Life in Malawi seems to revolve around Maize (corn). I
believe I have mentioned this before, but if you don’t have nsima with a meal,
it becomes merely a snack. It doesn’t matter how much rice or pasta with
veggies, meat or anything else you may consume, Malawian’s will still feel
hungry if nsima was not served. Because of this, growing maize is number one on
most villager’s priority list. In December as the rains begin, you plant the
first round of maize, harvest in May-July, shell, store and grind the kernels
into flour in August-October and prepare you fields until planting again in
December. I was able to help with this process the other day. I met up with a friend
named Foster who is a Malawian Red-Cross volunteer in my village and walked the
3km to his field. He had already cut his maize down and piled it in the middle
of his field to dry.
We arrived around 7am, and we were late. There were already
5 kids standing around the pile working probably there since sunrise. Foster
introduced me to the kids, and they laughed at me as I tried to introduce
myself in chinyha (as usual). After that, we all took our spots around the pile
of corn stalks and began to shuck the corn. Foster started to show and explain
how to do this, but thankfully I am well educated on sucking corn thanks to my
Iowan upbringing. After a bit the kids started chatting away with each other as
I listened trying to figure out what the topic of conversation was. Mostly, I
just enjoyed the repetitive movements of removing corn husks and throwing it
into the large pile of dried corn while soaking in the surrounding mountains
and warm rising sun.
As the pile got smaller, the children’s chatter became
louder and more excited. I couldn’t contain my curiosity and finally asked
Foster what they were talking about. It turns out that the little mouse nests
that we had been discovering under the corn stalks meant money in the kids
pockets. They were plotting about how they might find mice at the bottom of the
pile, and if they did, they could catch them and sell them to the local
secondary school’s headmaster. Mice are a popular protein source for much of
Central Malawi which is where the headmaster is from. I have not seen mice
being sold here in the north, but I have talked to many other volunteers who
have had the unique experience of tasting Malawi’s delicacy of BBQ mice.
Once the mice are caught, Malawian’s take the whole body, sandwich
it between two sticks and will roast it whole over the fire; hair, head, tail,
innards, everything. To eat it, pop the whole thing in your mouth!
It was very entertaining as one by one, the poor mice tried
to make their escape. When the kids saw something move, they would squeal out
with delight and immediately begin stomping and lunging toward the ground until
they caught the mouse. They would then grab it by its tail and fling it hard to
the ground to make sure it was dead. They found a couple of baby mice and would
also fling those hard on the ground and then lay them in a sunny spot to die.
By the time we got to the bottom of the pile, there was a pile of 17 dead mice
and 5 huge grinning faces. Only two escaped.
I think this whole experience is a small indicator of my integration
here. If I had witnessed children brutally killing mice back in the states I
would have been horrified. Here, it was actually really enjoyable. It reminded
me of watching kids catch crawfish in the creek in Tennessee, granted we never killed
or ate the crawfish, but the way the kids laughed and cried out with delight
every time they found something moving was fun to watch. By the end of the day,
they had an extra 170 kwatcha in their pockets, enough to buy msweeties for the
whole week!
