Respect

I achieved a major milestone yesterday - I was addressed in the respectful form as "amayi". "Amayi" literally means "mother" and it is used to show respect to the person you are speaking with. I couldn't believe my ears when one of the lab techs I am training greeted me in the morning with "Madzuka bwanji amayi?". I am off to Zomba this afternoon and will post pictures as soon as I can. Zomba is a cool town; it is a small town a the base of the Zomba plateau in the Southern Region. It was the colonial capital so there are lots of colonial-era buildings and it is the location of Chancellor College, the undergraduate branch of the University of Malawi system as well as the National Statistics Office (where I will be meeting with people tomorrow). I spent 2 weeks working there in 2005 and have very fond memories of the town and the people I met there and am looking forward to returning.