Rain

This morning I awoke to the sound of rain.

The sound was so unexpected that for a moment I lay in bed, puzzled, vaguely aware of the fact that something had woken me up. Light was starting to trickle through the curtains at the windows, but the sheets were white and clean, and I am pretty sure that nothing feel so good in the morning as stretching out in nice, non-threadbare sheets and then going back to sleep until sunshine gently pulls you to your feet, more awake and alive than you've ever been. But instead of sunshine, there was rain. 

I couldn't believe it.

When I got to Africa in the beginning of May, rainy season had barely ended, and everything in Malawi had been glisteningly vibrant, enchanted by the touch of a wand called "adventure" and attached to a wondrous tag that said "Made in Africa" in the most exotic small print possible. The leaves were still green, and in the evenings the grass would wave pink and gold in the dying sunlight.

Since then, the world has been slowly fading. The grass is now brown and withered, and the trees cling to their half-shriveled leaves like a forty-year-old rebel chasing his rock'n'roll dream. The red dirt has turned into sand which has somehow transformed itself into a fine rusty dust that manages to coat everything. Ugly remnants of shorn corn stalks dot forgotten fields. Every day the sun comes up to greet an ever-browner world, and every night the moon pushes it out of the sky to paint Malawi in a more forgiving, albeit dimmer, light.

But it is not the past three months; it is today, and today, it is raining.

The sound of the water smashing onto the corrugated metal roof increases to a roar, and I fling the door open to rain. The water drips down the roof and hits the ground with a soft splat, and I think that it is maybe the most glorious sound I have ever heard. It embraces the cobblestones and the bark of the trees surrounding us, and there's this white mist rising from the midst of Lake Malawi specifically to greet these most singular raindrops. The air is warm, but not hot, and the humidity, for once in my life, feels delightful and undeserved, like my skin is thanking me for a gift that I didn't pay for.

Rain on Lake Malawi, after it had passed us for a little bit.
Nkhata Bay.
Photo by Adam Ellsworth.

I pull a chair out of the chalet to the front porch and sit down in my tshirt and shorts, with my knees pulled up to my chest, and my hair in the messiest of sleep-tousled ponytails. 

I sit and I finish waking up, and I feel like the world is stretching out in some brand new sheets--that pretty soon the sun will come, take the world by its hand, and pull it back to its feet.

This morning, the rain came down down down 

down

and woke us all 

up.

Creation

“Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason…Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.” 

― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

Sometimes I want to create something beautiful so badly that I feel as though I could combust.

I used to be a voracious reader, and I used to write. I’m still a reader, but don't really claim to be a writer.

There was a time when I thought about being an editor for a living, an author on the side. So I majored in English. I changed my major to food science in a matter of months though for a number of reasons. One of them was because in order to be great as an author, you must be creative and original and vulnerable, and there is nothing scarier than having to be creative and original and vulnerable. Vulnerable in every way, because writing great research papers doesn’t get you anywhere after college. Vulnerable because you will always fear that you are not creative, not original, that you are merely mimicking, and thus mocking, the sacred act of creation. Vulnerable because authenticity can be sold, because true art always requires sacrifice of some sort, because it’s quite possible that your soul’s birthright, your heart’s child, your life’s work, may one day be stored in an attic or an empty barn, and that is that.

I couldn’t do it. I stopped writing (you know, besides the mandatory writing), save for the occasional half-hearted attempt that would quickly fizzle out.

I haven’t written anything that I’m truly proud of in a long time. In all actuality, I don’t know if I ever have. I have tried, but I can’t do it, or at least, I can’t do it yet. It all seems trivial, trite, sensationalized, contrived.

It’s sad because I love words like I love few other things, and I read them, and live them, and breathe them; I am moved by them, touched by them, caressed by them, and I still haven’t figured out how to put them together to say something that truly means something, anything. To say something that hasn’t been said before, to say something "really and truly after [my] own heart" and nobody else’s.

Sometimes, I just want to create something beautiful.

