Treez and My New Place

Intellectuals,
I moved into a new place. This ends a parade of caverns that I called home for the past month and a half. My new place, "Blessings House," (complete with a sign) is a sprawling set of buildings that I share with four sets of occupants. There is my intense landlord Calvin, who runs like four businesses/NGOs here in Malawi and speaks only in serious tones about trivial things and hates being interrupted. We had a conversation about soap preference that ended in a four minute monologue: "Chamomile is ESSENTIAL FOR YOUR SKIN!" There are an unknown number of Arabs living somewhere in the compound, the only one I really met, Assa, loves to party.

Monday at 6PM:
Assa: "You going out right now?"
Me: "Grabbing dinner, yep, you need anything."
Assa: "Just four smirnoff ices, some Chris Brown and [a ladyfriend]" (This was said in seriousness)

I'm going out with him Friday. The final group in my compound are a Chinese couple . He is never around and she speaks very little English, but is learning via five seasons of LOST. She calls me Jack Shepard, and every one of the arabs are known as Sayid. "Sayid, music always loud." She has promised more evenings of Lost reruns and pudding snacks, I cannot wait.

I spent this week in the bush of Cameroon, getting training in replanting trees, cutting them down, carving them up and packaging them, in that order. The work was exhausting, I actually went to sleep and woke according to the sun for the first time in my life, and I was re-introduced to a lovely night spent in a tent in the middle of nowhere, while it pours. We scoured the countryside for hints on the rare Mpinga tree and were lucky to find one that the villagers had already chopped down and were planning on transforming to charcoal. The scene was bleak. A community ravanged by HIV and mudslides, nestled into the foothills of the Malawi-Zambian border. To turn something so precious into so simple a commodity, these people were the sad combination of a miserable education and destitute situation. But we reimbursed the community for their troubles, planted three new trees and taught them techniques to care for them, gave them a number to call with questions etc. The town, which resembles an oil painting of green and brown swirls, may think twice next time.

Additionally, at one village we spent the night in, word was spread that I was a doctor. This resulted in a stream of people coming to see me about various ailments, even as I repeated that I wasn't a doctor. The worst of the bunch was a man with a deformation on his male unit, that caused too much skin on one side of it, leading to the appearance of it being bent. I might have nightmares for all eternity.

Finally my anecdote. While picking up groceries for my new place, I put down my full basket to examine the price discrepancies of biscuits. When I turned around, the nightmare of every shopper came true and it was gone. I asked employees if they had taken it and in utter desperation swept through the aisles in search of my basket. Finally, I reached the cues waiting to check out and I found someone actually holding my basket with all of its items. Who in the hell, would actually do that. Rogers, a mid-30s man who lived nearby and had been stalking me along the aisles and decided he liked me mixture of produce, home goods and cheese. He said he was sorry and that when I put it down he didn't think I wanted it anymore.

Only in Africa,
Steven