Ridiculously Long Update :)

So due to an unfortunate misunderstanding involving a faulty outlet and my failing computer battery, I haven’t blogged in like two weeks because I assumed my computer was no longer in working order. The good news is I discovered yesterday that when plugged into an outlet that actually works (genius), I can successfully use my computer. Bad news is I now am seriously lacking in letting you all know how everything is going! So this entry is going to be a skim of my past two weeks. Feel free to jump to whatever you are interested in, because anyone who knows me well knows that I can’t tell a short story very well, so this blog could end up being ridiculously long. I will try my best to make it reasonable, though, so here goes… [I just finished writing this blog and it is ridiculously long (fail) - so seriously I only expect my mom to read all of this - all the rest of you, enjoy skimming or skip to reading Mount Nkhoma, camp 3, and Zambia - sorry!]

End of Camp 1:
The first camp ended really well. The last two days the teachers really warmed up to us. Although during anonymous questions Alicia and I got asked some awkward things, and we pretty much had to throw our curriculum out the window for the day (Thursday) because they just wanted to ask us questions the ENTIRE day. I think it ended up being really educational for them and us as well. We discussed the differences culturally in relationships, engagements, weddings, sex, and some other gender type issues. On the final day we put on a big presentation, in which all of the classes do a skit or song to teach everyone else about an HIV/AIDS or environmental topic. The teachers did their own skit about how HIV destroys T-cells and causes a once healthy person to have a hard time fighting off sickness. I got lucky enough to be in it and played the role of a T-Cell. Lots of fun, and the kids LOVED having their teachers doing a skit. We presented the teachers with certificates at the very end (endorsed by the ministry of education) and they all shook our hands. Alfred gave me a hug in front of everyone and the kids went wild. I’m not sure if that is something I should feel awkward about or not since they typically don’t hug in their culture, but hey, I felt the love and the kids found it quite amusing, so I went with it. I do love to hug, so I don’t hate spreading it to the Malawian culture. A lot of the teachers gave Alicia and I their e-mails, and Chimbalanga wrote us each a letter. Quote from mine: “Thank you for choosing to come to the warm heart of Africa (Malawi) especially Mitundu. I have personally enjoyed your company. It really has made a difference in my life.” Big smile on my face right now. Definitely feels great to know that you really are doing something that is important and needed and appreciated.

Weekend Break 1:
Saturday morning some of us ventured out to a field to play soccer with some of the field staff (hired by World Camp to translate and help with teaching/leading during the camps – they are all from Malawi and around the same age as us volunteers). My team, the Plump Heffers, were defeated 9-1. But we all had a lot of fun and there was a lot of laughter, so it was a great morning. That afternoon we had a guest speaker at the house. He was a Malawi native who taught in the US for many years, but has since returned to Malawi and is working on writing children’s books about HIV. It was really interesting to hear him compare and contrast the school systems in Malawi and the US. According to him, kids are always going to be kids no matter where you are in the world. However, Malawi schools definitely have less resources, worse attendance (due to kids having to miss to take care of family members who are sick or help with chores), and no program for special education, among many other things. Just another reminder of how blessed US students are and how much many people take their education for granted. That night we cooked out at Cluny lodge, which is where Y2Y (the high school World Camp program) stays. As corny as it sounds, laying back in the grass and looking at the stars, it was the first time I think it really hit me that I was all the way across the ocean and in Africa. I’m so lucky. After that we watched the World Cup consolation game at Diplomats, a local bar. We made some local friends and danced a bit – great fun.

Mount Nkhoma:
So technically this could still be classified under “Weekend Break 1,” but I felt like this needed its own classification. On Sunday we woke up early and rode a little over an hour to Mount Nkhoma to hike. I thought it was going to be a nice little excursion, which it was, but I don’t think I realized that we were legitimately climbing a mountain. There was a lot of climbing up rocks, going through brush, and at times a bit steep. I had to take some breaks and was pretty sweaty but getting to the top made it definitely worth it. We were very high up and it was pretty much just rock face. We had some lunch and took pics and I climbed over to a rock by myself to have some personal life reflection time while looking out over Malawi. All I can say is wow/awesome. Here is an excerpt of my personal journal I wrote later that same day:

“Immediately I found myself drowning in the presence of my God, a most beautiful feeling. To see in front of me the tiniest bit of the vastness of the Earth, and realize how insignificant I am, but yet that God loves me, knows me, and is JEALOUS FOR ME?! with all that He has, is just unreal. It’s impossible to really understand. And to think of the beauty of the Earth and how might and powerful the Earth claims God to be and how blessed I am to have the opportunities to see these sights, do these things, have these moments. I was breathing God in and it was more than a beautiful moment. How vast this Earth, how great His love. I prayed for God to use me, to open my eyes, heart, ears, and thanked Him for bringing me here to Malawi.”

