Rogue of the Week (Willamette Week)

Penned this week's Rogue for Willamette Week.

Problems at Powell's Books (Willamette Week)

Another Willamette Week print story, this one on the layoffs at Powell's Books—from the perspectives of laid-off workers.

Two Willamette Week Stories

I've been working as a news intern at Willamette Week since getting back to Portland, mostly blogging about blood drives and earthquake drills and wacky legislative proposals (on headphones and cell phones), but also writing some more substantive stories.

I had two articles in this week's print edition: one on a housing cooperative opening above an anarchist cafe, and another on a local Egyptian couple and their thoughts on the protests in their home country.

Malawi's abortion debate (Gender Links)

I recently freelanced a piece for Gender Links, a South African website that publishes stories from across the continent. You can read my story on unsafe abortion in Malawi here.

A Series on Religion, Part 4: The J-Word (Glimpse)

In high school, I learned my kind had a name: Cashews. We were that not-so-rare half-breed, part Catholic, part Jewish. I quibbled with the "sh" sound (shouldn't we really be Cajews?) but mostly embraced the label. In Malawi, however, I have made few attempts to explain that my parents come from different religious traditions. Sometimes I say they were raised in different churches, but on a few occasions I've clarified that my father attended no church at all. No, he called it a synagogue. Some Malawians are surprised to learn that Jews exist outside of Israel. Normally I just cause confusion by revealing that my father is one of these mysterious creatures.

Recently, I divulged my ancestry to a young Malawian woman. Fanny is an accountant at my partner organization, and we've gotten to know each other over the past few months. When I told her I was flying to the U.S. for my cousin's wedding, she asked if American weddings were like Malawian weddings.


Fanny looking serious at a workshop in Ndirande, the township where I’ve carried out my research project.


I told her that, yeah, mostly they were. There's no perikani perikani, an hours-long ordeal at Malawian weddings where guests toss money at the newly betrothed, but the bride also wears white and we also eat cake and American couples also receive too many appliances.


As guests at the wedding reception toss money at the newlyweds, some bills entangle themselves in the bride's train.


"Does the couple go to a church first?" Fanny asked.

Some couples, I told her. Others don't. "And my cousin and his fiancée," I went on, "are Jewish, but they won't get married at a synagogue — uh, a Jewish church. But they'll have a rabbi —a Jewish pastor, kind of — at their wedding. He'll, you know, officiate the ceremony."

This met silence, which I hastily tried to fill.

"Yeah, I guess Jewish weddings are a little different," I said. "There’s this dance, the horah, and we all hold hands and dance in a circle and sing." Fanny blinked. "Think of the traditional dances at Malawian weddings, chioda and chisamba and all of those. The horah is like the Jewish chioda." And then, against all better judgment, I found myself singing "Hava Nagilah." I tapped out a little snaking grapevine, running into a desk and knocking a newspaper to the floor.

Fanny blinked again. She looked at me, puzzled, this time ready with a question.

"So will they go to church first?"

A Series on Religion, Part 3: A Sunday at Church (Glimpse)

“You haven’t been to church yet?” Yamikani asked. She looked at me with a mix of disbelief and horror. True, I said—I’d been in Malawi almost a year but hadn’t attended a single service. “Why not?” she asked. I shrugged. “This week,” she said, “you’re coming with me.”


Yamikani at a conference. Her cap is scrawled with “Jesus,” but don’t mistake her for a proselytizer. She rarely raises the topic of religion with me, and we agree on numerous topics: improving access to contraception, encouraging girls to remain in school, spicy chips, handbags.


And so I found myself, on a breezy Sunday in July, at Yamikani’s Pentecostal church. I sat on a blue plastic lawn chair in an auditorium garlanded with gaudy drapes. Banners reading “2010, THE YEAR OF DOMINION” hung on the walls. A few people asked which church I attended in America. I told them it didn’t exist in Malawi. The answer made me feel a bit slimy, but I’ve met little success explaining my agnosticism or my confused religious heritage (a Catholic mother, a Jewish father, a lifetime of lighting the menorah as the Christmas tree twinkles in the corner).

