So sorry for not posting yesterday. Time has started to speed up and we have been busy at the school. The last two days have been spent working with the teachers and enjoying the friendships we all have made a Kauma school.  The teachers from America have been working on sharing strategies that might help the Malawian teachers with some of their main challenges. It has been so much fun watching the Malawian teachers learn new ways to interact with their students. The “impact” that our volunteers have had on this trip has been easy to see growing over the course of the last two weeks. Today was really the culmination of all of the work. We had another meeting with the Malawian teachers and tried to really sum up all the things that had been done in the classrooms.
It was obvious how thankful everyone was for this experience. Our volunteers learned so much while working at the school and it seems that the Malawian teachers have also all taken something away from all that was shared with them.
It’s always funny because just as the group starts to get into a “groove” the trip winds down. We have shared so many laughs and I really think everyone has enjoyed the trip.
Last night we ate up at the lodge and it was almost funny to see everyone around a proper table! We all looked so clean!! The food was amazing and we had good company. A few of the ladies were fixated on the uninvited “guest” that was flying around the rafters, but for the rest of us it just provided good laughs. The upstairs of the lodge is open air so the was a little bat that decided to join us. Just another bit of malawian charm I suppose 😉
I have tried to keep the blog thus far focused on the journey of these volunteers and kept most of my own personal stories out. I will bend that rule here today just a little because I know some of my loved ones depend on this for updates on how “I” am doing. Yesterday was an emotional day for me. That is one of the reasons I didn’t post yesterday afternoon when I got back to the village. Many people ask me how I continue to travel to Malawi because to them it seems like it would be so sad. On most days the joy from the people of Malawi far out weighs the sadness. There are days though when something I see hits me and in turn it breaks me open in a way. I won’t go into the details here, but seeing a small child who had a wound that hadn’t been tended to made me sad. We did what we could for her and in the end I was told that today she had been taken to the hospital. I guess what we did and said had made a difference. Next week I will go back and make sure she is alright.
It is these moments that i question so many things…it is an aspect of these trips that is unavoidable. There is much more to say on this matter, but for now I am going to prepare for the final evening with this group. I will post more tomorrow after some sad goodbyes. I will miss this group and treasure the time we had together in Malawi. The joy really does out weigh the sadness….