Our Last Week in Malawi

August 8th, 2013

Sadly, this will be my last blog entry from Malawi.  It has been a wonderful two months, full of adventure and good times.  This last week has been no exception.  On Sunday, Patson, one of the workers at the guesthouse, invited us to attend a wedding.  The affair was really interesting.  First, we attended a church service, which consisted of some brief readings and a sermon that lasted an hour and a half.  The pastor was really animated and entertaining.

 

After the church service, the wedding began.  There was another sermon of an hour and a half, and it was very different from any wedding sermon I have ever heard.  The pastor really stressed that a wife should be submissive to her husband, and that a woman’s place is in the home raising children.  Somehow it made me a bit uncomfortable at times, but the pastor also said that a man who hits his wife is not a man, which I definitely agree with.  The strangest thing about the wedding was the actual exchanging of the vows.  The pastor had read the story from Genesis about Isaac, Eleazor, and Rebecca, when Abraham sent his servant Eleazor to find a wife for his son Isaac.  The wedding party reenacted this scene from the Bible like a play with the congregation as an audience, and this was the basis for the wedding ceremony.  I have never seen anything like it.

 

Later in the week, Kim had the opportunity to go to the clinic outreach, which is a program that is very helpful to the people here in Malawi.  Basically, clinic staff drive to remote areas in Malawi and administer vaccinations, check babies for proper nutrition and development, and inform people about HIV and contraception, among other things.  The conditions of remote clinic sites are quite appalling.  Here is a shot of a “clinic”, and you can see how unhygienic it is!

 

The villagers gather under shady trees and watch the drama group perform educational skits for them.

 

Kim even helped the clinic staff weigh the babies and chart their growth.  To weigh the babies, they hang them on a scale the is hung from a tree branch .  It really seems quite dangerous, and the babies frequently almost fall out of the scale!

 

 In Kuchare, where Kim was volunteering, fortunately the babies were all a healthy weight.  The people there have better agriculture and even milk!  It goes to show how living conditions really affect child development.

 

Some of the babies had to get vaccinations.  Luckily for this child, the vaccination was an oral one!

 

In other news, our baby chickens are not so little anymore.  They are losing all their fluff and are starting to wander around the compound.  We are afraid that the dogs here will kill the chickens if they get too close, so I think that we are going to have our friend Moses take them to his house in town.

 

After weeks of hard work, construction is nearly complete.  On Tuesday, Kim and I helped Moses put the finishing touches on the trusses, so all that remains is to pour the concrete floors and add the iron sheets for the roof.  Too bad we will not be here to see the completed project or teach the children in their new schoolrooms…I guess we will just have to come back in the future!

 

Yesterday, a local family invited Kim, Mara and me to their house for lunch.  We had nsima with usipa, tomatoes, and pumpkin leaves.  Nsima is a kind of stiff polenta that is used to sop up sauces, and usipa are tiny salted and dried fish.  You eat everything with just your hands, which was not something we were completely used to.  I wouldn’t say that it was the most delicious meal we have had in Malawi, but it was good, and we found it very interesting to share a meal with a local family.

 

I guess all good things come to an end, and these two months in Lifuwu have definitely been a good thing.  The people here, both the volunteers and especially the locals, are warm and friendly.  The kids crave love and affection, but they also readily give love in return.  It will be very challenging returning to North America, where warm and friendly relationships do not seem as easy to come by.

We still have our holiday to Zanzibar coming up, so be sure to continue following the blog.  Hopefully I will be able to continue blogging while we are there, but if not, I will be sure to create a post or two when we get back to Baltimore.