Not Just For Halloween Anymore

Three Christians, a Muslim, and a Jew were walking down the road. Actually it was four Malawians and an American. Or maybe I should say, a teacher and four students. Regardless, we were walking down the road talking about the same old things that students always ask me outside of school- religion, my relationship with Jesse, and first and foremost: where am I walking to. But today there was a new topic of conversation to add to the list, that concern of students around the world- the results of the exam. The last week has been final exam week for the end of term one. Nothing has more accentuated the differences between American schools and my experience with Malawian schools than participating in the entire production of writing, submitting, editing, organizing, administering, regulating, and most of all grading these exams. (In case the reader is not aware, today I finally finished grading the endless stack of 71 mathematics exams and 68 biology exam.) I’m not sure I can give the whole process the description it deserves in the few minutes I have now before I must pack for my trip in the morning down to Mt. Mulanje (where I’m looking forward to a relaxing week hiking in the mountains). I need some time discover how my views of schooling have shifted in the last few weeks and synthesize the things that I still hold true with the revelations I am experiencing here. Hopefully I will have some time on the mountain for a bit of thinking. So, while waiting for a treatise on education, my readers will have to make do with my story about a more mundane, though no less important, topic.

I have recently discovered a new food to add to the weekly rotation of meals. Pumpkins or “maungu” look and taste like a cross between your average friendly jack-o-lantern and an acorn squash. They are sweet, delicious, and cheap. One pumpkin costs about 25 kwatcha (15 cents) and will last for two dinners. Even better is that I can make a pumpkin-peanut soup and Jesse has recently discovered how to make a mouth-watering coconut squash curry using fresh coconuts from the tree out back. Dinner is now much more of a meal to look forward to.

We first sampled maungu on a trip a few weeks ago to Maldeco. The week before I had mentioned that I was going to go to Maldeco on the weekend and one of the teachers- Mr. Piyo immediately invited us to his home there. He wanted to show us around town and introduce us to his family. We set a time to meet of 2:00 at the bus station. Well, as things go in Malawi, there were no matolas to catch and since this was the pre-bicycle era, we ended up walking the 5km to Maldeco arriving 30 minutes lat. Of course Piyo was not at our predetermined meeting locale. Figuring that he had gone home after getting tired of waiting on us we set out to find his house. It only took asking three people before we were led by an eager-to-please student directly to Piyo’s family’s house where we were met by Piyo’s father and mother and sister and brother, but no Mr. Piyo. Word travels quick around the small town of Maldeco and after 20 minutes of waiting Piyo shows up at the house oh-so-pleased that we came- he thought we had decided not to come after he had told his mother and everyone that we would be arriving. That’s small town Malawi for you, not so different from small town anywhere I suppose where you can navigate on the good-will of neighbors alone.

As I said earlier, it was at Piyo’s house where we first tasted maungu. After dining on the largest cucumber I have ever seen he asked us to wait while his mother cooked up some pumpkin from their garden for us to try. He informed us that the pumpkin is a relative of the cucumber and that pumpkins are what Malawians eat when they don’t have food. By food he means “chimanga” or corn, which is used for practically everything. I couldn’t tell by this comment whether Malawians values pumpkins or not, and still was unsure after he sent us home with three from his garden.

Our colleagues and neighbors seem to be amused by our penchant for maungu. I get the feeling that it is a poor man’s food and not a delicacy usually eaten by white folks. Whenever a friend hears that we like pumpkins they immediately offer, “oh I’ll bring you some from my garden”. There seem to be many relatives of the cucumber growing in family gardens in this area. A favorite of mine looks like an inflated banana. It is some type of melon since when I first bought one the smell was so much like a cantaloupe that I was stunned when my first bite tasted nothing like a sweet fruit, but more like a pasty bagel. However, after refrigerating and mushing it up with lemon juice and sugar it makes a delicious substitute for ice-cream.

I look forward to tasting my first real ice-cream in months tomorrow when we go to Blantyre to apply for a 6-month residence permit. The word ‘residence’ feels so much more permanent than anything we have done so far. It’s the next big step I suppose, so long as we are not rejected, in which case friends in the States may be seeing us sooner rather than later. Here’s hoping for a friendly immigration staff and continued Malawian living because. Look for my next blog post after we get back from our adventure south.