Malawi Dictation: Outing with the Lighthouse HIV/AIDS Clinic 's home-based care doctors

The home-care doctors say they've saved the most critically ill patient for last. We bump over the potholes in the dust road primarily used for foot traffic, watching villages appear and subside out the window. I notice awareness of me arrive in every person’s eyes as if it’s a wind that reaches everyone in turn. The eyebrows of women, men, children jump up as they catch a glimpse of me, and stay up, their faces locked on mine. The faces of the children come to life with true grins. To see such happiness on anyone’s face is a gift, but I feel left out—I don’t know what the happiness is, there’s something here I cannot see. I laugh anyway. I would like to share something with them, with anyone, but I can’t find a place where our thoughts can cross.

We pass a few dry empty fields, and then stop in the road. To our left is a track in the field leading to a small square mud house, with an open doorway that reveals only black. I step out of the car and enter the world outside my window.

It’s quiet and the air is warm and full of soft dust. Five kids stand 10 feet away from me, looking at me solemnly, as if not sure what I’ll do now that I’ve broken out of the car. I look at them quietly a moment, then deploy my widest grin. The answering volley of grins is so instant and bright that mine is stuck on my face, trying to stretch wider until it begins to hurt. Finally I’m desperate to relax my face muscles and space out my grins with periods of no smile at all. Each time I grin again their grins reappear with full wattage.

The doctor is ready, and gestures that I should start down the narrow track. A gentle seriousness has settled on all the contours of his face in the time it took him to gather his tools. We walk through the quiet of the field. I don’t see the patient until my foot has already touched the dirt step in front of his house, but he’s been sitting on a chair outside the door the whole time, watching us approach.

He doesn’t move his head to face the doctor when they greet each other, which I think is odd until it's time to proceed into the house. I understand then that he is only pooling and conserving his remaining energy, and every movement comes at a cost. We wait for him to complete his long journey to his bed, respectfully looking away. The room is very dark, but the shafts of light that angle in from gaps in the tin roof are beautiful. They look solid enough to hold. A great rainbow of pills is scattered in bags or trays all over the room; sherbet orange and white striped tablets, cherry red lozenges, periwinkle ovals. The doctor and patient begin a sotto voce duet of questions and answers. When taking measurements, the doctor is impossibly graceful as he loops the tape measure around arms that never grow wider than the wrists, and legs that never grow wider than the ankles.

I spend most of the visit staring at the patient's t-shirt. It’s a black shirt gone gray from time, and there is an even coat of dust worked into the cotton weave. Still, behind these obscuring veils an image of a haunted house presses through to be seen. A mummy, a werewolf and some suited creature with the traits of both Frankenstein and a vampire slouch insolently in the door frame. Bordering the image are red ballooned letters meant to look like congealed blood: I ESCAPED THE HOUSE OF HORRORS. I look at the residents of the haunted house. I notice that each has a power hold on the others. The werewolf stands at the back, clamping the entire circumference of the other monsters heads with one gigantic paw. The mummy has slyly wrapped a loose end of his bandage around the feet of his companions. Vampenstein flexes his fangs at the neck of the werewolf, and is prepared to strike the mummy with a spare bolt, a replica of the one through his head. All together it creates a system of immobility.

It's hard to believe escape from such a place could be more than a mirage, that it would ever cease to wield invisible holds on you. It’s even harder to believe after I notice that the trapped despair in the monsters eyes is reproduced perfectly in the eyes of the patient.

The visit is ending. The patient asks the doctor one last question, and the answer is my name. Suddenly there are great vibrations of energy from the patients bed; his limbs skitter around as he rallies himself to rise. He accomplishes standing, and in a great waste of energy reaches out his hand for mine, saying bleakly, “Thank you, Mr. Ellen.”

I return to my place behind the car windows again, carrying a thank you that does not belong to me. I wish I could give it to the doctor. I let my eyes look out the window without seeing as we drive home, so that I can remember the sick man.

Hello, Suffering, I say silently. So, now I have met yet another of your many faces.

