So it goes

Acacia trees stand like curved bone in the tall, tan grasses. A dry breeze flusters the through their ranks  lining our newly cut firebreak. Beginning with the great and wide expectation of a dozer line, the firebreak starts to lose steam, funneling into the size of a footpath, and finally into tired brush toward the end of its circle around Kusamala. I see smoke! Memo sees smoke! My eyebrows raise! Their gaze follows the routine of their kitchen, as if the smoke in the distance is as common as the smoke coming out of their clay oven. I hurry toward the fireline to inspect. Large flames are creeping about a mile or two in the distance, with winds carrying them slowly north-west, parallel to Kusamala. I can see people on a far-off footpath watching before heading along with their business. There is no sign of a fire truck, nor will there be. Brush fires are shrugged off like a disliked neighbor; to go about their own business, unless business happens to be at your doorstep. Despite the dry season, I watch children build fires two feet off the road because dinner still has to be made. Maize fields are slashed and burned as to prepare for next year. Landfills are routinely set on fire, regardless of being surrounded by nine foot tall dry elephant grass. So it goes. And despite, whipping winds, the fire did not come knocking that night.

Two men from the lake came this week for a two day workshop on beekeeping. Daniel, a long-term intern, has been constructing a beehive out of bamboo for the occasion. This, plus the hive already active in the nearby forest, and a newly purchased hive, will make 3 honey producers for Kusamala. We shared meals with our guests at night. They had never eaten with mzungus (whities) before, so we treated them, and ourselves, to panfried pizzas. While heading back to their lake-shore village, we received word that their minibus caught fire, and passengers had to bust out a window for a quick escape. Pierre and Biswick rushed to the scene, where their truck became an ambulance for the seriously injured. They described how looters filed out of villages to take advantage of the mayhem. Thankfully our guests were not seriously injured, just shook up, and so it goes, they caught a minibus home the next day.

Malawians are ever accepting of reality. I too am adapting. Chisomo, acting as a very patient side-driver, has supported me in my efforts to driving on the left hand side of the road. Having only brushed with death twice and scaring the begeebees out of only dozen or so pedestrians, I consider my training very successful. So while free-ranging brush fires, mini-buses bursting into flames, street kids stealing plastic bottles full of our groundnuts, police and inspector payoffs, bicycles heaped with wood, and crazy mzungu drivers may seem a little extreme… so it goes here in Malawi.