What an amazing past two days I have had! If you couldn’t tell from my last post, I have really been loving this school and my class. So the last two days of camp I just kept getting closer to the kids and having more fun, and on top of that we also had homestay this week on the third night of camp. A lot of people were a smidge apprehensive but I had been looking forward to it since the beginning of the week so I was just plain excited to stay with a family in the village. Such an awesome experience! So read on for summary and thoughts of my past two days!
Camp 3 Day 3:
The third day started with more energy than the first two days, which I didn’t know would be possible. But the kids were so excited and I was ridiculously hyper from feeding off of their energy. We danced and chanted to our groups, to our class, and once we got inside the classroom. The day consisted of a true/false game about the misconceptions concerning HIV/AIDS, learning how to take care of someone with HIV, and alternative energy source lessons where we built windmills. For the most part the kids knew whether the misconceptions were true or false, but there were some mix-ups in translation that got a little frustrating at times because the kids had the right answers but were on the wrong side of the room for true/false. I just had to remind myself that as long as they were getting the information and were having fun, I shouldn’t get too worked up. And they of course loved making their own windmills and running around with them outside. During lunch they were excited I remembered so much of the Chichewa that they had taught me the days before. Kutu (ear), tsi tsi (hair), pakamwa (lip), puno (nose), diso (eye), mano (teeth), tima (heart). Unfortunately knowing facial features isn’t really conducive to creating much conversation. But it didn’t seem to matter; they love teaching me words. After lunch we took another fifteen minutes to dance and chant in a circle again. Too much fun. These kids make me smile so big. Today during empowerment I actually left my group of girls (they had two other World Camp girls teaching them, too) to go and join Daniel’s male empowerment group and answer questions. This way, the guys could ask a girl about girl type things or hear a girl’s opinion and views on things like sex, gender, and bodies. Daniel had warned me that they would not be shy, and boy was he ever right. In order to keep this blog as PG13 as possible, I will just leave it at that. However, please do ask me sometime what kinds of questions they asked if you are curious and don’t blush easily, because it is pretty great/hilarious. So that was a fabulous way to end the third day.
Homestay:
After camp we stayed around at the school, and after eating a quick dinner, it was off to home stay! I am sure we were a sight to see as we marched down the dirt road, all twenty-two of us with kids pulling each of us along. We got to the first house and Molly, Barbara and I were quick to claim it as our own. So after a quick introduction, everyone else from our group kept walking and left us behind. The first thirty minutes were kind of painfully awkward. Our Chichewa is pretty much non-existent, and our family didn’t really speak English at first. So we just kind of smiled and looked at each other and Barbara and I resorted to singing/dancing all of our morning camp songs. They seemed to think it was amusing, or they may have thought we were crazy, but soon Linda started talking more and things got better. Linda was one of the daughters at our home stay who was our age (22) and actually spoke a decent amount of English which was so helpful. We were asking if they were going to teach us to cook nsima, when all of a sudden we saw a woman carrying a bucket of water on her head, Molly started taking a pic, and seeing our interest Linda asked me if I wanted to carry a bucket on my head. I of course said yes and got excited, and the three of us once again had kids grabbing our hands and pulling us along. But apparently there was a misunderstanding because we walked right past the boar hole (where you get water from) and kept heading toward a small mountain. Two kids from my class, Jafari and Rahim, were among the swarm of kids leading us along, and thankfully they speak enough English to help me know what was going on. Turns out we were heading to climb the mountain. Oh goodness. We pit stopped on the way there and they got excited and pulled us into the tiniest of a building to offer us some beer they had brewed, but it looked quite like sludge and of course we turned it down. I was a bit apprehensive about climbing a mountain in a skirt down to my ankles, but I figured why not have a little extra adventure in my day. The kids were scrambling up