Another day

Well, it’s the end of yet another tense day here in Lilongwe. Again, the city basically shut down, due to the ongoing protests, which have now seemingly collapsed into anarchy. All of my meetings were again canceled today, so it was basically a snow day for all of us. I didn’t get much done, as Jorge and I kept checking the updates on Twitter. We worried for some young friends who had been traveling around Malawi and Tanzania, and who were supposed to be on a bus back to the city. I wondered how we were going to get food for the week, with the market shut down, and the gorcery stores reportedly looted. I worried about the violence and chaos coming closer to home, closer to my babies.

To deal with the anxiety, I baked cookies. And then ate LOTS of them.

Then, sometime after my lunch of cookies, I had this strange sense of déjà vu. I have dealt with perilous situations before – my time in Darfur was basically one crisis after another. So at first I thought all this conflict was bringing back memories of difficult times I had experienced in Sudan.

But then I realized, it wasn’t a conflict I was remembering, it was a catastrophe of an entirely different sort: Hurricane Katrina.

In the days and weeks after I evacuated from New Orleans in 2005, it was so hard to tell the fact from rumor. Who can forget the melodramatic interviews on Oprah, the (eventually disproved) tales of babies being sexually assaulted in the Superdome? And every horrible misdeed that was reported was just taken as truth, because of course, that’s what people’s stereotypes of New Orleans residents allowed them to believe.

And here we are again, imagining violent Africans wielding machetes and wreaking havoc…after years of being shown Africa only in the light of famine or war, is it any wonder that we don’t even doubt that people are capable of such violence?

Once the dust clears, I wonder what I will find – the battleground of burned-out cars and smashed, looted buildings that the reports have been evoking; or the ghost-town, shell of a city where most people just want to keep their heads down and get back to their normal life – the vision that my friends who have been in town today tell me they’ve seen. I hope it’s the latter, but by now I just don’t know what to believe.

Has it really been 5 years?

And yet it feels like such a long time ago, when Jorge and I were heading off to go watch "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" despite the protests of my mother-in-law that we would surely be killed the moment we stepped out the door. We were hours away from the eye of Hurricane Katrina by then, though, among the very few New Orleans residents who decided, against general wisdom, to go East into Florida to evacuate ahead of the storm. I mean, when a hurricane's a-comin', who decides the safest place is FLORIDA? Everyone else is usually trying to get to sunny Texas, not the storm-magnet state. But there we were, the rain pelting down, the wind whipping around us, and the news showing the same old shots of frantic palm-branches in the wind and giant waves. So we figured, what the hell? Why not go to the movies?

It wasn't for another full week before the enormity of the situation finally dawned upon me. As we all did after the storm, Jorge and I spent much of our free time watching the cable news channels, trying to decipher what was really happening. And I said to Jorge, "So have you talked to work? When do they want you to be back?" And Jorge looked at me like I'd just grown another head and said "Baby? There IS no work." And it hit me that everything we knew and counted on - friends, jobs, homes, Tuesday nights at the Maple Leaf Bar - all that was gone. At least for the time being. And back then, you never really knew if it would all come back. And finally I cried.

We counted ourselves among the lucky ones. We lived in a two-story apartment that only got a couple feet of flooding, meaning most of our home stayed dry. We had friends and family who happily took us in while the landlord gutted the place. Jorge's employer managed to accomodate the changing needs of the community, and suddenly he temporarily found himself in the tree-removing, blue-tarp-laying, mold-killing business. After a few weeks, we went home to a very desolate, lonely place. Where if you wanted to eat out, you had better plan ahead, because the few places still serving food shut down at 8 for the night. Where the shuttered coffeeshops seemed to have left their modems on, so that when the power came back, we could join the lines of people sitting on the sidewalks to catch up on e-mail.

Some of our friends were not so lucky; a couple of them lost their entire homes and everything in them. Some went away and never returned. We all coped with the scars of going off one day, feeling like we were just having a weekend holiday and waking up Monday with our city just disintegrated, all our friends gone. (What did I pack with me for the 6 weeks I spent evacuated? One miniskirt, one pair of shorts, a few shirts, and TWO bikinis. I'd be useless in a nuclear holocaust, I tell you.)

