It's surprising to think, after I returned back to the life that I thought I knew and that I loved, how much I miss both the country and the work I did in Malawi.

Don't get me wrong. I like it back here at home. It's just far more different than I expected it to be.

I leave for Chicago in a week.

A few weeks ago, I would've thought that day would never come. Stuck in innate patterns, frustrated by bureaucracy, I would've thrown up my hands and asked how soon it would be until I've returned.

But now, as the days slowly wind down - as I've found myself making plans with friends, mentally visiting my family, in general acclimatizing back to life in the States, I can't help but shudder. All the things I found familiar and which I loved - the tall buildings and the different viewpoints - I'm trying to wrap my mind around, to little success. Of course, there are some things I genuinely love to the point of tears - fast internet, working computers and Asian food among them - but still, there are too many "lasts" for me to consider. All of this seems to be coming to an end much, much too soon.

As such, I've buckled down and come to the process of trying to hash out my report. "Trying" seems to be the word here, because frankly, where can I start? There's so much information to learn, to read, and so little time to compile it all. That, on top of losing my first draft when my computer crashed, has not left me with a positive experience of the writing process.

And yet - I can't help but write nonetheless, pages upon pages for each project, possibly twenty to thirty single spaced pages on my research and interviews alone. The thought of a program boiling down to only a few lines of text is heartbreaking, almost, compressed according to the objective opinion of a bystander. The thought of action into paperwork and bureaucracy is almost too much to take, and that sentiment, combined with my innate laziness and faltering work ethic, is not reflecting well on the programs.

Still, I'm not writing this report for honor or glory. I'm writing it for them. The people who have dedicated their lives to stopping the spread of the epidemic. I admit, I personally feel that I'm not doing these programs right justice. They have so much going on - they attempt to save the world one person, one community, at a time - and I'm just sitting here, documenting it all. I have nothing but awe for these groups, the CBOs who provide for their villages and donors in rich countries who feel like they're doing something, donating to the "poor in Africa".

But, who am I kidding? I'm just a bystander.

Yet, I can't help but remember some of the people I've met here. During one meeting, I sat with an HIV program manager as she tearfully described how her year-long grant was ending and her home-based care programme was in need of new donors or it would come to an end. I still remember her face - old, weathered, beautiful - as she turned to me with a twinkle in her eye as she said, "But you were referred to me, and I heard about your projct, and I thought - God, I am blessed for her arrival."

Take from that, dear readers, what you may. The next time you may hear from me will be a while from now - who knows? But, needless to say, this experience has been nothing short of amazing. I have nothing but thanks - the most sincere thanks imaginable - to everyone who helped to make this experience what it has become.

Before I start, let me get this straight: I am not a superstitious individual.

I'm not the type of person to cower in the relative safety of my room if I see a bad omen. Black cat crossing my path? If I know the cat well and it doesn't look annoyed, I'll maybe pet it. Ladder on the street in front of me? I'll walk around it - those metal bars which keep the legs from splaying apart hurt if you walk into them. Drop a fork or some piece of cutlery? I'd pick it right back up. Mosquitoes within my mosquito net? Just wave them out.

In short, I'm usually pretty dismissive of random instances... except for when they ruin the work I'm doing at the moment.

This morning, my Acer TravelMate 6292, running on Windows XP Professional, finally bit the dust. This was a complete surprise for me; I'm fastidious about modding my electronics so they last for a long time. This piece of equipment had gone through eight trips through Moscow's airport security - an extremely rough treatment, by any standard - as well as through trips throughout seven countries¹ in the three years since I acquired it in my first year of university. I was fastidious about backing it up, going through defrags and virus scans on a thrice-weekly basis, running university-specific shell commands and programs. For heaven's sake, I even modded the XP format and power consumption of the laptop. It was my baby, in short...and all of a sudden, it was working one moment and not the next. (My guess? It's a worm, but I'm not too sure where I would have gotten it.)

Sadly, my computer isn't the first electronic piece to bite the dust in the last twenty-four hours. My music player - my lovely 8 GB Creative Zen, capable of running pictures and videos (along with having an SD memory card capacity), died yesterday morning. Like the Acer, it was working one minute and gone the next. The 1,500+ songs I had on that music player - and the 13,000 that I had on my computer - are essentially gone, trapped on a hard disk system that I may not be able to get into until I get back Stateside in two weeks. Running the MP3 Recovery tool on it did nothing, as my device was unable to respond in the first place.

