Living at Namitembo

Living in Namitembo

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After nearly 5 weeks, I am beginning to feel like I know my way around a little. Today we studied a map of the general area, and I could point to a few spots where roads intersect and say, “I know that corner.” Mostly though, the huge valley where we live, the surrounding hills (known as “the plateau”) and the higher hills in the distance have a peaceful sameness. They are green, covered with fields of marketable crops such as maize, tobacco, soybeans, peanuts and cotton with occasional banana, mango, papaya or lemon trees lending shade. The maize is tall now. Pumpkins are often planted between rows and the yellow blossoms peek through the greenery.

Each single home has its own family garden with crops such as maize, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and cabbage. Chickens are all over, like squirrels at home. Five of them are strolling around on the grass right outside my window right now. Around here, goats are often walked on leashes, like we walk our dogs. Houses are made of red bricks, sometimes covered with white plaster. Roofs are thatched grass or, for the affluent, corrugated metal. There are usually two or three smaller buildings near a house, one for bathing, one for storing maize and one chimbudzi (pit toilet). Yards are swept clean. There is no debris except for an occasional pile of loose bricks awaiting another project. Cooking is usually done on the kondi, a covered verandah, which also serves as a place to gather as the light fades in the evening.

Returning to the mission after dark last night, I saw a few lighted windows. Some houses have electricity. Some light seemed to be from emergency lanterns and other windows were surely lit with candles. Many windows were dark.

The comfortable, two-bedroom house that Chet and I occupy is on the edge of the mission compound. It was built by an American family as a gift to the mission a few years ago. It has electricity and inside plumbing, a small kitchen, living room, plenty of storage, ceiling fans and great ventilation. The house backs up to Fr. Phillip's "farm," a demonstration operation consisting of many vegetable beds and a large tent- like structure that houses hundreds of small trees. Workers go there to hoe every morning about 6. Salespersons know where our back door is...it's outside compound walls...so we get plenty of offers. I recently decided against a candle holder carved in the shape of foot with the big toe pointed to the sky.

The rectory, a three-room guesthouse, our house, a storage building and garages for four vehicles are in a circle around a grassy (sometimes muddy) compound area, which is fenced. Outside the gate a road leads to the maize mill, the church and several other buildings that used to be the residence and parish offices. One of them has been converted to a youth center. About the distance of a block in one direction is the primary (1-8) school and a couple of blocks in another direction is the secondary (9-12) school, the new Namitembo Montessori Nursery and further on, the Trade School which has classrooms and workshops for computers, woodworking, tailoring (treadle sewing machines) and brick laying. The computer classes are not held there yet because there is no electricity in the trade school. The wiring is in, but everything here happens in its own time. There are nice houses for teacher’s families near the schools. Teachers are reluctant to take jobs at this outpost, so providing decent housing is one lure. There are also several dorm type buildings for trade school students.

School uniforms are required for primary and secondary schools. I’ve seen blue, green and deep red ones. Here at Namitembo the uniform policy is quite lenient right now because of the present food crisis and resultant money shortage. Only about half of the children come in uniform and about a quarter of them come barefoot. They carry their exercise books and pens or pencils in little cloth bags, plastic grocery bags and occasionally, wrapped in old chitengis, rather like Japanese furoshikis.

We have a huge rain storm about once a day, sometimes all day. If you are driving along the dirt road. rain guarantees mud, which often makes the road like an ice rink. I've twice had the pleasure of being in a stuck-in-the-mud vehicle. Yesterday as I walked to the nursery there was a 12 foot wide stream running across the road. The children encouraged me to take off my shoes as they were. Instead, I elected to have traction, and waded in, shoes and all. Luckily it’s very warm, and the shoes dried by morning!

Sometimes we go to a village market and we've been to the town of Zomba and the city of Blantyre three times. I'm interested in the variety of things you can find in stores. Here are a few essential things stocked near a checkout yesterday: worm medicine, condoms, pain med, antacid, ibuprofen, waterguard powder and, of course, candy.

It gets light about 5:30 a.m. and is dark by 6:30 p.m. They say the amount of light only shifts about 20 minutes all year long this near to the equator. As we drive along roads lined by tall green grass, I think about how it will all be brown and burned or cut down by July. I'm glad we are here now. It is beautiful. It reminds me of Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight. The kid-book Galimoto has a number of familiar scenes as well, especially the page about the maize mill. I quite often see little boys pushing their galimotos on the road.

With internet access, electricity and occasional BBC, CNN or sports network TV, there are things to do at night, if the power is on. If not, we have good flashlights and books! As I type, Sarah from Manchester and Fr. Frank from Liverpool, England and Fr. Owen from Ireland are watching British soccer on TV. One language difficulty I’ve had is keeping up with the great variety of English that is spoken around here! Pudding means dessert, nappies are diapers and half-six is 6:30, to mention just a few!