Archive for July, 2009

Project Euler Again

Monday, July 6th, 2009

The trip to Malawi was beginning to dull the technical part of my brain (it is very small, so to neglect it and risk losing it completely would be devastating). To keep sharp I cracked back into the ole’ Project Euler problems. I got two more solved by the pool in the shad of some large banana trees in Lilongwe.

Problem 25: What is the first term in the Fibonacci sequence to contain 1000 digits?

Problem 48: Find the last ten digits of the series, 1^(1) + 2^(2) + 3^(3) + … + 1000^(1000)

Euler Solutions Page

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Tuesday June 9, Mulanje (dusk)

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Today has been a trying one, spent getting back to where we had just left. The founder of Katie’s organization has her panties in a bind about a story CBS wants to do on Idah and her summer in the US. This return means that yesterday and today were utter wastes of both time and money. Leaving Zomba we were hustled into a bus that immediately got a flat tire. From there we were practically thrown into a second bus that blatantly charged us double what everyone else had paid (a confirmed fact, not just a suspicion this time) and then tried to not even take us all the way to where we were going. They tried to convince us that we were at our desired destination, miles short of the truth.The reason was just that the lazy thugs wanted to have lunch and were sick of doing their job. This stranded two other folks (locals even) besides us. We had been around for a bit at this point. We knew where we we supposed to be going. We yelled. Other people yelled. The mini-bus conductor ran away to eat sugar cane. The driver smiled the smug smile of an idiot who wont relent even the most preposterous scam. Things got tense. They would not give us our money back, and would not take us on to our destination. One of the locals was a younger guy transporting a 50lb bag of rice. They were shouting at him, trying to drag him off the bus, smacking him in the face with dirty socks… Katie yelled at one point, “You get back here or you’re gonna get your ass beat by a white girl!” A different driver finally hopped in and took us to where we had paid double to go in the first place. A place where we were barked into another mini-bus that took every opportunity to stop and hang out with buddies along the way. 5 hours later from 2 hours away, we were back where we started. I am spiralling towards a low opinion of this place. I am a far cry from being miserable here, any adventure must float above the good and the bad. I am happy and honoured to be seeing and learning, but the joy that comes from poor people that can smile and say hello is slight and diminishing at this point. Why have we become obsessed with this place? Why do we continue to repeat the mantra: “Africa is hard, but a beautiful place filled with beautiful people.”? Africa is filled with the blind poor and the visionless corrupt. There is good here, or course, but it is the good that exists anywhere in the world where there are humans living: the best doing the best they can, friends, and families. These “goods” are not particular to this country or this continent. If you marvel at perseverance, marvel at any of named and nameless things still living and thriving on this planet, not just the poor people. The culture here is vanished. In its place is only survival, Christ, and coca-cola. All energy towards the almighty and his almighty bucks. But the ubiquitous buck is boring. It is just that no one here has ever seen enough of them yet to know this. The most craft I have seen here goes into the making of their coffins, where the culture is already buried and rotting in the ground. There are countless jack-assed idle men learning nothing, and endless armies of replacements when these asses finally come down to rest forever in the nation’s last craft. It is a beautiful land that has made itself inaccessible to human appreciation. Of course it doesn’t exist for our eyes to marvel at, our minds to reel, but appreciation of the natural world is always appreciated. You cannot breathe deep Africa’s air, or drink its waters. You cannot sit in its shade or soak in its sun. You cannot admire this place from the ground. To say there is no violence should not imply that there is peace. Again and again on this trip, I have been told that I am welcome here but I have never felt it. Only my money has felt truly welcomed here. Africa. You were once so rich, and now you are so poor. Your songs, which used to be about your people and your lives are now about Christs and politicians. Malawi, you call your president “the New Moses.” Your countries are all cargo cults, enraptured by what has been imposed on you, you play a tragic game, pantomiming the motions of a system which has never had you in its mindless mind. You are difficult to love. By your own hand, and with our salivating encouragement, you have lopped off the limbs that made you a beautiful, branching, and mighty tree. I hope that you find yourself again. I think that we should leave you alone so you may do this. You may resent us for this, and all our past errors, but only Africa can fix itself, and Africa is indeed broken. Nothing here is maintained. Everything deteriorates. Broken and rotting until someone happens along, horrified enough to pick it up for you. If there is hope to have here it is that you will never be without potential to change your situation.

