St. Brigid Roman Catholic Church
Journal Entry - November 1, 2004
Well, this is it! Just a quick selection of photos. I wasn't able to upload some of my other photos, but I may try again later.
Thanks for checking this website. I've enjoyed so many different aspects of this wonderful experience. I look forward to sharing with you in person.
Below is the photo of most of our students at our school. There are 9th & 10 Graders as well as students from the 1st and 2nd years of the Technical College.
Next is my lovely little friend, Memory, and after, her 2 day old little brother, Madalitso (Blessings.)
Below is the Mulodzeni Family photo...Ethel, Madalitso, Justin, and Memory. They have been very good to me and I'm really going to miss them. Actually there are many, many people who have been very good to me. Take care! I hope to see you soon! Over and out!
24 November 2004
Nthawi yatha. The time has finished.
We are leaving Malawi on Monday 29 November. As I'm sure anyone can imagine, I leave with mixed emotions. I'm sad to be leaving all of my good friends here. There are so many people that have been wonderful to get to know. There are many priests, sisters, the students, and people around town that I have really enjoyed sharing my time with. Yes, it will be hard to leave and as I write this, it still hasn't hit me that I'm actually leaving. I've got a lot of little projects that I want to finish before I go and many people to visit one last time. I'm sure that it will be very surreal to be actually leaving.
Now, on the good side of the mix, as much as I'll miss the great people here in Malawi, I'm really looking forward to getting home to see my family and friends. I'm scheduled to be getting into San Diego on 10 December, after a few days in Rome for meetings and then a weeklong layover in London and maybe Ireland to visit my cousins. I'll get some time to run around San Diego for a few days before I go to visit my parents and the rest of the family for Christmas. Then in January I will head back to San Diego to start to think about what comes next. At this point, I want to get back into the technical world of engineering with an end result that has a significant positive impact on the world. What that will be or how it will come about is still very unknown. I'm sure it will become more clear to me as I wait for waves while I'm surfing or just hanging out on the beach for a while.
Now, for an update of news around here.
Agogo Makalande is in good spirits, but that old body of his is running down. He was confined to his bed for a few days and couldn't sit up, but he pulled through whatever he had with the help of his daughter, Monica. She came over from Blantyre to stay for a few weeks. She really got his house into shape (new porch, floor, and cooking area) and did all of his cooking for him. He sent us a chicken to say thank you for all that we've done for him. (On a side note: our housekeeper, Eliza, said that she would clean it and cook it, but she didn't want to kill it. So I got the honor of taking it out the wood shed because I had done this in Boy Scouts a long time ago. One of the dogs came over and ate the head right away. Gnarly. I guess the dogs took note of the smell, because the next morning they ran across the fields to the chief's house and ate 4 of his chickens. The sisters paid him $10 for all of the trouble.) Anyway, I took some of Agogo's chicken back over to him and had lunch with him. It was a really cool, really special experience. He told me about his home on Likhoma Island and how he killed a leopard and a python and ate their hearts as "medicine" (as in gaining magic powers.) His only remaining brother passed away in Lilongwe in September. He's starting to talk of meeting the new volunteers when they come, but that's just a couple of weeks from now.
There will be new volunteers arriving the week after we leave. There are 3 Americans coming: 1 dude from San Diego with a degree in computer science, another dude from St. Louis with a degree in electrical engineering, and a woman from Minnesota who just graduated with a degree in general sciences. There is another woman coming from Poland, who did a year of service in Togo with the same program, and then one of the Polish women who are with us now (Gabbi) will stay for one more year. The school, particularly the college math classes, will be in very good hands. It's good to think of the school and everything continuing on with new momentum. We've stirred up a whole lot of interest in the school with just a tiny little advertisement in the weekend newspaper. So we should get full classrooms next year.
In the last couple of months, I've started teaching the little kids English. I had made flashcards for myself to study Chichewa a couple of years ago, so now they are using them to study English. I give them just a few at a time for them to learn. They can't get enough of them and some have even told me not to talk with them in Chichewa because they want to practice English.
I was hanging out at my friend's house and some kids were asking me if I was going to be going in an airplane. When I said yes, they were totally amazed and excited. I've known some of these kids for over a year now and as we were talking a little one that I didn't know felt my hair and said that it was very soft, then they all came over to feel it. It seems like they were all wondering about it, but didn't know how to go about checking it out, but the little one broke the barrier. So many oohs and ahhs.
One day the kids were singing a song (about me, of course) and I was so eager to figure out what it was saying. It turns out that it's a new song on the radio about John Chilembwe, the national hero of the country's independence as he is going off to work towards the independence. It's a pop song and it says (in Chichewa) "Johni, my husband, the white people will kill you! Ida! Ida! Ida! (his wife's name) Perhaps we will meet again." People sing it all of the time when I'm walking by.I think that the young ladies like to refer to me as their husband, because a lot of times they just yell out "Johni, my husband!" and wave. I enjoy the attention.