it and the three of us girls kind of struggled to keep up, but once we got up high enough it was so beautiful. Another one of those moments on this trip that was just surreal. I was sitting on a rock face on a small mountain, looking out over their village and the school and some villages and environment in the distance, surrounded by sweet kids who were so excited to be showing me this. The sun was getting lower in the sky, my heart was warm, and life felt perfect. And the kids were still trying to teach me more Chichewa (hahaha). We headed back to the house after that, and in the last bit of the daylight we danced a bit more, played some soccer with rolled up plastic bags, and I got to hold some sweet little girls. We also got to help them cook some nsima, basically by stirring it. But it was surprisingly hard because the fire it was being cooked on was in a small little room so there was a ton of smoke and it was hard to breathe. I stirred for about a minute and had to run out. They laughed. I also had one of the women tie one of the babies to my back (this is how many of the women carry their children here in Malawi), but that didn’t last long because he threw a fit, which made me sad but I couldn’t blame him for being scared of me because at that point I was looking pretty rough! Our family showed us their pigs (kumba in Chichewa), and man were they huge. They had some goats and two ox as well. The chief of the village also paid us a visit to make sure we knew where everything was and to assure us that they had maximized security for us, which was very sweet of him. I never felt in danger or anything though so I wasn’t really worried. Once it was dark our family invited us in to their home, and we sat by candlelight (and occasionally used a flashlight with Obama on it) and talked with Linda. Quickly it turned into her just teaching us different words in Chichewa, though. Rahim, my student who is also Linda’s little brother, just sat in the dark and didn’t make a peep, although he had been quite talkative earlier. Pretty soon more of the family had come in so that there were like eight people in there just looking at us. And what do they do next? Ask us to sing our national anthem. Not a single one of us three could sing, but we went for it anyway. I resorted to “playing the symbols” while Barbara was shooting rockets and I am fairly positive they now think Americans are crazy. We laughed most of the way through it, and afterwards they sang the Malawi national anthem to us, once in English and once in Chichewa, and it was so beautiful. I can’t even begin to tell you how hilarious the contrast between the two performances was. We also sang “This Land is My Land” to them. I kid you not, hilarious. We couldn’t stop yawning, so we finally went to bed (at 8:30pm mind you). We slept in a side room not attached to their house that was just big enough for the three of us to lay down. We slept on a straw mat and had our sleeping bags with us, too. It was pretty close and cozy, and despite being a tid bit chilly, I slept decently. We woke to a rooster right outside our door cock-a-doodling a little before 6. We got up and got ready for camp, and no sooner had we brushed our teeth than Karen (a coordinator) and Chikabachi (my favorite field staff) came around the corner to pick us up. Before we left, our family gave us each a bag of ground nuts as a present (we had given them a bag of sugar, a bag of salt, a box of tea, bars of soap, and a bag as gifts). We took a picture with them, thanked them profusely, and asked them to come to the presentation later that day at camp. As we left they were hooking the ox up to the oxcart, so we got lucky enough to catch a ride in the oxcart back to school!
So as for thoughts on homestay…It was so very humbling to stay with these people and see how they lived. It was also pretty cool to see how strong the sense of community was. We had tons of kids around us the whole time, and none but two were from our home stay family, but they community honestly just acts like one big family that takes care of each other. It is pretty cool to see a group of people act that way and actually love one another. Also, to have them be so welcoming to us was unreal. They did not treat us like strangers, but made us feel at home, special, cared for, and were clearly happy to have us. It was so much fun and a great experience. The way of life is so incredibly different from what we are used to. I mean, no electricity, no running water, no clocks really, nothing big and fancy. Really it is about appreciating the time you have in the present moment and being a part of a community of people – this is what is most important to the village that we were staying in. I admire that so much.
