The Travel

Psalm 1:2-3

Thank you all for the amazing responses, and continued support, it means so much to me that you all helped me and believe in me.

I finally finished downloading all my pictures, and of course want to share some with you all.  I also want to share some more about what I/we all did in Malawi. 

Not only did we have 59 suitcases that we had to keep track of, we also had 59, backpacks and 52, 50lb. boxes that we put a ton of supplies in to get to Malawi.  Some of the things that we put inside of these boxes were medical supplies, toiletries, kitchen things (silverware, plates, bowls), shoes, lots of shoes (this did not include the shoes for Barefoot Sunday that were donated, those shoes came on a huge container) (speaking of barefoot Sunday, that should be coming up in October, if anyone wants to donate their new/used shoes, I will add them to the bunch), we also had lots of clothes, soccet balls (this will be explained soon), soccer balls, Frisbees, two sewing machines, blankets, soap, and many more.  My pastor Paul, has been doing this for awhile and knows that there is a chance that we will lose our luggage and the boxes.  So he made sure we put a little bit of everything in different boxes, so if we lose a box or many boxes, we will still have some from another box that made it. This was an excellent idea, however, we did not lose ANY boxes or luggage!!  How amazing is that.

Side note: Grandma and Grandpa, thank you for the bright green suitcase(s), Mine stood out so well that I never had to grab my own bag, people just knew it was mine and got it.  No one had one like it.

We went to a couple different markets while we were in Malawi, these markets have A LOT of people, the first one we went to was huge, outside and hand made, each of the places that was selling things were in a area space no bigger that maybe a 5ft X 5ft space, and to walk in the 'walkways' the space was maybe 2 feet wide.  We were always smashed against people, the ground had huge holes, and feces, and everyone spoke Chichewa.  When we went to this particular market, we were not allowed to go anywhere without one of the students/translators, we had to leave before dark, and we were to barter for the prices, of three things that our pastor gave to us.  He gave us a challenge and a certain amount of money(Kwacha), to see which group did the best. This place was fun to be at because it was different, and new, and I don't think reality of being in a different country had hit us yet (we went to this market about an two hours after we landed).  In retrospect, we were in a very dangerous place and getting lost in the crowd would be very bad. We were to have a student in front of our group and in the back of the group. The people in this market were not friendly, they definitely took advantage of us 'azungu' which is white spirit in Chichewa.  They charged us to use the bathroom and yelled at the students that were with us for being traitors. The people would purposely walk by several times while running in to us and try to get us apart from each other.  We were not liked, but this was the only time we were taken to such an angry place, and it was a learning experience. I do not have any pictures of this place, my camera was dead.  By the way, my group won the contest!!!!

The ABC grounds were pretty fantastic.  This is where we stayed.  We had dorms and huts, the dorms were a pretty good size and you could have up to three people stay in them.  I had one roommate, and two others shared a bathroom between us.  This bathroom had a shower and a regular toilet.  I know what you're all thinking, 'I thought you had to go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground?'  We/I did, these bathrooms were at the village, and throughout Malawi.  And they were nice actually, and not as bad as everyone made them out to be, basically we squatted in an enclosed place with a hole in the ground, instead of behind a bush, and they were better than port a' potties. I do have pics, I will share. Anyways, because we had so many people in the dorms/huts, if you wanted hot water, or water pressure to take a shower, then you would have to take a shower at a certain time.  I apparently liked little water pressure and cold water, to each their own I guess.  Also, we found that flushing the toilet was not done very often, as the toilet bowls did not fill up very fast. We got to know each other pretty well on this trip.

We had devotions in the student center or cafeteria every morning and evening.  The cafeteria was huge (no pics)  and we were cooked pretty decent food.  Everyone kept saying that they thought they were going to lose weight on this trip, I believe we all gained weight. The basic foods we ate were, eggs, a weird sausage, Nsima-which tastes exactly like a thick sticky cream of wheat, it is also a staple food for Malawi and the village we were in, collard greens, chicken, cabbage, and rice.  We did go out for pizza a few times, as on one day, we had cabbage and this weird sandwich that was basically cottage cheese with tomato sauce, three times in one day, so our pastor decided he was 'tired' of cabbage and pizza would suffice. (the pizza was made different and was good). The students are obsessed with salt, because they don't have it, but since they can buy it at the local 7/11, almost all of the students on hand, even when we would go to the village, and they would pour it on.

There were also quite a few rats in the ceiling.  Every night we could hear the running around and scratching, or falling, on several occasions we saw them come out and then run away, some people said that the weird sausage thing we had was the rats. It was interesting how different our perception was in Malawi, we knew that these were rats, and that they could probably, or did, defecate on our plates/cups/food, but we all ate the food anyway.  But once we were back in the states or even Paris, we would freak our if we saw a hair in our food.

The ABC campus was just that, a college campus, the homes of the teachers and founders (Nell and Jack Chinchen-also my lead pastors mom and dad) were around the student center, they had a huge gymnasium, tennis courts, basketball courts, Frisbee golf, classrooms, it was about the size of our average community college.  And it was green, green grass, trees, plants, it was beautiful, I know if you are reading this and you live in Arizona, you are probably trying to figure out what this green color I am speaking of.  Sorry, I guess you had to be there.

This is the basis of where I stayed for two week, not including the two days at the safari place. We sent very little time here, and I really had almost no time to look around, let alone sleep. I might have a few pics but I didn't really take any.

 

 

 

This is chief Malika

(everyone in this village takes pics like this, they are all beautiful)

This is the inside of one of the two toilets, this one had a double stall.

 

This is the outside of the double stall toilet.  Chief Malika built this just before we got there, especially for us.

I did learn that having the top open and not enclosed was the best, I went into a few closed spaces, and WOW!!

Lets just say there is A LOT of years of smells.

The bricks you see on this picture and hand made by every village, everywhere we went in Malawi had piles and piles of bricks, the process takes about two weeks to make, but almost two years to set completely.

 

Write soon.