So, essentially, in a very short time frame, I've lost most of my electronic playthings. (Heaven forbid if my phone gets affected as well.) That computer, however, was not just for play. I wrote twelve single-spaced pages of my report, and suddenly that is gone as well, as I didn't have the foresight to upload my report on my hard drive this morning when I was working on it.

I hate to whine, but seriously, argh, why now? Just, why now?

...I'm just chalking it up to bad luck.

I should've had an inkling this morning, when I ended up going to work an hour late because my work driver forgot our contract ended two days later. But, ah well, if I've lost all my hard work, then I'm just going to grit my teeth and get back to it.

Hopefully it'll work out. Hopefully.

1. I'm sure someone was going to ask about this list, so for the laughs, here's the country list (excluding airports):
Singapore, the Philippines, China (including HK), Germany, the US, Kenya and Malawi.
(That totals up to 7, right?)
For the airports alone: Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Reykjevik (Iceland), Hong Kong (China), Schipol (Amsterdam - Netherlands), and of course, the infamous Moscow (Russia) airport.

An invisible giant, removing only one day at a time, will eventually dispose of an entire life.

-- John Updike, "The Sandstone Farmhouse"

*****************

What do you do if you realized your life as you knew it was coming to a close?

If everything that you ever worked for, 

thought of, 

and simply loved --

disappeared in the blink of an eye?

*****************

It's honestly weird for me to believe that my time here in Malawi is drawing to a close. The progression of time is not measured in the removal of obstacles, but simply in the dwindling of numbers. At this point, I can count (nearly) on my fingers and toes the number of days that I have left. Time has passed, from double-digit weeks to double-digit days and now -- now this. Essentially, I have two and a half weeks left here. My flatmates have left, as has my family. My school email address is slowly filling up with more and more work-related emails. These are milestones of sorts, but at the same time -- I almost feel my mortality ticking away, along with my blood pressure rising and a caffeine withdrawal kicking in, as I have to think about how to spend the last days before my last university year.

At this point in time, the workload has picked up. I'm scheduling back-to-back meetings with groups I've been trying to contact for months. I'm finally giving deadlines to my interview sources. I'm reading through my notes from the last two months and quoting documents while starting to write my final policy recommendation report. While it's a miraculous change of pace from the African-time to which I've actually become accustomed, it feels like the pace of Chicago, a gradation from a slow-paced lifestyle to the hustle and bustle of the big city.

*****************

Recently, I read the last post that I wrote on my Facebook profile, a single note about how to contact me over the summer. Reading it, I couldn't help but want to slap some sense into my three-month-younger self. My internal German was screaming at my conscience -- Mein Gott! Was habe ich gedacht?! Essentially, what was I thinking? 

Back then, youthful idealism ruled. Objectively, I was on top of my game. I was a go-getter. I was going to change the world. After all, I was going to work for the United Nations, my dream come true!

As the weeks wore on, I fell off my self-conceived pedestal. I learned to pick myself up from the pieces of ruined plans and failed ideas. As Steinbeck wrote, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I had to get off my soapbox, reconsider my motives and actions, realize that I was being arrogant, aggressive and self-interested -- and that to do my job effectively, I needed to have my pride and my sentiments in check. 

Despite having these lessons bashed in my head, despite weeks of wondering why I was doing what I was doing, thinking and contemplating with frustation on how to make my project actually work, I couldn't help but fall in love with this place. In finding my limitations with work and my project, the slow workpace endeared itself to me. The books and reports I was reading got more interesting; the policy recommendations were a refreshing change from remembering phosphorylation pathways.

Essentially, in finding where I couldn't go and what I couldn't do, I only got more interested in the field of development and diplomacy.

I realized that I was in love with not just the idea, but also the reality, of public health.

There is so much to do here in development that it's mind-blowing. I can say with a strong degree of certainty that when I leave here in a few weeks, I'm going to have a difficult time leaving. In seeing how people work in development, there is a large part of us that are hopeful, that feel like finally, we can change the world with our words. In the words of Hyde Park's most famous resident - yes, yes, we can.

Yet, as Kofi Annan said during his address at the 2002 African Union summit in Addis Ababa -- 

Let us be careful not to mistake hope for achievement. Let us not risk jeopardising what we have already achieved.

Essentially, I have hope for my future - but with hope comes hubris. Unwarranted pride. 

