Christmas in Malawi

My Christmas corner

     Apologies for not getting an update out before Christmas as I intended, but at least now I can report on Christmas!  It was a rough go getting into Christmas mode, but I did eventually do it with the help of a purchase of a nativity set, a birthday and Christmas package from my family, and downloading some Christmas carols off iTunes.  On Christmas morning I went to church, and attendance was sparse at the 8 am start time, but at least by 9 it was full.  Malawians don't really celebrate Christmas much, but the MKs really helped make it more Christmasy with some carol singing and a drama/puppet/presentation.  Some cold drinks (fanta & coke) and cookies were served at the Church after the service.  For Christmas lunch I joined another of the SIM missionaries and three Malawian families, plus a few more individuals for a typical Malawian Christmas lunch: Chicken and rice!  It was a wonderful time.  The kids made some bracelets, the adults played a game (similar to mafia), and we all enjoyed good food, drinks, and company.  

Also for the party, I made some tobwa (a maize flour and millet drink fermented one night).  I had the delight of a first taste when I was down in the south of Malawi in the Nsanje district.  Most of the missionaries don’t like it at all because of its thick and grainy consistency, but I love it and it was great to learn how to make it.  A guy named Luka showed me the process.  His family was at the party and as of mid-December he is also employed by me a couple of days a week to help out with odds and ends.  My hiring him helps both of us out quite a bit – he could use the money and I could use the freed-up time.  He helps with laundry (which, done by hand, I’ve found takes an awful long time), does some cleaning, helps me with Chichewa, and most importantly, does some baking for me!  For those of you who know my Mom (and my Oma for that matter), know that I have been brought up eating delicious baked goods.  Even when I was living in Vancouver I stayed well supplied with buns and cookies from home.  While there were some cookies in the Christmas package that I received, my time in Malawi was looking to be one largely deprived of excellent baking.  That was…until I discovered that there was this guy named Luka who bakes a mean scone and who was working for one of the other missionaries, but that that missionary was leaving in December. 

Luka washing some clothes

(On a stewardship note, it is much more satisfying visibly contributing to a family’s livelihood with paying for services than using the same – or rather, more – money for a washing machine and/or buying baked goods from the supermarket)

     But anyway, time to get back to Christmas things.  On the 27^th the SIM missionaries in Blantyre had a big Christmas party with a gift exchange and an amazing ham-meatballs-potatoes-cooked vegetables-stuffing-etc. meal!  I know I’m living in another context, but it was still very good to have a western-style Christmas party.  I made tobwa again for the party, but among the missionaries it wasn’t nearly so big a hit (I think only 3 of us like it).  Oh well, plenty of leftovers :)  For New Years tomorrow night, one of the missionary families is shooting off a bunch of fireworks, which should be a fun celebration.

The Christmas feast at the SIM party

     While Christmas isn’t associated with snow and cold weather here in Malawi, it is associated with rains.  The rainy season is now in full swing, and it is worth explaining a bit what that looks like.  It does not mean it rains all day, every day.  Most of each day is still bright and sunny, but there are more clouds, the wind has picked up, and almost every day there are thunderstorms and often at least one intense period of rain.  While the rain may last only half an hour, in that half hour it rains a days worth of Vancouver’s constant drizzle (there might be slight exaggeration there – I haven’t actually looked at the stats).   Needless to say, one does not want to get caught outside in it.  You can usually just wait it out and then it’s fine and sunny again, but you pretty much have to plan and take an umbrella or rain coat wherever you go.  Driving in the muddy conditions has also been quite an experience.  SIM has a short-termers vehicle that I can pay to use, which I have done a little bit.  The roads out here are bad to begin with – tons of potholes, etc. – but when you add the rain/mud factor, it renders some roads simply impassable.  I got stuck in a hole where the side of the road had eroded the other day, which was a little distressing, but I did manage to get out in 4-wheel drive without being towed.  For the most part, though, I am enjoying the driving out here – driving on the left side of the road, using roundabouts, having to be cautious of pedestrians all over, crazy minibus drivers, etc.  On a more sober note, though, with the muddy conditions, there are also accidents and about a month ago quite close to the college a truck lost control going down a hill, hit a couple of children and missed the bridge at the bottom.  The driver and the children died.  

The rainy view from my window.  Glad I was inside for this one.

