IPMP in Africa

It seems like we were talking all year about ‘meeting up in Africa’ - This weekend it finally happened! As Kelly B and I are both living and working in Malawi, we were able to meet up this weekend when Kelly came in from Dedza, to Lilongwe where I am living. Did all sorts of ‘city things’ like use the internet, eat at Nando’s Chicken, and get Gelato ,and then we were lucky enough to be invited to a wedding of a friend of one of my co-workers! I’d say it was quite a nice wedding at the Lilongwe Golf Club, and there were loads of people there. No invitations necessary for a Malawian wedding – just show up if you know the bride and groom. We went for the reception part, which was the guests all sitting under a big tent, with the bridal party at the front, and the MC would call up groups of people to dance up to the front and throw money. It was all in Chichewa, so luckily my friend Elsie from work was there or we would have been a bit lost. The MC will say ‘all the friends of the bride come up!’ or call up the grooms parents friends, and then you kind of dance up the aisle to the front and throw kwatcha notes into the air, that the bride or groom tries to catch in a big basket. It doesn’t matter what you throw, so it’s better to have a stash of 20 kwatcha notes rather than having only 500 kwatcha notes to throw :)

On Friday night, I was invited out for a work dinner to a fancy Indian restaurant. It was great to hang out with people outside of work and get to know everyone a bit better. The place we went was as nice of a restaurant as any fancy Indian restaurant at home - I'm still wrapping my head around the assumptions of what Africa should 'look like'. Yes, there is extreme poverty in Malawi - the kind you think of when you think of Africa - but there is also quite a bit of wealth. I want people to realize that Africa is not all starving people and dying babies. Yes, it does exist, but Africa is also fully stocked grocery stores, fancy restaurants and iphones. I do realize however that in the week and a half that I have been here, I have been contained in the Lilongwe bubble, which is not an accurate representation of the majority of the population. Spending more on dinner on a friday night than I'm sure many people in this country can't even dream of takes some getting used to. Its all quite an interesting 'juxtaposition', if you will.

I went out afterwards with Elsie, her cousin and a friend for a night out on the town. This turned into a 3 bar, 3am kind of night, which is quite a change from my usual night in the hostel when its 8:30 and we are wondering when the earliest acceptable time is that we can go to bed. We saw an Irish band play at a bar called Chameleon (who coincidentally stayed at the hostel last night, so we hung out and I was happily immersed in their 'Irish-isms') and then to another venue to hear a local Malawian band called the Black Missionaries. They are super cool! Very fun reggae, African stuff all sung in Chichewa.

I've been spending my evenings outside of work mostly hanging out at the hostel and mostly playing the most addicting game in the world, called Bao. You may have seen the boards around - a piece of wood with carved out cups for marbles or stones. It's basically dropping the marbles in the cups and trying to get rid of your opponent's marbles. The games take hours. Gin and Tonics and Bao after work. Its a good life.