All the Details!

Wow! A lot has happened since my last post! Where to begin??...hmmm…
My Work:

I have joined the Education Department Team here with JTW and will be working alongside Ulemu and Timothy. Ulemu is stationed in Kasungu so I spend majority of my time working with Timothy in Dzuwa. Last Tuesday we had a department meeting to help explain what my work is going to look like and what my responsibilities will be. Timothy and I are working on 4 different projects for which we are responsible for planning out the budget, finding funding so they can run, and writing monthly reports.

1. The School Feeding Program- Here in the local school JTW provides the kids with a meal of porridge everyday. This is a huge incentive for kids to come to school especially during the hungry months when there is little to no food at home. With this program we are responsible for scheduling and tracking down the women who will cook everyday. There 15 surrounding villages that feed into the Dzuwa School, so the women of each village take turns cooking each day. (side note: In all of the programs we try to keep the local people as involved as possible so that we are not just giving handouts but that the people are learning to work and help provide for themselves and their kids) We also collect all of the supplies to make the porridge (sugar, salt, maize, soybeans, pots) and distribute them to the women every morning. Then at school everyday we help supervise the cooking, making sure the women are there, and then line all the kids up according to their grade to distribute the porridge in a somewhat orderly fashion (stress on the somewhat b/c the kids get very aggressive when it comes to food!!!).

2. The Cultivation Program- The cultivation program is what helps to supply the maize and soybeans for the feeding program. Again to help keep the community involved we ask the local village chiefs to donate land to JTW where maize and soybean can be planted and harvested. JTW provides the seeds, fertilizer, and supplies necessary for harvesting while the villages provide the workers. This program involves lots of long meetings face-to-face with the chiefs from the surrounding villages, purchasing and keeping track of supplies, and monitoring the fields to make sure the work is actually being done.

3. Feeding Shelter Construction- Right now at the school the women are cooking in a makeshift shelter made from grasses and sticks. We are hoping to have a more permanent shelter built for them to cook in within the next couple weeks but maybe more realistically by the end of this term. Each of the 15 villages will donate bricks that they have made while JTW will provide the tin roof. Right now we are just waiting on bricks from 2/15 villages.

4. The School Sponsorship Program- This year we are hoping to start a sponsorship program to fund kids attending secondary school. In Malawi primary school (elementary and middle school) is free but after that you have to pay for school. We are hoping to put together a program that will match up kids graduating from Dzuwa School and some already in secondary school who are struggling to pay the fees (and maybe other schools in the future eventually) who want and are smart enough to attend secondary school with individuals who would be willing to pay for their secondary education. This job entails gathering a list of the top students from the teacher, putting together an exam that the students would take to rank them, collecting budget information for the costs of secondary school, and finding sponsors for the kids.



On top of these 4 projects I also have two other jobs…

1. Teaching- I was originally supposed to be just helping teach the standard 1 (kindergarten) class every morning but it now looks like I will be teaching the class by myself (with some translation help from Timothy). Yikes! School started this past Monday so I have finished up my first week of classes and things are going ok. The beginning of the week was awful because everything was soooo crazy but I am starting to get used to it. Although school is supposed to start at 7:30 there really isn’t any set schedule because of “Malawi time” (I will talk more about this later) so it is very frustrating! Class ends though at around 930 when my kids get porridge. I am just going mostly by whatever works at the time. I am though trying to establish a generalized set schedule in my class for the kids to get used to. So far we have worked on the letters ABC, some names of body parts, the numbers 123, had some relay races that were hilarious to watch b/c they didn’t understand, and sang some songs. Class is very interesting because I don’t speak Chichewa, which is all they understand. Timothy has been a big help in being there to help translate and keep kids in order while I am trying to teach in English and the few broken Chichewa phrases I know that relate to school. Oh my! It will be interesting to see how this goes throughout this first term. Oh yeah forgot to mention the numbers! Right now we have 190 kids registered for my class!!!!! Not all of them show up though so on any given day we have maybe 50-60 kids. WOW!!! It a ton of kids to try to teach!!!

