Weekend Festivities

Friday July 6th was Malawi's 48th independence day. I'd been asking people during the week if people do anything special to celebrate and all the responses I heard were the same. Most people don't celebrate it much.  There are some shops that are closed and people don't have to work because it's a holiday, but that's about it.

Friday we biked to the LBI for the first time! Laura, Pastor Martin and I left a little before 8 am and it took just over a half hour to get there. It was nice that there wasn’t too much traffic in that direction early in the morning. Laura and I are working on remembering how to get there! We've taken several different routes driving there and it can be a bit confusing especially since many roads have no road sign and some that do have signs, have a different name than what is printed on the map!

When we got there Pastor Chikwatru introduced us to all the students. There are 9 from Zambia and 9 from Malawi.  They all stood up and introduced themselves. All are married and most have children and their families live with them on the LBI campus. 

What I really liked was that as they were introducing themselves, every single one of them said, “I am blessed with…” a son and daughter for example. They all said they were "blessed" rather than complaining about having a lot of kids. It was a nice comparison to what we heard the day before.  When we were at the village for the mobile clinic the day before, the woman started chanting a song in Chichewa. Pastor Mabedi told me that the women were singing “how can we take care of all these children…they are too many for us…” So, after hearing that, it was nice that these men said they’re blessed to have children.

As they were saying their names, I was writing them down because I really want to learn who everyone is! So I tried to repeat their names; it is tricky! It’s hard to understand their names on the first try and of course they all chuckled when I tried to repeat their names incorrectly. I hope I can learn them all by the end of the course though.

We finally divided the students up into 5 groups of 4 to start off this week.  Each group will be for 1 hour starting at 8am on Monday.  We’re not sure yet if all the students are at the same level or not and what their expectations are for the course.  So we asked the students if there are things in particular which they for sure want to learn how to do.  Only one students spoke up and said he would like to learn excel, which we planned on teaching, and he wants to learn how to edit movies- deleting background noise and adding in other music. That one will be trickier though. We’ll have to see about finding some type of software to do that. We’ll plan to introduce Power Point as well.  The student also mentioned he’d like to learn how to burn music onto cds. That we definitely can do! And he asked if his wife could learn as well because she is interested. So perhaps if there are other students’ wives who want to learn, we can teach a class for all the women as well! We’ll start off with the basics tomorrow and see how quickly things progress. 

Saturday morning we got up early and met the rest of the group for an excellent outing. We drove about an hour to the hills around the township of Dedza to the Chongoni Rock Art area which is a World Heritage Site. As we got closer to the mountains, we were off the paved path and making dust clouds as we drove. It is the cool dry season in Malawi now and there is dust everywhere. When we were bicycling yesterday we couldn’t help but ride through dust clouds as cars passed by and it even gets on your teeth. It reminds me of the phrase “eat my dust!”  

There were hardly any signs for the Rock Art Area, yet many possible roads to take as we were driving along. At one point we passed the Peace Corps training site. As we continued along not sure where to go, Pastor who knows fluent Chichewa, asked a native for directions. We didn’t get too far before we stopped another man for directions and whether he offered or we asked I’m not sure, but in the end he just hopped into the car with us to direct us to the road to take.

We ended up parking and walking along a path leading up a small mountain. Despite our efforts, we never did find the rock paintings but we enjoyed the hiking experience as a group!

On our way back, we stopped at the Dedza Pottery Lodge to see the artwork there and to get some lunch.  I tried Nsima for the first time. Nsima is a staple food here. It was made out of maize flour and was thick and sticky. You eat it with your hands and dip it into another dish. I had a Malawian beef stew that I dipped the nsima into.

Saturday night we went out to get pizza with Melissa. Unfortunately it gets dark so early here- by 6pm and it’s not really safe to be walking around at night.  It limits evening activities but Melissa kindly took us for another ride in the ambulance. 

This morning we went to 8:30 church and enjoyed a beautiful service. My favorite part was when the choir sang. All the members stood up in their seats and the choir director lead them to begin singing a capella. As they were singing, they slowly began to move into the aisle forming 2 lines walking up to the front of the church. All the while they were stepping together and when there was a break from the singing, even the sound of the footsteps matched each other. Their voices blended together perfectly. The mothers had their babies strapped onto their backs with beautiful printed fabrics which is common here. And the babies are so content just sitting in the pouch on their mother’s back and swaying to the music. 

The choir had such great volume; it was very powerful. I wish I could've joined them although I really wouldn't fit in!

We learned that the choir composes all their own songs and there are 13 choir directors who all rotate to take turns directing the choir for different songs. It was beautiful!

After church we visited with some of the members and pastors. And then one of the women, Annette who is from Tanzania but now living in Malawi, had brought 2 sections of cotton fabric from Tanzania to offer Laura and I. Annette has her own shop which we haven’t been able to visit yet, but she also sews and makes tailored outfits to sell. She offered that she could make us something out of the material so we could have a piece of traditional attire out of the material from Tanzania!

Tomorrow will be our first day teaching computer classes and we start at 8am. After being in Malawi over a week now I’m ready to jump into our teaching work! It’ll be a busy week too with over 60 pastors on campus from Zambia and Malawi for continuing education classes.  Looking forward to getting started!

We learned how to say “let’s go!” in Chichewa… “tipete!”