Helping with the Nsima

To describe the shock that the women of the Willima Koyi Guesthouse had when I offered to help with the cooking for the night would not do it justice. A male, a white male, a white male who was dashingly handsome (ok, they said cute), helping in the kitchen? Not to be believed. However, since I somewhat enjoy cooking and was fortunate enough to have opportunities growing up to help out in the kitchen, I thought mixing with the elder women might be fun and a learning experience. Boy, was I right! Donning my new haircut, I cruised into the cooking shed and saw a few pots on top of open fires. One of the pots was for the famed Nsima. Once we got the water boiling we mixed in the mixture of maize and stuff (dried cassava, etc.) that would eventually become the nsima. For the next 15 minutes, I stirred, using quite a bit of strength as the concoction was thick and lumpy, and I didn't want any of the guests blaming me for bad nsima. With my foot hovering above the open flame, and my back starting to ache from pushing the two foot wooden oar through the pot, I really began to appreciate the effort these women put in every night. For ten more minutes I crushed the lumps against the side of the pan and flipped the thick, mashed potato-looking starch. With a bead of sweat falling down my hairless brow, I knew this nsima would be a good batch. After letting it sit for a while, I scooped out the first bit and it was brought to a table to be tested by a patron. After the African couple had eaten most of it, the waitress informed them that I had prepared the nsima. They were duly impressed and said it was the best nsima they'd had all week. When the bill was paid, the waitress offered to split the tip with me, but since I had just loved my experience, I politely declined. And, could one really split 20 cents between two people?

All the best,
Christian Lugasse

Isaac comes in...

Isaac, the smiling young six year old boy confidently sporting the sunglasses to the right, is homeless and lives by himself on the streets of Mzuzu, Malawi. For the past 3 weeks he has been invited to have porridge at a school for Street Kids but has refused to enter, mostly seen sucking his thumb. According to the teachers at the school, each afternoon he has come close to the gate but has run away when they approached. We were fortunate enough to be in Mzuzu for a week and one of the teachers from the school attended our sessions. Emmanuelle, a 30 year old Malawian suffering with malaria, came to all the practices and participated as much as he could (between fits of chills and weakness). He learned our games and took on our coaching style of teaching and playing WITH A SMILE. He asked us to do an extra session for his 60 street kids, and we jumped at the chance. We arrived at St. John's school yard and found no indication that grass ever looked at the field let alone lived there. Yet,, through dust and wind, every child smiled, including Isaac. After the session, covered in dust (and me some sweat), we headed over to the house that served the porridge. During the 3km walk, I was scared for the kids crossing the busy streets, until I recalled that they lived on the streets every day. When we finally got to the gate, Isaac stayed behind, thumb in his mouth. Nick, pictured above, has a certain British charm about him, and worked some magic. Isaac entered the complex but remained to the side. When the porridge finally arrived, he hesitated to take some. However, with a little Christian silliness added in with Nick's incredible silliness, Isaac became a new man. In front of the camera I held, Nick and Isaac performed a fashion show, going so far as Isaac asking to borrow Nick's sunglasses. Hearing his laugh, recalling his smile on the pitch, and watching him eat a plate of porridge, I had to wipe some sweat from my eyes. It was sweat, not a tear;)
While we didn't change his life for good, we Coaches Across Continents made him laugh for a day. Boy that felt good. I thank each one of you for the support you gave in getting me over here. The experience will not leave me.

Many, many thanks,
Sweaty eyes Aviza

Mzuzu Circle of Friends

Here is an aerial view of a group of kids with which I worked. It does no justice to the fact that there were 200 of us in the circle I was leading...

Scary Clown arrives in Africa

As a proud and loving uncle, there is not much my family can ask that I won't try and do. A good example is my willingness to don a life size Barney outfit in 90 degree weather for a birthday party. Or, an Elmo, or Cookie, or even a full blown circus clown outfit. (I can hear the snickers through the web that my regular clothes can be confused with circus outfits - words hurt;). Clowns are often funny, but as parents from the Poltergeist generation know, clowns can be creepy too. And as my beautiful niece Jacqueline can attest, clowns can be somewhat scary at your 2nd and 3rd birthday even if it is your uncle!
Let me start by saying I have not been dressing up as a clown over here in Africa. However, many of the villages in which I am visiting are not often frequented by "mzungu" (translated to whites/westerners). While most of the children get exceptionally excited to spot us and scream MZUNGU as soon as they see us, one precious two year old had never seen a white person and apparently had never heard of one. So, imagine the scenario of me walking through a crowd of people and appearing on the other side to see the same horrified reaction that my niece gave to scary clown - tears and a blood curdling scream! My attempts at making her laugh at least stopped the tears but she would never come within 10 feet of THE BIG SCARY CLOWN.