Camp 2: GoGo (name of the school, kid you not)
So this was my first week with an actual class to teach. Paige was my teaching partner and Cyrus was our field staff translator. We had a class of 39, and they decided to name themselves the hares. They came up with a catchy little chant, but on the third day of camp when I asked Cyrus what it meant, it apparently was about a sweet potato in a garden, which has nothing to do with hares, but oh well. That’s what I get for not knowing Chichewa. This school was really quiet compared to the first school. It was hard to get the kids to talk in class. Half of my kids didn’t have shoes, which made me sad. And the first day like ten of them didn’t bring plates/cups because they didn’t actually think that we were going to be feeding them. Teaching was fun and went well, but it was hard feeling like I was pulling teeth to get the kids to respond/interact with me. A couple things were pretty funny, though, like when the kids had to come up with names for imaginary villages, and they decided to name them “Upside Down” Village and “It Has Happened” Village. They also spoke pretty much no English at all, so lunch consisted of us just kind of looking at each other and them laughing at me if I tried to say things to them. Although we did have some fun drawing on the board and doing some dancing. I also got to use my first latrine for the trip. Pretty smelly experience. My class’s presentation at the end of the week was about how HIV can not be transmitted (like through sharing clothes or food or coughing on someone). It kind of flopped whenever they got up there to do it because no one could hear what they were saying, but of course I was proud regardless. We had some interesting questions during anonymous questions, the craziest one being that a lot of the kids kept asking whether or not we were human. The teachers told some of the volunteers that some of the kids thought we were angels because they weren’t using to seeing people with lighter skin and hair. A lot of sexual and body questions were asked, both in empowerment and in our regular class. It is crazy the misconceptions that these kids have and the lack of education about something so important and essential as our bodies and how they function. I hope that they are able to remember the things that we taught them, and use the information to keep themselves healthy and make the best decisions for each of them personally. I’m sure there was a lot more to this camp that I could share, but as it is it was half a week ago and my memory is that of a goldfish. So that’s all I have for the four days we spent there.

Mid-Session Break to Zambia:
So halfway through our stay in Africa, we get to travel eight hours to Mfuwe, Zambia to go on Safari. The bus ride was not so fun, but totally worth it once we got there. We stayed at a camp ground called “Croc Valley.” We camped out looking down on a river that never failed to have hippos right in sight. Supposably they often come onto the campsite at night, but I never saw them. I did however hear them 24/7 because they are quite loud. There were also crocodiles in the river that would lay out on the bank. The guy also told us that the camp ground had resident elephants, lions, a leopard, and a variety of other animals. I thought he was lying until I woke up the first morning to a family of wild elephants right outside my tent (a baby, a younger one, and three big ones). I kid you not, they were sniffing my tent. I can’t tell you how cool it was to look out my tent to elephants silhouetted against the sunrise. That same morning we went on a morning safari drive. We saw impala and kudu (kind of like deer), zebras, warthogs, giraffes, hippos, monkeys, and coolest of all a young male lion that had been left behind by the rest of his pack. We followed him for like twenty minutes and were pretty close. That afternoon back at camp I learned to no longer like monkeys (we have a lot at our camp ground). We had just been talking about how they looked like they were planning an attack when out of no where one ran up and snatched my apple off the table. Then as I sat down my sandwich so that I could pack up everyone’s food into a bin to keep more stuff from being taken, another monkey ran up and stole my sandwich! Sneaky little things – I was not happy. Monkeys ate my lunch. That night we went on our evening drive, which turned out to be the most exciting part of the trip. We got to see an African sunset over a river full of hippos, and then drove around the park with a spotlight looking for nocturnal animals. The first one we found was a leopard lurking in the grass near some impala. We watched him hunt for like twenty minutes, and although we didn’t see an actual kill, it was unreal to sit and watch him plan out his moves and sneak closer and closer. At one point we actually drove between him and his prey just as he was making a move so he ran right at our truck! It was nuts. I felt kind of bad from messing up his game, though. After we found two lions just chilling, and we were only feet away whenever a third joined and they all started wrestling and playing with each other. Animals and nature are so cool (simple, but true). And the strength and quickness of these animals is pretty amazing, too. We also saw a hyena and some smaller animals in the mongoose family. Pretty much our driver Fred knew what he was doing and showed us awesome things. The rest of the time in Zambia was spent relaxing in hammocks and by the hippo-friendly pool (the camp has had both hippos and elephants find their way to the pool). While there some elephants caused some ruckus when they broke into some food bins and then moved a tent. And our last night two of them woke me up at 3:45 am munching on some “elephant biscuits” right outside my tent. They consistently came back every thirty minutes so I didn’t get much sleep, but sitting in a tent and watching elephants which were at times less than two feet away from me was well worth the lack of sleep. So safari in Zambia was ridiculously cool, though slightly exhausting.

