Solace in art

Thursday, March 3, 8:15 PM
Felt horrible today. Had a temperature of 101 at one point. Susan just came by and made me some soup; I'm feeling better now. I sure as hell hope it's not malaria. I'm supposed to have a "mural party" starting sometime tomorrow.

The mural, charging rhino annoying the occasional dinner guest, 1994.

In other news, I got a tape from my buddies and my mom yesterday - it was just fantastic. It really made me happy.

Sunday, March 6, 12:45 PM
I just ate some of last night's leftover poutine - great! I'm still a bit under the weather, but at least I've finished marking my mid-terms.

Peter gave me some shocking news yesterday: Tom Cochrane was here in Malawi! Staying at the Capitol Hotel in Lilongwe a few months ago; Troy and Katie talked with him for a while. Damn! Why couldn't it have been me? I almost cried!

About a dozen people were over last night, and I'm alone again now, and dammit I don't feel like teaching tomorrow. The strike was supposed to be called off, but I guess I'll know for sure tomorrow.

Wednesday, March 9, 5:30 PM
The teachers at my school have "almost" been on strike for the past two days. They all stopped teaching Tuesday afternoon after hearing that other schools were on strike; the other schools, in turn, went on strike because they thought we were on strike Monday, which we weren't. It's all very confusing. I'm glad I'm not part of it. They all said they didn't mind me teaching, so aside from doing my own classes, I popped into a couple of Form 4 classes and helped them along.

Ah yes, my bike. I received the wrong one about a month ago and actually managed to sell it yesterday. In reality, Gary did all the selling, I just got the cheque for K1800; not bad, that's about a K500 profit.

I saw Susan yesterday - things have cooled down and she seems more relaxed around me now.

I got letters from home today - one birthday card from Phil and Mike, and a long letter from Sir D, who made me laugh the whole time. It was great to hear from them.

Oh yeah, and I taught my 3B girls to say Yahoo!

Self-portrait: View from a spoon (1993). 

Postscript 2010: I honestly don't know what I would have done without my art. At that point in my life, I was an avid reader but hadn't brought nearly enough books with me to keep me sane; the selection at the two bookstores in the country was, to say the least, pathetic. I had other past times, such as hiking the Zomba plateau and getting beaten by friends at chess and bao, but finding solace in drawing always gave me the greatest comfort. Early on during my stay I wondered how to decorate the huge living room wall, and I eventually settled on the idea of creating an African mural with the few pencils I had (I quickly ran out and had a good supply shipped). My mural became a past time that took on a life of its own, taking almost a year and a half to complete. The end result has been undoubtedly painted over, but that is of little concern to me. It brought me hours of enjoyment, provided me with the chance to slip away from the life I had - sometimes boring and monotonous, sometimes lonely, other times nutty - and blessed me with a peace of mind and opportunity to be creative that I wish I had more of nowadays. 


There are a few other bits and pieces of life in Malawi in these entries: feeling "malarial" as the expression goes, losing myself in the pleasure of letters and taped messages from home, and dealing with striking teachers. I can't fully remember the details of the strike: why it happened, how long it lasted, how it was resolved. But I do remember that the teachers at my school decided to strike after teachers in other schools began to strike when they thought we were striking. It was that kind of nonsensical logic that meant you never spent more than a few days in Zomba before another head-scratching "What is wrong with this place?" incident came along.

The unscientific but compelling bar graph on sexual activity among Peace Corps volunteers, and my own story

Sunday, February 13, 1994

Sketch of my living room, 1994.
The 5-kg wooden carving of the elephant is still proudly in my living room.

8:45 PM

Oof. Had another tiring weekend. I went over to the girls' house in Limbe on my own Friday afternoon (no, hitching didn't work) and met up with both Wendys, Ken, his friend Nathaniel, Nat, Joe, Jason, Janine, Jacqueline, Peter, Lorinda, Troy, Katie, Mike, Mike, Dave, Anna and I think that's it. Drank a lot Friday night, had even more Saturday, including a few with some guy named Abe at the Shire Highlands who told us (Mike, Dave and I) his life story over beers. Ken got sick and drank flaming ouzos, Joe got buzzed on one puff of a cigarette, I had some Chibuku, and everyone loves my bottle opener but thinks it's a phallic symbol. I made tentative plans to go to Zanzibar for Easter, so we'll see what happens. Oh yeah, Dominique also showed up. And we all agree the field director's a loser.

Saturday, February 19, 1 PM
I got here 5 months ago today. Just got back from playing chess with the girls at the Kuchawe Inn. I'm taking over Mrs. Ntata's math classes next week, to bring my workload from 26 to 41 periods, and I made out with Susan [not her real name] last night.

Sunday, February 20, 8 PM
Sometimes I just don't understand women. They say one thing, then do another, and always manage to mess me up. When I was on the couch the other night with Susan, she got to the point where she said she was comfortable holding me but wasn't going to kiss me. Fair enough, I thought, although I almost blurted out, "If you want a friend, buy a dog." Now what do you suppose she does not five minutes later? Unh-huh, right on the lips. So it's going like that for a while, then she gets to the "I'd better go home now" stage. Okay, I could handle that, I thought, because I wasn't feeling all that great plus I didn't have a fresh pair of underwear on. So she left me leaving me with the impression that she'd partially regretted it. Oh well. I should write a goddam book on the subject.

So then she comes around Saturday afternoon, hands me some fudge, and whisks away. When I passed by her place at about 7 that night coming back from Gary's on my defective bike (No, I don't want to talk about that), I was rather quick in telling her I was going home as if to suggest to her to pass by. So I left and haven't seen her since. Yeesh. Women. Can't live with them, pass the beer nuts. Obladi-oblada, life goes on.

Postscript 2010: I am so happy to be married. I cringed typing this entry, dismayed at how much importance I accorded to this episode at the time. Getting involved in a relationship with someone was the furthest thing from my mind back then. I immersed myself in teaching during the week, trying desperately to find interesting ways to teach mathematical equations I found challenging to explain (I also wondered why i had to teach impractical mathematics). The weekends, as is apparent from the earlier entry, were often spent consuming alcohol in the company of other volunteers. In my quieter moments of solitude, I did imagine what it would be like to be with someone. 


