Hakuna Matata!

Where has the time gone?

I swear I blinked and 2 months went by. I have about 2 weeks left in Malawi and it’s really scaring me. So here’s what I’ve been up to recently.

 The first week of June saw Louise and I performing in the Lion King. I said in a previous post that I was Zazu and Timon and Louise was Sarabi. However, because one of the actresses dropped out at the last minute, Louise filled in for Nala instead. It was one of the best weeks I have ever had in Malawi. We got really great feedback and basically had an amazing time. I’ve made some great friends because of it, with some really talented people. For the first time in my year, I really felt that I had been accepted into a community. We did 5 performances, each with its own hiccups, but on one of the nights there was a power cut right before we were meant to start which delayed us by about 30mins. It was so purely Malawi. As the week went on, word began to spread, so that on the last night the audience was the largest ever in Nanzikambe history.

 Julian (co-director and Banzai) and Louise (Nala)

 

Me as Zazu and the hyenas

  

Joshua (Simba) and Matilda (co-director and Rafiki)

 I was given the unofficial duty of repairing Chimwemwe's trousers...

 The masks

The aforementioned Matilda, our friend and fellow volunteer, has now gone home. It was really sad to see her go, especially as we’d spent so much time with her at rehearsals over the past 2 months. Matilda is an incredibly talented singer and actor – she’s one of those people that you know you will be a success one day, and you’ll be able to say “She asked me to sing harmony with her once!” A hard part of a temporary volunteer is that you have to say goodbye to a lot of people, without any certainty that you’ll see them again. We had to do this with our friends of the first 4 months (who we went to the Lake with) Walter and Sung, they were both off to university in South Africa. However, we were walking to town a couple of weeks ago, when a car beeped at us as it went by. Now this is really common, as some people know us, or think they know us, or want to give us a lift. Also, minibuses are always beeping their horns to try to get the attention of those walking past – so you usually don’t even look up when you hear a horn. So we look up at the last minute and get a glimpse of a guy in a 4 by 4. So we then go through every guy we know, and who it could possibly be. We both thought he looked a bit like Walter, but dismissed this as he’s in South Africa! Why would he be back in Malawi?

Long story short, I get a call from Walt ten minutes later to say yes, that was him we just saw and yes, he is back in Blantyre to help his parents move. I said my goodbyes to Walt in December, before I went to Dubai, fully aware that I wasn’t likely to ever see him again, so this was amazing! We met up with him at Doogles that night, saw a lot of old faces as everyone is back for the holidays and basically had a really nice night. It goes to show that you really never know when you might see an old friend again.

So something I haven’t been mentioning in these posts is that for about a month, from mid May to the end of June, Louise and I had been staying in an expat area of Blantyre called Namiwawa. This is because Sylvia, the head of the NGO Joshua Orphan and Community Care that helps to fund Nama Simba, went back to England to see her family and go house hunting (among other things). Sylvia kindly let us stay in her lovely house with fellow volunteers Jean and Jessie while she was away – giving us hot water, constant electricity, a fridge and an oven! It was a nice break from the living in the village – which can be really tough at times. No kids following us home and trying to break into our house, no chasing up the guard for not turning up every other day, no finding lizard poop all over the house. While it was a welcome respite from village life, we were glad to get back to our old routine, our old house with all its faults. It was more expensive to travel to and from Nanzikambe and TST from Namiwawa, and would had to do a lot more walking, and it was just nice to be back at home. Nevertheless, we are extremely grateful towards Sylvia for her generosity and kindness towards us.

Work has been pretty regular, after a small break right before the Lion King performances for daily rehearsals, but we have recently been told that Project Trust are not sending any volunteers to TST or Nama Simba next year. This means that there won’t be anyone living in our house next year. This means that we have to get rid of a lot of stuff that we had assumed we could just leave for next year’s vols. A lot of stuff we plan to give to the kids at TST or stuff like matches and salt to Nama Simba, but other things, like books we use to teach or paper, we’ll give to another Project Trust project. We’ve recently starting being a lot more generous with stickers, as we have hundreds to get through before we leave.

 Phillip hard at work...

 Louise and the boys

 Saidi and Me

 Dyna and Me

‘Leaving’ seems really soon now. We have 3 weekends left to do the things we’ve been meaning to do since we got here. We made a resolution to climb the three mountains surrounding Blantyre – Mt. Michiru, Mt. Ndirande and Mt. Soche. About 2 weeks ago, we went to Zomba to climb up to the Zomba Plateau, a week ago we climbed up Mt. Michiru and last weekend we climbed to the top of Mt. Ndirande. With plans to go to the top of Mt. Soche next week, we’ve become the kind of people who go hiking in their spare time, which still baffles us.

 Moon at Zomba

 Found a ginger tree

 

Me kicking Julian's ass at chess on Zomba Plateau

  

Mount Michiru

 

 Louise being Nala in the Hyena Hide

 Wobbly table!

 Found these awesome leaves

A couple of weeks ago, the African Netball Tournament was hosted in Blantyre. I went to see some Nanzikambe Arts dancers perform at the opening ceremony, then went to see the final a couple of days later – South Africa vs. Malawi. Malawi are said to be the best team in Africa and 5^thin the world, but unfortunately we lost by two points. It was really close… or so I’m told, because I couldn’t really see what was going on. It was all standing, unless you were a netball official. Louise saw most of it, though, and got some good pictures.

So, that’s about it! I’m working on a mammoth blog post to put up right before I leave, so I promise there will be another one of these before I’m home. It’s coming up to the point that it would be risky to send me anymore mail, as I won’t be here to receive it. So no more letters please! I will see everyone really soon.

TTFN

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.