"public displays of affection"

Students waiting outside the school's administration office to find out what will happen to their sick classmate. PGSS, Chisitu, Malawi.

You will often see men here walking down the street holding hands or walking arm in arm. The first few time someone, a teacher here at the school, held my hand as he walked me to a class room I was more than a little confused. In the end it's a courtesy like many of the other things which people do here, it's just that instead of shaking hands and then letting go they'll keep shaking hands as the walk down the street or talk about whatever over a beer. Initially, seeing guys arm in arm at a bar, I had assumed Malawi was really open to gays. I was misaken. It turns that, in the words of one Malawian, gays are an 'azungu' (westerner) problem, since there aren't any gays in Malawi they don't have to worry about it.

Speaking of affection, I was surprised to learn that having a boyfriend is grounds for expulsion here at the Providence school, though the students I spoke to didn't know any who'd actually be expelled for having a boyfriend. The sisters mentioned that once or twice a year a girl here at the school will get pregnant (and the sisters will find out about it). Usually it'll be with a boy friend back home, but they could never say for sure, and they really weren't that interested. They said that when this happens girl will take the year off from school to get married and have the child and then, generally, will return the next year to continue her studies. They didn't know how many times a girl gets pregnant and simply quits school.

I awoke this morning to the sounds of students yelling. It wasn't the first time I'd woken up to this cacaphony, but it was the first time it lasted so long that I couldn't ignore it and go back to sleep. When I finally dragged myself out of bed and walked outside I saw a couple hundred students walking back and forth between the school, the freshmen and sophmore dorms, and the entrance gate. All of the girls were in uniform except for one, who everyone else seemed to be following. The girl, dressed in black slacks and a bright red shirt, was surrounded on both sides by two other girls I assumed to her friends, given that they were the only ones whose faces showed some worry, and not just curiosity. At first it looked like they were helping her, then it looked like they were restraining her, finally I saw them, and 4 or 5 other girls, carry the girl in red to the head mistress' office. I ran into Christina who was milling around not doing much, she had her notebooks with her but she seemed to hope that the commotion would go on, and delay the start of classes even more. I asked her what was happening and she said that the girl was sick in the head, I'm not at all sure what that means. Christina's english isn't quite good enough to explain whatever medical condition the girl has, and my chichewa certainly isn't up to it. After a while the girl in red came out of the head mistress' office, was escorted to the school's flat bed trunk and taken to the local hospital. I have no idea what was going on, nor what's happened since.

this picture was published on friday, may 08 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: 70.0 mm; shutter speed: 1/250; iso: 200. this image has the following tags: malawi.