My New Hobby

About two and a half weeks ago, on the last day of my visit home, I got myself a new pair of glasses. The frames broke on my last pair, more than two years ago, and I never got around to buying another set. My eyes have worn down quite a lot, though - especially during the last year here in Malawi - so during my big holiday in the U.S.A., I got myself a new prescription and a brand new pair of glasses.

I'm wearing these handy new things most of the time when I'm out walking around in Namitembo. Everything's in sharper focus, and best of all - no squinting! No headaches! In spite of all this, one of my latest hobbies is...taking off my glasses.

That probably seems strange to you for any number of reasons. You might question whether "taking off my glasses" is actually a legitimate hobby. Or, perhaps more likely, you may wonder why I enjoy doing this in the first place. And why I'm bothering to spend the better part of an hour blogging about it (I guess you've got me on that one).

Anyone who's spent ten minutes in Malawi (particularly during the rainy season) knows its beauty. Right now in Namitembo, the mountains to the east are rippled with unknown shades of green. The sky is turbulent - shades of grey bruised with navy. Even the roads, washed away by the rain, are riverbanks of pistachio mud streaked with pale sand and jet-black silt, smeared with half-baked clay and diverted all around by jagged stones and tiny constellations of pebbles.

It seems incredible, then, that after just a couple of weeks, I take all of this beauty for granted. In almost no time, I pick up and move my reference points so that these humbling surroundings, which made me feel so small when I arrived, appear "normal." This is such an unfortunate reality - but I suppose we are not designed to feel childlike wonder every day of our lives.

Now, then. My glasses prescription corrects a mild-to-moderate astigmatism in both eyes. It helps me to read and focus on things without squinting, but it also causes my perspective to go a bit cattywompus, since my eyes have become rather used to adjusting for their shortcomings automatically. Basically, my eyes are not as spherical as they ought to be, which causes them to try and focus on two points instead of one, making my eye muscles work overtime to try and compensate. After wearing the specs for about ten seconds, the odd crooked feeling goes away, and the longer I wear my glasses, the more "normal" it feels to wear them.

However, when I take my glasses off after wearing them for an hour or so, I have just a few disorienting moments. For just 5 or 6 seconds, my surroundings look totally unfamiliar and new. The mountains loom at twice their normal size. Bluegum trees pop out as me as though the space between us has simply slipped away. Everything is fantastic and seems more real than it ought to be. In the time it takes me to breathe in and out just once, I am able to recall my first days of heady high in Malawi, and when it's over, my feelings seem immature and inappropriate - as though I'm trying to grasp onto an idea of Malawi that isn't actually true, something built up in my own mind over time, self-delusion heightened to a need to feel enthralled that seems almost desperate.

Then again, I've had a lot of gin tonight, so I'm probably reading way more into this than I ought to. Only time will tell. I'm also aware that this whole thing makes me sound like an oddball, but I'm okay with that.

A year in this country will do that to you.