Morning rituals exist across all cultures. There is of course variance within the culture, i.e. the teenager who manages to sleep past noon, but for the most part the rituals within a given community are similar. In The States we set alarms, hit the snooze button a few times, and then drag ourselves out of bed for our rite of food, coffee, and a shower. Getting out of bed is done with great reluctance and weekends are always the subject of early morning desire. Americans value our sleep because we work long days and often do not get the required 8 hours of sleep every night (of which technology is partially to blame). There is the rare early bird - but they are aware of how sleep is valued amongst their peers - they try to not wake the rest of the house... they shower, eat their bowl of Cheerios, fill a coffee mug for the road, and drive off to whatever desk job or assembly line they belong to. A few people have the motivation to even wake up early and go to the gym (something I have yet to achieve steadily), others have children which require longer mornings - but for the most part sleeping past 9am is a desire for many. This is the morning as I have always known it - felt with reluctance and quite transitioning into functionality. Malawi has a different sort of concept of mornings, the kind of perspective that could drive an outsider crazy (and if you can't tell... currently is). First off, Malawians do not appear to value sleep in any way, nor do they understand the concept of quiet morning rituals. Here, the people sleep and wake with the sun. Once the first sliver of light comes over the mountains, they wake up naturally and begin cleaning, collecting water, and tending to the animals. But, before anything else the floors must be moped and the front yard swept in illogical concentric circles so no blade of grass dare appear. This is amplified in the village - Women yell across compound walls to greet good morning, children run around doing chores and the vegetables sales-women start yelling for customers - ' Mapuno... Mapuno... Mapuno' (Tomato). Also waking with the sun is every animal in the country - song birds (some which ironically sounds like alarms - only with no snooze button), roosters, dogs, bees, guinea fowl, goats .... Everyone is let out of the nighttime kraal/kennel and set free to wake world. This is, once again, amplified in the village as there are simply more barnyard animals and less compound walls to keep them from gathering into one chorus. Then, once the yard is swept and water collected for the day's rations it's time to get ready for the day. In Usisya this means children going to the lake to splash their faces and brush their teeth, women go to the lake to wash the pots which remain from the previous night's dinner, and cattle gather for a morning drink (the sanitation of this ritual will be the subject of a later post). In town - at 6 the watchmen begin their journeys home, then at 7 gardeners arrive for the day shift, and at 8 the bwana's (bosses) head off to work. There is no coffee or proper breakfast - so I am not sure what happens between the 4:30 am yard sweeping and the 8 am departure - but somewhere in that there work shifts change and people head off to work/school or back home after a late night patrolling compounds. This local concept of - get up and go - has been one of the more challenging cultural practices to adjust to. Maybe it is difficult becuase it happens early in the morning - when my mind can quite the groggy anger or maybe it is because in my culture waking people is considered rude and inconsiderate. Being an anthropologist I often find myself saying 'it's a cultural difference, don't get mad over cultural differences.' However, the anthropologist in me doesn't turn on till after 8am, and when the guard knocks on my window at 6am to tell me something inconsequential - it takes every ounce of me to greet a happy good morning to them 'Nawuka makora iyayi' ( I did not wake well).
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Bonnie HarveyCurrently working in northern Malawi as Programs and Evaluations Coordinator for Temwa Archives
June 2019
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