MIA.

I apologize for the gap in time since my last post. I have been out of my office for the past week, and hence cut off from the internet. I checked my email once from a hotel near my house, which ended up costing 900 kwacha/ $6.50 for a half hour – a little too pricey to spend blogging.
Regardless, I actually write most of my posts from home during the evenings. I find it very hard to concentrate at work and need the quite space to gather my thoughts.

This past week I attended a ‘training’. Malawians love to use the word ‘training’ for everything. I guess it implies gaining new skills or doing something productive, I am not quite sure. All I know is that any time we talk about doing anything new, someone brings up an idea for a training to go along with it.
So this training was put on by the World University Service of Canada, one of the groups involved in my internship. It was offered to those volunteers who have recently arrived in the country to orient us on the history, politics, culture, and language of Malawi. I attended, along with my roommate and our friend Julie (another CIDA intern from Toronto) and a couple from Halifax in their late 50s (more on them later).

The first two days were a bit of a disappointment. Our ‘trainer’s’ name was Mr. Nthala. He seemed knowledgeable enough, but his delivery rubbed me the wrong way. I found his tone very condescending, and he kept pausing after almost every second sentence as if he was waiting for a large reaction from his audience. He covered a lot of history and politics, some of which was really not applicable to what any of us were doing. We spent a good hour on the different political divisions and chain of command in every Malawian District. Tedious, but I guess informative.
The most interesting subjects were about cultural practices and taboos.
Malawi is divided into three regions: the north, the central, and the south. I live in the Central region which is predominantly populated by the Chewa tribe –so most of the stuff I learned applies to this tribe. Although we also covered things pertaining to the other tribes as well. It is not entirely clear how important tribal identifications are in Malawi. The impression I got from the trainer is that it applies mostly to language and heritage. People from different tribes do live in the same villages, there is no history of violence between them, and people marry between the tribes as well. I think it is mostly a matter of pride and identity, as well as language classifications. Tribal leaders also play a role in the political system – I didn’t really understand how it works – but I see that they are consulted on various political matters by the president.
In terms of cultural taboos – there was a long list. For most of the taboos and practices I cannot understand why they are important or what would have started them, and cannot help but be skeptical of people who follow them (although I am trying not to be). Some examples: - do not point your finger at a cemetery or else it will become frozen that way
- do not whistle after dark
- a woman on her period cannot season any food and has to find a random little boy in the village to do it for her
- a lot of the rules have to do with sex – and we thought that religious Jews had a lot of rules – they haven’t seen anything!
Two of the most disturbing practices that we spoke about are the Guluwankulu and the Fisi.
The Guluwankulu are a secret society of men in the village. They are responsible for initiating selected boys into manhood at puberty. They perform secret ceremonies and educate the boys. The trainer could not give further information about what the education consists of, and for this reason I am not wholly convinced that this education is beneficial. They are responsible for educating the boys about sex and relationships, but no one really knows what they are teaching…….. The Guluwankulu also perform ritual dances in the community at different points during the year. They dress up in costumes with elaborate (and very scary) masks. They also have a tradition of being extremely violent. According to my co-worker, when you see a Guluwankulu walking in the village you should run away from them as fast as possible and go into any house in order to be safe. Otherwise they are likely to whip or beat you. Apparently the police are trying to crack down on this practice, but it sounds extremely intimidating – a way of terrorizing people in your village.

The Fisi is even most disturbing (in my opinion). The Fisi is an older man in the village whose identity is unknown except to a few key older women. They play a few roles: they are often brought in to sexually initiate a young girl who has reached puberty. I think the intent is to teach the girl what she is supposed to do and also to try and reduce her fears about sex. But the reports that I have read indicate that it has the opposite effect. These girls are often emotionally scarred by the experience, as well as being susceptible to HIV and other STI transmission as these practices are not being done safely. The Fisi is also used to ‘cleanse’ a widowed woman sexually before she can remarry –whether she wants to be cleansed or not. This practice is viewed by the NGO community as a form of gender-based violence and from the reports I have read, occurs in the communities that I am working in. Extremely concerning.

After that we moved to language introduction. I spent three days trying to understand Chichewa. It is an extremely confusing language. There are prefixes for everything!!! For nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives…..and there are few rules about when and why we use the prefixes. It quickly became clear that three days wasn’t going to do it for us, so Jenika, Julie and I are taking lessons twice a week to try and make progress quickly. I will keep you posted on this venture, although I am not feeling optimistic.

To round out the week, we spent Friday night in Salima – one of the towns on the lake. It was really nice and relaxing. And I ate great banana pancakes! Three times!
We bought a sack of mangoes on the way home – they are especially ripe in Salima because of the temperature. My fifty mangoes cost 35 cents- its nuts.
Our last stop for cultural training was a Kangoni Cultural Centre in Mua. It is run by a Catholic mission (I think) and has a really well developed cultural program and museum. As well, the grounds are beautiful and lush. We watched a two hour demonstration of traditional dances (including three by the Guluwankulu – I have some crazy pictures). It was great to see. The men wear extremely elaborate costumes with large head-dresses and do most of the dancing. While the women (including babies strapped on their backs) sing and dance around them. The singing is incredible. I think North America really looses out by not having more communal expressions like singing and dancing – it is so enriching.
I bought some great carvings as they have a woodworking studio there. Certain family members will be benefiting from these purchases.

Now I am apparently culturally aware and sensitive and therefore more able to carry out my work in Malawi. Let’s ho