What have I done at the age of twenty-one? Nothing on the grand scheme of things. I have a long, hard slog ahead.

So, it's time to keep trucking, to work towards my goals. To finish off this policy report with aplomb.

*****************

As a closing note, at the risk of exposing my closet 80's music addiction, I give you Africa by Toto! Enjoy!

10_Toto_-_Africa_(Toto_Iv).mp3

(download)

Click here to download:

10_Toto_-_Africa_(Toto_Iv).mp3 (11.36 MB)

Dear Lilongwe, I never thought I'd admit this:

But I love your meat locker tendencies. There is no question about that. However, I don't love my inability to get up in the morning because it's so warm being in bed... and not being at work today makes this realization so much sweeter.

(Is this deep? No. Is it so very true? Yes, yes and yes.)

*****************

I know that I haven't been making my presence known on the internet for about a week already. Put it to a combination of working on lots and lots of pictures (and I mean lots) and actually having my workload pick up substantially! Needless to say, the last few weeks of my time in Lilongwe are going to be a combination of craziness and sheer insanity, but it's going to be the fun type, the type that I get at school! Or, so I hope.

I'll be gone for a bit and be out of town, but trust me, there are a few picture entries that will be coming, consisting of different areas of Malawi and Zambia... in the semi-near future.

*****************

As I evidentally lack a creative side at the moment, I decided to take a leaf from my friend's blog and re-hash (with her permission) a copy of her liability agreement, just because I thought it was clever, intelligent, witty... Okay, Han, I'll stop stroking your ego and present the small print of this site.

This Site (“kachirombo.posterous.com”) and its content are provided “as is” excluding warranties of any kind, either express or implied, to the fullest extent permissible under applicable international criminal law.  We accept no liability for the blogging frequency displayed on the site and make no warranty that the site will operate uninterrupted or sarcasm-free or that any defect in the Author’s atrocious knowledge of the Chichewa language will be corrected.

Except for liability which This Site (“kachirombo.posterous.com”) cannot by law restrict or exclude, The Author holds no liability to you or any third party for any direct, indirect or consequential damages (including loss of procrastinationable time), or any other damages of any kind whether based on warranty, contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise.  

Finally, This Site (“kachirombo.posterous.com”) does not sell or rent any personal data you may have inadvertently given away to the Author to any third parties. The Author does, however, happily accept the possibility of Cookies (“tracking technology”) or baking material for the creation of said Cookies as a bribe to improve the blogging frequency as displayed on the site. The Author refuses to question the morality of this statement.

As of a month from now, I'm leaving Malawi for good. But hell, I really, really can't bear to leave.

The last eight weeks have taught me a lot of things. It taught me things that were on my workplan and things that simply weren't. I learned how to experience, how to get out of my comfort zone and how to actually live. I struggled for a long time to find my niche, but I think I've found it - and it makes me so sad, so bitter that I've done far little here than I set out to do in June. Then again, I have just enough time to make an impact - and heck, I'm excited to do that.

I was right a long time ago - I only had to give the homesickness time to abate. It's time, essentially, to start kicking ass.

At home, I wouldn't complain about this type of weather. Indeed, I know that I, like so many of my friends, welcomed such weather after a persistently drearily cold Chicago winter with lows of -34°C (-30°F). In contrast, where I live in southeast Asia, it's always tropical, equatorially hot - approximately 33°C (91.4°F) - with temperatures routinely climbing past 38°C (100°F) in August.  In short, I've been used to weather extremes like none other - I've learned to live with them and embrace them as being a part of living where I am.

Yet, at home, I would have central heating. I would have warm blankets, soups and strews - warm things that would keep my core body temperature at its normal rate, preventing a source of bodily stress that shuts my immune capabilities down. I've been lucky here that fruits are plentiful and cheap - some examples are ten amazingly large Pink Lady apples for US$3 or six tangerines for about US$0.40 - and that we're never wanting for produce. But there are some things from home that I miss as a result.

When I left Chicago, I was meticulous about my packing. I anticipated that the cold weather would do something funny to my overall homeostasis. I had Robitussin cough syrup and Halls cough drops in my possession among the medical supplies I brought. And yet -- soon, my supplies were depleted. The cough syrup went to my friend, who was sick before I left for Malawi. The cough drops were distributed to co-workers who came down with colds. And soon - I was left with nothing. Given everything I had, I hadn't taken care of my resources well, and I was left in the dust after a certain point. Clearly, I realize that this was my fault - in my ever-present absentmindedness, I didn't think about whether or not I would actually get sick.

