halloween, trash, cops, and lobsters

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. In fact I have never missed a Halloween. When I was around 9, I was very close to puking so I only trick-or-treated for a brief time, but I wore my princess Jasmine outfit and still managed to make it to a couple of houses. When I was a junior in High School, though I dressed up during the day, I thought that I was going to be too restricted by a complicated physics problem set. Sitting at my uncle’s kitchen table while he explained the problems to me, I couldn’t stand the ringing doorbell and the receiving of candy. Perhaps that evening should have ended in physics, but it ended in me buying a child’s bee costume at Walgreens and grabbing my sister to hit up a few houses. Again in my sophomore year of college I planned to write a paper, but then got caught up in the construction of a super sexy lobster costume. Even beyond Halloween I have always loved getting dressed up and creating a costume. One of my favorite costume moments/I forgot I was far from “cool” moments included me and one of my best friends at a costume party in Chicago. Frequently during college I would forget that getting dressed up is not really supposed to be about the costume, but how sexy you look in it. My friend and I were excited to attend a “Titanic” costume party where all invited were supposed to dress up as a certain class of passenger. We were lower class and I decided that an excellent plan would be to construct life vests out of paper grocery bags and put black eye make-up on our faces as “soot smudges”, or perhaps that was my friend Emily’s idea. Either way, this would be a good idea if the goal was to look crazy, far from alluring, and on a completely different wave length from everyone else there. We showed up at the party and I was immediately reminded that most college girls, first off, put eye make-up on their eyes…weird…and interpret “lower class passengers of the Titanic” as scantily clad women of the 1900’s with strategically ripped clothes. Which if you think about it, is quite the contrast to the sort of paper bag princess look we were pulling off. Note: even if you do decide during the party to remove your life vest, “soot” is much more difficult to remove and some girls are forced to make the choice of: “insane girl with the paper Trader Joe’s vest, that maybe corresponds with her smudges, or a girl who happens to have random black smudges on her face?”
Halloween in Malawi doesn’t really exist, except for in small pockets Peace Corps communities. Luckily, I belong to a Peace Corps pocket; otherwise I would have had to be in costume by myself, as clearly at 24, skipping Halloween celebrations is not a feasible option. Not only did I get to attend a Halloween party, but it wasn’t filled with sexy cops or nurses. Present were all of the Ninja turtles including Splinter, Captain Planet and his whole crew (some with more spandex and tighter pants than others), a shepherd, myself as trash with a stapled together trash dress, and my friend dressed as me though he unfortunately did not opt for wearing hair extensions. Of course it’s always good to have holidays where there is clear meaning behind them and whatnot, but who could ever survive those if you didn’t have the holidays that have basically just turned into solely about having fun? Many moments in Malawi I wonder what Malawians need to spur them into a mindset where they want to engage in development, and want to develop not with NGO’s from the U.S. or Britain, but in their own way, in a way that draws on the knowledge and beauty they already have and know. A lot of the time it seems to be about pride and having been colonized and consistently told that as a country they are not developed and by proxy not worth it. Many ways to build self-worth exist, but I think having fun is a key part of the ole’ worth building. Having fun doesn’t really have an outright clear purpose for some wider good, so it defaults into being about the individual and this creates a sense of worth. People have fun, and as it spurs no immediate good, you have no choice but to affirm that your worth it. I feel that at this point in the post I should say something along the lines of “ And now I have just justified getting dressing up, drinking up, and dancing, in the name of self-worth.” However, I don’t feel the need to really justify such behavior I just think Malawians should celebrate Halloween. Anyone who lives in a country that is one of the most poverty-stricken should have a right to affirm their worth and not always have to do it by proving to their families that they can feed them. Of course feeding your family is necessary, but when they can’t, it’s not always their fault, or because of their nationality. They should get to affirm it by creatively constructing a costume that they want to dance in. They should occasionally get to be presented with problems similar to “How do you construct a Ninja turtle shell in Malawi?” They should celebrate something for no reason, recognizing that not everything has to have a reason, and many things don’t, and maybe there are reasons for why their country is so stricken with AIDS and poverty, but not necessarily good reasons. Perhaps it’s not completely about gaining a full lasting sense of purpose and confidence, but who doesn’t gain something by dressing up for no apparent reason with a group of others who have done the same? And besides everyone feels liberated when there not dressed as themselves, and everyone should get to live outside themselves for a time, whether you choose to be the sexy cop or lobster.