I want the stars to come out, and I want to see them for what they are. I want to be kept up till five, even if nobody else is. I want to paint them, read them, sculpt them, draw them, relish them, sing them, dance them, write them—

Just so long as I capture them. Just so long as they last. Just so long as they exist for one beautiful moment after dawn—and if they are consigned to the barns and attics of the world after that, so be it.

I should like to accomplish that at least once.

the first goodbyes

Yesterday, we said what felt like lots of goodbyes.

We said goodbye to our little branch in Lilongwe. It was harder than I thought it would be. Three of us, including myself, have given talks here, and it kind of feels like home in a way. The YSA class that we were a part of has been so wonderful as well, and I think that they were just as sad as we were that this was our last Sunday. It was really touching.

Then we drove back to Korea Garden Lodge, where Kevin, the driver, dropped us off. And that’s when we said goodbye to Nicolle and Camille, the two PEAT interns, who are going to continue doing work at SAFI this week as opposed to go gallivanting in Zambia. What diligent souls. Anyways, they’re wonderful, and saying goodbye was just a tiny bit surreal. Oh, parting is such sweet sorrow, especially when you’re all going back to BYU.

I don’t want to get all weirdly sentimental [please ignore the fact that sentimentality has been permanently etched all over many a past blogpost—it’s fine]. It’s just weird because this is the first time that the fact that this program is almost over has felt real. That’s all I’m saying.

Despite my growing excitement to return to the United States and see friends and family, I can honestly say that I have come to love Malawi and the people here.

And I’m glad that we’ve still got two and a half weeks to finish saying the rest of our goodbyes.

culture shock

What is culture shock? It is a thousand little unexpected experiences. Or maybe it is the shock when those experiences are no longer unexpected, but happenstance, and you think, Gosh, who am I?

Either way, ultimately, it's those experiences that make your time abroad so delightfully (or even not so delightfully) different and necessary, because without them, you might as well have never left America, darling.


1) It is hearing Ke$ha playing outside your window and slowly losing your faith in humanity as you bob your head to a mixture of conversational Chichewa and catchy little phrases about Mick Jagger and alcohol.

2) It is getting ridiculously excited about toast, because the toast comes with jam on it, and you have been eating nothing but plain hunks of bread for the longest time (because anything, anything is better than bread with peanut butter on it).

3) It is eating the fat and gristle and spitting out the bone chunks in the meat without batting an eyelash (even though it's still unpleasant).

4) It is looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking you look good, even though you haven't worn makeup in months and haven't showered for three days.

5) It is that slow realization that the only reason that you are still taking your doxy is because it keeps your skin clear. Not because it prevents malaria. Because heaven knows you'd have started to forget to take your doxy weeks ago if that was the case.

6) It is choosing to eat not one, but two fishes, with your nsima, even though their eyes are blatantly (and blankly) staring out at you. Miracle of miracles. Glory be, oh omega-3 fatty acids. Please get in my belly now before I come to my senses.

7) It is going to the market and bartering. It is actually getting a good deal. Repeatedly.

8) It is going to Malawian hospitals with an intern, where she was stabbed multiple times by doctors who couldn't find her veins. When they finally drew enough blood to do blood tests, she was diagnosed with a bacterial infection. She was fed antibiotics through an intravenous shunt and was given four different types of medication. It is realizing that all the drugs, plus the consultation and all the needle-stabbing, cost 2500K, or about $8.00

9) It is trying to do research when it is so frustrating you could tear your hair out by the fistful. It is doing yoga at the end of the day on a dirty cement floor and feeling your heart rate begin to slow. It is realizing that even though half of the things here are frustrating, it (it being everything? I'm still not sure what it is) is still worth it.

10) It is spending three months with the same exact group of people. It is not going crazy. It is becoming and making friends.

11) It is not being fazed by slight tardiness. Or even extreme lateness. Or the no-show.

12) It is laughing with the cleaning lady and throwing up your hands because you have no idea what she wants, but she still keeps talking at you. So you give her two pieces of bread, and somehow the problem is solved, because she nods and leaves the room. (?) Food. Food is always the answer. For everybody.

