What's in a title?

21/4/13

Didn’t I say I would do a blog post this week? And I did. YES.

The past 2 weeks have been quite busy: at TST we’ve been doing lots of Maths tutoring. One of the Malawian volunteers was leaving so the kids got sweets and the adults had a party of sorts. Basically, we were all herded to the ICT room, where music was played and everyone started dancing. I was trying to imagine my old teachers at Meldrum doing this, but couldn’t. It was a great example of how different the culture is over here; Lou and I are so used to it that it doesn’t take us by surprise nearly as often, but this certainly did.

That day we also had an Italian woman visiting TST. Mary Cristina’s French was better than her English, so when Edwin asked her to introduce herself to the TST kids, she spoke in French which Louise translated to English which then Edwin translated to Chichewa. I was really cool to witness – it made me ashamed that my French is still miles better than my Chichewa after being immersed in the latter for 7 months.

At home, the water was off again. The entire village was dry for 3 days – the longest we’ve ever had to cope without. While this doesn’t seem like a long time, even with water stored up we all really struggled. We never know whether the water will be off for 2 hours or 2 days, so we are conservative of every drop. Bucket showers are seen as an unnecessary luxury and the toilet only gets flushed once a day (with used dish/clothes washing water). This is hard enough with 2 people, but Georgia was also staying with us. We made it fun however, as it became a bit of a competition to see who could use the fewest dishes in one day. On the bright side, electricity has been really good recently. Although, given the chance, I would definitely swap no water for no power. I hadn’t washed my hair for 6 days when the water finally came back on.

Last week I accompanied Louise for the Street Child Ministry before church. The street children are welcomed into the Pentecostal Church where they all sing together and play some drums. I found it really moving to witness all these children united by their faith. Then Pastor Francis comes through to preach to them in Chichewa, before they receive mandasi and sobo (round doughnuts and fruit squash). When I was briefly around for the Street Child Ministry on Easter Sunday, I had noticed Saidi – a TST child who had run away a few weeks ago – and I had asked him why he wasn’t at TST and whether he wanted to go back. While I couldn’t get a coherent reason out of him, he and fellow TST-runaway Esau said they wanted me to take them back to the centre. I told them to meet me outside KFC the next day at 10am, but they didn’t show. I wasn’t altogether surprised – add the fact that these kids had no way of telling the time to Malawi’s tendency to be late and there was next to no chance of the kids making an appearance. Last week, he looked even worse than before – absolutely miserable and not even joining in the singing and clapping. So I decided to take him back to TST there and then, before I lost sight of him again. Esau also found his own way back the week before. The change in Saidi is almost indescribable. He is always delighted to see us, throwing himself into the work we set him and, most importantly, happier than we’ve ever seen him. If I leave Malawi achieving nothing else, I will be satisfied. All children should have the chance to be happy. That is one of the many things that TST gives these kids.

So yeah, climate change is messing us around. We’ve had far too much rain, way too late, and now we’re ranging from having November-esque heat to nights where we can see our breath in front of us! What is this?

So Georgia left us last week. It was sad, especially because she’d been living with us for the past 2/3 weeks. And with Steph gone home, it’s just Matilda, Louise and I left of the Baluti/Nancholi crew. But we shall prevail! (What we shall prevail, is still unknown.)

I don’t have any pictures! So here’s a picture I took of Steph’s exposed shoulder after I claimed it for Narnia.

TTFN

Anecdotes

We came home from work last week to find three kids playing outside. They had pair of rollerblades and two of them had a skate each, skating one-legged-ly alongside the wall. The third kid looked just as happy as he pretended to skate in his flip-flops.

When washing the dishes after we make nsima or phala, I always poke the dregs down the plug hole. Louise is constantly paranoid that the sink will block and I always wave her away saying ‘Nsima/phala is water-soluble! It’ll be fine.’ Well, I managed to block the sink. However, I simply unscrewed the U-bend and emptied it, feeling like a pro.