Sunday June 21, Mabuya, Lilongwe (afternoon)
I have been reading back over my earlier notes, transcribing them for my blog, and it is remarkable the way your perceptions of things can shift. I read an entry from my first time returning to Liliongwe from the Lake, how dispiriting it felt then, how unhappy I was to be back, and how uncomfortable I felt to be here. Every subsequent return has felt like a homecoming. It is, of course, the same city. The life of it no longer offends me though. It is a familiar place, comfortable. I have learned how to be here, and this place was my first teacher. Harsh perhaps, but not without compassion. Re-writing these earlier apprehensions now, what is to become the public record of my time here, is startling – embarrassing even. “They will think that I am miserable. That this place is horrible.” Forgetting that this is a narrative, and that they wont know what I know now for some time still. In the narrative it is only just June. I am at the Lake, peaceful and serene, reading a different book than the one I am reading now, and just beginning to discover this country. I am not learned now, no expert, but journeyed. The traveler is transformed. “I is not Me.” -Rimbaud. I is someone else entirely. Back again where I started, but never the same. The travel narrative is familiar and over-explained, over-celebrated, and over-written. I am back in the same place where I was once miserable and happy for it. Any place, no matter how exotic, how alien, if we go there is only ever ours. My Malawi has changed much in a month, but this change arises from its developing familiarity. I ever I have done a poor job describing anything, I apologize. Who’s trip has it been after all?
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