'Hardships often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.' -C.S. Lewis
(updated 2019)
I am often asked a bunch of questions when I get home, I am also asked a bunch of questions when we are leaving. So I thought I should answer some of those questions on here:
Q: How are you treated? Do they like you?
A: It depends on where we are in Malawi. When we first arrive, we are greeted by the smiling faces of the amazing ABC students, at the airport. Whether we arrive with 30 people or 148, a bunch of the ABC students come and help us with our bags and load them for us. And several ABC workers ride on the back of a huge truck making sure our luggage does not fall off.
The first place we go after dropping off our luggage is to a market, there are many markets all around Malawi, thousands, and they are all over the side of the road. There are markets you can get in and out of without much thought and there are ones that are not so safe. We go directly to the not so safe one. Our pastor likes to scare us, show us the worst part of Malawi, and lets us know that this is the worst we will see. This market is one that we are not allowed to take pictures of, because 1) they will probably steal your camera/phone right out of your hand. 2)They really don't like it. This is where we see the not so nice in people. The 'road' this HUGE market is on, is called Devil's alley, for the theft, prostitutes, and all-around danger that they have. The place is basically a 1/2 square mile of a bunch of shops, and by shops I mean plywood shops about 8 ft X 8 ft, some a larger, some smaller, but they all sell a bunch of stuff and they all want your money, everyone is pretty loud, it smells very bad of feces and alcohol, the walkways are super narrow about two feet wide in most areas, and there are a lot of people trying to get you away from the group you are with, we usually will have an ABC student in the front and the back of us. I think I found it slightly intimidating the first time I went, but now I don't really think too much of it, and on this last trip they had me in the back protecting, everyone,, I have become a Malawian, even the guys that used to grab and touch me, are a lot nicer and know who I am.
The other markets we go to are small and quaint, they sell a lot of produce, they are one of my favorite places to go. They still have a bunch of people trying to sell you their product, but they are not as pushy or in your face. I love watching how each 'vendor' takes care of their area, they have their broom and always try to keep the area clean, they stack their products neatly and with care, and when someone buys something they immediately make it look perfect. The people at these markets just stare at you a lot, but they are friendly, they don't know who we are or what we are there for.
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This rice, this rice had my heart and what made me notice how much care
they took in their product. We took the rice out of the one on the left,
someone else was on the right side. Fiki was able to touch the rice, eat some, see that its texture
was good, and even mixed it around to make sure they were not hiding any bad rice in the mix.
They put our rice in a bag, weighed it and we paid. Before we even left, the guy folded thebag down to where you see it now and made the mound.
There was something special about this. I can't explain. |
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| Every section looked this beautiful |
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She was fixing her section after
selling some tomatoes |
ABC students are wonderful, nice, friendly, understanding, we could not do what we do, or go where we go without them, we could, but it would be so much harder and we would get little complete. They are happy to help and always easy to find. They all speak English, and well so the only problems in communicating is when we talk about things that may not make sense to them e.g. happy hour, zucchini, are a couple things I remember, or if you put a sentence together in a more westernize way, they will ask you to say it differently, but I found that this rarely happened, but it was funny when it did. The students answered a lot of questions, and the same ones over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Their patience was incredible. They go to the village at least twice a week as part of their education, so they know the village well and they know the people well. They know what needs to be done, they know who is sick and why they point us in the direction that we need to go. They are always happy and they LOVE to sing and dance, and they all know each other's songs and dances, So you could be in the middle of a song and dance with the women in the village and you will slowly start seeing the ABC students join in.
The people in the village, they are friendly to us. The villages that we have been going to for years, they think Azungu's are amazing, they sing and dance with us. The women and children are the ones we see the most. The men are harder to get along with, we do not see very many men around except on the soccer tournament days when everyone comes out. When we go into villages where they are not used to us, they are cautious but welcoming, we usually bring a couple of women from the village that know us and know the village we are going to as well as the people. This helps with the new people not being so uncomfortable with us. What I have noticed is the children are very hesitant to touch us in a village that are not used to us. they will laugh and point, but until one of our regular women villagers makes them touch us they keep their 2-foot distance. The children in our regular village, do not understand boundaries or personal space, so you could have 4 children fighting over you in a second.