But of course my observations are a shrill hoax. There is not “one Africa,” and I haven’t seen anything. I know nothing, and I generalize inexcusably. I can represent nothing but myself. These are not truths on the page; thoughts only. Thoughts of a first time traveler in a very small part of a very small country in an enormous continent which the traveler knows nothing about except the notions given to him by another nation -ignorant and in the dark. The interesting fact is that this free-fall form of travel forces you to be more yourself at the same time it is stripping your identity away. Clear and misunderstood, this country is as ignorant of me as I am of it.

PICASA PHOTOS

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Monday June 8, Zomba (evening)

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

We started the morning right, introduced to 600 giggling girls at Providence’s morning assembly. The principal uttered what is now one of my favorite sentences of all time, “let us all thank Father for the MASSIVE SOUND he brought on Saturday,” in reference to his last-minute save of the disco. The research team then went on a long run which gave me the rare opportunity to be by myself, play some music, and make myself some breakfast. The opportunity to be on your own rhythms in your own space is rare and revitalizing here. It is tricky being with the group because it is near unbearable to listen in on business that doesn’t concern me discussed over and over, but if I duck out, which I often do, I miss out on the genuine socializing that happens when the topic falls off the wagon. My nebulous position within or without the group aside, Katie and I departed for Zomba this morning, /we caught a mini-bus to Limbe and then hurried up and waited two and a half hours for the mini-bus (that was “leaving right away”) for the second part of or Journey to get around to going. Once we got rolling we made it quickly to Zomba, exchanging three hours for one, a fair trade for maniacs and people with no reason to be anywhere, between the two of us, we straddle both these categories. Zomba is a beautiful city in the shadow of a big green plateau bearing the same name. I successfully had my first shower in a long time. Like riding a bike. You never forget. Fargo and Raising Arizona have been playing on TV (our first TV the whole trip), which is a culture shock and-a-half. I also today saw “the Ass of God” or the sign for its abbreviated assembly. Despite the inconveniences and discomforts of travel here, I’ve been enjoying Malawi today. The two and a half hours turning down suckers, ice cream, and fried dough from the intrusive and hissing peddlers was a kind of fun that I don’t regularly get to relish, irritating but harmless. A culture of pushing. Everything pushing. In lines -pushing, in mini-buses -pushing, in traffic -pushing. Pushing sweets, pushing rides, pushing air-time, pushing fruits, vegetables, meat, soda. When you’re in the mood you can push back.

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Sunday June 7, Providence, Mulanje (morning)

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

NOTE::: At this point in real-time, I am safely back in Portland, Maine, USA. I’ll keep these updates coming along in dream-time, but the real-world will be interfering in fits and starts until it’s back in full swing.

We attended a disco hosted by Providence last night. A sweaty and slap-happy affair with a whole pack of clueless DJ’s and enough hormones to sink the Titanic. They take their disco’s seriously (although they happen almost weekly). The girls, many of them from well-off families take it as an opportunity to get gussied up in their finest future-fantasy-biography nightclubbing outfits. A tragic farce for the handful of sulking and insulting young men, imported for the evening to theoretically raise the girl’s spirits while simultaneously annihilating their self-respect. Yellow sneering imbeciles all, goading stray 13 years old from their elder pack of teenage arousal (It was later clarified that these men were actually part of the Young Catholics Association or some such nonsense, and not standard accessories to the discos. Sorry girls.) The boys aside, it was a quite jolly evening. The first half given over to the two options of either staring in dumbfounded horror, or laughing hysterically at the two psychotic uzungus (Katie and myself) doing our best to get the party started. If it was a “run away screaming party” we would have been doing an excellent job. We were told by some of the more daring ones that they were not dancing because they were waiting to pay their 70MK. They had not yet paid because the pack of idiot DJ’s had been on the stage scratching their heads for two and a half hours about the shit sound-system. The girls’ only way out was to form a large circle and sing and dance their own songs, which turned out better than any DJ came close to pulling off the whole night. Eventually a pro rolled in with a real system, a real trench-coat, and real glasses, to make things real for everybody. He played what should have been predictable, although I somehow had failed to predict, standard bubble-gum hip-hop and R&B that is loved and adored by 13 year old girls the world over. Outside, waiting to re-enter and finally pay to dance, we gave some Salsa lessons. We then moved on to Irish Jigs, Tango, and Russian Hat Dances. These lessons were a smash success, and I like to imagine it as the birth of a small contingent of girls practising the Tango back here at Providence.