We began by greeting each other with high fives. Nice! Way hipper than handshakes, and with recent reports of swine flu in Malawi, far more hygienic. The preacher’s stage presence was explosive. His voice boomed at the beginning and grew increasingly raspy as the sermon wore on. He beat his right hand up and down as if thumping a drum. Another man worked as Chichewa interpreter and personal sweat-mopper, chasing the preacher with a large white handkerchief. I admit, though, that I had trouble following the sermon, in which the preacher kept mispronouncing “irrevocable,” declared himself a lion, and accused another pastor of being a wizard (three days after they met, this wizard pastor died—don’t worry, though, our preacher assured us, “I did not kill him”).

My musings on wizardry were cut short, however, once it was time for personal prayers. “And if you can,” the preacher said, “you may speak in tongues.”

In what? Yamikani confirmed his words for me. Curiosity overtook skepticism and I strained to make out the voices of the congregants around me, but it was all a muddle—Chichewa, English, maybe some tongues.

As I rocked on my plastic chair, I instructed myself to be open-minded, but instinct told me this was bunk. I kept quiet, though, as the service proceeded. Near the end of the sermon, the preacher returned to the topic of witchcraft. I’ve grown accustomed to this topic during my time in Malawi. The daily newspapers carry frequent reports of witchcraft: men growing female genitalia, vindictive individuals preventing rain from falling over their neighbors’ gardens, invisible Satanists flying through the city, bewitched rats stealing money at local markets. Traditional healers set up stalls in the city center and in outlying townships, selling bottled herbs and gnarled roots. I try to stay mum when witchcraft enters the conversation, to remind myself that religion here is a blend of imported monotheism and traditional beliefs, but I couldn’t suppress an eye-roll as the preacher rehashed the topic. Then, however, he made me bolt upright.

“There is no witchcraft or sorcery—” he boomed.

Yes! Redemption! (In the rational, secular sense, of course.) Cogency!

The interpreter put his words into Chichewa.

“—that will work against me!” he continued. “In Jesus’ name, I am protected!”

I slumped back into my seat.

A Series on Religion, Part 2: Sex and the Bible (Glimpse)

Malawi’s population is overwhelmingly Christian, and conversation often turns to religion. I, unfortunately, seem unable to clamp my maw when talk swerves this way (see Part 1 of this series, in which I discuss my mother’s exit from the Catholic Church). Here is Exhibit B.

As part of my research on gender issues here, I spend time with a group of young women in Ndirande, Blantyre’s most populous township. As a foreigner in Malawi, I’m often assumed to be an expert in every imaginable field, and the women call on me to answer difficult questions. Once, as they crowded into a bedroom to compare pregnancy stretch marks, one turned to me with a solemn look on her face. “Rebecca,” she asked, “is there a medicine for this?”

During another meeting, a few of the young women asked me to confirm a Biblical detail. I hedged the question. “Interpretations vary,” I said, the consummate liberal arts graduate. Mistake. Especially because the women had just asked me about masturbation. I have no idea how this entered the conversation—the discussion was in Chichewa, and I made feeble attempts to follow along—but suddenly I found myself explaining that while some might consider masturbation a form of sex, others may not. I should have stopped here, but, again, I carried on. “Some may say only intercourse is sex, while some include…uh, other types of sex,” I fumbled. And still I didn’t shut up. “Like, uh, oral sex, or…uh—”

“Anal sex!” the matriarch of the house interrupted. The young women roared.

Oh no. How did our tame discussion about problems in Ndirande turn into this? I hastily attempted (and failed) to divert the conversation.

And then, inexplicably, came the big question—“But Rebecca, you still believe in God, don’t you?”
I handled this query better. “Let’s discuss this another time,” I said.

Across the room, I could hear the matriarch chuckle. “We need to get Rebecca to church,” she murmured.

I sighed and sank into the overstuffed couch, swatting away a fly.

Coming next: the women succeed—I make it to church.