     A completely different aspect of the rainy season is the increase in bugs, snakes, and spiders.  For the first number of weeks of the rainy season, it seemed like a plague of flying ants at night.  They are called ngumbi here.  They were simply everywhere and I was quite annoyed by them until I found out that they are tasty!  The students caught thousands of them.  They’re good fresh - just pluck off the wings - or they’re even better dried up and fried up – delicious!  

Ngumbi!

  They’re a little like bacon bits, and are good on their own, with nsima, or I also found, make a mean addition to a salad!  The spiders and snakes are not out in full force yet, but I’ve already killed a couple of small snakes, and do not enjoy the thought of having them around.  

 With the rains also came some relief to the high temperatures that we were experiencing here.  It can even get down in the lower 20s C.  It can also still get into the mid 30s though.  The other thing, especially just before or after raining, is that it gets extremely humid.  Plus, with the freshly cleared air I’ve found the sun to be more scorching and I've gotten burned even with only a little exposure to the sun.

     On the 20^th was my birthday and for the afternoon I had invited the faculty and staff at EBCoM to come over to my place and celebrate with a sort of combo birthday/Christmas/house-warming party.  A couple days earlier I had finally purchased a locally-made wicker furniture set for my place.  I bartered a really good price for it (I will talk another time about the joys of bartering here).  I was supposed to pick it up in the morning of my birthday (bringing my seat-count from 3 to 7).  It wasn’t ready yet, though, and had to come back an hour before the party was supposed to start.  I still had to wait a little bit, and then it started to pour, so we waited for the heavy rains to pass, and then I had to make two trips.  So I ended up being wet and late for my party.  Plus, the power ended up being off all day so the batter for a cake that I had Luka make a couple days before and hoped to bake that day, couldn’t be bake, so I had to go out and buy one quickly.  When the party finally got started though, it was a great time.!  That evening I was invited over to a missionary family’s house for supper and then we were joined by another missionary family for cake.  It was a wonderful birthday!

     Anyway, I think that will conclude this post.  I've put up more pictures and they can be seen here (at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033813&id=180500047&l=f2003bc546).  Happy New Year to all of you … or I should work on my Chichewa and say, ndikufunerani Chaka Chabwino Chatsopano!

Greg

My Village Experience

    Well, greetings again from Malawi!  Things have continued to go very well here.  I have just finished a two-week intensive course in beginner’s Chichewa and am jumping right into – probably a little prematurely – another two-week intensive course, but for intermediates.  I have been keeping busy, though things are at a relaxed pace, and I think I’m getting more sleep than I have in years!  I’m slowly adapting to the Malawian way of being a morning person (to take advantage of the cooler temperatures in the morning and the fact that it’s light out before 5 am and dark just after 6 pm).  Most of my time is designated for language learning, but I’ve really enjoyed getting involved in the life of the college more – I even guest lectured a couple of classes in Church History (talking about Early Church Apology and Heresy), which was a true delight.  Anyway, I will talk about other stuff at another time, but for this posting I want to tell a little bit about my week-long village experience that I was heading out to when I posted last.

     I stayed in a village called Banga outside of the city of Salima in the central region of Malawi (close to the lake, but I still have not seen the lake).  When I arrived in Salima I stayed the first night (and the last night after my village experience) with an SIM missionary couple – Paul and Marilyn Barr.  I really enjoyed my brief time with them and hope I make it back up to visit some other time.  I also met a short-term SIM missionary couple from Switzerland – Reto and Anja Widmer – who, we found out, are actually friends with some good friends of mine from Regent – small world!  

The Makhutcha Family

     In the village I stayed with the Makhutcha family.  He actually graduated from EBCoM a couple of years ago and is now the pastor of 5 churches in the area.  You may think 5 churches is a lot for a pastor to manage.  Well it’s true – though I’ve heard of a pastor covering over 10 churches.  There are several factors to the problem: in the first place, there are simply not enough trained pastors to cover all of the churches.  This is not because there is a lack of people who want to be trained and become pastors, but because there isn’t enough money to have them all receive training (each person at EBCoM is generally sponsored by their denomination, meaning the denomination pays the tuition and living costs and the students pay a MK2000 registration fee each term).  The problem becomes more complex though in the fact that the village churches tend to be smaller, and one church would not be able to support a pastor financially.  As it is, 5 churches struggle to support one pastor.  So there’s no easy answer.