I hollow out my mind to listen for a reply, but none comes. I’m not surprised. Not on any of its faces has Suffering moved its lips for me.

Malawi Dictation: Lucious Banda

Lucious Banda! Malawi's biggest star! He's playing tonight at a place down a small road that's the last left before the roundabout, we're told. After a few wrong turns we find a turnoff where several sets of headlights search down a potholed road, so we follow them and find a plain building surrounded by cars. We go in and see a warehouse stage lit with green, red and black; a bar in the back. We order drinks and sit on a table, watching the dancers perform.

It's four men with shoulder padded suitjackets and white undershirts, big belted tight bluejeans and beige berets. They move in choreographed rythms, together, so that they look like puppets being jerked around by strings at their elbows, knees and hips. Their neon striped and checkered ties never settle on their chests, but twist and ribbon through the air from the speed of the dance.

An hour or so later and large man wearing a t-shirt wanders across the stage discreetly. Even though he's picking up the mic I don't think it can be Lucious Banda because he has not a bit of the body language of a star. He seems like too nice of a guy. "Hello everyone, I'm so sorry to be late. I did not want to be late. And everyone is left standing here, it's not good. But we can start NOW!" A happy wave of sound rolls out from the stage and carries us the rest of the night.

Malawi Dictation: Hike on Mt Bunda

I woke early, and nervously picked up and dropped every piece of clothing trying to determine what's best for a hike in Malawi. My entrance into the kitchen was the catalyst for the group to load into two land rovers and set off. Ann and I rode with two English men in their 30s. After some banter-talk between them they turned on some melodic indy-pop and talked about The Shins briefly, before letting the soft pleasant cotton candy sounds of the male vocals usurp all as the common soundtrack. I stared out the window exclusively, watching Malawians walk down the thin orange dust streets right next to us. I saw they wore beautiful bolts of fabric or old thin jeans. I saw them sitting in front of flat billboarded storefronts, and tried to guess what was sold inside. I saw them leading bicycles through the dust, with large towers of firewood built on the platform above the back wheel like towering sandcastles that are born to crumble. I stare out the window as this footage rolls by, and the glass separates me from this place as effectively as the glass of a TV screen. The whole way to Mt. Bunda I watch this movie, and think again and again how the indy-pop soundtrack really belongs to another film.

We pull into a small group of houses, and park in someones yard. Children pour out from all directions. I look at the palm roofs and dirt bricks that are the same color as the dust we've been driving over; metal cans bursting with pretty succulent plants hang from the eaves. We stand next to the land rovers in our outdoor gear or button-up shirts, coating ourselves with sunscreen, adjusting gleaming sunglasses, loading snacks into backpacks. Twenty children in dust covered dresses, oversized shirts, and one-strapped overalls surround us, staring honestly.

One in our group draws her camera from its holster and the kids immediately grin and prepare their best karate moves for 5, 10, 15 pictures, all jostling together for prime positions. They wobble, they topple from trying to hold these precarious poses--but they do it laughing.

Chickens scatter out of our way as we head for the foot of the mountain. We walk through tufts of dry grass struggling to put down roots over granite rubble, until we reach smooth slides of vertical granite that lead us skyward. Black, aged white and pink are the colors that ribbon through the stone. The sun picks out new threads of glitter as the movement of my steps works my body higher.

Halfway up there is a group wearing while sheets that fill in the breeze. They're making a music video of religious songs. A woman in light green satiny skirts and beads across her forehead sits against the granite mountain, waving a feathery wand and singing beautifully through a wide grin, closing her eyes in bliss, gesturing with her feathery baton to the blue sky, the mountain, the flat wide land below us. Her high sweet voice sings "We worship you...We love you lord..." to the background music. Soon her "angels" in white sheets join her for another number. It is so quiet, there is only the sound of the air and the music. They want a picture with us, and I am in awe of the feeling of the crisp white sheet warm with sun that I feel on my sweaty skin as one of the angels hugs me for the picture, turning into my face saying, "My friend! You are my friend!" as if nothing is funnier or happier than that.