What is Real?

Just had our site visit. We are going to be living in Kachechea about and hour north of Mizuzu and 10 minutes south of Rumpi. We are super excited. Everything at site seems awesome.

I got a letter back from my mother this week too. She was commenting on a letter I wrote her where I said that life here (Malawi) is so real. She asked, "What is REAL?" and explained how she has a different life than Abby and Abby's is different from Mine and Tina's and so what is REAL?

It's a good question and I'm glad she asked. I've really had to think about it. And here's what I've got so far... I think REAL is hard.

In my old life (two months ago)I pretended that things were hard. Like teaching at a school with 30-35 students in one was hard. Only getting one box of paper for the term was hard. Having only 1 class set of Huck Finn to share between three teacher and figuring out when you can use it was hard. But really I was pretending this stuff was hard. REAL is HARD. real is having 60-100 freshman in a single classroom with 25 desks 3 at a desk and the rest on the ground. Real is giving teachers 2 notebooks of 80 half pages for the year. Real is having a (one [1]) copy of a novel that will be on the federal exam. I pretended that paying for the water, gas, electric, phone, Internet, cell phone, etc. hard or was reality, but it is pretend hard. It is real hard when you plant maize and hope that the floods, pests, monkeys, elephants or drought don't destroy your harvest because if it does your families food is gone for the year. Real is shucking corn by hand and separating the chaff using the wind but using it to feed the pig, taking the rest to the mill and storing it in your house even though the rats are attracted to it. Pretend is upset because the flu vaccines ran out this week and I have to wait a month. Real is hoping your kid does die of Malaria before age 5.
What makes it even more real is knowing that people are just born into this and there is no time to pretend. No time to work out of, or up from, real life in a life of "leisure." And this is as far as my thought process has gone. I get to this point and my head starts to spin because I say, "What about the single mom working two jobs and deciding between food and medicine; isn't her life real?" or the foster kid or the shut-in or so many other people...aren't their lives hard? Aren't they living real life and making it work....

and than I thought some more (I wrote this in my journal and stopped there because the sun set and I didn't know where the matches were to light the candle to continue to write so I went to bed and started again in the morning)...

So real is hard. Life is hard; its hard for us, but our hard is very different hard than that of billions of people who's lives are really hard.
but that is only half of what makes things real. REAL is fun, enjoyment, contentedness, laughter and love. These things I DO know and I don't think I've pretended to know them, but maybe I've made some of them a bit more complicated. Like Fun. I have fun when I go to the lake jump in a tube and fly around in circles, or I get on a roller coaster and scream on every hill, or when I rent a movie that has surround sound and 10 hours of extra features. I mean come one this stuff is fun, but yesterday I gave a kid a 10 cent kaleidoscope and he was amazed. I watched two kids, each had a stick and a leaf, and they played for two hours; i never figured out what they were playing but they were having fun.
The same goes for all the others; I know contentedness, enjoyment, etc. but I know them in a complicated way. Here they are simple, easier to find/see. There are times I find myself recognizing the simple way; like when Tim (another PCT) and I have a bouncy ball and start play monkey in the middle with just the two of us (try it sometime, its fun) and we just laugh at how much fun we are having. At home I wouldn't go over to Ryan's (Good friend back home in Michigan) house and say, hey let's play with a bouncy ball!" NO! I'd say, "Let's turn on the giant television with surround sound and play Halo with people in California." But I'm recognizing the simplicity. A Va'mama laughing with her sister at nothing, or an agogo (grandparent) smiling at a kids first whittling stick. I recognize them because I've seen them at home, at Christmas, or Apple Butter, or Sunday afternoons. It makes me glad that I haven't complicated my life too much.

But that is as far as my thought process on What is Real has taken me.

Anyway. Check out Tina's blog. it is tinaandzebinmalawi.blogspot.com
Sarah thanks for the Bible verses.
Josh thanks for the insight and and encouragement.
Klumper thanks for praying about language barriers (after site visit we will definitely be practicing hard-core)
Moms and Dads thanks for the letters and packages (we are going to have a sweet garden)
Renee thanks for the prayers
ANd I know I read more comments than that but after 4 days of meeting new people and trying to do it in a language that I hardly understand my brain in racked.
We really do appreciate all of the comments, they make us laugh and cry (Michelle) but they remind us how lucky we are and why we are able to be here doing cool things for other people that deserve our help.

Well I have like 10 minutes online. We are in lilongwe and just getting our bank accounts set up and stopped in the Peace Corps office. Tina and I are learning Chitenbuka which means we'll be in the north. Right now we live in a village in a mud it with a thatch roof. It is rather hot here which surprisingly makes me a selfish jerk. I get to a point where I just get snotty with people because...I don't know, just because.

Its like everything here has to do with the little things. Little things annoy me like, why is the truck 10 minutes late; why is the language class at a different place today; why can't I find my toothbrush. And it flips me out. It gets me a bad mood and I loose perspective of why I'm here. But then it is the little things that are just awesome like My students want to take picture with me on his camera (I don't even know if it had film in it); my host family's son's face lights up when I toss a bouncey ball at him: my host mother looks at me like I am giving her an extravagant gift and it is a bunch of 4 carrots.

Life is simple here. You have what is in the village and what is in the village is all there is. Days drag by, and weeks shoot past. We miss everyone back home. Thank you for the posts on the blog it is very very good to hear from people. Shane you make me laugh, and I bet we are the best 2 man somersault team in the business (haven't seen any Malawians though). I hope Apple Butter was fun if you did it, and thanks giving goes well.