1.02.2008

Boys in Pink

Malawi is probably one of the only places in the world where you can go and see entire villages where no one has ever seen a TV or even looked at pictures in a magazine. This means that my students cannot speak English (despite the fact that it is the language of their secondary education... eek), and means they do not know who Angelina Jolie is (her kids were not Malawian after all; they do know Madonna though), and in its most tangible result, it means that Malawians have no concept of any fashion, not to mention Western fashion. Without magazines or widely read papers, there is no media to tell people what they should or shouldn't wear, and therefore, they wear whatever they can find in bins in their local markets. This means boys wearing hot pink T-shirts that read, "this is my party shirt," or "I am a Princess," and "just do me." I have seen the toughest boy in my school rocking a hot pink, ladies, 1980s (shoulder pads and all) business suit, complete with fat gold buttons.

Malawians seem to long for and want American culture, yet don't understand its context. You see men wearing 50 Cent jerseys in the church choir. My neighbor's wife sits on the front stoop knitting while listening to her radio, which regularly blasts the loudest, dirtiest, foulest gangster rap I have ever heard. Then, of course, there is the Chitenje (wrap skirts and head dresses that everyone wears) that I've seen with Bon Laden and flaming WTC buildings collapsing on them. They don't even know where or what New York is, but it's hard to believe people could be that clueless. Then you remember that it is a 2 hour walk and a few days salary to buy a newspaper (and 1/2 the population is illiterate), so you realize that they really are that cut off from everything you know, and you laugh.