In my last post I noted that I was in the Peace Corps in Malawi 30 years ago. I was a teacher. Recently a student found me on the Internet and sent me a letter. I included excerpts from that letter. Since then I have had a few more emails from my student. He listed ten students from my class who have died of aids since I was last in Malawi.
When we were there Steve would come home from the operating room covered in blood to his underwear. It ran off his body in pools of red in the shower. The sterile gloves were used over and over again. He often tore his finger through a glove doing invasive procedures. We did not know about aids then. When he got home and began reading the medical literature, Steve knew he had to be tested. Malawi was one of the places where aids had been initially discovered. Blood could be deadly. In retrospect we were lucky.
Much later I wrote a poem based on my teaching experiences in Malawi. I offer it here in memory of my ten students, the many others, friends, some like family, others co-workers who we know have died and those we do not know about.
RAIN FALLING ON TIN ROOFS
Nsanje
Malawi, 1980
Bat guano leaks through
the ceiling onto pages of my
notebook writing it’s own
story.
And school boys jump up
to move the desk of their
teacher, they
carry my books for me, call me Madam.
In the ass end of this
country, in the still dark morning they
come, uniformed
in frayed white shirts( dotted with pin
prick
holes from the sparks of coal
irons).
Where we study Solzhenitsyn,
browned pages falling
from one single copy and 40 boys
sit at shared wooden desks cannot
hear the teacher, rain a drum
pounding, their heads down.
Where President Banda is for
life and we dare
not discuss politics, wide eyed
smiling, shining black
broad muscled, 25 year old
“boys” still in secondary school.
Praying to god and to the
spirits because
they have seen hyenas turn into
witches and fly
through the night in baskets
meant for winnowing the rice.
Where it is the only rain to
fall in one year
because God has forgotten us and if only
our fore fathers had been slaves we would be Americans
now.
I love your eyes, your voice like music they
write in love
letters to me and I lie to them and say, you
can be anything
you want.
1 comment:
Many metaphors, many thoughts and emotions, thank you, Nancy
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