Back from Malawi

Wow - what an insane month that was...

I'm always shocked by how busy I am whenever I go to Africa. I pack my suitcase chock full of books I'm just certain I'll be able to read, and I usually never have time to read any of them. This time I not only packed books, but articles upon articles to review for exams, read up for my dissertation, etc. I'll let you guess as to how many of them actually got read. One of the issues is that my time there is always limited, so I'm as social as possible whenever I'm there (for better or worse, ugh). That's one of the things I love there - the emphasis on relationships - but it proved to be less than helpful for getting any academic work done this past month.

As of this morning, I am back in London. Although I miss Malawi something fierce (my friend Chiara and I talked about how that place is a drug, and my how it's true!), I'm relieved in a way to be back. I'm looking forward to diving back into my academic work, doing what it takes to successfully complete this masters. The next four months will hold lots of adventure, sleepless nights, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

I promise a more thorough recap of this and 'lessons learned' soon - at a point when I can afford the procrastination... For now, I'm going to enjoy my hot shower, my own kitchen, and springtime in the city.

Malawi melacholia

I have been in Malawi for a bit over two weeks, and I leave two weeks today. I am already feeling quite melancholy about leaving... Somehow whenever I leave a place, I never, ever fully believe that I'll be back again. Perhaps that comes with having moved 15 times and having gone to 10 different schools by the time I graduated high school. Living the gypsy lifestyle (to an extent - I was a preacher's kid) shaped my personality from a formative age. This has privileged me to a degree, as I've eased fairly easily into the "world citizen" lifestyle in the past couple of years. And yet I long for the roots I wonder if I'll ever have.

Balaka has become a certain kind of home to me, even though I've only ever spent a total of three months here. I have built a certain type of community here, and a good foundation of local relationships for working within this culture and this town. Every time I've come I've built it up by by bit, and then I leave it again. Each time I wonder what will be left standing when I return.