In honor of the city we love, our second home, here are some photos from that time:

Just another beach weekend, right?


Jorge got home early, before any of the really basic clean-up could be done. There were power lines and trees down everywhere. And still a few bodies on the streets.


Cleaning out the apartment. Notice the bath-tub ring of mold.

Dora watching over all our ruined junk. The city looked like this for months, discarded refrigerators and ripped out carpet everywhere.

Our apartment after being gutted.

Our friend Jonathan's neighborhood was one of the worst-hit. This photo was taken six months after the hurricane.

Jorge had the unfortunate job of searching for Jonathan's passport in this mess. What you see all over the floor is sodden insulation from the ceiling.

Ready for the game

Neither Jorge nor I is a native New Orleanian, but we met there, wooed there, and wed there, and we hold the city close in our hearts. Even though we have been away for almost 4 years now, we still consider New Orleans home. There is no place in America with such a unique but cohesive sense of self. When you live there it seems everyone knows the same jokes, listens to the same local radio shows, loves the same restaurants (although which are the best is cause for very long debates). And when good times come around - and hard times, too - it's amazing how everyone pulls together.

That is why we are so nostalgic for home today. There is no place in the world we'd rather be right now than parading through the streets of New Orleans, cheering for our Saints.

Instead, we're supporting from afar. The house has been blaring Rebirth Brass Band all day, and we've got our gear on.

Jorge's Saints jersey was a lucky find. We were out walking one day, lamenting how he had no Saints paraphernalia to wear for the game, when a few minutes later we walked past a Malawian wearing a Saints jersey. "You have to buy his shirt!" I told Jorge. But...we had no money! What to do? No problem, this is Africa. The barter economy is alive and well. So Jorge literally gave the man the shirt off his back , and we walked home with Jorge in the sweaty, smelly jersey. I think both men went home feeling like they had gotten the better end of the trade.

So, we are ready. Unfortunately, the game comes on here at 1 AM in the morning. And I have a big donor meeting tomorrow, so there will be no all-nighter for me. Instead, after I go to bed tonight, I will be off the grid. No e-mail, no Facebook, no BBC World News...not until tomorrow night when I can watch the pre-recorded game for myself.

So, New Orleans friends and family, no matter how excited you get, no calling at 6 AM cheering over the Saints' glorious win...I want to experience it myself!

Africa Hot

The worst time of the year for Jorge, back when we lived in New Orleans, was the summer. Despite the fact that he was raised in a place where the temperatures rarely dip below 80 degrees, the poor boy cannot stand the heat. He stays out of the kitchen, unless it's air conditioned.

So in New Orleans, where he worked outdoors all day, summer was misery. I would call him during the day to ask how he was doing and all he would say was "It's hot. Africa hot."

Turns out, when he actually got to Africa, he learned that it's not really so bad here - it's much hotter in New Orleans. But today, in Malawi, it's hot. New Orleans hot. I got into the car to go to the store at lunch time and the steering wheel was searing - I could only dance around on it with my fingertips. We finally got a fan in my office yesterday and I've had it blowing straight at my face all day.

It won't last though - any time now the rains will start, which usually means hot humidity for a few hours, then long breaks of cool, cloudy, wet weather.

Jorge and his mother spent the last few days in Liwonde National Park, a few hours South of Lilongwe, where they saw lots of "los bambis," as my mother-in-law calls antelope. There was one exciting moment where they were briefly charged by elephants, which Jorge said nearly made him soil himelf (of course, he didn't quite put it in those words...).

Tomorrow I will drive down South for the weekend to meet them in Zomba, where we have wrangled our connections into booking us into the U.S. ambassador's cottage. Luxury all 'round, folks, just like I like it. And nice cool mountain breezes to get me out of this heat...

And I'm back!

