zikomo-Malawi, Africa: The women

You know this quote? This quote is the epitome of the village we were in. This is their life quote, and they have never even heard it before.

DANCE like no one is watching

LOVE like you have never been hurt

SING like no one can hear you

LIVE like heaven is on earth

The women of the village, sing, they sing ALL THE TIME. They dance, they dance while they sing, and it's choreographed. You know those cheesy teenage movies, where even though the different groups (e.g. jocks, nerds, beauty queens) don't get along, they all know the same song and choreographed dance to the song, and as you are watching it you think, 'there is no way everyone in the WHOLE school knows this, and even by the end they still don't get along. Well, that was this village, (except they got along) and every woman knew the song and dance, eventually, we found out that the men, children and even the students/translators knew these songs/dances. And it was wonderful, their voices were angelic and cohesive. They didn't miss a beat. I was only able to get a couple of videos because I would be in such 'awe' that I would forget to tape them, and even when I did start taping them, they wanted us to learn the song and dance with them. And I did, we learn one full song, that we sang every night at worship after dinner, but I was able to learn the dances a lot easier,(probably something to do with the language barrier of the songs) but I did learn some of them.

On our second day there, the women's group that I was in went to 6 widows homes to give each of them a gift, to pray for them, and what they wanted us to pray for, and to ask them if we could come back and help them with their day to day chores. These women were so appreciative of what we were doing and giving, every one of them told us that they could not believe that we would travel so far to give them a gift. One of them told us that she was going to commit suicide the day she found out that we were coming and that because she knows that Live Love helps her and loves her, she knew that God was telling her not to. When we walked to the first widows home, we only had 7 or 8 women who were following us to the home, but as we went on to each of the homes, we gathered, or rather acquired more women, as we would leave a home there would be more women waiting to take us to the next home, and they would sing in between each home. We found out that they actually made up a song about us and Live Love, and it was incredible. By the time we were done with each widow home, we had more than 40 women with us, singing and dancing, and even as our day was coming to an end and we were leaving the village to get to the buses, the women would sing to us all the way to the buses.

As we drove away that night I thought about what it would be like to start singing and dancing in our neighborhood, just because I was happy and felt Gods presence. To have no inhibitions about what people thought, and what if my neighbors joined in and we had a cul-de-sac dance. Then I thought, 'that's a quick way to get to know the local police officers, cause my neighbors would call the cops for disturbing the peace'. Have you heard me sing, not pretty, God did not gift me in that area.

These women ARE: Love God, Love your neighbor, Dance, Sing, and Live, and even though in comparison they had nothing, in reality, they had EVERYTHING.

We drove away on our buses to head home. And I could not help but have a huge smile on my face, I wanted those women to come home with us and sing. To come home to America sing, I would not be opposed to either. Singing wasn't just at this village, I came to find out quickly that singing is Malawi. The students/translators that were with us would sing on the bus too. Everywhere we went. Our buses did not have a radio, but we had something even better.

Here are a few pictures of a few widows.