Nsanje

I have been wanting to write about this for a while, and now I have collected my thoughts and found time to write something coherent about this cultural blemish.

A few months ago I visited a village called Nyamazani, and I was amazed by what I saw. This village is strikingly different compared to most of the other rural settlements in this area. Most of the houses have roofs made of iron sheets, it appeared that almost every family has their own oxcart, there are a variety of fruit trees throughout the area, and the place is crowded with goats; pigs; and cattle. On the other hand, in my village (as with most of the villages in this area) most of the houses have roofs thatched with grass, the entire village shares two oxcarts, we enjoy cutting down trees before they can reach ten feet, and only one family is raising cattle; two are raising pigs; and a handful keep goats. Clearly the standard of living is mush higher in Nyamazani, and I wanted to figure out why.

To begin with, there are tribal differences. The largest tribe in Malawi, concentrated in the central and southern regions, is the Chewa. In my area, most of the people belong to this tribe, we speak this language (Chichewa), and the leadership-village headmen/women, chiefs, and members of parliament-belong to the Chewa tribe. However, the village of Nyamazani is a small pocket of a different tribe of people, the Ngoni. The Ngoni are descendents of the great Zulu tribe in the area of what is now the Republic of South Africa. The tree pillars of Ngoni culture, as any Ngoni is happy to tell you, are meat; women; and beer. In spite of this, they do seem to have their act together, especially when compared to the impoverished Chewa.

There is a controlled experiment set up here. We have an independent variable-the Ngoni tribe in Nyamazani and the Chewa tribe in the rest of the area. We have a dependent variable-the Ngoni village has much greater material wealth than the surrounding Chewa villages. All the other variables are more or less constant/equal-these people have farmland of the same fertility, they deal with the same weather patterns, they have the exact same government leadership, etc. What is left is the fun part-to interpret the data. (Please excuse me for turning this into a science experiment-I am a nerd, and I just finished teaching the Scientific Method to my students.)

To do this, I went straight to the source-the people themselves. I asked a variety of different people from both sides the provocative question, “Why are the Ngoni so much better off?” To this question the typical response was: “Because they have more money.” I had to press further: “Why do they have more money?” To this second question there were two different, but not entirely exclusive, ideas. The first idea was that the Ngoni are simply harder workers than the Chewa. I feel the second idea explains the divide in wealth more deeply: The Chewa people tend to have more jealousy towards one another.

I have observed this jealousy firsthand, and I feel that it is one of the biggest problems this country (or more specifically-the central region of the country) is facing. I have to be aware of this because the people I interact with, or become friends with, are victims of jealousy. For example, I have a good friend who helps me with lots of different things such as maintenance around the house, development projects at the school and in the village, and learning various things about Chewa culture. People see him hanging around with the white man a lot, and perhaps they think I am giving him lots of different things. Therefore, he has felt a huge difference in the way the people in the community treat him. A few months ago, two of his goats were stolen, his old friends no longer talk with him, and he cannot rely upon other people for help as he did in the past. It is to the point where I feel uncomfortable talking to him in public because I know people are watching us with hatred in their eyes. All this is due to jealousy.

A handful of knowledgeable people have told me that this abundance of jealousy leads to laziness, theft, and a fear of spending money if you do have it. The first consequence, laziness, is certainly present here. I’m not sure whether or not laziness is a consequence of jealousy, but it certainly is a problem. I have been told by older people that this is something new. In the past, people were working very hard farming (which is the main source of income here), and then after the harvest in March and April they received the fruits of their labor. Apparently, nowadays things are different. The work ethic has faded away, and people are content with just barely surviving. Perhaps this is due to jealousy. There is no need to work hard and gain wealth if people will just hate you for it.

People also tell me that there is lot’s of theft due to jealousy. Another friend of mine, who typically spends all day-from 5AM to 6PM-in his enormous garden, and has plenty of produce and income to show for his hard work, had ten chickens stolen from him last month. It is not uncommon for well-to-do people in the village to be robbed on a regular basis. When I arrived here last December, I was surprised to see that very few people grow cassava (a crop that grows very will here, requires very few inputs, and gives a good profit) and raise pigs (another good source of income). I asked why, and I was always told that people are afraid to have these things because they are frequently stolen. Obviously, the theft here cannot be entirely contributed to jealousy, but it certainly is a contributing factor.

The last point is most interesting to me: People here are afraid to spend their money, or even to work hard to make money, because they know people will be jealous of them. This is less of a problem for me because, as a white man, I am expected to have lots of money (If only these people knew about the debt I have with my college loans). But for everyone else, you have four options if you do find yourself with a full wallet. One, you can find a new place to live, such as a city where wealth isn’t something that attracts as much attention. Two, you can keep the money without spending it. Three, you can spend the money on silly things or give it all away to your lazy relatives. Four, you can set up an alliance with you friends and family so that anyone that threatens to steal your things or show their jealousy towards you will be punished severely. I suppose there is a fifth option: you can work hard, buy nice things, be a good person, and then in the end feel the effects of everyone’s envy.

For the most part, Chichewa is a simple language to learn. In English, we have many synonyms, while in Chichewa there is the inverse of this-one word that means many different things. However, the English word “jealousy” can be translated into at least three different words in Chichewa: kaduka, nsanje, and njiru. To me, this isolated abundance of synonyms illustrates just how important (or prevalent) the idea of jealousy is in Chewa culture. These people have a hard enough time just to get by on a day-to-day basis. Having to be conscious, or fearful, of success certainly doesn’t help the situation. It doesn’t really encourage development either, which makes my job difficult.

“We’re one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other.” U2