What to take to Malawi

The booty I'm taking to Malawi

OK friends, here's the deal: in 27 hours I take the red eye to Toronto. I climb off the plane at 8:45 in the morning, go through Canadian customs, and then crash for a good night's sleep before I board another jet at 11 a.m. Friday, June 22, for Addis Ababa, and then on to Lilongwe, capital of Malawi, in Southern Africa. So I haven't got time for a long post here. In this one, you get the quick and dirty.

What you see in the photo here is the booty I'll be taking with me for the Malawians. About 85 hats, a few nice dress shirts, lots of sports tank tops and T-shirts, women's garments. and a few other odds and ends.

Here's what you are looking at in the photo. At the bottom, some diarrhea medications along with malaria meds, which I start taking two days before I leave (like right now.) Right next to those is Shu, one of my traveling companions. That's the name I gave this Shoe that Grows. There are nine others on their way to Maggie, my Malawi contact and traveling companion. In Africa, Shu will be bobbing along on my backpack, right next to Jean Baptiste, because I'm going to be distributing One World Futbols as well as a shoe that will expand for years as a child's foot grows. I'll tell you more about that later.

See that blue soccer ball -- that stays here. Too big. Jean Baptiste, shown in the photo at the bottom of this post, is my other traveling companion, and a lot easier to pack.

Oh, I almost forgot. I have a third traveling companion (other than Maggie). That's Micah. I call the white hat in the photo Micah, in honor of its donor, Michael Kheriaty, a gentleman I know in  the ballroom dance community. His and another 84 hats that I'm taking to Malawi, and which are crammed in the green and red duffel bags in this photo were donated at a clothing drive I'm going to tell you about in the next blog or so. I'm not cramming Michael's hat in the duffels. I'm wearing it, to keep it in good shape for some tall African man. I'll know who to give it to when I see him (her?), and I'll try to post a photo so you all know it was a good fit.

There are some other things in the photo -- a really loud necktie which will likely go over big in Malawi, or Zambia, or Zimbabwe, depending on what happens.

Also in the photo -- some sharp Tilamook cheddar cheese, and some Best Foods Mayonnaise -- which should make Maggie do back flips as soon as she reads this blog. These products are like gold in Malawi. Oh, and see that little curvy orange thingy hanging around the cheese? That's a really cool goose-neck lamp that plugs into your lap top's USB port to illuminate your keyboard in the dead of night. Those make really nice stocking stuffers; and poor as Malawi is, there are going to be laptops.

That little button in the bottom center -- it's from the Northwest Folk Life Festival. I will bet somebody will get a kick out of it. And the kazoos? Not many people know this, but I'm the guy who introduced kazoos to Hanoi. The reason I know this is because I had to show really smart adults how to get music out of them. I'm packing a bunch of them along for the kids.

And how about those T-shirts? These are my own -- love them, but never wear these. One is a Puma shirt my son gave me; he's a shoe designer for Puma, living in Nuremberg. English is widely spoken in Malawi, so I hope they like the Deport Racism T-shirt, which was manufactured as a poke-in-the-eye for Tweetie Bird. I'm a supporter of the Innocence Project, and that shirt lists the names of wrongly incarcerated people who were released, mostly on the basis of DNA evidence. More than 300, many who spent years on death row, are rebuilding their lives. And I hate to part with my Bernie shirt; maybe people in Africa have heard of the guy who wouldn't have been so insulting to our international allies.

Am I political? Yes. Extending the hand of friendship is a political act. But, as I told my dance mates, giving them the shirt off your back is an act of love. They were very supportive of this effort, and I'm proud of them.

I'm not taking the greeting card. It's special. It was given to my by Alex Hawkins, a great dance instructor at First Class Ballroom in Everett. You can't tell by looking from this distance,but when you open it, there are a bunch of little figures that wiggle while the Cupid Shuffle lyrics and music play. Cute. Where did she find that?

Well, time to start winding down for the night. Morning comes early, and I have to beware of loose ends.

More later . . .

Love,

Robert,
and Jean Baptiste,
Oh and Shu. . .
. . . and Micah, too.