Wild Things Chase Cyclists The kids with the sticks in hand and sacks on their heads are animals. That is, their bodies have become the homes of animal spirits, boogy men of sorts, or so the custom says. These are typical Nyau costumes (pronounced like a cat's meow but with an N). The traditions surrounding the Nyau's costumes and the way they harass kids revolve around a semi-secret society that has roots in traditional shamanistic animism; traditionally those who dress up "become" animals in their own minds and in the minds of community members. Or that's what I'm told. Even though the area is mostly Catholic now, you see somebody dressed up and chasing little kids every few weeks. Recently a new king was anointed in my area (the government calls them Traditional Authorities, in practice they are influential, mainly out of deference to tradition I think), and we saw Nyau all over the place for an entire week. They remind me of the book Where the Wild Things Are.
Where the Wild Things Are The kid with the stick and the sack on his head is an animal. That is, his body has become the home of an animal spirit, a boogy man of sorts, or so the custom says. The traditions surrounding the Nyau's costumes and the way they harass kids revolve around a semi-secret society that has roots in traditional shamanistic animism; traditionally those who dress up "become" animals in their own minds and in the minds of community members. Even though the area is mostly Catholic now, you see somebody dressed up and chasing little kids every few weeks. Recently a new king was anointed in my area (the government calls them Traditional Authorities, in practice influential, but mainly out of deference to tradition I think), and we saw Nyau all over the place for an entire week. They remind me of the book Where the Wild Things Are.
Boys Fishing By the Reservoir To the right of where I stood when I took this picture is a big reservoir with a lake back behind it. You can catch catfish behind the reservoir, and in the stream below it little cropies hide in the deeper holes. I never saw these boys catch anything, but during the right time of year they hang out there all day long, fishing and playing and sometimes sword fighting with their bamboo poles.
Blue Bicycle, Big Round Tree This tree near St. Gabriel's Hospital in Namitete, Malawi, has the roundest foliage I have ever seen on a tree that has never been trimmed. If you had a tall enough ladder you could make a tree look like this, but sometimes nature just gives us these perfect accidents.
Tree Defeated Someone felled this vine covered tree a long time ago, and surprisingly left it to sit rather than cutting it up for the open fire cook stoves or for baking bricks. It is just outside Kalolo, the head village for our area that is named after the local king who resides there.
Hand Hewn Bridge This bridge spans a small ravine just a short walk from St. Gabriel's Hospital in Namitete, Malawi. The bridge rocked to and fro even under my modest weight. I felt like Indiana Jones when I walked across, even though I did not have a whip to latch onto a branch if the bridge collapsed.
I live next door to Father William, an excellent old priest who has been in Malawi since the the seventies with the Catholic Order of the White Fathers. One Sunday Father William took me to one of the many remote villages where he leads Mass. The congregation sang wonderful, beautiful music that was punctuated by the sniffles and cries of too many babies. So many babies. Infants rarely leave their mother's backs, and then they are usually carried by a sibling. A mother does not disrupt daily life just because there is a little person on her back; I have seen mother-baby duos Church going, bicycle riding, even splitting fire wood together. This particular woman stayed around to read from a tattered old Bible for a few minutes after Mass ended. You can see her baby's legs sticking out underneath her elbows.
Boys in the waves at Senga Bay I took this picture at Senga Bay on Lake Malawi. This lake is huge - you can only see the other side (the mountains of Mozambique) on a very clear day. It took me two days to figure out why, other than missing the smell of salt in the air, this place feels different and somehow safer than a real ocean. Finally I realized it was the cadence of the waves. They are driven by strong winds rather than the rotation of the earth so they come in faster and on most days, weaker. In general Malawian kids love having their pictures taken. This little boy in briefs was obviously no exception. In the background you can see a large drift boat as well as several hand-made dug out canoes. When I was there the fishermen had to go out at night because the wind and waves were too great during the day. The canoes and drift boats were still navigating back to shore by kerosene lantern light until three o'clock that morning.
Acrobatics Show at the School House This room is typical for a school house run by the Malawian government. The younger children have gathered here on a Saturday to see the older boys by the window perform acrobatics and staged Tae Kwon Do fights.
Executive Barber Shop This is the barber shop at the Nami Ntondo market near where I live at St. Gabriel's Hospital. The building is typical for this village, and I get a kick out of the (executive). The woman is wearing a traditional chitengi - a long colorful wrap kind of like a sarong.
One day a German student came home after her first day in the hospital to tell me "Something strange happened today. Someone died in the male ward and all the women began to wail and weep. Even men were crying. I didn't realize everyone shouts and wails when someone dies in Malawi." Later I found out that the man who had died was a King. Kings in Malawi are not like politicians but they are locally influential, I think out of deference to tradition. The government calls kings Traditional Authorities and each county is named after its traditional authority. Most of the area around St. Gabriel's Hospital is Catholic, but many traditions still involve practices rooted in animism. For example, the Nyau are a semi-secret society that dresses up as animal spirits. In October there was a week long ceremony to choose the new king and these horse-like spirits came from all over to confirm him. Often the animal spirits are scary and they chase kids around like the boogie man, but these horses were friendly.
Deus and son prince with home made fishing poles We made this big stack of bamboo fishing poles on a Friday afternoon. You use a machete to cut down a thin bamboo tree that is about fifteen feet long. Then you tie a piece of fishing line to the tip so that the line is just as long as the pole and when you stick the hook in the pole handle, the line stays tight and does not tangle. Just to be sure the line is tied on well, you cut a strip of inner tube rubber that is about as wide as a shoelace, and you wrap it very tight around the tip where the line is tied on. You can see we made a bunch of poles so that each of us could have a couple in the water at once. Deus is about as tall as Carlos, but he looks very big in this picture.
Prince, the Rooster, and their Fishing Poles We made this big stack of bamboo fishing poles on a Friday afternoon. You use a machete to cut down a thin bamboo tree that is about fifteen feet long. Then you tie a piece of fishing line to the tip so that the line is just as long as the pole and when you stick the hook in the pole handle, the line stays tight and does not tangle. Just to be sure the line is tied on well, you cut a strip of inner tube rubber that is about as wide as a shoelace, and you wrap it very tight around the tip where the line is tied on. You can see we made a bunch of poles so that each of us could have a couple in the water at once. We were getting ready to head out Saturday morning and Deus had just shown me the pot of worms he collected when this big rooster walked by. It made me think about how small his son Prince is, so I took a picture.
Bench by the Brick Window This building is part of the Machinga District Hospital campus in southern Malawi. Overall, the hospital is spartan but well kempt. I do not know who forgot this small building or why they let it go to seed. This image was my first attempt at High Dynamic Range or HDR photography. This technique involves taking multiple snapshots of the exact same thing with varying amounts of light (exposure time). You then use software to superimpose multiple images so that you can get the best shadows from the darker images and the best highlights from the brighter images. You can tell that a breeze was moving the tree leaves on this day; they are a bit blurry because they were not in the exact same place for each of the three images I combined to make this one.