Q: What do you wear?
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| Chitenje as a head wrap |
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Chitenje as a skirt, head wrap, and sling
Chitenje-pronounced Chi-ten-gee, the Chi is like chip
not like Chicago. |
A: The men can wear regular clothes t-shirts and pants or shorts. They can wear this in and outside the village. The women can wear anything they want outside the village but should stick to a t-shirt/blouse and pants. If they want they can wear shorts outside the village, but this would be a sign of disrespect in Malawian culture. Sticking with something that goes past the knees whether it be a skirt or shorts or dress, and a shirt that covers their shoulders and does not show skin e.g. Cleavage, or back. In the village, women MUST wear a regular shirt that covers their shoulder. No tank tops. And they MUST wear long skirts. The village women wear this thing called a chitenje. This is basically 2 meters (6.5 feet) or (2.18 yards) of fabric that they wrap around their waist and tie or tuck in to secure. They come in all sorts of amazing and beautiful colors and patterns and they average 1500 Malawian kwacha (money) that's about $3. The chitenje is a 'staple' for the Malawian women. They use this thing for EVERYTHING. As a skirt, to gather things, food, dishes, clothes. They use it as a baby sling, a head wrap, to clean, to sit on. The first time I went to Malawi I was helping a widow in her home by putting down a layer of mud in her house. This helps the house with any extra holes and dings they might have accumulated to smooth their home out. Once the mud dries they have a sold floor, wall, patio. While I was doing this my skirt was getting dirty, as I was on my hands and knees, the widow and her friends were watching and they stopped me, I thought I was doing it wrong, but no, they took their chitenje off and put in around me so that I would not get dirty. This is another use, offering it to people who might need it. This year the women have learned to sew and found several opportunities to give their chitenje to one of us who had a minor or major rip or tear on their skirt, wrapped their chitenje around us and asked for our skirt so they could sew the rip or tear. This fabric is brilliant. (Once again I had this amazing picture of a woman, using her chitenje as a sling holding a baby and she was swinging an ax at the same time. Now it's no where to be found.)
Q: What do you eat?
A: We eat the same there as we do here. They have the markets everywhere, they have grocery stores that are about half the size as one we are used to, and they have lots of food. At the school: breakfast- cereal, hard-boiled eggs, toast(the toast is amazing, we love it and miss it), pancakes, French toast, yogurt, banana(I don't like bananas but I love theirs), apples, coffee, tea, water, juice. Lunch-we had sack lunches usually with an apple, chips, and a granola bar and a sandwich. The sandwiches one year were peanut butter and jelly, then they would run out of jelly, and they would be peanut butter and peanut butter or peanut butter and butter, then they would run out and they would be butter and butter. They upgraded us to ham, chicken salad, and Italian sandwiches the last couple of years. The chips were Lays potato chips but they have different flavor a that a lot of people like more than American flavors. Sweet Thai chili was one. Dinner- chicken, rice, nsima, home fries, meatballs, potatoes, goat, greens, leftovers from the day before. We also went out for pizza at Pizza Inn (I'm not a fan of pizza, but there was something about this place that I wish America had. They do have KFC in Malawi we have never been there, but the ABC students seem to love it.
(I never take pictures of prepared food I am about to eat, and it looks like I did not disappoint, maybe next year??)
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Random pic: The truck that held all of our luggage.
we have a different type of truck or bus
every year. |
Q: What do the villagers eat, what is their staple?
