"Christina Michael"

sunset over the Providence School's chapel (no pictures of christina michael yet).

Spent today at another village, this one home to a student named Christina Michael. Her village is located directly next to a huge tea plantation, in an incredibly scenic piece of country side. Imagine yourself looking over small rolling hills, each covered in the greenest shade of green nature has ever made, there's a bright white sun directly over your heard and white fluffy clouds are moving lazily through the sky pushed by a lite breeze. Now imagine people, from this distance they're more like big ants, harvesting the tea leaves and dressed in every color ever put to fabric. Finally smell the pails of grapefruits which were just plucked from the citrus trees in the field behind you. Now what if you were actually there and not just imagining it? I don't want to make you jealous, but it's the truth, my day was prettier than yours.

Christina lives in a small brick house with her grand parents, her uncle (who oddly enough his her age) and probably someone else though I'm not sure. The road from the tea plantation to her house, about 20 minutes on a bicycle, was an almost townhouse-esque succession of relatively nice homes. Of course, I need to clarify that by "nice" I mean that the vast majority of them had roofs and windows, some of the roofs were steel (instead of wood and straw) and some of the windows had glass in them. On our way there, traveling in bicycle taxis, Ben and I managed to grab the attention of every child old enough to walk (and some that weren't), by the time we got to Christina's house I counted 36 little kids following us.

(How to have fun with kids, courtesy of Ben Chambers: Let's say you happen to find yourself walking down a dirt road with about 20 little kids following you. Walk normally and then, at some random point, turn around, throw your hands up in the air and shout BOO! as loud as you. Sit back and laugh while the kids run away screaming. This trick works best if you're 6'7" and have long hair.)

The major different between Idah's village and Christina's village is their proximity to other things. The most important of these things is the tea plantation which provides steady, if minimal, employment and the relatively large number of communal spaces within walking distance of her house: she's surrounded on all sides by other villages; there's a secondary and a primary school about 30 minutes away; a soccer field; a church; and a very nice rural clinic. Having all these things nearby allows for a much more active social life and a larger community of friends, this is in stark contrast to Idah's family which is almost totally secluded and cut off from the rest of the world, even if they're both of them live the same distance, geographically, from a market or city or other center. Since Christina's village has a lot more people, between it and the surrounding villages, Christina finds herself with a lot more friends her age. It's also fortunate that they all (or most of them) study, so nobody is jealous of the fact that Christina goes to has this scholarship to go study at the Providence school.

These 2 weeks Christina is going to summer school to help her prepare for her upcoming exams, so today I wasn't able to spend too much time with her. From what little I saw today it seems like Christina's life in the village is much more like what I'd expect, she goes to school, spends time with her friends before and after class and helps out at home when she's not studying. Tomorrow she's going to let me follow her around and see what a typical Saturday is like for her, it'll be interesting.

One thing you'll notice about the pictures, and my journal entries, is that little mention is made of adult men. I see a ton of children, a lot of women and some older men, but in the past three days in the villages I haven't seen any adult men. There's a pretty strong division of labor in this rural part of Malawi, the men work, either in the fields or in at the market, and the women stay home and tend to the house, except when there's a lot of work to do in which case they'll help out in the fields and then come back and tend to the house.

I haven't yet been to a village at night and may not be able to (though i'm trying to see if I can make it work). Tonight I stopped at a bar with Ben and a peace corp volunteer and had a few beers. It was almost strange to see guys just hanging out, chatting, having a beer, without any kids running around...

this picture was published on friday, april 17 2009. there is a full size version available. this picture was taken with a 24-70mm f/2.8 on a nikon d700. the settings when this was taken were: focal length: 24.0 mm; shutter speed: 1/125; iso: 200. this image has the following tags: malawi.