(evening)

Your experience with this place can vary wildly depending on your mood. The same activities and encounters that can be at one time sunny, warm, friendly, exciting, or adventurous, can another seem oppressive, hot, stifling, desperate, and panicked. The insects can be a factor, as can a good night’s sleep, but one can play into the other. Today I have also been hungry for the first time the whole trip. Hunger changes everything. Your are torn between your emotional need for go-to foods, comforting and easy to acquire where you are from, and the much less appetizing reality of your situation. Basically bananas or any one of a small handful of untrusted and un-trusting “restaurants”. On good day you are something different here, an exciting and exotic stranger, an amicable and amusing failure at fitting in, and an amateur cultural ambassador. On bad day you are a target. A shining white beacon of money and imposition, never anonymous, never left alone,always propositioned. You owe everyone something because they are worse off, and are charged more because it is assumed that you don’t know any better (the uzungu price). You are a white ghost or invader (uzungu is actually a bastardization of the words for ghosts or dead person) causes little kids to cry, and older ones to run away laughing at you and calling you names. You are glowered at by old men, giggled at by the women. You will be jeered at and talked about openly because they know you don’t know the language. You are constantly being asked where you are going, either because they want to get your money for taking you there, or they want you to be there and gone. But there are smiles here too. And genuine laughter. There are people who will help a complete stranger. There are people with stories you wouldn’t believe that still have hope like you wouldn’t know. There is beauty in the sunsets even though it is dangerous at night. The sun shines brightly on Malawi. There is an abundance of warmth here, even when so much else is lacking. There is warmth, and presently there is a young man writing about it, trying to decide if he is trying to list the admirable qualities of shit, or if he is just getting shit mixed in with his list of admirable qualities. I just want to be allowed to breathe the air of this country, not as an exploiter or something to be exploited, but as whoever I am.

PICASA PHOTOS

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Saturday June 6, Providence, Mulanje (afternoon)

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Took off on my own today. Caught a mini-bus in front of the school into the Boma (town). The country is beautiful out here. It is a place where Africa seems on the verge of working. There are lush green gardens and farms, brick and metal houses with flowers and potted plants. It suggests the tropics with large palm fronds, big green banana leaves, aloe plants, and flowering trees. The desperation is diminished here. Here it appears that Malawi has caught a breath. There thoughts arise out of ignorance. The truth of this area may be here or elsewhere, I apologise if my first impressions are false. I walked up a long road to the foot of Mt. Mulanje, a beautiful shaded walk past smiling women carrying large loads of wood on their heads. Some of the children here asked me for money, “Hello! Give me money!”, which seemed odd given the relative quality of life here, but perhaps not enough is a more precarious place than nothing. A truckload of young men passed me on the road. One of them was wearing a Ramones t-shirt which I gestured emphatically at. This set them into an eruption of cheering and laughter. They passed me again on the main road an hour later, still excited and shouting. I walked back to Providence from the Boma which was long and hot (about 6k). No one bothered me. I exchanged many “Muni bwanji”s. I cooled myself with a bucket shower back at the school, and didn’t make it very far in writing before being descended upon by a pack of school girls. They sat and asked me questions for a long time. Their English was exceptional, most of them coming from some relative money in Blantyre. They laughed at me and told me it was bad to be an only child. Most of them were from families of four or larger. They were shocked and somewhat bothered by the fact that I was not a Christian, but I didn’t feel like arguing theology with a bunch of 15-years-olds, so I changed the subject. They asked if I believed in aliens, if I thought humans could be cloned, and if they could learn ballet. I asked them if they thought machines could think, if we would get humans to Mars, and about Malawi. I encouraged them to teach themselves Ballet if they were so interested in it. I told them that if they want to learn something, they shouldn’t let anything stand in their way. I said that I was interested in history, and one girl said, “oh yeah? Who’s Adolph Hitler?” Another girl said she thought this was the last generation, which I though was strange, so I questioned her about it. She doesn’t seem to think she’s the last generation anymore. I had them teach me some “Deep Chichewa, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it already.

PICASA PHOTOS

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