A busy day...

guest blog post by Ranen Korporaal

Malawi is sure different than what I expected. Goats running wild, eating whatever green that they can find, occasional enormous speedbumps trying to launch us into space along the way down to the center, and you always need to be on the lookout for people as they are everywhere! Either they are sitting along the highway trying to sell their goods, herding goats and cows to a spot to graze for the day, or transporting people on bikes down the highway. Wherever you go people will always be walking, walking, walking.

This morning we woke up early, ate breakfast and drove to the center (avoiding the rocket launchers this morning (: ) When we arrived at the center we saw the cooks preparing the cabbage that was served today for lunch! The classes had already began so it was very quiet! We parked the car close to the foster home and their mother was there to greet us when we walked around to the back. Today for her is laundry day! She also took us to where she cooks the food and told us that she was cooking fish, nsima and cabbage for the children at lunch.

We then went and greeted the head teacher, Ms. Margreet! At the same time we discussed the plans for the day, which is the sponsorship updates! She asked us to start with nursery 1 and build our way up to standard 7 (as standard 8 was not there today because they wrote their exams already back in May) The hardest standards to work with were the young grades as they do not speak any English, and were quiet and fairly shy, so we had to have Ms. Margreet as a translator from English to Chichewa. Everything moved so quickly that by lunch time, we were already done Standard 4!

For lunch we tried nsima, cabbage and tomato puree. The nsima was definitely better than what mom had described it like! It is almost tasteless and has the texture of very thick cream of wheat porridge! Dad was thrilled as it brought him back to early days and he ate a whole meal of it! Mom ate a decent portion and us kids sampled it! After finishing eating our lunch, the foster home had asked us to come and sing with them. Here they sang amazing grace in Chichewa for us and we sang Psalter 53:1 for them! We then took their picture with their foster mother, in front of the foster home! Fred, a boy in a wheelchair who lives in the foster home, has a strong liking for Dad!

After lunch, the younger standards had no classes so they were hanging around all afternoon. We then took pictures of the standards 5-7! All of the kids loved their prizes - the girls all getting the bracelets made by Katie and me (and a few other helpers) and the boys got hot wheel cars up until grade 5 and grade 6 and 7 got hacky sacs! Dad all this while had been trying to keep the kids away from being in the picture and had brought out the ball that we gave the children yesterday! Once we finished the picture taking, we found dad with some grade 4-6 boys taking pictures with Fred! When I got there some of the boys wanted to take a picture with me, it sure gets pretty interesting being in the center of the group! Fred then wanted to show dad the borders of the center! So dad went with Fred and quite a few others to the boarders of the center! Fred loved being the center of attention! We then brought Fred back to the foster home, along with his foster brothers! They then wanted to show us their room and take a picture! How dad has the memory storage for all these pictures I don’t know!! If you ever come here, make sure your memory is very empty because it will leave full!

It is now 7:30 and it is dark and the crickets are chirping! Tomorrow we hope to visit the garden and the gardeners working in the garden that Southern Irrigation has partnered with! It is very funny because mom and dad right now are checking the sponsorship papers and pictures we collected from the children and mom knows who sponsors who from memory and while we were there mom knew over half of the children’s names. Funny, she knows these kids names, but often fumbles over our names at home!