We visited a CDSS (Community Day Secondary School), the optional leg of the Malawian education, it costs almost nothing, and is beyond the scope of what most families can afford. As with the village yesterday, there is a lot of sugar-coating and starry-eyes, comments bordering on patronization. We marvel at the absolute lowest levels of operation and champion the success, forgetting that if this minimal amount of operation was not present, there would only be dysfunction and non-life. The social biologies are not completely below praise, within them you find optimistic and happy people, people that are alive basically. For Westerners, I think, we come here and see all this life so close to the line and think that these people are somehow more connected to life because, to us, they appear to live some much closer to death, oblivious to the life that we ourselves must necessarily posses. Being death-rich does not make you life-rich. For us I feel it is just a television show with a cast of suffering and smiling people, miraculously making a go of it despite the absence of pizza and bus-schedules. These people are not more special, more precious, than us or anyone else. They are not less intelligent, not more focused, harder working, not tougher, or more sensitive, just a different system in a different set of circumstances. Different but living also. Living without much. After the CDSS we went up to the Mulanje Mission Hospital, one of the most maintained facilities I've seen so far in Malawi. They have a large HIV/AIDS clinic because of the exceptionally high prevalence in Malawi, specifically here in the southern region. We were greeted by the administrator and shown a PowerPoint presentation about their finances and facilities. I do not yet miss things back home (aside from friends) per se, but I do miss access to the following things should I want them: real hot showers, a tall latte, fresh muffins, good toast, red peppers, a soft bed, cheese, and burritos, oh and the most serious of all; milkshakes! I could really go for a milkshake ...chocolate is hard to come by here. Yeesh, maybe this has gotten more serious than I thought...
PICASA PHOTOS
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