"sing like you care"

Idah Savala (center, second row) and other members of her church singing during Sunday services.

Idah let me accompany her to church and then the preacher gave me free roam to take pictures, I couldn't have asked for more. There was a lot of singing and dancing, the first 30 minutes at least were basically one long song. This was followed by a lot of reading from the bible (in chichewa of course) and then a long sermon. The preacher spoke directly to God (i'm assuming), his head was tilted upwards looking at the sky, his attention never falling on the faces seated before him. There were children playing everywhere during the entire service, the adults ignored them 80% of the time, except when they got in the way in which case the kid would be unceremoniously booted out of the way, in a manor not unlike how I shove my dog around when he's blocking the bathroom door. I am not a church goer, so my experience in this is pretty limited, but there was a feeling of vitality at this small rural church which I'd never felt at a religious service before. Even the sermon was done with such passion, and at such a high volume, that I got swept up in it, and I didn't understand a single word of what they were saying. It all lasted just under two hours, and by the end I don't think there was a single person who hadn't in some way taken part, either through singing, reading, playing the drums, chanting or just getting up and clapping a beat. If you ever find yourself in Malawi on a sunday morning, go to church.

One of my questions before coming was: How do you spend your day in a small Malawian village? Thanks to Idah I now have a good idea of the answer, and it's mainly farm work. From planting to harvesting to tilling there is always something which needs to be done either in the fields or back at home to prepare the crops for sale or consumption. Other than that there's a lot of cleaning which needs to be done constantly. I was surprised this morning to find that the dirt patches between the homes had been swept. Ben told me that they do this to make sure grass doesn't grow since it can hide snakes and during the wet season becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes. There is also a lot of cooking to be done, Idah guessed that it takes about an hour to prepare every meal, a little less for rice which is faster and easier to cook than nsima. There is no way to conserve food, so while everything is eaten fresh (which is nice) it also means that everything has to be prepared from scratch every time. They eat twice a day, lunch and supper, for the 6 or 9 months after harvest and once a day during "famine season", which is the period right before the harvest. Just for the sake of it I'm going to list all the things, excluding for plants, animals and food, I saw at Idah's village yesterday: There's a bamboo mat she shares with 2 of her sisters to sleep on, I saw a few blankets as well but no pillows. She has a suitcase with her clothes in it (the same suitcase she uses when she's at the School), no closet though and since I didn't see any clothes lying about I'm going to assume she keeps her clothes in there. I would have to guess that Idah, due to her school uniforms and spending some of her pocket money on clothes has more clothing than most of the people in her village, but I need to ask her (for what it's worth I certainly didn't see a lot of clothing around). Idah also has a number of notebooks and pens, other girls and boys her age, who go to school, would also have some stationary but probably not quite as much as Idah. There are no closets anywhere, so any clothing they do have must be neatly kept in maize sacks. There was some soap, but no shampoo. This shouldn't be a problem since everyone's hair is cut very short her, a little variety in hair styles amongst women, but not a lot and none at all amongst men. Her mother has a calendar and a mirror hanging on the wall in her bedroom and a beautiful piece of black and yellow and green cloth she uses as a window shade, but nothing else (her mother's room is also the only building, of the 4 Idah's family has) with a window. I saw a number of people, older men mainly, with portable radios, very useful when you have to sit in the same spot and remove dried maize off the cob for days on end. I heard a lot of music on the radios but nothing that seemed, to me and my chichewa ignorant ears, like sports. They also had a number of pots, pans, plates, cups and a few (literally only 3 or 4) spoons, forks and knives. Finally there were a number of machetes, hatchets and I'm going to assume some other random farming tools stowed away somewhere. Since the harvest has just ended any tools they had used for that would already be put away. That is, to the best of my knowledge, an exhaustive list of everything Idah's family has.

So that's how you live off a couple hundred kwatcha (a few dollars) a day. Eat only what you grow, trade what you have left over for food you can't grow, live only in houses you can build and maintain yourself, and have very little else. Assuming the crops are good every year, assuming you don't get sick, assuming there's never a big fire, assuming the river doesn't flood, basically assuming nothing really ever goes wrong, then you just might grow old.

Towards the end of the day Idah took me down to the river, a short walk from her house, where they wash their dishes, clean their clothes, bath and fish.

I'd never seen anyone fish by hand before and at first I thought they were just kidding with me since I didn't see any nets. A number of people, though I only saw girls working yesterday, will work together to build up little dams in the river and thereby create small pools of still water. While some of them are building, and rebuilding, these small dams someone else will stand over the pool and look for fish, if they see one they'll try to grad it with their hands. If they don't they'll let the dams collapse and start over again. There river is fairly shallow, never more than 30 or 40 centimeters deep and moves slowly. During this time of the year the bottom of the river is made of soft light red/brown colored mud (I don't know what it's like in the middle or end of the dry season but I assume it's very different). Therefore creating these small dams and pools isn't very hard to do, but you do need to do it over and over and over again in order to catch anything (let alone enough to feed you for a few days). I don't know how long they'd been there when I showed up, but it was late in the afternoon and all I could see in their bucket were a few crabs (which for some insane reason they don't eat), a few huge snails and a tiny anchovy like fish.

Shortly before I left Idah prepared and gave me a bag of freshly roasted (still warm) peanuts, these were peanuts that a few days before were still in the ground, that morning they were still in their shells. Without a doubt the best peanuts I've ever had.

this picture was published on sunday, april 19 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: 52.0 mm; shutter speed: 1/125; iso: 1600. this image has the following tags: malawi.