At the time, my Peace Corps neighbour's boyfriend showed me a bar graph that was shown to all new volunteers. I doubt the data in the graph were accurate, but the message was clear: it showed that sexual activity among male and female Peace Corps volunteers grew steadily from the time they arrived in country. 

An unscientific but relatively accurate picture of sexual activity among Peace Corps volunteers, circa 1994.

For the first four months, sexual activity among males was considerably higher than that of females, but when the fifth month came along, the spike in women's sexual activity was tremendous. My neighbour's friend assured me: "Everything will work out by your fifth month." The incident recorded in my journal takes place one day before my fifth month.


My entries at this point in time reflect an immaturity concerning relationships and a prose saturated with clichés. I would have expected nothing less from the man I was back then. If I could go back in time and give advice to the 23-year old me, I probably would have said not to worry about things so much, just have fun, and realize that, however improbable it is to have a friendship with a woman, it's certainly not impossible. But no matter what sage advice the 40-year old me could give to the 23-year old me, I doubt I would have listened. 

On being a teacher will no classroom management skills

Thursday, February 3, 1994, 9 PM

This week's tired me out quite a bit. I'll be glad when that last bell rings tomorrow. I'll be home this weekend, probably getting back to my mural.

Something strange happened in class today. I had begun teaching my 3A class after lunch when I suddenly heard a flapping sound pass me by. I stared down from the chalkboard and saw a bird not more than a few inches away from me, sitting quietly on the edge [of the board], apparently not at all afraid of me. The students momentarily gazed at it in silent wonder, as did I, and then it was off, flying out through the door.

Thursday, February 10, 8:20 AM

Got pissed off for the first time in class today. I didn't lose my cool or anything like that, I just got tired of seeing them half asleep with their books closed. I stopped teaching 3/4 of the way through and told them to do their assignment. At the end of the class I passed by one girl who hadn't even done one number yet; I asked her why and she just stared into space, saying nothing. In retrospect, I find I shouldn't have behaved that way to the class but couldn't think of a way to even get my hopes up. I need to cool down.

First page of Book II.

Postscript 2010: The bird flying into class did freak me out. The classrooms were part of a compound, and in order for a bird to fly in, it had to come into the compound, swoop under the awning, and come in through the classroom doorway. But it did. I don't believe in prescient signs, but if I were to, I might have thought that the bird's appearance was telling me I should try to stay calm and find some inner peace.


I didn't, as the second entry demonstrates. My frustration in class was so upsetting to me that I felt the need to walk home right after the class and write in my journal. The journal had become in a very real sense a means for me to reflect on what was happening around me. There were no other teachers with whom I could share my frustrations. That's owing to two factors. On the one hand, I surmised that the other teachers could not relate to my frustration. I suspected they would dismiss the students' behaviour as typical and beyond any effort worth changing. The second reason was rooted in a stubborn pride, a reluctance on my part to show others that I was at a loss to handle my classes. 


Had I been older and wiser (I'm definitely older now...as for being wiser, let's hope so) I would have made an effort to ask other teachers for advice. In retrospect, it was rather shortsighted for a volunteer organization to send inexperienced people out in the field and leave them alone for two years and expect them to do a good job teaching when they've never taught a day in their life. I had no resources at my disposal: this was pre-Internet, pre-TV, and in most places, pre-telephone. I had no books on classroom management, nor anything on teaching mathematics, formulating lesson plans, evaluating students...nothing. The only teaching material I brought with me was a big, fat piece of chalk that my Calculus II Mathematics teacher Sir David gave me prior to departure. I still have the chalk, by the way. It was too special for me to use.


It must be said that the stuff I was teaching was of little interest to the students. The textbooks I had to work with were very theoretical (see the photo for a page from "Secondary Mathematics Book 3"). I had to find a way to teach that would capture the interests of the students (and keep me interested as well). It would take a long time for that to happen, but it did eventually. 


While I wrote that in retrospect I would have sought advice from others, one thing I would not have done was to prepare myself on becoming a teacher by relying on books telling me how to teach. I think some people have a natural affinity for teaching, and I wouldn't have gone to Malawi if I didn't think I had what was necessary to be a good teacher.

Chapter 1, Secondary Mathematics Book 3:
Do not try this at home. No, really.

Saturday, January 29, 1994

10:45 PM
Well, the house is a mess, there's food all over the place, the power has been out for a few hours, and the goddamn dog broke my glasses (well only one lens). But I feel good. I guess you have to learn to take all these things in stride. I called my mother after my glasses broke and spoke to her for almost half an hour. It felt different talking to her this time; I felt more relaxed, not like before. She's been telling me how it's been -50 degrees with the wind chill factor - that's rather hard to relate to when you're in your shorts.


After the chess league met at St. Mary's, Jason, Janine, and Gary came over to my place for a barbecue. Some of Eva's friends came over to join us and we wound up being 10 people at one point. Everyone just left a few minutes ago and this is the only time I've had to myself all day. I'm exhausted.


I've just read over part of the dream I wrote about a few days ago and while I think I have an idea of what it means, I don't want to elaborate at this time of night. For now I should simply end Vol. I by saying gonani bwino [good night] and see you in Vol. II.

Postscript 1996: [Back in 1996 while working on my Masters in Education, I wrote a paper about my experiences teaching in Malawi. Here's an excerpt from the chapter on "Life in the Classroom."]


The first classes I taught were similar in format to those other teachers taught. I would arrive in class as the bell rang, students would rise from their chairs in silence and stand at attention. I greeted them according to the time of day, and they greeted me in a like manner all in unison. The first time this happened to me I was perplexed as to why they stood after wishing me a good morning or afternoon; then I realized they were waiting for me to give them permission to sit down. So I did.


As can be imagined, discipline was not a problem. All eyes were constantly fixated at the front of the class during an entire period. Having never taught, I attempted to forge a teaching style which was a combination of what I thought were the most effective characteristics of my past teachers. Part of this style consisted of writing an example of a mathematical problem on the board and solving it with them by eliciting questions. I encountered two obstacles: (1) they would not talk, and (2) they would not try to write anything on paper until the entire problem had been solved and was written by me on the board. They simply stared, conditioned not to say anything. I almost felt like a hindrance talking to them. Yet language must enter the curriculum in two ways: as a communication system of classroom and school and as a means of learning. Neither was making its way into my classroom.