Pondering the thought of my reaction to meeting a green person,

Uncle Christian

Blantyre Market Street Football

The last few Sunday mornings have brought me into a new side of Malawian life. At 7:30 in the morning, we pile into our hired 4 row, 12 passenger mini-bus (about the size of an American mini-van). The driver and his money collector, the four CAC coaches, the six Play Soccer Malawi coaches, and the twelve kids from Ndirande leisurely squeeze in and travel to the Blantyre Center Market. First though, we stop by the private primary school that is kind enough to lend us their small soccer goals. The nets comfortably slide into the van, and we're off. We arrive at a bustling, chaotic African Market with varied street vendors selling their wares. The shops, consisting of a few large branches supporting either a thatched or corrugated tin roof with no walls, stand next to each other on the sloping, dusty, dirt paths lining what probably is a lovely stream, save for the trash and possible rotting food waste. Among the goods being sold are pants, shirts and shoes that I suspect may have come to Malawi as donations. Additionally, there are text books for sale, cell phones, converters and access to one slot on an extension chord to plug in your phone for a charge (many homes do not have electricity or plumbing). After passing these shops we enter the more traditional "produce" section. Essentially we are in an old, beat up parking lot with much of the pavement crumbled and eroding in the corners. Replacing the pavement are puddles of mud mixed with ashes from burnt sugar cane bark, plastic bags (majumbo), banana peels and probably some other smelly unmentionables. I give this detail because in the far corner of the produce section the vendors move their buckets of sweet potatoes, their piles of sugar cane and their baskets of cassava to give us a 35 yard by 25 yard street football (soccer) field.

With the sun shining, we set up a small sided game, going so far as to line the street football field with some sort of chalk. It actually looks quite impressive. Within just five minutes the crowd surrounding the field creates a wall covering 3 of the 4 touchlines. Each wall is three people deep. The last sideline is actually a ten foot high brick wall on which 25 young boys climb to cheer on the players for the next two and a half hours. As I was not playing in the first game, rather the match was between some of the women from the Malawi National team and one CAC coach, I join the young teenage boys on the wall and lead them on some cheers and The Wave. Even though I am an older white man, they welcome me into their clique and we have many laughs (most at my expense in trying to speak Chichewa). I eventually learn that many of these boys are homeless and earn money for food by selling plastic bags (like those given out in supermarkets) to other vendors and patrons, an obviously small margin business. Seeing them laugh, enjoying the soccer and forming a bit of community makes my self-deprecation worthwhile. But even more importantly, I know that their attendance at this event allows the city to educate them (and other vendors) on health and sanitation issues as well as other life skills. These are the reasons for my involvement.
Even after just two weeks I can see a difference in the market. Less trash is scattered, waste is properly moved outside of the market, and most importantly, more smiles appear. According to the press, Sunday Street Football also has helped women gain respect in the community as the female players pull themselves up off the cement during the matches, with scrapes and cuts, and continue to play hard. Additionally, the media touts a stronger sense of community as a result.
The only problem with the venture is that I eventually have to play, against 16 - 25 year olds. By the good grace of all the soccer gods, I played respectably, scored a couple of goals, and limped the next day only as a result of age and not injury! Comically, one of the hostel cooks in Mzuzu (some 900 km north of Blantyre) approached me two nights later to ask if I played Street Football as she had seen me on TV. Yes, apparently our game was broadcast on Malawi National Television. The humor in that last statement is not lost on me. However, I can deal with the paparazzi in order to bring awareness of the program and all of its benefits to the entire nation;)

From the glare of the flashbulbs,
Cristiano

Chigamula

Over the last few weeks, I have been fortunate enough to see the real power of football by drawing kids to school and afternoon lessons.
Each day, in various neighborhoods (villages) surrounding Blantyre, we have assisted Play Soccer Malawi with their fantastic football and education sessions. We have taught such things as social equality, health (heart, eyes, lungs), and community leadership. My favorite was the sign language as no one, including my fellow coaches, knew that I knew quite a bit of sign. I saw 100 jaws drop when I did the alphabet with both hands.
Must run to another session.
Bo bo.

