MALAWI: YEAR 2

I want to thank you for all of the support, prayers, encouragement, cards and emails I received while I volunteered for my second year in Malawi. Also for all your support for my parents when I over stayed my year and wasn’t sure when I was coming home. Running around barefoot, swimming in the lake, and talking with strangers…all things we are told not to do but which make the world the amazing place that it is…well, at least I took my anti-malaria pills!

THE PLAN When I returned to Malawi I was planning to help start and implement a girls program through the Synod. This began with an intensive language course…I spent a little less than 2 weeks with a missionary from South Africa who had been in Malawi for over 40 years. Mornings were spent one-on-one learning grammar…I know lots of rules (though I still have trouble putting them into practice). In the afternoons I went to a nearby village with Amai Chigaga and took part in their day-to-day work from cooking to harvesting to prayer meeting to carrying water. A wonderful experience that helped to jumpstart my Chichewa…However, my contacts with the Youth Department of the Synod were fired and I got redirected—>

EBENEZER SCHOOL After realizing that my days in the Youth Department were over, I went back to the school where I worked during my first year. As the curriculum is mostly American, there were things that I could help decipher and explain. I helped in the second grade class with math and with reading in the other classes. I also helped in the office with the computer, laminator, copy machine, etc…and for a few months was even headmistress! When the third term began I was asked to take the second grade class as that teacher had moved away, so I was back to teaching mostly full time.

HOSPITAL I also helped at the Mission hospital about 2 days a week. I began by helping keep notes for the epilepsy clinic on Tuesday mornings. Africa Burn Relief (American organization) pays for all of the burn patients and, as epilepsy is the largest cause of burns in third world countries, they also pay for the epilepsy treatment. They wanted to know if patients were coming back, if the treatment was helping, if they were taking their medication, etc...I also helped to put patient files together (all the paper work for the doctors to fill in for the patients) and do computer entry for some of the government programs that pay for health care.

COMMUNITY I made some wonderful friends in the Nkhoma community: long term volunteers, missionaries, medical students from other countries, and Malawians at the school and at the hospital. It was a great time to be there and to feel that I was helping and useful. Though I felt at a loss in the beginning when my proposed plan fell to the wayside, it was an amazing year and a half. With the support that I received (from here and there) I felt that I was in God’s hands and I am so grateful for that.

TRAVEL While there I did some traveling… this time mostly in private cars instead of public transport. Many weekends were spent at Lake Malawi relaxing, swimming and eating fish dinners. Over Christmas I traveled with Ute (eye doctor in Nkhoma from Germany) to Mozambique to swim in the Indian Ocean and try out my nonexistent Portuguese and to Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls, go on safari, and admire the astonishingly beautiful and varied landscape we found. People everywhere were extremely helpful, positive, friendly and hopeful for a better future.
Once again it was hard to leave Malawi, but I'm glad to be home.

Zikomo kwambiri (thanks a lot).