give em gum, give em guns, get em young, give em fun, but if they ain't givin it up, then they ain't gettin none

It almost never fails. The same thing happened while I was in Bangladesh too--all the time. And it’s funny, funny, (mildly annoying) funny. I will be on my bike, maintaining my steady, measured, somewhat brisk pace. I will pass someone who is going significantly slower. Approximately 45 seconds later that person will muscle past, sometimes casting a sidelong glance to make sure I’ve noticed. I will shake my head, and continue my pace. About 50 yards ahead of me, Lance Armstrong will slow his pace. And yes, I’ll pass him again, knowing that somehow, that’s going to be taken as a personal assault on his manhood or something. Again. The next thing that happens usually depends on my mood. If I’m feeling pissy, once I’ve passed him a second time I’ll maintain a rather smug, almost breakneck pace so he can’t pass me again (unless he’s really fast). If I’m feeling sanctimonious, I’ll be the turtle to his hare and let him grunt on by again, and we’ll continue our little cha-cha until one of us finally makes it home. One of these days when someone tries to pass me, I’m going to match his speed exactly and stay neck and neck, for as long as it takes to drive him crazy.

***

On three continents now (ohh, look at me), I’ve played a little game with students. It’s a little rhythm game we used to do in theatre classes. You stand in a circle, and start clapping a slowish, steady beat. One person, holding a pen, and a person standing next to him/her, make the following exchange, to the beat, like a chant:
Person A: This is a pen.
Person B: A what?
A: A pen.
B: A what?
A: A pen.
B: Oh! A pen!
The exchange ends with person A handing the pen over to person B, and without breaking the rhythm, person B must do the exact same exchange with person C, and so on and so forth, around the circle. The game gets more complicated as you add more and more objects (book, ball, wallet, biography of James VanderBeek--which gets tricky to say in one beat . . ), and even have things going in different directions and cross each other. It’s about concentration, listening, and keeping the beat (or if you’re teaching English, it’s about vocab and the articles).

Now, in America, the high school students picked it up in about 20-25 minutes. In Bangladesh, after an hour about 2/3 of the students could do it passably, but only just in individual pairs, coached by me, and only sometimes did we even have time to do it in a circle. In Malawi . . . The sixth graders had gone around the circle twice after 10 minutes. It’s pretty cool. There’s a reason why Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, and Jay-Z were/are all African-American. Yes, that’s right. (You can sub in Mos Def or Nas if you’d like.)

***

Things yelled in my direction every day on the street, AKA names I am called:
Jesus (the beard)
Chuck Norris (either the moves or the beard. Probably the moves.)
Azungu (meaning white man)
White man (because I’m a white man)
Adamu (because my name is Adam. There’s not a single syllable in Chichewa that ends in a consonant.)
Adams (because who wants a name that ends in ‘M’?)
David Cassidy (actually I was only called that once)
Sir (just because it’s polite. But with the African accent it’s more like Sah.)
Boss (because I wrote “Born in the USA” and other blue-collar hits)

***

I wish development work got to be more primal. Rock stars, athletes, even stockbrokers . . They get to yell and scream and punch the air when something’s gone well. I had a good day today. I wanted to crush a beer can on my head and shout; and it really felt like I’d just *#!@%ed poverty and injustice in the *#@%$!*%. But you know, not only can you not write that in a blog that anyone can read, you also can’t scream it--or hardly even think it--without feeling stupid, especially when you’re standing just outside the Water Commission office alongside a busy street where you could be called Jesus at any time.

I like Malawi.