village visit

Last Sunday (well probably a couple of Sundays ago now) rhona and I went with Beria, the housekeeper at Barbara’s house, to her village. She stays in Nkhoma but her home village is just around the other side of the mountain. We’d talked about going since probably February and now being September we finally got it scheduled and went. We took the back paths and when we hit the “main” road again, rhona and I realized we’d walked this way once when we thought we might go all the way around the mountain (didn’t quite make it but had some nice exercise). Beria told us that there were some Yao (native belief/culture from before the Christian movement) traditional dancers or spirits in the area, so we didn’t stay on the main paths for long. We arrived at the village and there were only women and children around. We were introduced to beria’s mother and aunt who were sitting under the eaves of the house. We sat next to them and greeted everyone else who came up—sisters, cousins, children…and we shook hands with everyone at the insistence of the agogos (grandmas) as a sign of respect. the children were fascinated by us and also a little scared of us which surprised me as I’m sure they have quite a bit of interaction with azungu as the family is pretty well off and employed in nkhoma. I listened to Henderson, Beria’s son, sound out and read some Chichewa from a church pamphlet/bible study that happened to be covered (for safe keeping) in a French newspaper so I read a little of that. Same effect of not understanding.

After being introduced to one of the many women, I listened to her greeting to Beria and it was very similar to the one that I know but not quite the same—a few extra syllables added so I asked about it and was met with gales of laughter. I’ve known that we azungu are an endless source of entertainment for Malawians but I had no idea what I’d said that was quite that funny. I repeated what she’d said (more laughter) and then they said that it was the same and that I’d said it correctly. So I still don’t know what was so funny.

Our crowd was also told of our preparation of telele…very funny and strange evidently. Then we were told that we would have it correctly prepared today for our lunch. The correct preparation has in oil, groundnut (peanut) flour, onion in a very gooey paste served with nsima. Not bad but definitely not my favorite relish for nsima and I think I’ll stick with our preparation of the leaves. Beria has told us that she’ll teach us the correct way to do it so that we can do it ourselves…after lunch we sat under the eaves of a different house and the kids got a bit bolder and wanted their pictures taken. Not the most flattering but they love them either way especially when they get to see them right after they are taken.

It seems that the village life is peaceful and quiet…granted we visited on a Sunday afternoon but it made me think that I should try to spend some time (maybe a week) in a village to see what the “real” life is like here.