About my grandma but also Africa

And we're off! Ok- full disclosure. It's not all work (I know I've led you to believe it has been) and no play: we've packed a dose of old fashioned fun into this trip. Yesterday we loaded into a jeep (make: Land Rover; model: unclear. It's rugged. From the 90s?) and zipped along a paved road towards the Malawi-Zambia border, and into Zambia. 

En route, Malawi life still unfolded on either side of the 2-lane (1 in each direction) Tarmac (in America, we call them highways. Sometimes they have six times as many lanes): Goats grazing and playing and some dead and hung by the neck, their red meat exposed and for sale. Cows pulling carts and women sitting in the shade dictated by 4 thin cut down tree trunks arranged in a rectangle and replanted in the dirt, like a beach umbrella, with thatch layered along the top. They're selling oranges and corn flour and green beans and groundnuts and potatoes, just as I've watched them sell for the last two weeks, just as they'll continue to sell for so many years to come. 

But have you seen how they arrange the oranges and potatoes into pyramids? It's kinda neat. I didn't buy roadside oranges this trip but small bananas (ntochi) up North were going for 10 Kwacha each. That's 1.4 cents. I'll take ten, tawonga (thank you). 

Also along the banks of the road are lots of bicycles with at least one but more often two or three passengers each; children run around with sticks.

Africa reminds me of my grandma, though she never traveled here, and though she passed away in 2013. Fun fact: I never discarded the printed out eulogy I wrote for her funeral and less than a year after I gave it, when I visited Africa for the first time, I still had the original copy on me. Creased and barely legible, but when I reread it before bed under my mosquito net it was as if my grandma was breathing in this new world with me (is this too macabre?). Eventually too torn and smudged, that original is now in a drawer at home but I've since printed out a new copy. Its with me on this trip too. 

Why does Africa (the Africa I've experienced) remind me of my grandma? I want to say I'm not sure, but that's a cop out. I do know I just have to figure out how to put it into words. Ugh, words. 

I think it's the unconditional serenity. The calm. The natural beauty. The color and the zest. I think it's how Africa makes me feel, in unison at peace but alive. Safe. That's how she made me feel. That's how she made a lot of people feel. 

I think it's that my grandma would have just flipped that I'm having the experiences that I'm having. Upon my return, she would've expedited a brunch. She would've made sure we sat next to each other at the kitchen table. She wouldn't have needed to try though, we always did anyway. 

I can imagine my grandma would've been almost too excited to actually take in all my photos and stories. But, with true awe and palpable excitement, she would've said it was all so incredible. It is all so incredible. In case I hadn't on my own, she would've made sure I realized that. 

I started this post prior but I'm now just back from a cool morning safari drive in South Luangwa national park. I thought about my grandma and Africa during that ride and also realized this:

The way in which my grandma effortlessly viewed the world and its people is similar to how I've managed to take in Africa. With emotions like hope, pride, empathy, awe, and love. With the easy realization that it's all so incredible. 

Love,

Rebecca