     Anyway, back to the village.  The Makhutcha family is wonderful and they were so warm and friendly and hospitable during my week-long stay with them.  They have four children and one more on the way: Hannah, Esther, Joshua, and Gile.  The father’s name is Augustine, which is an awesome name, and I would have loved to call him that, except that the norm here is to not use adults’ first names.  Generally people are called by their last name, or, for him, Abusa (pastor).  I never actually found out his wife’s first name, because it’s expected that I just call her Amayi (Mrs., woman, or mother).  Of the family, only Abusa Makhutcha could really speak English (but he, very well), and it was a little early in my Chichewa learning, so for practical as well as cultural reasons, most of my time and communication was spent with Abusa. 

The Makhutcha Family.  Left to Right: Joshua, abusa, Gile, Hannah, amayi, Esther

A Typical Day

     So what did I actually do in the village?  Well, it’s one of those things where there is so much to tell and I can’t possibly cover everything, and yet, I didn’t actually do much at all.  Village life is much more laid back than life in Blantyre (which, compared to North America is already very laid back).  To give an over-generalized day, I would get up by 6, sit for a bit until they told me water was ready for a “bath” (a bucket of water), have my “bath,” sit for some more, have breakfast with them (though the kids were usually gone by this point since school starts at 7), and return to sitting with Abusa.  Then somebody would come or we might go to someone’s house, and we would sit and chat, maybe have a few mangos.  If it was an eventful day we would walk about 1 km to the market and pick something up for lunch.  Eventually at 1 or so we would have lunch, followed by some lounging (in other words, sitting) with the family (the younger ones would be home from school by lunch time) and maybe listen to the radio a bit.  Then somebody might drop in or we might go to someone’s house and sit and chat and probably have some mangos.  If it was an eventful day we might have another errand – like recharging Abusa’s cell phone in the market (since the houses don’t have electricity), where there is a shop with either a generator or solar power or something.  Then eventually dinnertime would come around, and we would have dinner and then lounge around (usually outside in the moonlight) with the family until between 8 and 8:30, and then it’s pretty much bedtime. 

Inside the house, which consists of this room,
a couple of bedrooms, and the back yard
(where there's the "bath," outhouse, kitchen, and chicken coop).

An Explanation

     Okay, okay, so it’s slightly exaggerated, but you would be surprised how little.  You probably won’t feel sorry for me, but a lot of the sitting tended to be on rather uncomfortable chairs, and so after a few days my butt was really getting quite sore.  The wicker chairs seen here, for example, look comfortable enough, but they had posts awkwardly right under the seat so that I continually needed to reposition myself in them.  But anyway, I suppose that it is now my task to convince you that the whole culture is not just terribly lazy.  Well, in the first place, do remember that it is a relationship-oriented rather than task-oriented culture.  But probably the most important piece of information is recognizing that it is a very seasonal culture and I was there during the very tail-end of the dry season, which also means the very hottest time of the year.  With temperatures in the mid-to-high 30s and perhaps higher, and with no electricity for fans or A/C, and the mode of transportation being walking, one can begin to sympathize with the situation.  Plus, almost everyone in the village earns their living by farming, and at the end of the dry season it is mostly a matter of just waiting for the first rains.  People might work 2-4 hours in the morning (when the temperature is tolerable), preparing their fields, but planting doesn’t begin until the first rains.  My little glimpse of village life was also skewed in that I was staying with a pastor, whose work is largely relational – visiting people, sitting, and chatting – rather than working by cultivating land or selling produce, etc.  Also, up to this point I have really only given the man’s side of the picture.  There is a very strong division of gender roles in Malawian society, and part of that says, men do not get the water, do not do laundry, and do not go anywhere near the kitchen.  So, from my perspective at this particular time of year, the women were doing much more work than the men (especially considering they do often do a little bit of field work too).  Anyway, react to that information however you will. 

Amayi cooking up some nsima in the kitchen, which is outside in the back yard

     But as I said earlier, while we didn’t actually do a whole lot, there is so much that I experienced and so much that I simply don’t have the time to report nor do you have the time to read…after all, none of us are presently living in a Malawian village :).  So what I will do is touch on a few things, but leave most comments and anecdotes for as they come up in pictures, which are available here (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033392&id=180500047&l=ef14f33bc2).

