The Subway By: Lusizi R C Kambalame, Malawi

It all starts with a note on our program schedule 'meet in the Palladium Lobby'. We congregate, all 18 of us and the staff. The traditional 'good mornings' take on the tirade of the conversation. We then shoot out of the Palladium Hall which has become home into the street. We turn and walk north towards the entrance of the Union square station. Clambering down the steps to the station we are usually in different states of getting the Metro card out - from backpacks, purses, pockets or panicking from thinking the metro card is forgotten or lost. But none has lost the card. We wade thru the gates into the grounds walking towards the platform. All around us is a buzz of commuters in the usual rush; to work, from work, going shopping, running an errand and going god knows where, but in a hurry nonetheless.

In the station we are greeted by amateur musicians trying out their voices and chords for our split second attention! It is a jumble of sounds, movements and emotions as we make our way to the platform. The train draws to a halt and we move in, almost at pace as if drawn by a single thread, all moving forward. From the intercom a warning and reminder that we are to roll from the station sounds and everybody is onboard! The subway is like nothing I have experienced. It’s my keyhole view of what America is; a place of many possibilities, and where success is not contained - it could happen to anyone at any time perhaps to one of the subway musicians. It is a country of migrants with many dreams, as wide and diverse as the subway commuters’ skin tones, and with a culture that is rooted in different struggles as well as victories.

Inside the train voices with different accents are heard above the rumbling of the train and rattle of the metal on the rail. It is the 18 visiting scholars and the MIAS staff talking; discovering more about New York, and the US, getting to know each other more, recalling the previous day’s excursion, lectures and balancing out our thoughts. And the silence of the metro can no longer be, the commuters have been bombarded with excited conversations. And soon we will reach the stop to our destination which ranges from a museum to a baseball stadium and we will alight and clamber up the steps into the street and the summer heat. We have conquered the subway!