at my own computer and download the pictures. I have plenty to post, though!

Last weekend was my first trip to Lake Malawi. Locals lovingly refer to the lake as a calendar lake because of its measurements: 365 miles long (days in a year) and about 51 miles wide (weeks in a year minus one). I can’t begin to describe how odd the drive was from Lilongwe to Selima, though. Getting outside of Lilongwe doesn’t take long. Once outside the city, the roads seem even more narrowly paved. The random livestock that traverses the road is one obstacle among many. If you’ve ever played a video game which requires driving, just know that the game must have been based on driving the Malawian countryside. The father of one of my students, Dr. Harthoorn, drove me along with his family of 4 children and wife. I suppose once a person becomes accustomed to the foot traffic and animal crossing, they just get a bit bold. But he wouldn’t slow down a hair from 140 kilometers even if there was a goat about 300 meters in front of us on the road. Somehow, he knew that goat would get off the road about 50 meters before we’d get to it! But I didn’t know that and the entire drive I was on pins and needles!!! There were also the Africans on the side of the road who truly looked like the national geographic pictures you see. Apparently, the people that themselves and hang all kinds of funny things from body parts along with the costume and makeup belong to a secret Malawian religious sect. They speak the same language, Chichewa, but they change the meaning of words so the average person doesn’t understand what they’re saying. I suppose this is a bit like the Catholic church conducting services in Latin for centuries to the common man with no Latin learning.

The occasion for my lake trip was an invitation from my student, Luke Franz, to his 6th birthday party. His mother is an Azungu (white) Malawian and his father is a tobacco farmer from elsewhere in the world. They had a lovely place on the lake with its own beach property and a gorgeous "L" shaped pool surrounded by lush lawn and palm trees. There was even a shady dock built right off their property over the steep sloping beach.
Saturday, I took a walk on the beach and met a neat Malawian girl who spoke good English. She aspires to be a nurse and wants to come to the States for school. Talking to her made me realize how amazingly fortunate I am that I can visit Malawi, but also access first world countries. My opportunities are endless compared to her. I have no idea how she would even begin to get out of the country! Most people like her live close to the lake, bathe in the lake, and learn English in Sunday School or some kind of missionary school. She is probably very intelligent, but Malawi hospitals pay next to nothing for their nurses. In fact, most nurses, if they can, go to school in England and never come back.

The government had such a problem with doctors in training as well. There weren’t any medical schools in Malawi so the government would pay to have doctors trained in England. The doctors, naturally, would stay in England, being paid an exorbitant amount more than they are paid here. So the Malawian government began to refuse paying for the students’ last year in school or training. The students were forced to return, never completing their degree. So most Malawian doctors aren’t actually completely qualified to practice medicine.
I recently met a young Malawian woman, Lucy Francisco, who is studying medicine in London at Kings University. (I think this is the name of the university). She has such a neat story. Both sets of her grandparents are Portuguese and immigrated to Mozambique which is a Portuguese colony. During the civil war or revolution (I’m not sure which it was), they became refugees in Malawi. Her parents met here in Malawi and married. She speaks French, Portuguese, Chichewa, and English. What was most interesting about her diverse life is her guilt about a split life between London and Lilongwe. She will make exponentially more than her father makes once she begins practicing because of the difference in value of the pound and Kwacha. I think she struggles with guilt that her father has worked so hard for 30 years here, and she will be able to afford so much more here than he can.

Sorry for the long blog entry! I am just experiencing so much! I’m even learning the names of the birds and horticulture here. This country is so rich in many ways. Maybe I see the wealth of the atmosphere and culture more because there isn’t so much to hide the landscape and the people as there is in the States.

Pray for my health. I have a cold, yet again. Being with sniffly kindergarteners doesn’t help.