Postscript 2010: Up until this point in my journal, I hadn't written much about my practice as a teacher. It was a struggle. I was not a trained teacher, I was a bloody mathematician. I had no experience as a teacher or any job in which I taught someone something, not even with my summer jobs: security guard, store clerk, horticultural technician (I watered plants), and statistician, among others. I had to rely on mimicking the best practices of my favourite teachers from the past and go with what my intuition was telling me. The other teachers at the school, while very kind, offered me little in terms of teaching skills. If anything, they sometimes exemplified how not to teach. One teacher was so annoyed that students did not stand up for him upon entering the classroom that he refused to attend classes for the rest of the month. Others showed a lack of enthusiasm that frustrated me at first, but it was important for me to step back and consider the conditions in which they were living. As Mrs. Msiska, a Bible Knowledge teacher told me once, "I had to choose between being a nurse or a teacher. I hate blood, so here I am." There were few career choices for those fortunate enough to complete secondary school in Malawi. As Mrs. Msiska note, if you were a woman, your career path brought you to nursing or teaching, and not much else. 


As Vol. I of my 5-volume journal comes to an end, I look back at a time almost half my life ago with tremendous satisfaction. I took a risk by leaving the comforts of home, my friends and family, and the security of what would probably have been a boring job calculating stratified random samples with standard coefficients of variation. I have learned more life lessons by taking risks, and when I think of the man I used to be, I sometimes wonder what my life would be like now if I had not settled down and remained as carefree as I was back then. (At a minimum, I would most assuredly have a bigger beer belly.) A friend of mine from all those years ago recently told me she sometimes thinks of the "what ifs" that could have shaped her life. While I too occasionally think of the different "what ifs" that could have steered my life in different ways, I am, as my friend is, without regrets. 

January 1994: letters from home and the volunteers publish another Buku

The cover of the January 1994 Buku

A different entry this time. Rather than take a page from my journal (I'm almost at the end of myfirst of five journals from Malawi), I thought I would go straight into a "Postscript 2010" voice and look back at two items I recently dug up that brought me back to my life all those years ago.

The first is what the WUSC volunteers called the Buku, or "book" in Chichewa. Buku was a collection of newspaper clippings from Malawi and back home. In each edition were also recipes, The Far Side cartoons,  and the occasional section with practical tips, like how to rid your home of cockroaches. Buku was published every few months.

The January 1994 edition (see photo for the cover) had plenty of interesting articles, and receiving a Buku was just as good as getting a letter from home. Keep in mind that the Malawi of 1994 had no Internet, no TV, no good bookstores, and no reliable telephone service. Come to think of it, things haven't changed much for most people since then. Some of our Buku articles that month were:

• Trudeau tells all especially about Maggie
• Quebec prepares for battle [in 1995 there was a referendum to separate from Canada]
• Canadians to reassess foreign relations
• AIDS in Malawi: Shaking Cultural Foundations
• Ozone Slayers: How the world waited too long to rescue the shield that protects Earth from the sun's dangerous UV rays
• Challenge to formulate new strategies without expats
• Africans losing decades-long war against deadly malaria
• Great expectations: World Bank looks for success in South Africa [the article was about structural adjustment programs]

Recipes to spare us from the nsima
and beans were a necessity

The last few pages of the Buku - after the article telling the reader how to get rid or cockroaches - were dedicated to an assortment of recipes. The page pictured here has three recipes: macadamia rissoles, lentil fritters, and tomato and bread pudding. For a more dazzling presentation of culinary delights, I suggest you visit my friend Joe's website, who was probably one of the Buku contributors for this issue.

Another series of items I dug up were some of the many letters I'd forgotten about: letters I had written to my friends, letters I received from them, and letters from my family. Throughout my two years in Malawi, my mother was easily the most diligent write among all of them, but my brother surprised me by writing frequently as well. To be honest, it was quite unexpected. Throughout our teenage years we kept a distance from each other, and I'd never thought of him as the type who would sit down and write a letter (and almost all of his letters were handwritten). But he did spend many hours writing to me. When I was fortunate enough to receive letters from both my mother and my brother at the same time (excerpts from each are in the photo), I would be kept updated on which neighbour's cars did not start because of the cold or when my mother would go bowling or attend a variety show with her group of widows. And I'd be reassured by my brother that my mother was fine, that she panicked over the usual things, and how, despite being an avid sports fan, he made his way to her home to clean her driveway on Super Sunday.

Letters from home

Mefloquine night: Thursday, January 27, 1994

[Note 2010: Before I begin...Tonight I discovered some additional artifacts of my life in Malawi. Some letters I'd written to my mother, photographs I'd sent her (see below), and a paper on education in Malawi that I had written for my Master's degree back in 1995. I asked my wife what she would prefer reading: theories of education in Africa or details of a Mefloquine dream? She laughed her head off. Mefloquine, that nasty anti-malarial give-you-every-horrid-side-effect-imaginable drug easily won out. Here's my dream.]

5:30 PM


I know, I know. I haven't been writing lately. And I still owe a lot of letters, too. I sent a tape off to Sam last week after receiving one from him. It was great to hear his voice - the minute I saw the package on my desk I darted with it to my house and listened to the tape. He sounded sad, though. I guess I can understand that.


I had a weird dream last night. Yeah, one of those dreams. I don;t remember much of it, but what I do, I'll try to relate here.


First off, I'd like to stress that my dreams are felt more than seen, that is most of the time I don't know what's going on but I can actually sense the emotions in my body as the scenes unfold in my mind.


I don't remember how things started, but I recall being adored and cheered at by huge crowds of people lining the streets of what seemed to be a big city. At first I thought I might have been in a car going down a street waving at the people, you know the way Santa Claus waves at the crowd during the Christmas parade. But after a while I felt as though I were in a helicopter with the door open and I was waving at everyone, wearing a big smile. It was a warm, comforting feeling.


The sound of a radio announcer could be heard through the streets (hey, don't ask me how) and he was mentioning how proud my brother must be of me at that moment. And just as he was saying this, I looked off to a skyscraper with the blue windows (maybe the windows were blue, maybe it was the reflection of the sky, but it felt sunny) and saw my brother wearing a blazer and tie, waving frantically at me. There's something about having your own blood being proud of you that puts you on top of the world.


So the helicopter whizzed by the buildings and sort of zigzagged up and under one of them only to put me at eye level with my mother, who was on a large balcony on one of the buildings. She gave me that motherly smile that just can't be imitated.