13) It is that inexpressible joy that only comes when the toilets will flush. 

14) It is seeing hundreds of children with vitameal, and just feeling really, really happy about it.

15) It is trying to do traditional Chichewan dances and failing miserably. How is it that I love to dance so much and am still so bad at it? It is deciding not to care. It is shaking your body to the a capella music anyways, like self-consciousness isn't a thing and embarrassment doesn't exist. At least not in this special little circle of happy people. 


Well, that's fifteen things out of the thousand or so things that have made this experience what it is. We're wrapping up this experience. This week is the last push to get all our research done. Next week, we're taking off to Zambia to see Victoria Falls. The week after that, we're going to Nkhata Bay in northern Malawi. And then we come back to SAFI to pack up all our things, and we go back to Lilongwe. One morning, we'll pack up for good and board a flight for NYC, and that is that. The summer will be over. 

And the craziness that will be next semester will ensue. But let's not think about that just yet.

Until next time! I'm off to buy bus tickets to Zambia!

timshel

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.'”

-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Homemade bridges connecting Old Town in Lilongwe.

Choice is a beautiful, beautiful thing. In a way, uncertainty has kind of always been the ugly caterpillar in my life. But over the two months I have been in Africa, it has been morphing into a butterfly (forgive the kitsch).

I am beginning to feel myself embrace the moment of choice that comes with limbo, the “Thou mayest.” The “Thou mayest not.”

It is standing at the edge of a swaying platform with my eyes closed. It is stepping onto a bridge when I cannot see the other end. It is that moment in the air as I flip--that second before I hit the water.

I don’t know anything, and thus, it is in this moment that I must live.

Thou mayest do all things. Thou mayest not.

But, the most beautiful of all things beautiful: In all moments, but especially this moment, thou livest.

It is all one can really be cognizant of at times like these, and I have never been more aware of it, although I feel the countdown beginning to wind down.

For now, I choose to bask in the delicious uncertainty, this blessed permission to enjoy the idea of choice before it flies into the sunset--this brief interlude before the quivering timelessness transforms itself into decision.

good reads

I've been reading a quite a few books in the last little while, especially as the research over here has slowed down a bit...Interpreter of Maladies (an extremely intimate look into the everyday lives of various Indian Americans), The Great Gatsby (This book. These characters. Gosh, I can't WAIT to see the movie once I'm back in America!), Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction (I had to read it twice--J.D. Salinger is genious! I can't believe the only work of his I'd read before this summer was Catcher in the Rye), Wuthering Heights (What strange, despicable, powerful, strong, possessed, intriguing characters--I finished it one evening, and reread all the best parts the next), and Anna Karenina.

Anna Karenina.

Nicolle gave me her copy of Anna Karenina last night. The power was out, but I wasn't quite sleepy yet, so I grabbed my flashlight and decided that I'd read just a chapter or two. But Tolstoy sucked me in and two and a half hours later, my left shoulder was cramped from holding the flashlight and my right arm had fallen asleep. I put it away for the night, only to pick it right back up this morning.

I am currently at page 420.

It is addictive. It is beautiful and devastating and inspiring, and I can't put it down for long.

I read Anna Karenina once before, but it didn't leave a lasting impression upon me. In fact, I rather remember thinking that I had to finish it if only because it was such a classic. Maybe I wasn't ready for it, or maybe I didn't really understand the story. I don't know what it was.

But books deserve second chances--and I'm so glad I gave it a second chance. It may be one of the most powerful books I have ever read. 

a sea-change

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange...
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest

That's part of Ariel's song, the one that he sings to Ferdinand as he guides the young prince to Prospero. It's a beautiful song, but I think that these few lines are my favorite. They're brilliant, because at this point of the story Ferdinand believes his father to be drowned.

One would think such a situation would be devastating, not brilliant. And, it is. But Ariel, that ingenious airy spirit, offers such beautiful words. Such marvelous comfort.