Camp 3: Mkanda
I started this camp in such a positive and uplifted mood, which fit right in because this school is awesome! The kids were so excited about us being there and are much more willing to talk than the last school. My class is 24 strong and named themselves Spain, even though usually they choose animal names. I let them stick with it because who doesn’t want to be the world cup champions? They are a pretty rambunctious group, and speak a bit more English than the last school. At lunch the first day a kid named Jafari kept hastling me trying to get me to give him my nsima and beans. When he realized I wasn’t going to budge, him and the rest of the boys in the class decided to just start teaching me words in Chichewa. They taught me all the words for facial features, which they quizzed me on today. I did pretty well, but couldn’t remember any of the animals they had taught me the other day. Chichewa isn’t too easy to learn overnight. After lunch we got in a circle and danced for a bit, which they of course loved and got all squeal-ly when I would go to the middle and try to imitate their moves. Today Jafari and I had a dance off, and then Joseph (another student) and I had some kind of strange karate face-off which ended with all the kids laughing hysterically, I think at me. They are just so much fun and being around them I can’t do anything but smile. I got in trouble a couple times today because I was making them giggle when my teaching partner was up teaching a lesson. Oopsie, I just can’t contain myself. These kids have so much joy, even though to our America-trained eye it looks as though they have so little. They might not have shoes, and they may wear the same outfit every day, but honestly they make many of the kids I know back home look poor, at least in spirit. These kids smile and dance and are fun and kind and don’t complain about anything (except Jafari trying to hassle me for more nsima). They are full of life and joy and I am envious of them for that. I am having SO much fun teaching them about HIV/AIDS and the environment, and I think they are having fun learning it. Condom demonstration was today and I got to lead it again, and I think some of the boys in our class got a little too excited, which was pretty funny. We had some extra time before empowerment groups (when the girls and boys split up and we talked about gender issues and bodies and more intimately about sex issues), and so the class started asking Brittanny (teaching partner this week) and I questions through Cyrus (field staff for the week). The best one? When they learned we were from the United States, they asked if we were from the same state of Sylvester Stalone. I kid you not. How random and hilarious is that? They also asked if we were married, if we had a boyfriend, and if we would date a black man. Needless to say, I think that Joseph became exponentially more excited to see me/talk to me after that question session, and is probably determined to be my next boyfriend. Oh sweet kids, haha. I’ll let you all know how that turns out…

So I told you it was impossible for me to keep it short. If you are still reading at this point, I’m impressed. And also wondering why you didn’t have something better to do with your time. Hopefully I’ll be updating more frequently so the rest of my posts won’t be so lengthy. Until then, I will leave you with some random thoughts, because this post wasn’t long enough…

*Malawi has a ridiculous amount of goats. And they just roam around everywhere. Goats may be taking over.
*I am learning to love nsima, even though camp 2 class asked why white people don’t eat nsima. I may miss it once I’m back in the US.
*I have seen at least ten kids wearing Obama shirts here.
*The kids are really good at mimicking what you do or say, and so people have had a lot of fun getting them to chant things like “Sarah Palin” (we have some Alaskans on this trip).
*Everyone here with World Camp is awesome. Fun people who just want to help others by educating them about issues that are important to their lives and crucial to keeping themselves and their environments healthy. Look up World Camp. I’m really falling in love with it. Educate. Inspire. Change.

**All my love from Malawi, Africa to my friends and family back home**