Yesterday was our last full work day here in Malawi. I woke up about 5:30 and began cleaning up my little hut. It was time to pack up and move up to the lodge once we were done working. We had our breakfast, gathered some donations to leave at the kindergarten and headed out on the path. Once we arrived at the site we looked at what had been done the day before. Since we had been out in the country with Anna Marie we had no idea what the men had done while we were gone. We were pleased that the front porch of the building had been built and now we were ready to continue on with the walls. The work moved quickly because there were more workers than usual. At ten o’clock the kindergarten class gets a snack break and some time to play. Since we hadn’t spent much time with them we took the opportunity to go over and play a while. We got the children all fired up. We ran and played ball, we sat and watched them eat snacks and then played all kinds of silly games. At one point I was sitting in the dirt with my legs stretched out and most of the 31 children were lined up and taking turns jumping over my legs. Each time a child got to the front of the line I would take their hand and say “zina lanu dani” (which means “what is your name?”). They would respond and then I would say “jump! Sheila! ( or whatever the name was). The kids went round and round in the line until finally one little one brought me several books. She handed them to me and I quickly discover they were all in German! While I obviously can’t read German, and it seems silly to read German to Malawians I decided to just go through the pictures with them. We counted cars and birds in the books and went back and forth using Chichewa and English. I got to playing much longer than I should have and finally returned back to work with Phil. We got quite a lot accomplished in a couple of hours. When school was about to let out we walked back to hand out gifts to the children. A good friend of mine had given me about 40 beanie babies. We had enough to give one to each child. We also had some stickers so we lined them all up and I gave out the babies and Phil put stickers on each child’s uniform. The kids were (mostly) all very happy and thankful. After a lot of pictures and some chatting we went back and worked a little longer. Each day we stop work at 2. It was close to 2 when I decided to cut out or “knock off” for the day. Phil wanted to stay a bit longer so I took the path back on m own. We have become quite good at navigating the winding paths here on the property. This farm is over one thousand acres and all of it is so beautiful! I will defiantly be missing all my walks once I’m gone 🙁
After a little lunch Phil and I packed our things up and a car was sent to drive us and our bags up to the lodge. Once the car arrived we decided to just send our bags and take the long walk up on foot one last time. Each evening we have walked up to use the Internet and sit for a while. Then each night we take our flash lights and make the walk back. It’s become a sort of tradition so we wanted to enjoy it one last time.
We felt as of we were walking back to start our reintroduction back to real life. We got settled and took hot showers (indoors for the first time this trip). We changed into CLEAN clothes and met up for a nice dinner here at the lodge. I had a quick meeting right before dinner, but was done by 7:20 so we sat and talked and ate. Then in was off to bed for both of us. I know I was asleep before 9.
I know I’m a day behind so stay tuned and I’ll post another blog in the next few hours to fill in what went on today.