A future search

The mornings are brisk, with slow muscles under long sleeves, and a light fog lingering low over the residential garden beds we’ve planted to eggplant, chickpeas, lettuce and sorts. A mwadzuka bwanji (how did you wake?) and a cup of coffee start the day that will begin to heat warm and dry as the sun follows route. The staff assembles in the classroom, huddled chilly in 80s track jackets and odd sweater fits. A large chalk-board is center, with the internal and external mission of Kusamala printed across. Molly, our director, is admirably kind and shy in her genuine effort to erase the hierarchical posts that seem so ingrained in Malawian culture; that of bwana (boss) and worker. She describes last year’s annual budget, in tandem with the two new grants just received; how Kusamala will still act, in part, through external aid for the next three years, even extending to a new village with additional staff. Though, she stresses, what’s most important is that there is more time now to become a sustainable center, where the need of outside help is no longer necessary, and a self-sufficient Malawian staff will be able to take Kusamala forward. There is light clapping accompanied with polite nods, shivering, and no questions. Perhaps worker bees believe they will be worker bees forever. Maybe overhead will always be over head. Maybe everyone was just disenchanted with the cold. Despite the awkward silence, an underlying inspiration simmers as the issues and workings of management are consistently brought to laymen’s terms, and staff ideas and concerns are continually encouraged to be shared.

A New Yorker arrived with microscope in tote. She sets up lab in the common room and has enchanted the likes of Enock by designating him escort and camera man. He knows this will be a ‘very good week,’ package included with a fancy lodge stay at the lake, near the site of a new learning center she aims to build. He was completely dazzled upon his return, and proud as a newly appointed chief as he settles back into his routine with a inspired air about him. My own post, here at the center, has been centered on various construction projects. Having just finished cementing a raised garden bed for the kitchen alongside hanging baskets jerry-rigged from pvc pipe, I am planning next to build a bamboo dome complete with benches in the medicinal garden. I feel this bob the builder pairs well with Green’s comment, “She walks like an army man.” While veering away from my initial agricultural expectations, I know moving forward any future search I do is often gone with the wind. So while posts may be placed, or else cold bones are slow to move; while future maybe searching, there is solidity in what we do every day, there are breaks to be found, and slow cold can always thaw with time. And as we dispersed from the classroom we immediately livened walking out into the sunshine.