I'm sure there were other parts of the dream connecting that part to the next one I'm about to describe, but I can't recall them.


I was in a bedroom, and it was presumably the same day at around 3:30 PM. It was light in the bedroom, shades of white and blue around me. And then there was Janis [Note 2010: not her real name, but it was someone I knew in Malawi]. It felt as if this part of the dream lasted the longest for obvious reasons. We were fooling around on the bed, the windows open as well as the door leading to a garden. Within a few minutes our clothes were off and we [Note 2010: You know there are some bits that are best left unwritten]...Although I noticed she didn't like me sucking her [Note 2010: I'm probably driving you nuts. Sorry.] so I concentrated my full attention elsewhere. Time was a problem, though: it was nearing 4 o'clock, and for some reason I had to be somewhere for 4:02. Yes, I was going on the next space shuttle.


No, I don't know why, but I was confident that they wouldn't lift off without me. So it was back to a naked Janis, and I'm sure I must have been smiling the whole time during my sleep because she was gooood.

Posing next to a sunflower in front of my house,
a couple of days after one of many "Mefloquine dreams."

So whenever I'm actually enjoying myself the usual happens: someone knocks at my door. I open the door (I don't think I was wearing anything) and a peasant-like woman wearing drab-brown clothes and hanging her head down silently gave me a shriveled piece of paper. I told her to leave and sat down next to Janis and somehow came to the conclusion that the note was written by Phil [one of my oldest and dearest friends]. It was a message warning me of a spy who was after me. Yeah, sure: helicopters, naked bodies, a shuttle mission, and now a spy. The dream actually felt more real than the comic way it may be interpreted. At any rate, I left Janis and found myself on some rocks by the bright blue sea close to a shore not unlike the beach I was at in Montezuma [Costa Rica]. There was a helicopter on the water waiting to escort me to the shuttle. But I felt sad - I knew something wrong was going to occur on the shuttle, and I knew what it was. Again, I stress the fact that I feel things in dreams more than see them.


Sam was on the rocks with me, seeing me off. He didn't want to see me go, but he knew I had to. I didn't want to go, but I knew I must, even though I was going to die. I embraced him as the water splashed on the rocks beneath us and I handed him a folded-up piece of paper and told him not to read what was on it until after I'd left. He promised and I was off. What was on the paper?


"Jesus told me last night that the shuttle will blow up, but I have to go."


Postscript 2010: Whew. Mefloquine is nasty. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I don't know why my NGO told us volunteers to take those pills once a week in order to prevent us from getting malaria. I've vomited, gotten sick to my stomach, had headaches, one hallucination, angry behaviour, mood swings, and vivid dreams. The dreams were the most benign side effect. The website drugs.com lists no less than 31 side effects caused by Mefloquine. Four years of that stuff and I sometimes wonder why I'm still alive.


But as I mentioned, the vivid dreams were the most harmless of the side effects. The other volunteers and I would joke about our "Mefloquine nights" and the kinds of dreams we would have. This one detailed in my journal entry is one of the few that I took the time to record. There are obvious issues at play: acceptance from my family and a need to be praised, strong ties to close friends back home warning me of danger (Phil's note of a spy) or being with me in times of danger (Sam before the shuttle blows). Being intimate with someone, as I was in the dream, had not happened since my arrival in the country. But it was not something which preoccupied my thoughts (although my subconscious was obviously working on it). As for Jesus telling me to go jump on the shuttle, that one remains a mystery to me to this day. If there are any dream analysts out there, I'm more than willing to hear your thoughts.

Friday, January 14, 1994

10:35 PM
Steph just came over and miserably beat me at that bead game, bao I think it's called. Those American girls from Namibia left yesterday morning while I was hungover from the night before - we had a great time. On my way to get beers with Elizabeth, we stopped for a few at the bottle store for a few Browns [Carlsberg beer with a brown label that was slightly sweeter than the regular Carslberg "Green"] and a little more, as it turned out. I only bought two beers for us, but that good old Malawian hospitality handed us three more beers each in the space of 20 minutes. We stumbled back home and had a great dinner at Eva's. I went to bed at midnight, then got up at 5 to prepare my classes. Boy, I was tired. Only one thing could wake me up:


Tom! [As in Tom Cochrane's Life Is a Highway.]


I blasted the song in my ears and as the song was playing, Jean Marie woke up and wished me a good morning in her t-shirt and panties, followed by Jennifer a couple of minutes later wearing mot much more. Jean Marie asked me what I was listening to and when I told her Life Is a Highway, she said "Oh wow, that's my favourite song!"


God I should have proposed right there.


Then Jennifer came in and told me she loved the song and she'd seen Tom in concert before leaving the US. I was in my glory.

The card my friends gave me before leaving
Montreal in September 1993.

In other news, I owe about a dozen letters to people who have written to me, but I'm afraid I've been procrastinating. But I should get to writing something soon.


Postscript 2010: When I started transcribing these blogs, the original intent was to reflect on my teaching practice. While the memories of Jennifer and Jean Marie and the others have faded over the years, I clearly remember how I felt during, and after, teaching my classes that day: lousy. The fact was I was taken aback by the presence of all these beautiful young women staying at my home - and understandably so, for they were beautiful and let's face it, such an occasion never presented itself to me back in Canada. But I suffered dearly on that day not only for being hungover but for teaching the worst class I have ever taught. I was teaching the youngest students, the Form I girls, about geometry for the first time, and I was completely unprepared. I fumbled through the entire class and probably confused the hell out of them. It was a valuable lesson for me: to always be prepared for a class, and at least try not to be too hungover. For the rest of my days teaching in Malawi, I can safely say I was always prepared. As for hungover...it was never as bad as that one time. But knowing what's written in subsequent journals, I find it prudent to create a "Carlsberg" tag in this blog at this point in the journey.


I ended this journal entry with a reminder to write to friends and family who had written to me over the holidays. No gift was more precious than the letters I received from all of them. And knowing me so well, three people wound up sending me the same Star Trek calendar.

Friday, January 7, 1994

5 PM

The matola (pickup truck) heading for the border.
Jason and I got stuck with the open air seats.

