HappyGeorge

It’s a seven minute walk from the McCauley’s home in the secured compound, over to the CRWRC office – basically straight up a long non-residential street. I was walking home tonight, after another inspiring day of teaching, when a young man approached me – offered me his hand and introduced himself as “HappyGeorge.”

“My father called me George and my grandfather called me Happy so I call myself HappyGeorge.”

I wasn’t exactly happy to meet him, as my hard-working students had stayed late and it was starting to get dark and who was HappyGeorge and what did he want with me anyway?

Turned out he was a high school student who knew a French-Canadian girl who lived in Toronto, who had been in Malawi for two years and was planning to return. He suggested we walk and talk.

Four thousand kwatchas later, I now own four handmade baobab tree-fibre necklaces:

The mental math I attempted, during the transaction, in order to determine how badly I was being taken, is too complex and painful to recall, even now. But after haggling HappyGeorge down from 6000 kwatchas, I was quite proud and triumphant – until he threw in a fourth necklace, which makes me wonder what the actual street value of each necklace might be.

 I even used some Spectra Energy “win-win” talk during the negotiations:

Me: If I give you 4000 kwatchas and you give me three necklaces, I think that’s fair. You’re happy and I’m happy. But if I give you 5000 kwatchas, then you’re happy, but I’m no longer happy. Or if I don’t buy any necklaces at all, I’m still happy, but you’re no longer happy. For 4000 kwatchas, we’re both happy.

This kind of corporate logic won him over.

According to my calculator, 4000 kwatchas is about 27 dollars, thus  a win-win for both parties, I think.

But even more importantly, I got home alive – and didn’t have to flee from a malnourished seventeen year old, so I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing.