Woof woof! Cuckadoodledoo! We were awoken by the sounds of these animals, so familiar yet so foreign to our ears. The day started with EWB training on the history and culture of Malawi, extending into the NGO (non governmental organizations) in
Malawi. From my observations, NGO’s make up quite the industry here in Malawi, everywhere that I’ve roamed down the streets, I see white SUV’s with labels and symbols painted on them from a wide array of international NGO’s (EWB doesn’t have white SUV’s anywhere, everyone at the National Office uses bicycles to get around).
We were sent to the Market place for a scavenger hunt and it’s quite an interesting and another overwhelming experience.
“Chin Chin! Ni hao! Konichiwa!” Sometimes, this is all I hear, but most of the time, people are quite friendly, asking me where I’m from, what I’m looking for and if they can escort me around the market. The market has a smorgasbord of goods, ranging from shoes to clothes, chickens to frying pans, soaps to toys, etc. It’s quite an interesting place to find all your goods but if you don’t’ know your way around, it’s easy to get lost.
I’ve been approached by random people who ask me if they can be my friend. What do they mean by friend? Do they mean in the strictly, platonic North American definition or do they mean, let’s be friends and get married? It’s something to be weary of, but the people here are quite friendly and I’m not too sure if I have the right filters in place to interpret such open ended but simple questions.
I leave the market, looking at all the imported used clothing that they sell here. Most of the clothing actually comes from
Canada’s second hand clothes stores. I recognize the Gap fleece, the Johnson family reunion 1994 t-shirt, the Napoleon Dynamite t-shirts and wonder if there’s harm in flooding the local markets with used textiles. The textiles here are quite beautifully patterned (I have about 4 meter’s worth of cloth to wear as a wrap) and I’m sure it’ll do just fine, but I don’t’ understand why there’s so much western clothing flooding the markets and I can’t fully comprehend the marketplace in Africa with Western good flooding it. What do you think about this?
—-TANGENT!—
I’m the safest person in Malawi, apparently, after some gross misrepresentation of everyone chinese in the kungfu movies, I can beat anyone ugly.
I’ve heard about second hand clothes being exported to Africa. Here in Malaysia you see lots at the local markets too. Guess it’s a good thing if it’s affordable for the locals right? As for the Chinese people all know kungfu/karate thing, my friends from Zimbabwe and Lesotho said that it’s a very common stereotype there. Haha, live it up.