A: They basically eat Nsima, greens, beans. Corn is their staple, this is what they usually harvest while we are there. With corn they make nsima. They harvest the corncobs and set them out in the sun till they are completely dry, they sit down on these mats that they use for everything (sitting, guests, corn, groundnuts) by hand they take off every kennel and put them in these baskets. Every year we usually sit with them and help, but this year because of the drought they did their harvest early because people will steal their harvest. Once all the kernels are off they soak it in water for 3 days, I believe this is too clean it as well as else but that I have not asked. Then they lay it flat on the mats until it is completely dry again. Next, they take it to a mill and grind it to a fine powder. There are mills in most villages. They are loud. To make nsima, the take a huge pot, and put oil in it along with water and the corn powder and they mix it by his mix gets super thick. The women in the village are very strong. We had bodybuilding men try to stir this stuff and the women had to take over cause they were going to slow. I think nsima tastes like cream of wheat, but it's so thick you could build models out of it without it falling. So what they do is they wet their right hand and take some nsima
and they roll it into a ball with just that hand and then they take some greens or some beans and thy eat it. This is all done with their heads. The beans are usually kidney beans and he greens are whatever they picked or grew. Collard greens, mustard greens, whatever they have and they cook them. They are fresh and really good. We had this meal several times while in the village. I miss it a lot., Oh yea , and they cook everything by taking 3 rocks and placing them in a circle, getting wood and starting a fire between the rocks and placing the huge pot on top of this all outside. These pits are made out of metal, and the whole this gets super hot and these women will use their hands to move it without a second thought. We try to help by using bare corn cobs as pot holders under the ledge of the pot (as the students show us) and it is still VERY VERY hot!!
Q:Any other missionaries there?
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Random pic: you can buy these tables at a market
Flip the table over for a game. |
A: The short answer, yes. A more detailed answer, a lot of the teachers at ABC College and ABC academy are missionaries, they can be there from 1, 2 or 5 years. They also go out into the villages on Fridays. But there are many missionaries everywhere we go. You can go to the markets and see them, we are very noticeable, we do not know the language and it is obvious, we walk faster, Malawians take their time with everything, they are in no hurry to get things done quickly, but they will get it done. There are many places that people can work in Malawi as a missionary, COTN (Children of the Nations) and World Vision are neighbors.
Q: What shots or medication do you have to get?
A: There are quite a few things that are recommended. Typhoid, Tetanus (booster), yellow fever, Malaria medication, are something's I can think of. I do not get anything, except the Malaria medication. And I am terrible at taking it. This time around I did not get it at all, and asked one of the doctors on the trip if I could have some, he gave me15 pills I took it for 5 days (the directions say to take it 2 days before you leave, then take one a day, and then for 7-30 days after you get back) I have never done this, and I have also never been bite by a mosquito. We have only had one person ever get Typhoid a long time ago, before any of my trips, and that was because she went off by herself into a hut and ate their food and drank their water, when she was told not to do this unless there is a student with her to make sure everything is ok....it wasn't. No one has ever gotten Malaria, but that could more than likely be because people actually take the meds. One day I will not be so lucky.
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Random picture of a rickety bridge to
and from different markets |
Q: What is Malaria?
A: I get this question a lot but from what most hear it is preventable and curable, so why do we need the medication? Because we don't want to get Malaria, it is a disease that causes fever, fatigue, vomiting, and headaches, but can lead to yellow skin, seizures, coma, and death. There are approx. 438,000 deaths each year, mostly children under the age of 5. Malaria has several types; Malaria 1-5, the lower levels make you sick and are curable and preventable, but since people in the village cannot afford them they usually will stay sick for a while and then get better, and most have had malaria so many time, they have lost count. The higher malaria can kill you within a day. My good friend Suzgo lost his mom to Malaria 4 the same day she was diagnosed. Malaria is preventable, using cautions like mosquito nets (which I slept under every day, malaria meds, repellants, the like it at night so stay inside, wear long sleeves and pants. The malaria meds are about $15, and there is a cure. When a person gets Malaria in a third world country. Most of the time they do not have the money for Malaria meds, or families have to think about should they spend the $30 a month they get on helping their child/family member, or should they feed the family. This is why a lot of children end up dying, not enough money.
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| I know this kids name I swear. She was a handful |
Q: Does anyone get sick?
A: Yes, people are sick the whole time we are there. Most try to push through, but some have to stay back and fight whatever they have. Children are sick a lot. We had one lady this year who was doing great all day and then out of nowhere she started throwing up for an hour. We took her to the clinic on the ABC campus and she spent two days there until she was able to keep down solid foods. We still don't know what she had but thank God she was healed quickly. I personally have never been sick while there, Thailand, on the other hand, is a different story.
And on that note, I leave you this:
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Dorm room from last year, and my
mosquito net. |
