Me Too...

I wrote something for our Pastor's blog today about our experience in Africa. Go check it out when you get the chance. Here is an excerpt:

Life in America is tough. Life in Africa is tougher. I don’t know if that is proper English, but truth rarely fits into neat grammar.

For the last two months, my family of six lived and worked in the African nation of Malawi. With a life expectancy of 37 years and an AIDS pandemic that is unrelenting, Malawi is tougher. However, it took me a while to admit it out loud. At first, everything was an adventure.

Read the rest here.

School

If you want to go to school in Malawi, you have to have a school uniform. A lot of kids can't afford a uniform, so they are not supposed to be able to attend. Thankfully, they have relaxed that rule lately to allow the poorest children to still attend. We had uniforms made for our children so they could experience Malawian primary school. The uniforms cost about $3 a piece, and they are custom made by the local tailor. Our church takes care of 50 orphans in a non-residential program that pays for their school fees including uniforms.

The primary school in Madzanje has around 1300 kids in grades 1-8. Problem is, they only have 4 classrooms. The other rooms are grass huts that they put up just for shade. When the rainy season comes, most kids choose not to go to school. Recently, they decided to allow the kids to use the court buildings for classrooms, so the kids that used to meet under the tree outside can now have a roof over their heads.

Since our kids are "azungu" or "white," the headmaster wouldn't let them go to school in the grass hut building. Instead, they went to the courthouse with about 50 other kids. See if you can pick them out in the picture below.

The longer school went on, the more the Malawian kids crowded towards Catherine and Easton. By the end of school, they were squished up against the wall to the point that they couldn't even see the board. It might seem crazy, but white children have never been to this village before.


The longer we live here, the more I feel like there are two main areas that could and should be addressed. Healthcare and Education. For $1000 a school building could be built where these kids could go to school year round. The foundation has already been laid. They just need sheet metal and bricks to put it up. And a clinic in Madzanje is in the works as well. Maybe someday soon these issues will be taken care of.

My parents came in yesterday. It is really great to be able to share this experience with them. Their coming means that things are winding down here. Just a week left and there still seems to be so much to do. We are trying to finish up the last remaining projects. We are working on beds for the orphanage right now. For those of you who donated, much of the money is going towards mattresses and bunk beds for the kids. For children who have spent their lives sleeping on grass mats, a bed and mattress is a rare luxury.