Last Day of Camp:
I had been worried that I would struggle today at camp because I thought I’d be tired from homestay and because we were starting so early. I was wrong. At 7:30 we played a game of soccer, World Camp vs. the kids at the school. Playing in a long skirt is quite difficult, so I’m going to blame my lack of skill on that. The game ended in a tie 2-2, but everyone had a lot of fun and it got the kids all worked up and excited. After songs we played ultimate Frisbee, with classes playing against each other. Really this just amounts to mass chaos because no one is actually playing the way it is meant to be played, but hey they had a blast so that is all that matters. During class we did anonymous questions, and we had possibly the “best” question of all the camps thus far. Unfortunately, it is a bit X-Rated and isn’t blog appropriate, so again, ask me later. They also seemed to be extremely interested in my love life, first telling me I was lying about not having a boyfriend and then quizzing me over why I didn’t. Then they asked if there were other girls in the United States who couldn’t get a boyfriend. Hahahahaha. Oh kids. Too funny. We planted our Charlie Brown of a tree (seriously, puniest tree I have ever seen), tested out our solar oven, and headed to presentations. Our class presented over how you can’t tell if someone has HIV just by looking at them. Presentations were good; a lot of people sang songs and I was in awe of how angelic these kids voices sound. After, the chief of the village had written out a letter in English that he read to us. It was obvious that he didn’t know English that well, so it meant a lot that he was making the effort. The best parts? “We are thankful that nothing bad happened to you last night.” “Thank you Obama.” “You are all children of America.” Aside from those funny parts (which weren’t actually meant to be funny), it was really sweet and you could tell that the community really enjoyed us being there and were happy to have us. At the end, they had a special presentation. I can’t really say enough to do it justice because I’m still not exactly sure what it was, but in their culture, they have these dancers. Usually they scare the kids, but since it was at the school I think they made their costumes less scary and weren’t acting as intense so that the kids could stay around. There were two dancers, and they kind of looked like scarecrows and there faces were covered with sack-like things. They were carrying sticks and danced around and the chief gave them money. Later I was told that these dancers usually are much scarier, and will hit people with the sticks unless you pay them. That is how they make their living. Our field staff had never even seen them before, so it was a big deal that they were there. It was really cool, and honestly a bit creepy. But I enjoyed it. Leaving camp that day was hard because I had become quite fond of some of the kids. At first there were just a lot of handshakes, and then Boston, the smartest kid in my class, gave me a hug and the hugs just started flowing from all over the place after that. I snapped a few more pictures and then had to get on the bus so that we could head back.
I really loved this school. I loved their excitement and energy and happiness. Regardless of how tired I may have been on the bus rides there, the minute I stepped off the bus I was smiling and I smiled the whole day. I just couldn’t stop smiling around these kids. They were all so beautiful in their simplicity. I had so much fun and am so blessed to have been there with them, teaching them and learning from them. Life is so good.
Random last Thoughts:
*The people here really love Obama. Like…a lot.
*Best question another class has asked: “Is the carbonation in Fanta from white people’s farts?”
*I think I am kind of blind to the poverty that is here in Malawi. And I can’t figure out what that means, if it is a good thing or a bad thing. I try to make myself aware and to think about it. For instance I realized in my empowerment group this session that 8 out of the 18 girls did not have shoes. But when I’m in the classroom with the kids teaching them, when I’m riding down the dirt roads, when I’m sitting in my host family’s room, I just don’t think about the differences between what I’m used to and how things are here. I think I just see them as people. People like me and like my friends and my family. What does it matter what kind of possessions one has, because really none of that is going to stick with us in the end, you know? I’ve never been one who pays much attention to detail, and I am satisfied to look past those details when I am with the kids. I want to live in the moment and just appreciate them for who they are as people, not what they have or what conditions they live in. But I also think those things are important to think about once I’m sitting back here at the World Camp house. These people are rich in spirit and have rich souls, so we should all be envious of them. But at the same time, do they not deserve better education, better living conditions, better nutrition and food and water and hygiene? It is getting really late and we have outreach in the morning, so I’m going to leave it at that…but I guess that’s just the kinds of things my mind is chewing on right now. I don’t have an answer. And I doubt I ever will. All I know is that the most important thing is that all of us love each other as we want to be loved. And I am so lucky to be able to do that with the people, and specifically the kids, of Malawi right now.
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