Needless to say, having four weeks of deep-seated sore throats and slowly declining energy levels - where it now takes me half an hour to peel myself out of bed in the morning - and, more recently, racking coughs that keep me up all night really wasn't how I was envisioning spending my time in Africa. It wasn't in my mind to complain about the situation and make my family panic, but eventually - I nearly had no other choice. (Warning to my family: pack warmly.) I don't have energy to really travel - but I will travel nonetheless over the next two weeks because I should make the best of the opportunity. Luckily, from a quick self-diagnosis, it's not malaria - because that doesn't affect the lower tracts of the throat - and it's not TB because I would've been coughing bloody sputum after a few weeks of being infected. I'm lucky in those regards, but I'm not sick enough to warrant going to a doctor. Sigh.

Ah, well. It's time to get some of the local cough syrup from the pharmacy and see how (and if) it works in comparison to the US stuff, or to the super-tasty honey cough syrup I tried when I was younger. Either way, I'm going to try to get better, learn from this experience, and see how I can spend the last few weeks I have here. At any rate, cheers.

12 Yesu Ndi Khomo.wma

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Click here to download:

12 Yesu Ndi Khomo.wma (4.59 MB)

"Jesus, he is entering", from the album Paphiri ndi Padambo, featuring Mofatt Mtegha.

Many thanks to Finn Magill for procuring the album for me, and Peter Mawanga and the Amaravi Movement for recording this album.

Due to the nature of my work – analyzing documents and data, interviewing faith-based organizations, writing policy recommendations – it’s easy to lose track of why I’m doing what I’m doing. I know the work is “important” and that what I write will actually make a difference. (It also is tremendously uninteresting to take pictures of, hence the lack of photos on this blog. Oh well.) Still, it’s hard, especially with homesickness, with missing “my” people, my family and my home, to see the real point of the work.

However, there have been exceptions to that rule.

During an interview with the Baha’i organization – a faith started in 1844 Iran, present in Malawi for the last fifty years and yet marginalized – I got on the topic of stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) with my contact. It was as if a sudden switch was flipped. The mood of the interview changed drastically; Marie* went from reserved, calm yet engaging to completely teary-eyed, loud and emotional.

Like so many other children in Malawi, she was an AIDS orphan. She saw her mother die from AIDS when she was seventeen, right after she finished high school, and her father die a few years later. She had to take care of five siblings by herself and put them through school – and yet, her faith (which she had converted to, along with her parents, in her teens) kept her strong. She felt it was her moral obligation to take care of her siblings, because it’s what both her parents and her religion would have expected of her.

Yet – the part which I’ve grown so painfully familiar with through hearing people’s stories – was the method through which her family contracted HIV. There were eight of them in the house; only her father was employed as a housekeeper, making only US$20 a month. Her mother, because of a lack of both gender empowerment and cultural norms, wasn’t able to get a job. Rather than let her family starve, Marie’s mother had no choice but to use her beauty and shortchange her dignity. She traded sexual favors for money from rich men, for they had no other way of feeding the family - and it was by that method that she contracted AIDS. She spread it to her husband, who died a few years later. Yet, through her emotional depiction of her family, Marie made the point clear. Her mother was not promiscuous by choice. She wasn’t sleeping around for fun. She had no intentions of deliberately ruining both her life and that of her family. She merely had no other option of getting her family out of poverty, of making a better life for her children.

I know that we’ve progressed to embrace more female empowerment and acquired more effective ART therapy here in the last decade. Yet, the situation has not gotten much better for most people here. Needless to say, it’s one thing to have Paul Farmer talk about 'structural violence' - where the prevailing cultural and socioeconomic systems betrays the poor - and a completely different thing to see it, to hear it, in your own conversations with your interviewees. It’s heartbreaking. I know that if I had heard about this story a few months ago, I would’ve taken it to heart. And yet – despite feeling Western guilt, now, I consider myself lucky. I am where I am. I’m making a difference. I’m trying to get people involved in the HIV legislation, trying to get faith-based PLWHA more involved in affecting policies. Different faiths or not, my beliefs in humanity have been getting crystallized the longer I’ve been here. We’re human and we’re all equal, and nothing’s going to change that viewpoint.

* not her real name