Kids, Village - Oh what a day!

It is Wednesday night and I wanted to reflect on this day. To give you a little perspective, the day started at 7 AM where we went to the community building on the ABC campus to have breakfast. It is directly across the path from Debbie’s and my “chalet” with the 8 bunk beds. Bethany has hired a cook, Paul (who has 4 children and rides a bike 20km to get to work) to cook our meals. He prepared the best scrambled eggs with bacon, cheese, peppers and onion along with toast and juice. For those of you who were nervous about me being able to eat, I did not starve.

Then Nick led us in a short prayer before our devotional time in Ephesians. Joining us (Sherry, Caleb, Debbie, Nick and Bethany) was Timothy, from ABC and Lawrence who is friends with Nick and Bethany and works in the village day to day.

After that, by 9 AM we drove out to the school where most our little kids go. There are 5 buildings and 10 classrooms. We started with the bell ringing and all the kids scattered to their classrooms. We went to the class which was the equivalent of KG or Preschool. There were about 250 kids in this cramped classroom - normally only 125 – but the other teacher was out on funeral leave. As we stood outside the classroom there were the most beautiful sounds being sung in unison. The kids were all sitting on the floor with legs crossed and chanting some songs. It was beautiful sounds of children. They were all well-behaved and paying attention to the teacher. We met briefly with the Head Master who has told us the change in the school year and the curriculum over this past year with having a 3-term school year and out during our summer which will help when we have groups that go over in the future in the summer. They also have changed from Religious Education from Bible Knowledge as a section they learn about. I don’t know the difference but I believe they have Presbyterian support?

Then we went to the other classrooms and visited as well and saw a “Life Skills” section where the kids were learning how to take care of their clothing. When the teacher was quizzing the kids or asking a question, the child would raise their hand kind of at half mast out in front of them and snap their fingers to get the teacher’s attention. She would then call on the child and they would stand to make their answer. We saw them learning to read and write English in addition to their Chichewa language. It was an interesting experience. The kids are SO well behaved. They have a recess time and their periods are longer. No electricity in the schools so it is all done by daylight (holes in the brick walls), no fans to cool them – it was about 85 and very muggy.

Malawi is sub-tropical with red dirt – similar to the weather in Hawaii year-around. It usually rains part of the day, but we didn’t have rain where we were today.

After the school, Caleb drove the vehicle to the Makalani village where we got out and saw everything that is going on there. They have a resource center where they have storage, a small class room, an outdoor kitchen and clean-up area where they have the food preparation for the kids when they return from school. It smelled wonderful. A common meal for the kids is beans (like baked beans) plus vegetables in it – I saw tomatoes, onion, pepper etc… and they were cooking over an open fire. This is the feeding program for our kids. We walked through the village and saw houses – very small brick huts with thatch roofs, we saw the wells where they can pump their clean water and not have to travel far to get water. There is not electricity or running water in the village. There are also not cars and I didn’t see bikes either. The children have to walk out of the village to the school and it is quite a ways. I think at least 10-15 minutes by car. We also spent time going over to the land that was donated by the village Chief. This land is planned as a building project for the future where they can move the feeding station or have a classroom building, or housing for our livestock. It is currently being used to grow for the feeding program so they don’t have to buy. I am very encouraged and excited about the future for this village and these kids’ lives. A couple more things we did was put the PET pull cart together, twice. I apparently didn’t listen well enough at my informational meeting about the pet and included instructions were pictorial and had a few missing steps. We had a couple of extra parts I will ask dad about and let Lawrence or Timothy redo my work. It works though – and we will see her face tomorrow when we are able to transport it out to her. Caleb and I tested it out on all sorts of terrain and it works REALLY well. Thank you again http://www.giftofmobility.org/. We have plans for a feature article on PET and Invest, hopefully in a local newspaper or magazine (as we have a few connections) and think it would be a good special interest story.

The last thing we did today was go to the open air market (not a safe area of town) and purchase 23 te-ting-ge’s (not spelled correctly) a cloth we will give the women along with their donated t-shirts so they have something to use. They wrap their kids in the cloth to wear on their back when working in the field or wear it as a skirt or sit on it to not get dirty. Tomorrow we will also give the women their 200 lbs of fertilizer and clothing and we girls will get a taste of gardening big time by assisting with fertilizing their crops by hand.  Fertilizing is a process where they poke a long stick down into the plant mound near the roots and pour in the fertilizer, then cover it back up with dirt.  Sounds fun?

More tomorrow.