Pastoral Affairs

     A key aspect of why I went to the village in the first place was to gain some insight into the kind of context that most of the students who graduate from EBCoM will be going into.  For this the trip was extremely helpful.  I not only got to see what a pastor serving in a village lives like and what he does, but I also had some really good conversations with Makhutcha about the challenges he faces, issues that have come up in his churches, and what sort of things he’s doing to address them.  In every account I found Makhutcha to be very wise and approaching matters with the right attitude and motivation, which was really good to see and gave me a lot of encouragement to witness some of the fruit of the work of EBCoM.  While recognizing that EBCoM can’t take all the credit, if this is the kind of person the school trains and sends out, I am proud to be a part of the ministry!  Without giving too many details, some of the issues he faces involve church elders not cooperating with each other and/or the pastor; people jumping from denomination to denomination; people not coming to church (for months!) because of unrelated things (e.g. land disputes); people backsliding from active, church-going Christianity; illness and death; preference of music (hymns vs. praise chorus); the association of Christianity with a moral code (legalism – especially not drinking or smoking) instead of the Gospel; and – especially in this particular area – the practice of witchcraft, tribal identity tied to traditional religion, and peoples’ fear of breaking away from these. 

     A couple of the afternoons I tagged along with Makhutcha and a few of the elders on house visits.  This was mostly for people who hadn’t come to church for a while or where there was a particular need for prayer – e.g. sickness.  There would be some reading Scripture, encouragement or exhortation depending on the situation, and then prayer.  I didn’t understand a whole lot as it was all in Chichewa, but it was really good to observe.  In the 2 days I would say we visited between 15 and 20 different houses.  At each place as we approached, one of the elders would call “Odi” (equivalent of knocking), to which, if someone was home (which they almost all were), responded “Ee” (“yes”).  The host would then bring out a mat and/or if they had any, some chairs.  As the azungu (white person), I was always given a chair if there was one, even if there was only one.  To refuse it would be disrespectful.  After we were all seated, the host would come and greet each person individually either with “mwaswera bwanji” (how has the day gone so far?) or with “Muli bwanji” (how are you)?  To which the respective responses are “ndaswera bwino, kaya inu” (it has gone well, and you?) or “ndili bwino, kaya inu” (I am well, and you)?  People were incredibly surprised that I could say the greetings, and impressed that I “could speak their language,” even though the greetings were close to the extent of my ability.

     You will see more about church on Sunday in the pictures, but just to say that as the azungu, it was expected that I would preach.  Thankfully I anticipated this and Makhutcha confirmed it earlier in the week, so I had some time to prepare something, and was able to address some of the above concerns relating to fear, power, and identity with Eph. 3:14-21.  I actually preached on this same passage at the wedding of my good friends Chris and Laura Madge, but as you can imagine, the sermon was very different.  Makhutcha encouraged me to take some pictures during the service, and so I also took some video.  Here is a clip of the youth choir singing.  In a church service there is a time for choirs to come up and sing some songs.  There is usually a women's choir, youth choir, and children's choir, and they rehearse during the week for each Sunday.  This service, though, there was only a youth choir.  Pretty well all the choir songs I've seen involve some movement - I think if they are working songs, travelling songs, etc.

I also took some quick video during some of the praise and worship chorus (notably different in enthusiasm from the hymns).  Here is a glimpse.  

Food

     I ate very well and never got sick when I was in the village.  Meat is not a regular meal, but they showed great hospitality in having meat three different days – pigeons, goat, and chicken.  The pigeons were contributed as a gift in light of my stay from their landlord, madala (a name of respect given to an elderly person).  Here is a picture of me with him:

Chicken is an assumed meal for a very welcome guest.  It doesn’t matter that some other meats are better.  If I was an honoured guest and only staying for one meal and was served pork, beef, or guinea fowl, I would get the hint that I was not very welcome.  I was very happy, then, to be served chicken.  Besides these dishes, other relishes that I had through the week were tomato and cabbage, pumpkin leaves, beans, and black-eyed peas.  They generally served two relishes, which was a real treat and not too common.  The relishes, of course, were generally accompanied by nsima, though they did serve rice a few times as well.  Breakfasts were tea and masikoni (an adaptation of the English word, scone – basically sweet buns).  Snacks either with the Makhutchas or when we visited other people included mangos, cassava root, mangos, freshly roasted peanuts (so freshly roasted, they burned my non-Malawian hand!), oh, and did I mention mangos?  It is mango season, and they ate mango after mango, as many as five in one sitting, one after the other, and we’re not talking the small mangos either.  Both because they’re difficult to eat and because I didn’t want digestive problems, I couldn’t keep up with them, and maybe had half the mangos they did.  They were delicious though!

Well, I think I’ll leave it at that for now, and let the pictures (here) do a lot more of the talking.  I plan to post again before Christmas since there’s been lots happening.

Greg