Jill finds herself on the ground in Malawi and, while she understood that the nation wasn't very wealthy, it expresses a poverty she has not encountered before.
In Malawi, she's met by Adeena Karasick, a fellow Canadian writer and language poet, and Adeena's husband Sean Southey who works for the United Nations Development Project. They show her around and get her settled after the long trip from Toronto to Zomba, Malawi.
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 96 00:48:25 +0200
I have arrived!!
We (Sean, Adeena and I) have been discussing a video link up. I'm of no help as my knowledge of the tech is poor, but I hope we can get it going. What a coup!
E-mailing from the house is very suspect. First to get the connection to the university takes hours sometimes and then once you've sent the e-mail it is stored in Zomba until they send it to South Africa and out to the world only three times a day. Then there's the electricity and phone lines which sometimes go down for a week at a time.
I'm still not acclimated I think. It's been three days and I've been shuttled from colonial decadence to extreme poverty. Now I've been in 3rd world countries before, but this is somehow different, although I'm still processing why. Maybe it's just Malawi, I'll find out soon, because the plans are to go to Zambia and Mozambique soon. To my chagrin I find there are no ATMs here and so I am stuck in no money limbo.
The weather is not much hotter than Toronto when I left, and during the day it gets hazy because it is the burning season and large tracts of land are being burned.
Today a walk to the village - mud huts and the like. Yesterday we went to the Old Town Market, which was pretty abysmal. This is an extremely poor country. Oxfam sends clothes here and the locals wear them, but there are too many so they sell the excess in the market. The locals have no money to buy clothes so mostly the UN people and other foreigners buy them.
At the house we have a servant, who washes my underwear by hand (!?) and makes
all the meals, cleans up and does everything. He's very nice, but it's a bit
strange. Somewhat like having one's mother
doing stuff for you as an adult that
she did when you were a child. Being of colonial heritage, so to speak, I'm not
really fazed with servants, but the underwear thing takes a little getting used
to. We also have a gardener and a guard, but no swimming pool as Sean is the
environment minister (or something). Apparently they have already had their hose
confiscated by the police for watering too much!!
There is no photo processing here, so you won't get pictures. [The photos you see here were developed once Jill was back in Canada. -Ed.] Should I try to find somebody with a camera and video capabilities to send you pictures of me and the country?
That's all for now. Gotta send this while the lines are still cool .