Dear Reader (Mom),
I haven't written much over the last handful of days. I think I covered a lot of the broad strokes in past posts, and lately my experience has been more about the details. The day-to-day experiences and interactions are borderline indescribable; the frequent and random conversations with locals are difficult to recount. I think it's only after the culture shock settles that you really begin to inhale the culture. And boy, has it been breathtaking.
This past week, we conducted an additional 2 focus groups, trekked to a far off village called Luhomero to visit a friend of Emily's, and spent some time in the hospital. We navigated electrical outages, water outages, a snake encounter, and transportation methods that just don't exist in America. We became a little more adventurous with the food- tasting Irish potatoes which are basically chunks of potato cooked roadside in a pan of sizzling oil suspiciously proximal to raw meat, street bought bananas with deceptively brown peels, and local donuts which are essentially deep fried dough. Personally, I've become significantly more tolerant of bugs and small reptiles, have mastered my French Press coffee maker, and am working on speaking slow. I'm also sleeping well, eating well and reading almost every day. A mystery novel at the moment. I do not know the last time I've behaved this wholly.
Our research is challenging, but interesting. Have I mentioned what we're doing? I believe I have. We've revised our questions a little bit and are learning a lot about the use of traditional healers (we go for certain diseases like pneumonia... pneumonia is a pain in the legs), the challenges in accessing the hospital (we make a stretcher out of branches and carry the sick person there), and the experiences Malawians have at the hospital itself (sometimes if you go to the hospital often, some of the health workers ask "oh, you've come again. Why are you back again?"...as if somebody applied to be sick). We're also mastering the setup of the Malawian governmental health care system, and are quite literally learning the lay of the land. As in, Emily, seemingly displeased with the collection of maps we had taken photos of on my iPhone, this morning started drawing her own.
So I don't know: I feel like I've just arrived but at the same time as if I've been here for a while. You're not tourists, you'll be around for a while, so I'll give you a better deal on these bracelets, an artist told us this morning. There are times when I close my eyes (or probably actually just keep them open), but picture precisely what might be going on in NYC at the given moment: I miss it, but know it'll be thriving when I return. When I'm not internally transporting there myself, I've tried to explain to the locals what home is like for me. The grid of paved concrete I think is hard to believe (see: the Tarmac Road), and the concept of Central Park obscure (And people live in this park?). In a van yesterday a born and raised Malawian pointed out a two-story building, the only two-level in Ekwendeni, and I told him that in the States I live on the 24th floor.
Right now, I'm on the first floor, of the vacated doctor's house, sitting on my bed in the garage (it's cozy by the way). The electricity is going in and out but I'm waiting for it go out for good. Every other Sunday, for around 24 hours, the power turns off for scheduled maintenance. I made my coffee in advanced, though, and have my flashlights at the ready. Tomorrow'll be a good day.
Love,
Rebecca
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