Nov 1: Birthday Weekend

I can’t say that my birthday weekend started off the way I had expected. I was given an early birthday present on Friday morning on my way into Blantyre. As I was getting of a mini-bus I was pick pocketed. Immediately I knew realized what had happened and I started to freak out. Luckily, there were students from the college that had made this trip with me and Young one of the other DI’s. Once I said someone pick pocketed me they all said one thing to the mini-bus driver who comes to the school daily and he proceeded to walk into a crowd of around 50 people and came straight back with the guy that took my wallet. I again wanted to give this dude a piece of my mind, but instead he took 500 kwacha for going to the trouble of giving me back my wallet. I gave the bus driver a few hundred kwacha for helping me. I really could have cared less about the 3500 kwacha that was in my wallet, I was much more concerned about my visa debit card that I do really need. It would have been a VERY big hassle if I would have had to cancel it and have commerce bank send me a new one, especially for this weekend. After this little experience and a couple of unfortunate things that happened to my friend Chihiro and one of her Japanese friends a few weeks ago, I will not let myself become comfortable again while I’m here. Some Malawians truly do deserve the title, “the nicest people in the world” and some of them do make this the warm heart of Africa, but at the same time the second that you let your guard down or start to feel the slightest bit comfortable and trusting you will be taken advantage of or robbed. My mistake Malawi, it won’t happen again. Lawrence and his brother Grisham said that it won’t just happen to tourists or foreigners, if they as Malawians let their guard down, the same thing will happen to them. I know it is the same all over the world, but it just really sucks that so far in my traveling life I am 0-2 on were you robbed while traveling overseas alone? The rest of my Friday was quite nice. I went to the DAPP country office in Blantyre and used GREAT and FAST internet for really the first time since I have been here. It was much needed since I had a couple of projects I really needed the internet to finish. In the early afternoon I went to lunch with the other DIs from Amalika. We ate at the Hong Kong restaurant. I was super excited to have Chinese food and the two Asian DIs Chihiro(from Japan) and Young(from South Korea) were also very excited. The restaurant looked exactly how most American Chinese restaurants look, so I got a little giddy that the food might be the same way. Needless to say, my hopes were soon after crushed when they brought out our food. I ordered the specialty item of orange chicken, it was the medium size and there were maybe a total of 8 pieces, it was like paying 100 kwacha per piece. Besides the size of the dish the chicken tasted awful, but I plugged my nose and got it down. Alberto the DI from Spain ordered Mu Shoo Pork. His dish came out on a salad plate and it was full of thick noodles that you might see in homemade chicken noodle soup, large chucks of rubbery scrambled eggs, a few mushrooms here and there, and about 4 specs of pork that didn’t exactly taste like meat. After lunch the DIs surprised me with a small chocolate birthday cake and a chocolate bar. It was a nice little pre-birthday celebration. After we left the restaurant we walked around town for a while, then Young and I went and met Lawrence at Shoprite. Lawrence took Young to her friend Jenny’s house and then we went to the store and back to Lawrence’s house for dinner. After dinner we watched Coming to America and a very good bootleg copy of “The Goods”. I spent the night at Lawrence’s house, it was nice and I had a great mosquito net so my night was a little hot, but mosquito free.
On Saturday we started off the day looking for houses. I went with Lawrence and his brother Grisham to 2 potential houses. We had to pick up the real estate agents at different areas of the town and then they gave us directions to the house. It was a little different process than what goes on in the states. I’m sure my Aunt Mary would love to have potential buyers come pick her up at Country Club Christian Church when they were interested in seeing one of her properties. After the real estate agents showed us the houses we dropped them back off and gave them bus money for their time. One of the two properties was for rent and the other was for sale. The house that was for sale was a fixer-upper, but the lot the house was on was huge. It actually was a 3 bedroom house and garage, with a sitting area, bathroom, and kitchen plus a 2 room servant’s house. The property had enough room in between the two houses for a garden and laundry lines. It was a huge property for Malawi and it was selling for 1.5 million kwacha or $9,375.00. The owner was also selling the lot next to the house which was a little bit bigger for 150,000 kwacha or $937.50. Taking both of the lots and combining them you would have enough property to build a house on Ward Parkway and add a 50 meter swimming pool all for a little over $10,000 dollars US. If you actually wanted to construct mansion and the pool you might spend an extra $25,000 at the very most and you would have a VERY nice house. That night I had dinner with Lawrence and his family at a place called TJ’s. It was a very small, but nice restaurant. It was a lot more upscale then what I have been getting used to during my first month. Lawrence also invited his niece Diwinner(sp) and two of her friends. He gave a little speech about how he hopes and expects that all of the people will take care of me after he goes back to the US since I will be in Malawi for my b-day, thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. At the end of dinner we had some traditional Malawian cake, the cake was definitely special in its own way. It was very special for me to spend my birthday with such great people. After the restaurant, Lawrence, Grisham, Toco, Diwinner, Neaty(diwinner’s friend), and I went to my favorite club in Malawi to dance. I know you can’t read sarcasm, but we went to Mustang Sally’s for their Halloween party. Since it is owned by an American the club celebrates American holidays. I was surprised how international the club was, I think every European country was represented by a backpacker. There were even a couple Japanese guys there, but no other Americans. I am still in search of my first American. I really want to find an American for the simple reason of conversation. I have to speak so slowly when I talk here and still half of the time nobody has any idea what I am saying. I know a couple of the students are actually trying to learn from me and try to listen to me, but I have recently starting noticing that the majority of them aren’t even listening and they aren’t even trying to hide the fact that they don’t give a shit.
On Sunday I came back to Amalika and Charlotte also threw me a little birthday party. We had pancakes that she and Indu made, and we also had some hot chocolate. It was the first time that I have ever had milk and water hot chocolate. After we ate she gave me a really neat mahogany bowl. Overall, I would say that my birthday weekend was very nice, besides a few minor setbacks.