This marks my first entry of the new year - the reason why I'm rather late in writing is that I just came back from an absolutely wonderful time in Harare. Granted, transportation to and from there was a hassle, from not being able to get a bus in Blantyre, getting stuck in a minibus with 22 other people from Blantyre to Mwanza, getting stuck in Mwanza, back to Chiradzulu and then having the matola break down on the way to the bus the next day, and taking a 12 1/2 hour bus ride from hell. And all this before the trip really began. But it was worth it in the end. I'll write about it in more detail later but here are some of the highlights:

1. Jason burns part of my tent.
2. About a dozen chocolate milkshakes.
3. Angela Bassett in What's Love Got to Do with It?
4. Greek food.
5. Ouzo.
6. Eating crocodile tail on New Year's Eve.
7. Arnold in Terminator II.
8. 7.5% Guinness Goodness.
9. Cold Zambezi.

Tuesday, January 11, 9 PM

I have 4 beautiful women staying with me tonight, so I'm not going to write much. Their names are, before I forget, Jean Marie, Mary Elizabeth, Elizabeth, and Jennifer. They are coming from Namibia to see Eva [my neighbour], but she's, uh, occupied at the moment, so I'm stuck with all 4 of them.

Postscript 2010: Back in the mid-nineties, even though Mugabe had been leading the country for a dozen years, Zimbabwe was an undeniable paradise in comparison to Malawi. After having lived in Zomba for three months and eaten a bland diet of bread, Tambala peanut butter, rubbery chicken, and lots of nsima and beans, my stomach was desperate for a change. Walking down the supermarket aisles in Harare was a surreal experience: an endless selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh milk, meat, and an assortment of cereals from South Africa that rivaled the finest Super Duper in upstate New York. I gorged myself of Wimpyburgers and milkshakes at the Wimpy's downtown, saw movies in the theatre (Malawi at the time had one theatre in the entire country, the Apollo, with a miniature Saturn rocket on its roof), and went into near-shock upon entering an actual department store that had clothes my size. 

It was even more of a shock when my friends and I went to our first restaurant upon our arrival. We looked at the menu and asked the waiter out of habit which items were available. He looked somewhat offended that we ask such a question. In Malawi, the existence of a menu did not mean the restaurant had the food. A conversation with a waiter would go like this:

Me: I'd like the chicken and rice please.

Waiter: So Sorry, we don't have rice.

Me: OK then. I'll have the chicken and chips.

Waiter: Yes, sir. Sorry. No chips.

Me: How about just the chicken.

Waiter: Ah no. No chicken, sir.

Me: Then what do you have?

You see it was easier to start by asking what was available. 

In the years since then, Mugabe has demonstrated that he is one of the worst despots imaginable who is still in power. The economy has been ruined, farmers' lands have been desecrated from violent land distribution schemes, the health care system is ravaged, independent free press is stifled by Mugabe's goons, human rights defenders are constantly threatened and attacked - the list is endless. To give you an idea of the downfall of the country's economy: back in 1994, the highest bill at the time was no more than 100 or 200 Zim dollars. Two years ago a Zimbabwean human rights defender gave me a 50 billion Zim dollar bill, and told me I'd need a few of those to take a bus from Harare to one of its suburbs. The state of the country now is absolutely deplorable. 

It seems wildly uneven to write about an evil African dictator and the arrival at my doorstep of four beautiful American women looking for a place to stay late one evening. How true, so I'll leave that story for another postscript.

Christmas Eve, 1993, 2:30 PM

Janine with one half of our dinner, not looking
very happy, thinking of what's ahead

John went to the market with Bennett and bought two chickens - live. So I know the food's fresh. J and J are over now, and Gary'll be showing up later so we can bake custard pie, chocolate chip cookies, and apple pie, among other things. I'm sitting in my usual spot, in my shorts, beer in hand. It's a cool, sunny day, about 23 degrees. The perfect winter's day for Christmas Eve.


Christmas, 7:30 AM


I had about 2 1/2 hours sleep; after Ken, Gary, Jason and I finished playing poker at 2:30 AM, I sat in bed unable to sleep. I was thinking of Christmases past, and began to feel more than a little tinge of loneliness. This marked the first time I was away from home on this day, and I knew my mother would be sad. When I called her on the phone I could tell she was holding back tears when she said, "I love you, dear." My friends back home also have managed to piss me off. When I asked my mother if any of them had bothered to show up at home for when I was supposed to call last week, she said no and that kinda hurt. The good news was that John [my brother] sent me a card, and JP's sending me a long letter. She also told me he's interested in overseas work. 


The sun and the heat make it feel like any other day, but I feel a small void. In a sense I'm glad the others are here around me, but at the same time I wish I were alone to let it out.


Postscript 2010: People who were strangers to me just a few months before had taken the place of my family at a time which was always celebrated with only my closest family members. It was a reflection of the isolation all of us felt, the removal from our livelihoods and homes back in Canada, the distance from our parents, brothers, and sisters made all the more painfully apparent with crappy telephone connections in which stunted conversations owing to a 3-second echo made an emotional connection impossible. Even more significantly, it was a true testament to the nature of genuine friendships, where a group of people who'd never met before found themselves in the same small country at the same point in time for personal reasons that could usually best be described as "just wanting to help people." I'd written in my post that I wished I were alone on the day, and in retrospect, I would not have wanted that. I'd been alone one Christmas day a few years later living in Accra, and it was one of the sadder days of my time in Africa. 


I didn't go to church that Christmas day, unlike previous years when I would make the yearly trek to the parish with my brother and mother. Instead, I lived the day in full pre-Internet pre-mobile phone pre-instant communications (and in Malawi, pre-television) mode by spending time with friends, enjoying each other's company by baking, feasting, drinking Carlsberg beer and cheap Portuguese wine, playing poker and listening to Simon and Garfunkel's greatest hits over and over again. I could not have asked for a better day.

Wednesday, December 22, 1993

7 PM


I had the kind of day I don't really want to have again. True, I did eat my share of delicious food at a Chinese restaurant, and managed to convince Bennett (Steph's worker) to cook Christmas supper for us, but I also had to spend two hours on a bus each way going to Blantyre, got to Immigration to renew my passport extension only to be told that I can't, never quite made it to Limbe to get my visa for Mozambique, found out that Janine has an infection in her stomach which may prevent us from going to Harare, and on my way back home in a yanu-yanu bus a kid by the side of the road insulted me in Chichewa much to the delight of the crowd and ended his malicious monologue towards me by screaming "F*ck you!" as the bus drove away. Oh yeah, and those goddam flying termites are buzzing around me again. I could really go for a Molson Dry.


