UC Berkeley Web Feature
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My first glimpse of Malawi, spread out before me as we landed. The landscape has become a familiar sight. (Photos by Jennier Browning except where noted) |
Into Africa: Minibuses, nsima, and starting work on an AIDS research project in Malawi
| About Student Journal 2006 [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
LILONGWE, MALAWI — Six months ago, I am ashamed to admit, I could not have found Malawi on a map. So you can imagine that I would never have expected to say I have been in this East African country for over a month.
Even though it now seems completely normal, perhaps I ought to first say how I got here. The short explanation is by taking four airplanes. The longer one is that I took a Letters & Science Discovery Course on AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, taught by professor of sociology Anne Swidler. Through this class I met Professor Swidler's colleague, Susan Watkins, who is a demographer at UCLA, and heard about her AIDS research project: the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project, known as MDICP — the first of many acronyms I have encountered here. MDICP is a demographic research project that seeks to monitor behavioral responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in rural Malawi; it also offers voluntary counseling and testing for HIV, using rapid tests that take just a finger prick and give results immediately.
I wanted to see if I really liked research by gaining experience in the field. And since my interests have slowly been shifting to Africa and I found the class on AIDS extremely interesting, I jumped at the chance to learn more by going to Malawi. I am working on several different components, including a small project that attempts to ascertain the status of community-based organizations and the process through which they interact with local NGOs, government agencies, and the international development community.
After a frantic period of finals, friends' graduations, and packing, I barely made the first of my four flights (San Francisco to Los Angeles, L.A. to London, London to Johannesburg, and Johannesburg to Lilongwe). But everything else went smoothly, and a mere 36 hours later, I arrived in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Sam Mchombo, associate professor of linguistics, had entrusted me with a bag of soccer balls and jerseys for the soccer teams he organizes in Malawi. Soccer is a big deal here, but that will have to wait for a later dispatch. Prof. Mchombo's son, David, was there to meet me at the airport to collect the bag, along with two Malawians from MDICP.
 One of our minibus fleet. |
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Next I had my first introduction to the glamorous mode of transport we use on the project: the minibus. Joel, one of the supervisors in the field whom I later met, refers to his minibus as the Limousine. It's equipped with his laptop, which when placed on torn seats serves as the vehicle's satellite TV; an automatic bottle opener, where the frayed fabric revealed a medal rod perfect for the purpose; a sliding door that lets in dust from the road unless you push down a tarp; and a missing window covered with packing tape.
However, I quickly realized that I was very privileged to have any type of transport at all. We drove on the left side of the road — British colonial legacy — next to many people walking and biking. Placid, one of the two people who met me at the airport, explained that the bicycle is a very important mode of transportation here. People balance the most unwieldy loads on the back of their bicycles: 2-meter bundles of wood, sacks of maize, even passengers with huge suitcases.
 People here balance the most amazing loads on their bikes. |
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He also said that the road was very uncrowded compared to a few months ago. Apparently it used to be lined with vendors who impeded the flow of traffic, so the government outlawed and removed them. Placid thought this was a good thing, explaining that the government had created a market space for them and that many were not upset. I was not here then, and don't know what it was like before, but the method he described — using the army one day to bulldoze and forcibly clear everyone out — seemed rather harsh and more likely to make people very upset.
If after a half an hour of watching people walk along the road I still hadn't adequately appreciated the luxuriousness of an entire minibus sent to pick one person up, I did at the checkpoints. There are two between Lilongwe and Mchinji, one of MDICP's three sites. We were quickly waved through, but two soldiers had stopped a minibus in front of us. "Minibus" is really an exaggeration. They aren't soccer-mom-type vans, but are boxier, with three or four rows of seats like those you'd find in a schoolbus. The minibus in front of us was crammed full of people with baggage popping out everywhere and people pressed against the window — at least 20 people stuffed into three rows of seats. Placid explained that at checkpoints, the government makes sure the minibus has a legal amount of people. Either that number is very high, or everyone breaks the law, because every minibus I have seen has been exactly the same way. Either way, it puts the stuffing into cars I have done in Berkeley to shame.
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 I was happy to finally arrive at my new home after the 36-hour journey. |
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 My room is No. 5, the "Elephant Room." |
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 The electrical outlet in the shower is unfortunately not visible; it is just to the left. |
After an hour's drive, we arrived at Kayesa Inn, located 4 kilometers from the "boma" (administrative town) of Mchinji and very near the Zambian border. Any romantic or scary vision I may have had of roughing it in the field evaporated after my first tour of the facilities.
We have hot showers (as long as you keep the pressure to a trickle). However, as someone used to a clear and defined separation of water and electricity, I was nervous about plugging the showerhead cord into an outlet in the shower. We have flush toilets and beds with mosquito nettings. The place is kept spotless, in my opinion excessively so — the staff works extremely hard, scrubbing the floors on their hands and knees everyday. One woman even cleans with her baby tied up in cloth on her back.
Besides the comfort of our simple but adequate rooms, I was shocked by all of the technology surrounding me. I walked into a room and everyone was on a laptop. Since I purchased my first-ever USB flash drive for this trip, I can say I feel more technologically advanced here than I did in Berkeley. There is a Xerox machine (granted a very slow one) and several printers, as well as the ability to connect to the Internet, by satellite.
I spent my first few days settling in. We wake up between 6 and 6:30 a.m. here, and as a student who barely survived her first 8 a.m. class this spring, it has been a surprisingly easy schedule to keep. We go to bed early — around 10. One time I slept until the late hour of 8 a.m., and all day people were asking me if I was feeling OK. I was briefly sick a few days after I arrived, but they ruled out malaria because I had not been there long enough. (I am taking the antimalarial drug Malarone daily, a very expensive drug at $7 a pill, but luckily my insurance covers it. This means no crazy hallucinations for me, which are a frequent side effect of Larium, another antimalaria drug.)
We all eat in one central dining room. My first meal — and every following one — started with a choice of rice or "nsima," a paste made of maize flour with water which has the flavor of a corn tortilla. After choosing rice or nsima, there is almost always a choice between chicken and beef. They use the entire chicken here and would only be confused if you asked for a breast. Picking pieces is kind of a lottery. They all look deceivingly meaty, but I often end up with mostly bone. I once even ended up with the spinal cord. There are usually greens — a green plant chopped up that resembles spinach — with a bit of tomato. Sometimes there are peas or potatoes and occasionally carrots, tomatoes and green peppers. Your plate is topped off with a red sauce that must include tomatoes, although nothing like tomato sauce from the U.S., which is poured over the nsima and rice. I feel that I am reverting back to my days as a picky nine-year-old because I always eat my nsima plain.
Nsima holds a very important place in Malawi. One supervisor told me that people say you have not eaten here if you have not had nsima at least once. Another told me that people have a saying about AIDS: "Ilimu ufa" — literally, "It is in the maize flour." The metaphor of HIV in the flour uses the image of nsima as something everyone eats to express the belief that everyone will get AIDS.
Nsima is also intimately related to sex. We have a question on the survey about whether a husband can refuse to eat a wife's nsima if she refuses to have sex with him, and the answer is almost always no. However, if a husband does not eat his wife's nsima, she will ask him why not and ask him where else he has been "eating."
Next: A trip to the field