une annee sans lumiere

on Sunday the president came .. and so on Saturday morning there was an explosion.

i awoke to silence .... well, except for the rooster crowing and the pheasants squawking outside my window. [flick] no lights. no electricity. no hot water. nothing unusual. i dressed and left the house, and ran into the pastor’s wife:

“cooking oil ... they did it for the cooking oil! did you hear the explosion this morning?”
“no, what happened?”
“someone stole the oil from the transformer and it exploded. we’ll be without electricity for a year! they took the oil to fry chips to sell during the president’s visit.”

the president came yesterday. thousands attended. some ate chips. some of the same will arrive at the hospital today with food poisoning ... gawd knows what’s in transformer oil

when the power’s out
in the heart of man
take it from your heart
put it in your hand

grammatical fiction

Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the ‘first person singular’, and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found out that those processes wrongly known as ‘monologues’ are really dialogues of a special kind; dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as ‘I’ instead of ‘you’, in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions; but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observations and even refuses to be localized in time and space.
Now, however, it seemed to Rubashov that the habitually silent partner spoke sometimes, without being addressed and without any visible pretext; his voice sounded totally unfamiliar to Rubashov, who listened in honest wonder and found that his own lips were moving. These experiences held nothing mystic or mysterious; they were of a quite concrete character; and by his observations Rubashov gradually became convinced that there was a thoroughly tangible component in this first person singular, which had remained silent through all these years and now had started to speak.
...
Rubashov tried to study this newly discovered entity very thoroughly during his wanderings through the cell; with the shyness of emphasizing the first person singular customary to the Party, he had christened it the ‘grammatical fiction.’ He probably had only a few weeks left to live, and he felt a compelling urge to clear up this matter, to ‘think it to a logical conclusion.’ But the realm of the ‘grammatical fiction’ seemed to begin just where the ‘thinking to a conclusion’ ended. It was obviously an essential part of its being, to remain out of the reach of logical thought, and then to take one unawares, as from an ambush, and attack one with day-dreams and toothache.

denominations ...

one thing that has baffled me and my fellow travelers is the monetary denominations in Malawi. the smallest ‘paper money’ bill is 5 Kwacha … about 4 Cents Canadian. this doesn’t present too many problems; you get rid of these as tips or save up for a Coke (40 K). the bigger issue is that the largest bill in the country is 500 Kwacha, or C$4. this is a huge problem when you’re trying to pay for something expensive, or when you’re not going to see a bank again for a while. for example, when Gord and i stayed in Cape Maclear for eight days, we ran out of cash and had to do a day trip to the nearest city to hit a bank. i personally had to withdraw 60,000 Kwacha to pay for my Scuba course, my bar tab, and my future days of travel out in the Lake. with only 500 Kwacha bills to work with, i had one-hundred and twenty bills in my pockets for the drive back, each pocket bursting!

now add to this the fact that most transactions in Malawi use cash; Visa is almost never accepted, and bank transfers don’t seem to exist yet for the average consumer.

on Friday, my colleague Dr. Marana bought a used car. the price: 1.2 million Kwacha (C$10,000). the method of payment: cash, of course! since the exchange rate she was quoted at the bank was terrible, we drove to ‘see a guy’. we pulled up to his hardware store and were invited to sit with him at a desk behind the counter.

“how can i help you, my friends?”

“i need 1.2 million Kwacha, cash. i have a personal cheque”

“no problem, no problem” ...

rates where negotiated, an international account transfer replaced the cheque, and we were taken upstairs to the man’s office. [THUNK] “one-hundred thousand” [THUNK] “two-hundred thousand” [THUD] “three-hundred thousand” .... 1.2 million Kwacha handed to us in a plastic bag! it filled the plastic bag. it was a rather large bag. we nervously placed the bag in a backpack and made our way to the location chosen for the transaction: a shopping mall parking lot. the seller pulled up, entered out mini-van, the bag was displayed, and the swap made. it totally felt like a drug deal!