Postscript 2010: In retrospect, it wasn't such a bad day after all. Having recently spent a total of 33 hours waiting in airports during my last trip, and just as many hours in the air in miraculously inadequate airplane seats meant for people half my size, wasting a day to fruitlessly renew my passport extension doesn't seem all that painful. Most of that day was long forgotten until I transcribed the contents of this journal entry (I had completely forgotten about the infectiously wonderful-sounding yanu-yanu buses). 


One image which has remained in my mind since that day was the young boy at the bus stop who told me to f-off. His eyes blazed with such a feral intensity as he repeated those words to me over and over again that I became visibly embarrassed and felt a growing sense of unease. It didn't help that the other passengers, all Malawians, were laughing at the boy's rant, and part of me felt they were laughing at me, with my inability to respond. I made a conscious decision not to engage the boy, and it's a decision I would probably repeat again if a similar situation presented itself, for I believe a response would further fuel the ranting. 


Regrettably, I had seen a number of foreigners, either living overseas or travelling, who have shown tremendous disrespect towards people from a local population. Children often suffer the most in these cases, because many of them have an innate curiosity to approach the strangeness of foreigners and to simply observe, sometimes sneak a smile or even say hello to them. Granted, plenty of them also ask for money as well, or they're scared silly. But most of the children I've seen in different lands are genuinely curious. If it gets to the point where a young child standing on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere tells me to f- off, perhaps somebody told him the same not so long before, and he's merely imitating a behaviour he's been subjected to.


Wherever that boy is now - a man in his late twenties - I hope he's been surrounded by enough people who show him love and affection so that his days of swearing at strangers, or anyone, are long gone.

Monday, December 20, 1993

3:40 AM
I woke up about a half hour ago and thought, well, I've been sleeping since 8 PM so I guess I've had enough. 


The power is still out - I guess the one good thing about that is that the freezer's defrosting.


Looking back at some of my more recent entries in my log, I've noticed that I've steered away from any heavy philosophical mumbo-jumbo as I used to write in the beginning. I believe it's because the initial sense of wonder is gone and my senses have become used to the environment. Part of me regrets not writing that way anymore, but then again, too much philosophical jargon can isolate you from a lot of people. I see this clearly with Tom [not his real name]. When we climbed the [Zomba] plateau on Friday we stopped to rest by some rocks and he began to explain a new philosophical revelation he had about life being a series of paths on a plane that infinitely stretch to the horizon. Since you cannot explore all paths during your lifetime, you enclose yourself in a dome containing paths having end points and some which continue and escape out of the dome. 


Meanwhile, I was trying to catch my breath.


When I climb a mountain, I do so to clear my head and purposefully avoid thinking of anything. I find I'm doing that a lot, and I'm steering away from grandiose metaphors which elegantly explain the meaning of life. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that my philosophical interpretation of life is essentially not to have one. If you get to thinking too much, you begin to lose track of reality, by that I mean the world in which the rest of the normal population of this planet reside in.


Postscript 2010: I greatly respected the friend mentioned in this journal entry, but honestly there were times when his intensity was so great that I felt awkward being around him. All these years later, I avoid using the term "philosophical" - not deliberately, but probably because life gets in the way. I can't talk philosophy at the dinner table when my children are busy holding in their burps and farts. I go to the local pool to relax, talk to a few neighbours, and read pages of a novel. No discussions on planes of existence take place there, and I'm quite happy about that. My job as a human rights educator prompts me to ask questions concerning the impact of my work and the work of other human rights educators, but when it comes down to it, I don't want to spend time philosophizing on the meaning of my work, I'd rather just do it.


In this entry, I wrongly interpret a reduction in philosophical mumbo-jumbo writing to a familiarity with my environment. You don't need to delve into philosophy in order to have a sense of wonder and an appreciation for your surroundings. You just need to open your eyes. As Richard Feynman wrote: "Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there." Whether those "things" are the beauty of a sunrise, the laughter of children, or the strangeness of living in a different country, our imagination can indeed soar.

Wednesday, December 15, 1993

4:45 PM
I have a chorus of those little African warblers chirping in front of my house now. I'm in my usual spot, sitting in my chair with my feet up and Reality [the dog] doing absolutely nothing next to me.


Ron [a British neighbour who was a chemistry teacher at the school and a bit nutty] made a comment about my beard (I shaved it off a week ago and I'm letting it grow back)" "Oh, that's coming along nicely, Paul," he said. "It's actually growing quite fast. What did you do, put manure in your shoes?" Thanks, Ron. Bad joke, Ron.


I made a trip to Whitex yesterday to buy some chitenjes [Malawian cloth] to have them made into pants - size 33", which is something I haven't been able to fit in since the mid-1980s. I bought, of all things, a pattern with a bunch of ostriches. I can't wait to see the results Friday.


Christian and Louise wrote letters to me today - each took only a week to get here. Louise still has a lot of negative attitudes about herself, but she seems to be developing more self-confidence. She said something which, for some reason, managed to bug me a little which is why I'm writing now. Her boyfriend is moving in with her in April, and that combined with what Julie wrote yesterday [she wrote that she'd found Mr. Right] has made me wonder (only a little) about how I'm going to wind up with "Ms. Right." Here are two women I was involved with and they're already at the next step in their relationship, whereas I can't even get to the first step. No part of me is looking for anything with the slightest hint of permanency with any girl around here. But on the other hand, that means another two years will go by. That shouldn't be my outlook on things, though.


Yikes! I just read over what I'd just written and it's goddam depressing! Wake up Paul - play THE song!


Postscript 2010: The song in question is Life Is a Highway by the incomparable and uniquely Canadian artist Tom Cochrane. For whatever reason, when the song came out in 1991, it instantly became my favourite song, and I doubt any other tune will ever dethrone it. "Life is a highway, I want to ride it all night long" conjured up such an immediate, urgent tingling sensation throughout my entire being that I became deliriously happy every time I played it, no matter how frequently I pressed the REPEAT button on my disc player. Living at home, I played it incessantly in the basement, much to my mother's consternation; it played during my wedding; I listened to it innumerable times while traveling across Canada; I played it over and over again while sitting in my home alone in Malawi; and softly at the end of my mother's funeral. The song is undeniably a part of my character, and while I don't play it nearly as much as I did all those years ago, there's no denying that the song still has the intended effect of making me feel good. 


