When asked to describe what our life is like here in Malawi, I am torn between hyperbolizing and normalizing what we experience on a daily basis. I cannot explain how it is here, only how it feels to me, a North American. I see through a cloudy lens, a lens of understanding that is incomplete. We will be learning for a long time before we can say with any confidence that we know what it is like here, or what is really going on beneath the surface.
For example, I often feel the inconveniences, the harsh realities of hearing of 7 year olds dying from simple procedures and babies orphaned after another mother dies in childbirth, but the reality is that there are a lot more advances medically and a lot more conveniences than ever. Yes, men sell bananas at the side of the road for a living, and women carry water on their heads, and all the stereotypes of Africans remain and exist: there are lots of children, there is a lot of dust, there are small villages with mudbrick homes; yet, there are doctors and medicines, supermarkets and malls, there are air-conditioned buildings, small coffee shops, and places that accept credit cards. Living in an African capital city is a strange story to tell. The city represents a smashing together of classes and realities. There is this dysynchrony, this cacophony of instruments playing together discordantly (to my ears). Perhaps there is a song being sung but I cannot hear it? And what is my part to play in it?
I suppose like in any society, everyone’s stories interweave to make one big story, but I don’t recognize any of the stories here, that is what makes me such a foreigner. I suppose I never noticed the middle-class story I was living in Canada, until I became middle class in a predominantly non-middle class world. The economic divide here is chasmic. The lives of a wealthy Malawian, a foreign dignitary, and business owner, feel quite different than the average subsistence farmer and fruit seller. And there are missionaries- kind of right in between. All these stories interweave but are miles apart. Yet, they depend on each other at the same time. Things are changing in the city, life is changing rapidly with technologies and advances that seem startling in this place. These things cause social classes to change, but then there is this unseen fabric that connects it all, an African fabric of economies and scales and understandings, that I do not understand. I cannot perceive all that is here. I cannot perceive the social norms nor the conversations that happen around me, about me. I cannot recognize how idiotic I look doing the things I do, things which make up my everyday life in this context.
So here I am, trying to demystify what is mystifying to me. What you think about Africa, is somewhat true. What I thought about Malawi, is somewhat true. Sure, there is no power for 6 hours or more a day, sure we have to buy differently and spend differently, but these are all just small aspects of daily life. There are also normalcies that feel odd here because I didn’t realize this or that would be so much like at home in Canada. “You mean, you can buy Lays potato chips here? You mean Malawians want their kids to learn how to swim too? You mean, they call that minced meat, like we do?” Perhaps that is what is most strange, is realizing that we are all just not that different, after all. But then, we are more different than I can describe.
And that is the complexity we live in.
Demystified yet?