So I had two weeks of fast internet connection access, and did I put it to good use? No. Instead, I wait until I'm back on African internet to post an update. But really, I was busy:

Jorge and I flew to New York and drove to Pennsylvania for the wedding of my closest friend Mary. I got to see some old college friends, and Mary looked beautiful. It was a really lovely wedding. Long, but lovely. It was a Catholic ceremony and I felt like the only heathen protestant in the church, though. Pictures to come!

After the wedding we spent a couple days with Jorge's best friend Daniel and his girlfriend Lisa in New York. We had pizza at Grimaldi's, which is supposedly the best in New York. When we got there, there was a line halfway down the block, but they really pack them in the place, and we were seated in 40 minutes. The pizza was worth the wait. We also got to have lunch at Artisanal, one of my favorite restaurants. It was a total cheese-fest: Cheese plate, followed by cheese fondue, rounded out with a Croque Monsieur (basically a fancy grilled ham and cheese sandwich). I'm not sure I have really explained here the depth of my love for cheese, but if you've seen "Sideways," I am the cheese-head equivalent of the wine nerds in that film.

We then flew to Los Angeles, where my sister Joy and my grandparents live. The rest of my family flew in to see us for the weekend: my dad and his wife, my sister Miriam and her boyfriend, and my Aunt Alanna. It was a full reunion, and we had a great time. I also got to spend time with my boy-genius nephew. How many 2-year olds do you know whose vocabulary includes "concrete," "beard," and "combine harvester"? We got a free day at Disneyland thanks to my sister's hook-up, and made it to a Dodger's game as well.

Our last stop was New Orleans, where the main activity was eating. Lunch at Commander's Palace, obscenely large and gooey Po'boys from the Verti Marte, Colombian food, and my sister-in-law's delicious shrimp fettucini. Then dinners at Dick and Jenny's, an amazing little local place, and Clancy's, the good old boys' favorite.

Didn't get to see as much music as I'd have liked, owing to the fact that I'm now a namby-pamby old lady who likes to be in bed by 10, but we did make it to Rebirth at the Maple Leaf. It was a poignant show, because the brother of the tuba player had died only days before. The night before the show, two of the band members were actually arrested for disturbing the peace when they dared to hold a second-line parade in his honor, without a permit. The police showed up and told all the marchers and musicians to go home, and of course the mourners just kept on playing and dancing for their fallen brother. I love New Orleans.

And now I'm back in Malawi, where the heat has kicked up, and the trees are miraculously green again, despite the fact that there has been no rain since May. Even my garden is starting to grow!

I would have written yesterday, but I was out sick with a cold all day. I'm going back home to bed as soon as I finish this!

So it's been 2 years since Hurricane Katrina, and things are still not OK. It's funny how many people we meet here think that everything has gone back to normal. They always say "but it's fine now, right?"

Ummm, no. I haven't been in a year, but from friends and family I can report to you that all is not well in the beautiful Crescent City. It's amazing how the progress just stalled after a few months. People just ran out of money. Most people that I know that rebuilt did it with their own savings or on credit, counting on the insurance companies to come through at some point. (And we all know just how eager insurance companies are to pay up to their loyal customers). I'm going back to the U.S. on vacation in three weeks, and we were able to squeeze in a few days in New Orleans. I fully expect to see plenty of trailers in my neighborhood when I get there.

Jorge and I recently watched the Spike Lee documentary "When the Levees Broke". It was really very good - I recommend you invest the 4 hours to see it, because it touches so much on what we were all feeling after the storm: the horror at seeing the city flooded, the expectation that help would come soon, the shock on realizing that there was nothing to go home to, and then the anger at realizing it was all preventable. The only thing that was missing was the shocking reaction from much of the rest of the U.S. While most Americans were very giving and helpful (except in Florida, where we evacuated to. Punks.), I couldn't believe some of the venomous, accusatory remarks that came from a small minority who chose to blame the victims.

I'm sure none of this is news to my enlightened readers, of course. But I just wanted to remind you to keep New Orleans in your hearts this year, especially as elections loom.