2. After School Sports- On Tuesdays and Thursdays Timothy and I run the after school sports program. We start off teaching a bible lesson and then break up the kids to play soccer, volleyball (Tuesdays), and netball (Thursdays). The first day was so interesting b/c as of right now we only have one volleyball (I am hoping to buy more in the city whenever I get the chance to go there next) and no soccer ball. So the first day we had maybe 200 kids show up, standards 4-8. Obviously all of them could play volleyball so we just limited to standards 7-8 which was still about 50 kids! So 50 kids for 1 volleyball!!!! Oh my it was soooo hilarious! So I taught them the basics of the sport and then went into passing. The kids were not that great and after a while many of them got sick of having to wait so long to pass one ball that they left. I ended up working really with a core group of maybe 20 girls with all of the other littler kids who weren’t allowed to play crowded around us. So we were playing in a tiny circle b/c the kids have no concept of personal space and staying back. Very interesting. We’ll see if any of them want to continue to learn volleyball next week. Netball on Thursday went well although it was so hot b/c we play from 12-1:30pm! Right now temps are around 80 (yay for my alarm clock with a thermometer!) in my room so maybe high 80s low 90s in the sun??? I am guessing?

Wow…ok that was a lot…thanks for hanging in if you are still reading! After my initial meeting briefing me on all of these projects I was very overwhelmed but it hasn’t turned out to be too bad yet.
Big Frustrations Right Now:

1. Time aka. “Malawian Time” - Time here is not like US time. Things happen when they happen and it is never on schedule. My first time here I adjusted pretty ok to it b/c it didn’t really matter when things happened but now that I am actually working I am having a VERY hard time with it! Fist off I am a very scheduled person in general. I love knowing when things are going to happen so I can prepare for them and like keeping a schedule and staying on time. This never happens here! Things are always being sprung on you and no one ever shows up on time. A couple stories…for our first meeting with the chiefs about the cultivation program the meeting was supposed to start at 8:30 am. We were supposed to leave our house at 8am “sharp”! ha So I was ready to go at like 7:45. We didn’t end up leaving until 8:25. We got to the meeting a little after 8:30 and no one was there. We waited for maybe 30-45 min and then went to the head teachers house to see if anyone had showed up. He said no. Then we walked to one of the surrounding villages to find one of the men on the feeding committee. He said that everyone had been in the fields working but that they were on their way back now for the meeting. So we waited there for a little and then walked back into Dzuwa to wait for everyone. As it ended up the main chief we were waiting for never came and the meeting didn’t start until…get this…12:15pm!!!!!!! Almost 4 hours late!!! And then the meeting went until 2:35 all in Chichewa!...such a long and frustrating morning. Another story…our second meeting with the chiefs. We were meeting just so the chiefs could tell us yes or no as to whether they were going to give us land to cultivate. The meeting started an hour late. We presented the chiefs with all of the information they needed within the first 10 minutes of the meeting so all they had to do was say yes or no. Well Malawians are not very concise or efficient so it took them 2.5 hours to say yes they will give us land! Ahh! Finally I think it is dumb that even though all the village women have feeding schedules we still have to walk to each village the day before to tell them that they are cooking b/c we do not know if they will show up. If you have a schedule you should follow it! (although I do like walking around and seeing all the different places)

2. School- The teachers are not very driven. There is no time schedule and some teachers do not even show up to teach! It makes me very sad and frustrated because these kids need to learn!


Overall I am feeling more settled in and used to things here, although it is still SOOOOO hard for me to imagine I am going to be here for a year! There are times when I am still wondering if my presence here is making any impact and God has graciously given me a couple indications that it is...many of the women who cook for the feeding program have made comments to Timothy that they are so grateful that I am here and feel so lucky to have me...so that is an encouragement. My Chichewa vocabulary is slowly improving but I am still completely lost in most conversations. Something funny…I have watched my first couple episodes of “24” (shout out to Goose and all my other friends who love that show)! Gloria and Elliot (the family I am staying with) love the show and have some of the seasons on their computer. They convinced me the other night that I HAD to see it so we watched it! So funny to think that I am seeing it for the first time in Malawi! So far I really like the show! Haha Although it contributes to my reality confusion…let me explain. So every night when I go to bed I dream of life in the USA so it is sometimes very hard to wake up and be in Malawi. Sometimes I just want to stay in America. Same with watching “24”…when I am watching the show I forget that I am in Malawi. Hopefully both of these will get easier as I am here longer. My favorite time of the entire day by far is a night when I get to cook with Gloria, look at all the beautiful stars, and then hang out with her and Elliot after dinner. So far I have seen 2 shooting stars (shout out to Grammie).

Hope this all made sense I have been adding to it bit by bit throughout this past week
Prayer Requests:

-continued adjustment to life here

-for my family and friends back home (I really miss them!)

-for my programs and schoolwork

-for health here...a few of my fellow teammates have come down with malaria and are trying to get on the road to recovery...I have been pretty healthy so far...I am just getting over a small cold though


Huge Blessing and Great Surprise:  I got to eat an apple and orange here today as I am spending time in Kasungu a little bigger city!!!!! YUM!!! I MISS FRESH FRUITS AND VEGIES SOOOOO MUCH!!!