Living in Malawi, I did what I could to minimize the moments when I felt sorry for myself; it's actually quite easy when you're surrounded by people who are unquestionably worse off than you. At that point in my life, back in 1993, getting into a relationship was not a pressing issue, but still, companionship would have been nice. I was a little taken aback with the news from Julie and Louise (not their real names), writing to me about finding Mr. Right (for Julie) and moving in with her boyfriend (Louise). The news from Louise was particularly surprising. We were together back in September 1993 on the eve of my departure from Canada. Getting close to her was always a struggle, there was always a reluctance from her to open up. In our last hours together, she admitted to me that she'd recently begun seeing a therapist who had been helping her unearth the painful memories of being sexually abused by her grandfather. Memories she'd repressed for years. Saying goodbye to her that night made me feel as though I were letting go when she needed me most. I could not imagine the suffering she must have felt back then and the deluge of sorrow, anger, betray of trust, shame, and insecurity resulting from such abuse. As I drove away from her apartment, I questioned my own motivations for leaving my friends and family for two years. But I moved on, and so had she in a short period of time, and because it had only been three months, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of person he was, and whether or not he would show her the love she deserved.

Monday, December 13, 1993

6 PM

I'm sitting outside on the porch now with nothing much to do. I have to invigilate one more exam, then mark another, then I'm done for '93. It's freezing right now! It can't be more than 18 C and it looks as if it will rain soon.


The staff Christmas lunch is this Thursday and I managed to make something that didn't burn or make me gag. I started out by trying to make brownies Friday night but what resulted was a mix between ooh-this-will-rip-your-fillings-out toffee and bricks. So I got rid of that by crunching on it all weekend. My second time at bat was worse than the first: Granted, the peanut brittle looked okay up to a certain point, but when I added the baking soda - Ka-BOOM! The goddam thing blew up like a chemistry experiment gone horribly wrong. I then added the vanilla and peanuts and struggled to slosh it into a pan. Now normally you would expect peanut brittle to have a nice golden colour to it. But no, mine was a sinister dark brown. As one might expect, it tasted horrible but it would have made great concrete. Dammit, I knew I should have gone into masonry.


I was getting a little worried by this time. I had cooked some reasonable tasty things in the past. Yeah well welcome to Africa Paul - my measuring cup was a coffee mug. I persevered and finally came up with banana ice cream, and it's damn good. Although I don't think it'll be enough, so I'll see if I can make some of my super eggnog with the brandy I bought today on special.


Postscript 2010: This post is an homage to Joe St. Lawrence, WUSC volunteer who was in Malawi from 1992 until 1994 and is an avid reader of my blog. Joe can cook, as is evidenced by reading his own blog, unlike me way back then, and now. Upon my arrival in Malawi in 1993, I was invited to Joe and his partner's house and he concocted a banana curry, which I found absolutely absurd but was dazzlingly surprised by its wonderful flavour. 


After the welcome from Joe and others in Lilongwe, the capital, I was off to live on my own in Zomba. Living on my own was nothing new: I'd lived on my own in Canada. However, in Canada I relied heavily on whatever could be microwaved or consumed in a pub, and those were two options unavailable to me in Zomba. The first meals I scraped up for myself consisted of nothing more than maggot-infested packaged noodles with ketchup. It's no wonder I shed almost twenty kilos during my stay in Malawi.


In the end,despite my inability to make something as simple as peanut brittle using my neighbour's oven, the ice cream was a success. And as for the eggnog, I liberally poured the brandy I bought on sale and mixed it in. The end result was a surprising number of inebriated staff members in the library screaming at me to pour them some more eggnog. When you're working with a bunch of nuns, well, the end result is nothing short of hilarious. But I could have done without the flirting. I vowed to take it easy on the brandy next time.

Friday, December 10, 1993

1 PM
Just made a snowball from the ice that accumulated in the freezer. I couldn't let a December pass by without throwing a snowball through the air. 


I just got paid for the first time today - over K3000! Yeehah! I just wrote a letter to JR so I'll continue in my journal another time.


Sunday, December 12, 7 AM
I've never gone to bed so late as I did last night - in Africa, that is: midnight. It was worth it, though: I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation! The pilot episode from six years ago. I couldn't believe it! J+J borrowed the video machine and TV from their school and rented the show for K7 at the PTC. Star Trek in Africa! And we had beer and pizza to boot.


The past two weeks have been the most eventful since my arrival and ironically enough I've written the least in my journal. I suppose it's because I'm so busy with all this going on around me from the gunfire to the teachers' strike (is it on for tomorrow> I still don't know) to Star Trek. Part of me wishes I had a computer to type up my thoughts more quickly but that would mean being a slave to technology, and we all know I left Canada partly to get away from that.


It's less than two weeks until Christmas and I haven't bothered to send any Christmas cards aside from one to Mike back home. Around here I sent some to Gary, J+J, Joe and Nat, Wendy and Gen.  [I drew pictures on the cards, in some cases ridiculing the incompetence of the Malawi Young Pioneers, or MYP.] Assuming I don't get arrested for the slanderous depictions of the MYP (and for sending a bullet casing in the mail to Sam), I may have time for one or two more cards, but part of me is getting pissed off at the people back home. Only Phil, Mike and JR have written back to me and I've written just over 20 letters to everyone. Sometimes I get so tired of writing the same thing over and over again that I develop an aversion to writing altogether - I guess that may be another reason why I haven't written much lately.


I corrected my first end of term exam - Form 3 Algebra. Average: 35%. Assignment average: 74%. Hmmm. I wonder. I'm told this is to be expected, but it's still disappointing - the students seem to enjoy and understand in class but when the time comes for them to show their true colours, it's a different story.