There are so many children around town that make me feel like a rock star wherever I go, whenever I go. First they notify each other that I've been spotted, and then they start running (and even crawling) towards me. The little ones get so excited when they see me coming. I think that they are pretty bored and they like it when I give them attention, chat with them, tickle them, and lift them up in the air. They have plenty of their own little games though, like making their own dolls with mud and old hair extensions and little trucks out of wire and bottle tops. More recently the little ones have started crying every time I leave. I don't know if I mentioned in my last update or not, but I was floored when a little 3 year old and his younger friend walked about a km (over a hill and out of sight from home) to come to the school and visit me. It was their big adventure to come to the big school down the road. One of the other volunteers had an errand in town and they got a ride in the truck, which was a huge bonus. The kids are really great.
In September a former Peace Corps volunteer gone local married an Italian volunteer and they are planning on living here indefinitely. They had a traditional Malawian wedding ceremony and they hired the most renowned traditional dance troop in the country to come and perform. It was sooo cool. The drums were incredible...I've never heard anything like it. They played so fast on different drums, but there was a syncopation that was really amazing. It was a real treat to get to see it all.
The next big event was when I went to Sande village, where my friend Justin is from. It rained the night before our trip, so on the way there it was time to collect a new kind of relish, called nkuululira (they looked a little like something I've heard people call "sand puppies" in the States.) Many women and children were out digging into the fresh mounds of dirt that they had made. That's one of the pictures on my home page. I heard that they are very tasty, but I wouldn't know. We went for the celebration of the completion of the rite of initiation for younger his sister, Ruthi. When we showed up at their house, they all came running out to greet us, singing and dancing. It was very cool. Ruthi had spent all week long inside of her house with her mom and was totally covered with chitenjes (traditional cloth that gets wrapped around the waist like a dress) whenever she went out to the bathroom. Her dad was sent away for the week. Then the last night she went out into the bush with the other girls and they were given many lessons. While we were waiting for them to return, we drank tobwa, which is non-alcoholic beer made from corn, and had lunch.we had "awfuls" which is the stomach and things of a goat. You guessed it, it's a delicacy and they wanted me to eat lots and lots of it - they insisted. So, I enjoyed it as best as I could and shared with the others as best as I could. Ruthi and her cousin returned at about 2 o'clock and that's when all of the women started singing and dancing around them. It is considered a very serious occasion for the young woman and her mother, so they aren't supposed to smile. The older women of the village sat down and gave her advice on being a woman and leaving childish ways behind. Us guys stayed back about 40 meters and watched the women in the village sing, dance, and give the mother a bunch of chitenjes and money. Ruthi got a little money herself. This is often considered a checkpoint in her life. She can decide to look to get married or to continue on with school. Her older sister was selected to go to a government school, but chose to get married (so that she could have more freedom?!?) and start a family instead. I told Ruthi that I would pay for her school fees as long as she wanted to go to school, all the way up through our technical college. She got pretty excited about the idea. She told me that she wants to become an English teacher and teach here at our school. I think that it is a great idea. She's only in the 5th grade, but it isn't too uncommon for kids to be quite old for their grade level in school. I told her that if she does well enough, I would pay for her little sister to attend school with her the following year. Yeah sure, I'm a big spender.$20 per term to the private elementary school and $50 for the secondary. In comparison, her brother makes the most money in the family as a laborer at the co-op across town and he is making less than $12 per month. Their family couldn't afford this level of education for her otherwise.
The next big news is that Justin's wife had a new baby boy last Friday. I knew that Ethel was pregnant, but not that she was due so soon (the pregnancy is never discussed until the baby arrives - no preparations or anything until the baby is actually born.) It's a healthy baby boy, named Madalitso, which means "blessings." His older sister, Memory, is just starting to walk on her own, just a step or two at a time. She cries a lot and gets really upset when I leave. So a couple of times I pretend like I'm going to take her with me and walk a little ways with her. She was looking back at the house and then back at me. Before it got at all traumatic, I took her back to her Mom and she was happy with the situation.
Our good-byes have been going on for some time. We are getting praise and appreciation piled on high. We had a good-bye lunch for the 2nd year college students who are leaving. (There was a big portion of them who didn't get a diploma, so they wanted it to be a less formal farewell.) The first year students served lunch and performed songs, poems, and skits. It was very nice. The whole school students gave us a farewell performance the following week with songs, dances, dramas, and gifts. The students passed around a notebook and they wrote letters to us in the book to take with us. It was really cool and a lot of fun.
We wanted to say some thank you's of our own to many people who have helped us out over the last couple of years, so we invited 5 or 6 priests over to say Mass and then we another 20 people or so to come and have lunch. The whole time the tables were reversed and we had a lot of thanks and praise piled on us.
There was some good rain over several consecutive days, so most of the people planted their corn crops. Many people were saying to wait and be prudent because it's still a few weeks early, but most have planted, and many fields are already sprouted. But the hot weather has kicked in hotter than ever the last couple of days and many people are "sweating it out" in more than the usual way in hopes that the rains return soon. We'll all have to wait and see what comes. Pray for good rains in Malawi. There were low crop yields last year due to intermittent rain.
