Weary Traveler

Our trip to Malawi was not without drama, but we are here, minus one bag. Chezi is the same as when we left in December, still beautiful and joyful but not without challenges. The number of children requiring extra help seems to grow every month, so much so that Chezi cannot possibly accommodate all of the children in need. Even on out first day of playing with the little ones and babies (mwanas) we experienced both the hope and sorrow that everyday brings.

Our friendly neighbor the cow (ngombe) woke us up to a freezing rainy morning. We then had to muster up the courage to enter our pantry, which is currently being guarded by a GIANT preying mantis, which aside from looking like a transformer will absolutely refuse to move from our doorway, we now consider him our friend/mezuzah. Sister Victoria was nice enough to deliver some Nescafe (which is awesome) and powdered milk and we put together a little breakfast without burning our house down.

From there we played with 20 mwanas and frankly had a lot of communication problems, but they didn’t seem to mind when I called a girl a boy repeatedly. From there we went to visit the school that we will be teaching at for the next six months. We have been there before but knowing we will have to stand in front of 90 students at a time trying to teach and communicate it seemed a bit frightening! Should be interesting. We were excited to tell the Headmaster, Mr. Banda that 6 pallets of materials will be arriving for his school in the next week. I think that the items will enrich the children’s learning and also give us teachers a little help.

The day ended with a little unpacking of items sent by a visitor from Dubai and some homemade gruel......we are hoping to go shopping tomorrow to get some more food options.....oops the power just went out. Ok very dark...very very very very dark. Guess we will go to bed.