Postscript 2010: Seventeen years ago is an eternity in terms of technology. No one - or at least, almost no one - had internet access, or even knew what the world wide web was. And not just Malawi, but back in Canada and most of the world. There was no email, no Skype, no internet chat, and few cell phones. If you wanted to get in touch with someone overseas, you either had to call (and that was an unreliable option using a phone in Malawi) or write. I wrote all my letters by hand, as did most of my family and friends, and in retrospect, I am thankful that it was that way. In my journal entry I lament not having a computer to type more quickly. But a letter to a friend or a family member is a story, it takes time but should not be construed as time-consuming, just like spending an afternoon with a good friend is not time consuming. There is something to be said about the genuine connection that is formed between letter-writer and receiver in the pen-and-paper letter writing process. Something about knowing that those particular pages that you're writing on will be welcomed, held, and preciously cared for by the receiver. I cannot begin to express the tremendous joy at the sight of a new letter on my desk in the staffroom. As soon as I saw a new letter from someone back home, be it a small thin letter, a massive missive of 20 pages, or a large padded envelope in my mother's handwriting with the words "knick-knacks" and "value 0$" written on it, the rest of the world would instantly fade out. I was no longer in the staffroom, I was back home, my mind flooded with the fondest  memories of the person who took the time to write to me. Sometimes I would hold back from opening the letter in the presence of my colleagues, and wait until classes ended and I take the letter back home and open it with the greatest of care. Other times I could not resist ripping the envelope and furiously spreading out the pages of the letter and quickly reading over its contents, only to take it back home to re-read it numerous times until fatigue settled in. 


Years later, I am thankful I kept all those hand-written letters from my friends and family. When I lived so far away from the ones I loved, being in a strange land captivated my curiosity for only so long; after a while, I felt a longing to be with those I'd left behind, and the joy of receiving a letter from home brought me as close as I could be to them. In the letter shown, dated 18 November 1993, my mother chronicles a postage tip from an engineer, a rare earthquake in Montreal, and Mickey Mouse's 65th birthday. Absolutely inane, but this letter, like the dozens I received from her, is a gift that I will always cherish, much more than the deodorant and Life Savers she sent along with the letter (although the deodorant was more appreciated at the time). 

Tuesday, November 30, 1993

It looks like it's really going to rain hard pretty soon. The past few days have been eventful. let's start with Friday.


Three o'clock rolled around and it was time for me to go to the football field for volleyball. I coached the girls for a while, then made my way over to Cyrus where he was showing a bunch of girls how to play basketball. That was quite a sight: seeing a man who's never played the game teach it to 30 girls with one ball. Anyway, I joined them and as I was showing them how to do the wave, they all went bonkers suddenly and began running away from the field towards the school. It took me a few seconds to realize that they were running and screaming away from a guy holding a knife a few feet away from me.


Uh-oh.


Fortunately, he seemed to be in a world of his own and didn't seem to realize anyone was around him. He knelt down where the girls had been playing and toyed with the knife in the dirt. All the girls were a safe distance from him, but Cyrus and I weren't. The guy planted the knife in the ground and walked slowly, as if in a daze, towards the girls. They screamed together and scurried all over the place, but the real threat was over with. He walked away in the bushes, I picked up the knife and tossed it in the garbage. That put an early halt to afternoon sports. 


Saturday morning I went to Box 2 with Joseph and Stevenson to bring St. Mary's chess club to play in the Zomba Chess League. They were the only girls there, and they did manage to beat 2 boys out of 8 games, which I'm sure was a humiliating experience for the losers. It was fun. On the way back, I coached Stevenson on how to swear properly in English and we got tangled up in the celebration of a wedding making its way down the highway, with several dozen people cheering, singing, and dancing.


Monday, December 6, 7 PM
Had a good weekend at Gen and Wendy's. Very nice place. The army is fighting the MYP [Malawi Young Pioneers] - over a dozen people killed - Kaye [our field director at the time] told me to pack up and head for Mulunguzi. I'm not worried too much yet - I'm more worried what my mother's thinking. I hope I don't leave the country. Whoops, hamburgers are ready.


Postscript 2010: First, the man with the knife. Seeing a half-dressed person walking in a daze was not unusual in Zomba. The Zomba Mental Hospital was just down the road, and conditions for keeping the patients within the institution were not all that strict. It was not uncommon to see a patient from the hospital walking around town in their distinctive uniform, a blue and green striped outfit that reminded me of pajamas I wore in the 1970s that my mother had purchased from K-Mart. But the gentleman with the knife did not have those distinctive shorts; he wore (what was at that point) black rags. Thankfully, it was the only time something as unusual as this ever took place (the Gorilla Man was also unusual, but not in a threatening way. More on that another time).


The chess tournament was certainly a highlight for me. I was appointed patron of the chess club during our first staff meeting when Mr. Chanunka whispered to me, Do you play chess? To which I answered Yes, a few times ten years ago. Poof, he nominated me to be the patron of the chess club. The girls' confidence was not very high, but I think they (and the rest of the girls at school) were simply happy to be in a tournament. That particular tournament took place at Zomba Catholic Boys' School of all places, and the girls were absolutely giddy with excitement at being there. After the first round of matches began, Alice, a Form 3 student, approached me with a stunned look on her face and said, "Sir, I won!" She did indeed beat the pants of a boy, who was being summarily scolded by the patron of his club and shamed in front of his snickering colleagues. That part didn't make me feel good, but her victory sure did. As we left the tournament and drove through the gates of our school later that morning, at least a hundred girls from the school were waiting to cheer the chess team on. We got out of the truck and they sang their hearts out. 


And finally, the dozen people killed. During that first weekend of December 1993, I was staying at the house of two other volunteers in Blantyre. I had made my way there to get the damn hole in my tooth fixed (the dentist was very thorough and asked me whether I had AIDS as her first question). By the time I was on the bus, the Malawi Young Pioneers, or MYP, were in an armed battle in key town across the country. The MYP at the time was a much-feared paramilitary wing of the ruling Malawi Congress Party, the MCP. In early December, three army soldiers had been killed and the army sought retaliation against the MYP. The MYP, on the other hand, was more than a little upset at the news a few months back that they were to be eventually disbanded. They were allegedly responsible for the disappearance and killing of thousands of Malawians in the 1970s and after. With the president and leader of the ruling MCP, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, seriously ill and recovering from brain surgery, the MYP's fate, and the country's was very uncertain.


In the end, the MYP was no match for the army. There were over 30 people killed that weekend, with clashes in Zomba where I lived and in other cities. In Blantyre where I was staying, we heard gunshots pierce the air throughout the day. our only source of information at the time was our shortwave radios, listening to BBC. But I didn't have to worry about my mother finding out about the violence. As is the case with most things like this in Africa, news hardly makes its way back home to Canada.