To transform an idea so awful as a rotting underwater corpse into something so magical. To suggest that even the ugly can yield beauty, that death can yield something more than dust and bones, that the tragic--that all the tragic, and not just King Alonso's supposed death, or any death actually--can perhaps means something more than tragedy, that it could actually be a means of molding us into something stronger, better, fairer, or something closer to the sorts of things that make up an elusive perfect world.

There are so many tragedies, rotting dreams, decomposing circumstances, pasts that could eat away at your skin. In short, there is so much pain in the world. The phrase sounds trite and overused, and I am cringing as I say it. It is the kind of overused where well-meaning people shake their heads and feel sympathy for all the orphans in the world before they say something like "Let them eat cake" because they don't realize that there is no cake to be had in such places of pain. Sometimes, there aren't even breadcrumbs.

I went to two orphanages this week with a group of people from NuSkin Japan. At one of the orphanages, a little girl named Nancy latched onto my side for the afternoon. She was bright, and smart, and so happy, and as we were laughing together at a joke, she grabbed my hand and looked up into my face and seriously asked, "Will you be my mom?" And I laughed.

I laughed because I didn't know what else to do. I thought about all the other people who had told her yes, or no, or perhaps just laughed as I did, and then left her. I thought about how long it would take her to stop smiling and laughing and playing with all the orphanage visitors, how long it would take her to realize that too many of them came to see her because she was an orphan, not because they necessarily wanted to take her out of it. And I felt slightly guilty, because I saw the older orphans, the teenagers who were standing back, watch us with their unreadable dark eyes, and I knew that they knew as well as I did that after we had toured their orphanage, seen their bedrooms and paltry belongings, played with the little ones, and patted ourselves on the back for spending time with them and giving them vitameal, that we would leave and not look back. And I wondered how long it took those ones to figure out the game, how many rejections it took before they stopped amusing visitors in the vain hope of gaining a family.

And so when I told Nancy, "I can't," it broke my heart, because whether or not the phrase was rehearsed or how many people she'd told it to, whether or not she said it with a little shard of hope, whether or not she knew what was happening, she didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve anything of what had happened to her--she was just a kid, and she just wanted to belong somewhere. And I wanted so badly to give her something more, to let her know that she was important, that she belonged, that all the rejection in the world couldn't take away who she was. I wanted to assure her that I wasn't exploiting her, using her, playing with her emotions. That the orphanage and all of their sad stories weren't just an ethnographic experience. But I couldn't, because in that short moment, I wasn't sure myself, and I couldn't have told you why I was there if you'd asked me. It was a horrible feeling, because I felt like I was learning something at her expense, because I did grow up in that 20-second span of life, and I still had nothing to offer her. And as I said, "I can't," because I didn't want to lie to her, all I could do was hope and pray that even with all the ugliness and tragedy in her life, that nothing of her doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

The NuSkin Japan people brought polaroid cameras and took tons of pictures and gave the pictures to the kids. The kids loved it, and collected them like they were Pokemon cards. Nancy gave me one of her treasured polaroids to remember her by, and I told her that I would, so...here she is!

meet nancy!

If even death couldn't stop the wondrous process of a sea-change, there's got to be hope for the diseased, the orphaned, the brokenhearted. Can tragedy wreak its havoc upon us and can grief bring us to our knees and can the crushing weight of all the uncontrollable forces in the universe rest upon our shoulders, and can we still lose nothing of ourselves but that it be transformed into something beautiful? I hope so.

And perhaps most importantly, can we play a role in that, in enacting sea-change? In ourselves? Most definitely. In others? I believe so. We are asked to bear one another's burdens, to mourn with those that mourn, and to comfort those that stand in need of comfort. To help transform pain into relief, into something beautiful, more whole. I need to figure out my role in all of this--how can I best accomplish this? I'm not sure yet.

Sea-change. See change. Here's to limiting decomposition and stagnation, to encouraging transformation. Here's to doing it with the help of God, the stubbornness (and brokenness) of our own selfwill, and the love of others. May we always give love, and may we learn to accept it.