Bad bus, good bus

My 37th birthday began in a 5 bed dorm room in the top floor of a converted three story office building in downtown Lilongwe, Malawi. The scene was straight out of the Matrix with a blue mosquito net hovering above each cot, filling our heads with the needed skills for the 12 hour adventure that lay ahead. After a quick rinse in what I now appreciate to be an excellent, warm shower, I headed to the kitchen to grab a piece of toast and jam only to learn the power was out. A jelly sandwich became my celebratory nourishment. Three bites later, I was done and off to the Internet cafe a block away. Business people and ordinary citizens crowded the dry, dusty, orange-clay Lilongwe streets. Because we needed to travel to Blantyre that day, an ATM stop was needed to take out some Kwacha. However, with more than 30 crossed-arm, bored Malawians waiting in line, we deduced the outage extended beyond the hostel's four walls. We initiated Plan B and went straight to the Internet dungeon to check its status. The computers were on! I sat down at my kindergarten sized desk in an environment devoid of all illumination. After ten minutes, I had only been able to get one, two sentence e-mail off. Not Comcastic:( Suddenly, an alarm sound pierced our ears, but we didn't react except to laugh that it was better than the vuvuzela from the Confederation Cup games. [My theory on those is that some South African soccer fans stumbled on a box of New Year's Eve goodies meant for Time's Square and fell in love with the three feet long plastic horns (vuvuzela) and decided to torture opposing fans with their debilitating cackle.] When our chuckle subsided (the humour LCD has fallen pretty low), the cafe manager informed us that the siren indicated the generator was on the verge of its own demise. Soon, the computer faded to black.Back at the room we decided we needed to use some of our emergency US dollars. That saved our Kwacha for water and bus fare. With the prospect of a five hour bus ride ahead, I also splurged on some chocolate cookies (as a birthday gift to myself). I still deliberated between the 80KW and 100KW cookies and went with 80KW. (175KW = $1).With vital vittles in hand, we ventured to the bus stop arriving at 10:30. By 12:30, our 11 o'clock bus still had not shown, so we began making other plans. At 1:00 though, a 1980's commuter bus showed with a handwritten Blantyre sign in its window. Hooray! Two of us jockeyed in line, using our elbows and butts to establish position, only allowing 5 teenagers to leap in front of us in the queue. I successfully held 4 of the hard plastic seats for my comrades handling the luggage. We reunited shortly and idled for another 30 minutes, with street vendors hawking their wares through the bus windows - bananas, lollipops, fanta, milk, yogurt, eggs, slippers, sandwich bags of water and many other commodities. I passed on them all, but did think twice about the mice on a stick. Seemed too early to be THAT adventurous. To our surprise, we were asked to move to a more luxurious bus that had just pulled in to the depot. My jockeying skills were utilized again, with a renewed zest. Only 2 kids got through my Mutombo elbows this time. In our smaller, but cloth, seats we finally began the travels - at 2:30 pm. For the next 5 hours, we crossed some amazing Malawian landscape - individual, rocky mountains covering the horizon with vast dry plains at their feet, speckled with plump shrubbery or the African tree, interspersed among traditional huts or villages with fires aglow. The one cd of traditional tribal music added to the atmosphere, despite it being played at full volume. At least for a little while it was enjoyable. As night descended upon us, we approached the small town of Lirangwe, about 70 kms from Blantyre. We noticed the brightness and clarity of the numerous stars. With no interference from city lights or street lamps, the stars shone vibrantly. In fact, I noticed there were no lights at all, unfortunately that included our headlights. Soon we had to pull over as we almost hit 10 different walking or biking Malawians. After an hour of roadside fun, including me inspecting the fuse box of the 60 passenger bus, three of us went searching for an alternative means of transportation. With some struggle, we hailed a 1970's mini-bus to get a quote on a ride for five passengers with 10 bags. Almost immediately, two other previously hidden mini-busses appeared providing us with some negotiating leverage. Seeing competition at work was comical - drivers made various accusations ranging from claims that other buses had no gas to claims that the buses weren't actually going to Blantyre. Once I got us a reasonable price of 1000KW for everything, the big buses lights came on! We decided to roll the dice with the big bus to the disappointment of the mini-bus driver who pointed to it and said "bad bus." He pivoted and pointed to his bus proudly and declared "good bus." I apologized but knew my blog title immediately! With luck, we made it to Blantyre by 9:00 and were escorted to our rooms at the Malawi National Sports Council to rest in our bunk beds before heading to sites the next day. I set up my mosquito hut for the first time, squeezing it into my lower bunk space, much to the amusement of my friends. It must be pretty funny to see all 6'1" of me crawling into a 2'x2' pop up mosquito tent. I could, however, see an ounce of jealousy in their eyes when I pointed out it also meant none of the roaches could fall on my head. With that thought, the memories of the majestic landscape and the anticipation of the upcoming trainings, I soon faded off to black myself.