Mary in Malawi

Im right now having breakfast that my lovely Olivia and Wilfred made for them, and shared with me.. I was a bit (or, ok, VERY) sceptic to the over boiled cucumber like gunge on my plate. But believe it or not, it was so good!! It looks like a giant cucumber, så i though the texture would be like... boiled cucumber. Slimy. But not at all, really! It smells wonderful, and tastes just like fresh potatoes in springtime in sweden. Some salt on it, and it's just delicious! It is called "Mphonda" in chichewa, but I will try to find the engish name. Wilfred says it is raelated to pumpkin, but nicer to eat.

Tonight, I could not sleep good at all.. I was stupid enough to believe i was cured from my night mares and could with out problems read a scary book before sleeping, but not... =(  The book was called "Someone in your bed" and was about a could and dark creature that crawled up next to a girl in her bed when she turned out the lights... Ick. Not good.... especially not when you have hyenas lurking around just outside your window, howling, looking for food in the garden. We have had a lot fo them lately, around 11 pm they start coming down the mountain. You know when they approach, because all the stray dogs suddenly become silent. They usually fight, and bark och howl, but when hyenas are close, they all stay away, hiding. They don't want to get into a fight with a hyena... I really wish to see a hyena, I am not afraid of them.. But as long as you only hear them, they get some kind of powerful mysticism about them. And you can hear, right outside your bedroom window, but you can't see it, cause as soon as you pull the curtain away, it is allready gone.

There are a lot of stories about african magic here and the people really believe in it, no matter how educated they are. They believe that people can put curses on each other. They can make someone become sick as a punishment, or just because they are evil. Not everyone can put a curse or practice magic, only some people. the traditional doctors (witch doctors) can do it, and they can also shift they shape. They can turn in to any animal, preferably a hyena, and then they sneak around during night, collecting secrets from people, learning dark magic.  We had a situaton recentely in Nkhoma.. Some people burned a hyena, and the same day a witch doctor went missing. The newspapers put out the news; "Traditional doctor in shape of hyena killed". Everyone believed so, even the staff at the hospital. The scary thing is, that this witch doctor is still missing, many weeks later. So who know? Maybe it is true! Maybe there are not hyenas lurking around our house in the night, but people practising dark magic...?

When you ask the people here, why no muzungo (white person) has ever experienced anything, they simply say "Witch craft doesn't work on muzungo!" And  for them, it is true. Even the really educated ones, they believe so. I find it amazing. People here live so close to nature, and everything turns into magic.

A friend of ours, Keith, is a nurse at the hospital. And he is very educated, very modern and very "westernized" if I can say so. And even he says it is true. He once saw a person turn in to a beatle and fly away.


In the hospital, there was a guy in the staff accused for witch craft, and accused to put spells and curses on the other staff members and their familys. Noone wanted to talk to him, everyone turned against him, and it all ended with the hospital priest together with a lot of staff members walked from house to house in Nkhoma to pray together with everyone for this man.

Can you imagine the world I ve lived in for a year?? =)