St. Brigid Roman Catholic Church
Journal Entry - December 12, 2002
Everything has gone as planned with my arrival into Balaka. We were blown away by the school when we arrived. It is huge and the buildings are 1st class, with landscaping being done and a big security fence. I was speechless. It didn't feel like I was on a mission in Africa, but rather about to work at any junior college campus in the U.S. The buildings have been funded by the European Union to the amount of about $4 million. This seems to have all came about from about 10 nuns working to solve the various problems faced by Malawi. They drafted a proposal for the main solution to these problems being improving the education and the funds were granted. The big building is a major statement as to what is possible in the country. They site God's providence in making this happen and it really is quite amazing.
Even with all of the wealth of buildings, the purse strings are really tight. None of the funding from the European Union will be used to finance the school (supplies, local teacher salaries, electricity, or anything.) We are trying to conserve and reuse everything. We are planting a garden to grow as much food as we can while having the time to manage it. The construction workers make about $1.50 per day, and the skilled tradesmen make up to $2.00 per day. The food staples seem to cost about the same as they did in the US. There are stores which pretty much have everything that there is in the states. It's just that not everyone can afford everything. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor. It seems as though the poor are getting poorer. We are going to be serving the very poor and it very much feels like a mission again.
There will be the equivalent of a high school, with the typical classes and extracurricular activities. There will be something of a junior college which will work towards 2 year degrees and certification from exams in technology and business and a 1 year degree in Homemaking. There will be about 100 students in each class. The boarding has a capacity for 400 students. We've been meeting to lay out what classes need to be taught in the curriculums and who can teach what classes, and when the classes can be taught over the next 2 years. It's pretty exciting to be in on the ground floor. The sisters waited until we were here to set up the class periods, etc. It's been really cool to think and talk about what should be in the curriculum. There will also be some sports teams and clubs.
The library is going to take a lot of work. The books that we collected in San Diego are being shipped from Italy in a "container" which still hasn't arrived. There are a lot of books here which need to be inventoried and cataloged. We also need to make all of those little pockets and check out cards that go in the front of the book.
It's been raining a little bit. Nothing too steady. At times it comes down really hard and other times it's pretty hot. In general, it hasn't been too hot at all, certainly not as hot and humid as Rome in August. Please pray for rain, but not too much rain to cause flooding, because the next few months are critical for crops.
There is a co-op here in Balaka that was set up by the St. Louis Monfort Fathers which has all of the basic, necessary things that you would need. There is a clinic and pharmacy, a dentist which also does orthodontics and false teeth, pharmacy, a new computer center that is getting started, automechanic, metal shop, wood shop, and many other things that are developing skills of the people that work there as well as improve the quality of the community. It is really a huge success story. The main thing is a printing press which has an exciting history of printing up a letter from the bishop in 1993 which led to an election and the democratic government. There were a lot of factors that played a role, but the letters were secretly printed and distributed throughout the country to be read at the same time at Mass on Sunday. There are stories of the printers running to escape and the presses being burned. Some secret tapes were sent to the BBC and then broadcast throughout the world and the changes were in motion.
The language really isn't an issue. It seems like everyone that we've met speaks english to some extent and some Italian from the Montfort Fathers. I think that every time I've said "Moni!" (Hi!) they've responded with "Good morning!" --even at 4pm! The Mass is all in Chichewa which is the biggest learging area. We are going to continue to get some Chichewa classes for the next few weeks. My vocabulary is coming along pretty well.
Oh yeah, and there are bugs! Lots of big BUGS! Spiders and ants and termites all kinds of things. I had my light on in my room late the first night unpacking and they were everywhere. When I went to sleep they were crawling all over me. We've got some lizards in the house that are very welcome. There haven't been so many in the house now, whether we've figured out how to manage them (we don't put the lights on in our room much) or they just moved out when we moved in, but its been much better now. There have been swarms of termites out in the rain which was strange. This morning the birds were gobbling them up.
It's going to be very difficult, no, time consuming to communicate via e-mail and to update my web page.
For e-mail, I can check it once/week, so the plan is to open all of the mail, copy and paste it (without reading it) to a disk, and then write the responses off line, and then try to send the responses the following week.
I think that it will still be faster than snail mail, but much slower than even what we had in Rome.
I'm in an internet shop in Blantyre, and it's taken me 20 minutes to get to where I can start editing the web page.
I don't know when the next update will come, hopefully before Christmas. I hope that you're doing well. Peace!
