Language Barrier

One of the hardest parts about being in another country is the inability to communicate with people because you don't speak the local language. Sitting at work sometimes, although I am surrounded by people, can still feel very lonely. People are always speaking in Chichewa. So you're constantly left out of the daily discussions of news whether its pieces of a morning meeting, a breaking news story or just cordial discussions of the daily events that occur. Often when hustle and bustle starts in the newsroom I will turn to my colleague and ask him to translate. And that takes a bit of time as well.

Sometimes, my colleagues try to communicate with me. But conversations that should really be only about 5 minutes will often drag on because both myself and my colleague are struggling to understand what each other is saying. My colleagues often say that I speak too fast. And I find that they speak too fast. Whatever the case may be my english is completely different from their english.

However, as my frustration has mounted in the past week or so, I called up my colleague who was previously a teacher and asked if he could teach me Chichewa. He agreed. So starting next week twice a week after work I will try to become somewhat fluent in Chichewa. I've already started learning and I pride myself in being a pretty fast learner.
My work is Malawi is definitely so much more difficult then I ever anticipated.