So much time has passed since my last post.. I feel overwhelmed at where to pick up again. The last 2 months have been filled with eye openers, inspiring moments, interesting stories and exciting adventures and I have so much I want to share so I am still deciding on what to make this post about.
I think I will go from the start of the beginning ( a saying which I heard today) and dedicate this post to sharing my experiences from the place that took me offline in the first place, Malawi.
What an unexpected and surprising 3 weeks that turned out to be. So as I explained in my last post Lunathi and I decided to come to Malawi for service. We started off with daily Junior youth groups and Children’s classes which were a test to our communication skills as many of the kids did not speak English. The classes were nice but most definitely the highlight of the entire trip was Chintheche. Chintheche is an area just a 7 hour bus trip north of the capital Lilongwe. Lunathi and I accompanied by a posse of other local Baha’is headed off to the lakeside villages to do some teaching and visit other Baha’is in those areas. The lake that I’ve mentioned is Lake Malawi. Never before have I heard the word ‘lake’ used to describe a body of water that ginormous. 6 hours of our bus trip was alongside the lake and we didn’t even go to the top. This lake borders 3 countries, it looks like an ocean and it’s surrounded by sand. It was like going to the beach but without waves and the water temperature like that of a warm bath. We were also warned that there are crocodiles and hippos in the lake not that that information hindered us at all in diving right in. After having to hike from where the bus dropped us off to the village itself in extreme heat and the sun blaring down on us and each of us carrying our luggage on our backs (and remember Lunathi and I are very much city girls, we don’t pack light) we were desperate for relief and so regardless of all the dangers we were warned of in regards to swimming in the lake we dived right in.
I can sum up our time in Chitheche with the following image, boiling dry heat, sitting under mango trees, relishing in their fruit, teaching locals about the Baha’i Faith and the classes that the Baha’is have to offer. That is what it means to go teaching in the villages. Now what it means to live in the villages looks something more like this.. sweat, aching limbs from hours of walking between villages, “AZUNGU” being heard on every side, echoed by the voices of local children (Azungu means white person), little girls crying whenever I came near them (most traumatising experience ever) mosquitoes, hole in the ground toilets, sleeping on rock hard floors, heat, no electricity, chickens, goats and swimming in the lake. That pretty much covers what life in the village was like for us. Now as I had served in Vanuatu before and lived in a hut with bugs and rats and all the rest of it I wasn’t too fussed by village life, except the squatty toilet which is another blog post on its own, but for my dear companion Lunathi who has never been too far from her phone, comfy bed and all the other typical city girl things it was rough. I don’t think she has fond memories of the village. I’ll share some exciting new experiences with you now. First off I ate flies. I ate them both alive and cooked and to be honest I liked the live ones better. They are these little lake flies that fly in a cloud of black and are collected by waving a basket through the swarm. They eat them live like chips just walking around with their basket and dipping their hands in every now and then. They didn’t really have a flavour more just a fluffy texture. The cooked flies come in a patty and don’t taste nice at all. They don’t have much in terms of seasoning in the village so everything just tastes salty. NEXT I had barbequed rat, the one I had was a little burnt and it may or may not have resulted in me feeling like I was on speed later on in the evening. The next thing I want to share is more of a funny story..
So Mdyaka was the first village that we stayed in and one of the Baha’is there generously donated his 2 bedroom hut to our travelling party of 8. Now please don’t assume that when I say bedroom I mean a bedroom, these families live only for what they need and a bedroom really just means a space for a bed. One of the rooms had 2 beds and the other had 1. Lunathi and I shared the single room, the 4 other girls who were Sandra, Vafa, Moonirih and Aunty Phebe shared the other with 2 in one bed, 1 with her own bed and one on the floor and the 2 males, Justin and Mr Kachingwe were on the floor in the front room. By bed I mean wooden structure with no mattress. In the heat, no pillow, on a hard wood surface, with mosquitoes buzzing around your ears sleep was not a term that can be attributed to that first night. On top of it all Mr Kachingwe was developing a flu or something and my goodness I have never in my life heard sounds like that. To call it snoring would not do justice to the roars that were emitted by this single individual. From that night on we dubbed him snorelax. As you can imagine on our second night there after the exhausting days and the minimal food and the lack of sleep from before I was willing to do anything to ensure that I would be able to sleep so I volunteered to sleep on the floor. As there were already 3 people on the floor most of the straw mats and things had been taken so with only one blanket underneath me and with some of my clothes rolled up to make a pillow I settled in to sleep. I blasted music from my Ipod into my ears to drown out the sounds of the mosquitoes and snorelax, I was so tired that even watching 3 rats scamper into the house on the roof ledge didn’t bother me I was finally able to sleep until.... THUMP!! Something hits me on the head and falls down next to me. It’s pitch dark around me so I reach out my hand to try and feel what it was, I touch it and squeeze it a few times but I don’t recognise this thing so I shine light from my Ipod onto it and low and behold it’s a roll of bread. How on earth did a roll of bread manage to fall onto me? I look up to see if maybe bread isn’t stored above me somewhere when I hear it, “Squeak, squeak squeak...” it makes sense now. The rats were trying to get their dinner, they took something too big for them to carry and dropped it on the way out. Now I see them, arguing with each other, deciding whether or not to go back for their food. “Squeeeeeeeak, squeak, squeak” “Squeakety, squeak, squeak”. I decide that if they do want to come back for it I don’t want the bread anywhere near me so I flick it over towards Justin instead. Another night of sleep destroyed, I watch the sun rise and the chickens make noise as they wake up, the chickens also sleep in the house, and so begins another day.
There is so much that I can talk about in regards to our village adventure but in order to do justice to all the thoughts in my head I will leave this post here and finish off the rest in blog posts to come.
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