as a side note, i went to the post office today to mail a small package to Germany. the cost: 1280 Kwacha. the stamps i received: twelve 100 Kwacha stamps, one 50 Kwacha stamp, seven 4 Kwacha stamps, and four 1 Kwacha stamps ... the front of the package was completely covered, and so the rest had to be put on the back! ha

i, T

hello my fiends! i've been at the hospital for only a week now, but already my to-do list is months long. so far, the administration would like me to:

• network their computers
• digitize their patient records in a central database
• implement a computerized inventory control system to track medicine throughout the hospital
• connect them to the internet
• stay longer than June 7 to get all of this done!

i'm also giving Excel lessons and working with a couple of American volunteers to finish some proposals for funding ... busy busy! still, i'm so glad that i've found some needs which i can address, even if i get through only half of them during my time here

i’m on a mission / you betta just listen ...

i arrived at the Malamulo Mission (where i will be volunteering) last night. The mission was established outside of the city of Blantyre by the Seventh Day Adventist Church more than 100 years ago (i’m still researching Seventh Day Adventism (like, what the heck happened on the seventh day? i thought god rested!) but so far i’ve figured out that they are Christian, their Sabbath is on Saturday, and they don’t dance, drink, or wear jewelry ... i’ll let you know what else is involved as i interact a bit more. ;)

it's a self-contained community out in the middle of a rural area, surrounded by rolling hills and tea plantations. it has a free hospital, a nursing college, a secondary school, a primary school, and, of course, a printing press?! i'm one of only six wuzungu (white people) in a community of thousands, so i've gotten used to being stared at everywhere i go. still, the children are very cute and always wave and shout "wuzungu!" at me as i pass .. ha!

i'll be living in a house on campus for the next two months. it's a cute little place with a large bedroom and living room, a kitchen (although my meals will be prepared for me at the 'guest house' down the street), a front terrace, and a sweet little cobblestone courtyard. this being africa, the electricity and water are intermittent so i've gotten used to doing without when necessary. i'm also used to the 'african shower', which involves crouching in a tub and splashing water over yourself as best you can.

i'm not sure exactly what my volunteering will entail, but so far i've been asked to co-write a proposal to U.S. Aid for some funding. i'm really happy about this, as i've written dozens of proposals in the past, and this one will be much more fulfilling than my previous efforts (e.g. to implement millions of dollars worth of software so that one corporation can more easily take over another)

there is no internet access at the mission, so my e-mails and blog entries will mostly be written during the week on my laptop, then sent from internet cafes in the city. i hope to do this each week. okay, i'm off now to shop for supplies for my house (coffee!!) i love hearing news from home, so please continue to write when you can. love you!

afriggin' lion safari

WOW! i just returned from a three-day trip to South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. we saw the most amazing assortment of animals.

first was a day safari. we hopped in our vehicle and after driving only 30 metres (from the hut where i was sleeping!) we saw two giraffes. then we pulled out of the camp and onto the main road to find a huge elephant sleeping under a tree at the side of the road! minutes later we were in the park and the real extravaganza began: a dozen hippos having a bath, an elephant mother and baby grazing on the tall grass, a group of giraffes munching on some trees, a herd of zebra taking a rest ... simply breathtaking! on the drive back to the camp we were confronted by a huge bull elephant walking down the middle of the road towards us. he walked right up to our truck before diverging to the side of the road as we revved our engine (i managed to capture a video of that one; a must-see when i get home!)

that same evening we set off on a night safari, which was equally spectacular. first we saw a herd of elephants walking into the bush, while one stood guard and another rolled around in the dirt to cool off. after a beautiful sunset we drove around with a spotter trying to find some of the elusive nocturnal cats. after a fair bit of tracking, we heard a pair of lions attacking a buffalo just metres to our left, and turned the spotlight in time to catch some of the action (the lions were not successful, and were rather peeved that we disturbed their hunt.) the word 'intense' does not adequatly describe these few minutes.

and now i'm back in Lilongwe for a coupla days before heading down south on Thursday morning. take care all!