After a month of living at the isolated guest house Mabvuto and I decided to move to his house. I’d spent a few nights there and thought I’d like to live a more authentic Malawian life. The deciding factor was when we found that none of the electrical outlets worked and the management appeared to be in no hurry to fix the problem. My friend Harry’s wife also unwittingly played a major role in my decision to move to town. I had had a short chat with her at the “bore hole” a few days before our move. Her warmth and interest in me was refreshing and very appealing. I wanted to have more of that.

We moved into town on a Saturday. On Sunday Ireen, Mabvuto and I went to the market. When we returned from the market Mabvuto announced that we’d forgotten to buy “food” (meat). He immediately left to return to the market. It takes about forty minutes to walk from his house to the furthest market. Two hours after he left a boy showed up carrying a frozen chicken. He told me that Mabvuto would be back in one hour. He was apparently in town discussing a football match. Six hours after leaving me alone with his niece who spoke very little English, in a house with no indoor plumbing Mabvuto returned. He was very drunk. I was very angry. He seemed surprised by my anger but did agree not to behave in that way again.

During that first week in his house Mabvuto left me alone 4 times to go drinking with his friends. Once I was with him and I left the bar because I was feeling ill and the idea of sitting around drinking beer was not at all appealing to me. I tried to remind myself that in Malawi there is little else to do but go to a bar and drink with friends. I spent most of this time alone in his house reading or doing reports for the orphan care. When he came home drunk in the evenings we often had tense discussions and he went to bed early. It was lonely and depressing. I decided I would try to return home earlier than I’d planned.

The following weekend Mabvuto’s friend Simwacka promised to take me to a village so I could see traditional dancing. The Olympics had just begun and Mabvuto and I were desperate to watch some of the events. Again on Sunday we went to the market where we coincidentally met Simwacka. Mabvuto asked him if he knew of a good place for watching the games. Simwacka suggested a few places and then Mabvuto told Ireen and I to go home. He said he was going with Simwacka to find a place suitable for watching Olympics. This was at about 10:30 in the morning. Ireen and I headed home.

I was insulted by the fact that I had not been asked to join the adults but I didn’t put up a fight. I was trying to show respect to a culture I didn’t understand at all. By this point I was feeling closer to her than to him anyway. I’d spent a lot of time with her laughing, cooking, washing and shopping. On our way home she spoke about her mother and her step-siblings. We spoke about the possibility of her and I staying alone together next year. I felt very close to her. I felt that we had formed a strong bond. That was the last conversation I had with Ireen. I didn’t yet know that my unhappy stay in Malawi was about to become almost intolerable.

Share This: