Monday, July 23, 2007
Last E-mail
Hello Everyone! Well, this is our final email as we will leave the computer here in Lilongwe...First, we feel like we are fully recovered - minus a few bathroom issues here and there. Thanks for your prayers! We really feel like they have helped. For the last couple of days, we have been traveling and relaxing. We traveled to Lake Malawi and stayed at a little resort by the name of Carolina. It was not necessarily what we in the U.S. would deem a resort, but it was a luxury for us. The lake was beautiful and reminded us of home, staring across Lake Michigan. We met some other Americans at the resort. They were on a two month stint with Children of the Nations. Most of them were college students. We really enjoyed getting the chance to talk with a few Americans again and share our experiences with each other. They were encouraging to us in many ways. Our trip to and from the lake was another test of our patience. We traveled with Emmanuel in the Toyota LandCruiser. It is a fairly old vehicle but from what we have heard always reliable. However, we think we bring bad luck to SOM vehicles because we once again broke down. This time it was a tire but instead an overheating engine. We had to stop about every ten minutes to let the vehicle cool down and add water (we guess they don't use coolant here) to the engine. Nevertheless, water is not always a readily accessible commodity on the roads of Malawi, so there were a few times when we waited 30 or more minutes while someone went searching for water. We were impressed, however, at how many people stop to help you when you break down here in Malawi. There was one time that we had a crowd of twenty standing around watching us. We aren't sure if we were just a comical sight or what, but they were a big help in the end. After about 11 hours of car travel (when it should have taken 5), we made it back to Lilongwe. We are staying at St. John's again, and we are thankful because we think we got the luxury room at St. John's (compared to what we had last time). We are enjoying our last few days here and are trying to nurse our stomachs back to health before we travel. We fly out tomorrow around 1:20pm. We fly to Nairobi first and then on to Amsterdam. We will spend a few days in the Netherlands, checking out Nate's mother country, and then will head back to Holland, MI. We can hardly believe that our time is coming to an end, but we want to say thank you to all of you. Thank you for reading these emails, for praying for us, and for supporting us in so many tangible ways. We are so grateful for the wonderful support team we have had back in the U.S. We look forward to sharing more with you when we return. Check the blog later for some pictures! Blessings,Nate and Bekah
Good News!
Hello Everyone,(this was supposed to be sent last Friday, but the internet was down. we haven't been by a computer since! we'll write our last email here in a few minutes.) This is just a quick note to update everyone on our status. We woke-up this morning with bad stomach cramps and so on, but this afternoon we are feeling better - not perfect. We think that we are on the upswing, and to be honest with you, we are feeling pretty positive that we did not have malaria. We will explain more as to why we feel this way later. We had lunch at Chet Burns' house (the missionary from Action International) with him, his wife Leanne, and his family. His family consists of his two biological sons and five adopted children (two of which are living in the United States). You may have read what I wrote earlier about him in one of my emails, and I should say that his ministry is not quite what Naomi made it out to be. It seems that instead of only wanting to work with the CCAP church he actually only wants to work with churches in general. The CCAP church won't work with him that much, actually, because they are focused on doing their own projects. He works with the area evangelical churches. The catch there is that Save Orphans Ministries does not necessarily work through churches. They work through communities. Now I will not be the one to judge whose philosophy is correct, but I will say that each in their own right seems to be doing positive things. Chet's house was luxurious by any Malawian standard. He had four bedrooms, one and a half baths, an almost typical American style kitchen, a living room, dining room, and an amazing view. He is renting this house for only about $130 a month, so can I say that I blame him for wanting to find a comfortable space for his family? No. They were very hospitable to us and served us "sloppy joes," chips, and oranges. We were thankful for a little American style food after many meals of nsima and rice, and we were thankful for a little debriefing time with people who come from our same culture. I think that both Nate and I needed to have the opportunity to ask our "dumb American" questions to people who would both know the answer and not think we were ridiculous for asking them. With all of that said, though, Nate and I both said as we walked away that we were happy that we were forced (in a way) to interact only with Malawians for most of our trip. If we had met Chet and Leanne earlier, it probably would have been too easy for us to try to escape to something more familiar. However, because we surrounded ourselves in the Malawian culture, we feel we have been given a fuller perspective (not the entire perspective by any stretch of the imagination). One interesting conversation that we had with Chet and Leanne had to do with our illness. We explained our symptoms to Leanne who immediately got a smile on her face. She said that malaria is very over-diagnosed in Africa by doctors. She said even when tests come back negative (which ours did) they still prescribe the malaria treatment (which Dr. William did). She then asked us what malaria preventative medication we had been on, and we said Lerium. She said that she thought maybe our illness had to do more with the Lerium than with malaria. She explained that Lerium can be very harsh on our bodies, stripping them of even the good bacteria that we need. She then suggested that we try eating yogurt to help introduce new bacteria into our system. She said that may help. She also gave us each two probiotic pills which are like a mini-shot of the good bacteria. She also said that my heartburn could be caused by the Lerium as well. Now, of course, she is not a doctor, but I think that I am going to listen to her advice at this point. Little unknown fact about malaria (according to Leanne)... the mosquitoes that carry malaria are only in very warm areas - meaning when it dips into the 40s here at night the mosquito would die - and they only feed from midnight to 6am - hence why you need to use the mosquito nets. Also, a distinct symptom of malaria is that your eyes ache, like they are going to fall out. We did not have this symptom! More than likely, our illness has been caused by the stripping of our immune systems by our antibiotics, leaving us vulnerable to some common bacteria that is creating havoc in our systems. We are hoping that we will feel completely better before tomorrow when we travel to Salima and Lake Malawi. Once again, thank you for your encouragement and support. We are so thankful for all of you. Many blessings,Nate and Bekah
I forgot to add something to the last picture I posted. That is a picture of inside a minibus...public transport at its best!
Nate is helping to fix one of the many flat tires we experienced...
Nate and Picard...brothers from another mother...:)
Bekah helping to hand out AIDS buckets in Katzecara area...
Nate is helping to fix one of the many flat tires we experienced...
Nate and Picard...brothers from another mother...:)
Bekah helping to hand out AIDS buckets in Katzecara area...
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Read second
Hello Everyone!
Well, I wish I could say that I have great news to report today, but it seems that everything I have to say is either depressing or just simply not good. I will start, though, with our health.
After staying home yesterday and resting, we were hoping that Nate would wake-up this morning feeling like a million bucks. However, instead, we both woke-up not feeling quite right. Nate's headache and stomach cramping worsened, and I woke-up throughout the night with chills and sweating (not to mention a few stomach problems). We thought we would try to at least make the journey to the office, though, which is where we were suppose to meet up with Lonely to make the trip back to Tsngano area. When we got to the office, though, Nate's headache was in full bore. Lonely asked Nate to described his symptoms, and immediately after hearing them, she made a phone call to the hospital. She said we were going to take Nate to get tested for Malaria. Well, needless to say, this was a shock to both of us as we did not even consider Malaria to be an option; after all, we have been taking our medicine and using the mosquito net. :) Nevertheless, it was off to the hospital...
Since we are visitors (and white, I presume), we were taken immediately to a doctor in a private room where he asked Nate some questions and examined him. He said that Nate was going to need to get blood drawn because he was concerned about two things. He thought that either Nate had Malaria or a blood infection. Well, as soon as I heard the blood infection part, I figured that I better get examined as well :). We ended up both going to the laboratory to get blood drawn (lots of blood!)...I won't go into too much detail concerning that whole experience but will say that it isn't quite as sterile as in the U.S.
Nate was concerned about having a needle in his arm, and I was concerned about the dirty gloves that my lobotomist was wearing! :) Well, our blood tests came back negative for the infectious disease. Praise God!
However, the doctor was still convinced that we have Malaria, so he prescribed SP or Sulfadoxine B.P. (500mg) and Pyrimethamine B.P.
(25mg). This is a single dose treatment that is supposed to do its magic within 72 hours. If our symptoms do not go away, though, we are suppose to call Dr. William (he gave us his cellphone number...so different than in the U.S.) to tell him that we need to switch to a different medicine. The drugs were free as they are to everyone in Malawi (if you can find them). We mentioned to Dr. William that we were surprised that our whole examination was free as we pay a lot of money back home for such things. He said, as if it were common thought, "Well if it cost money, only the rich would be alive, right?" As I walked out of his office, I understood his point as I read the faces that looked up at me - saying that they were just happy to have enough money for the nsima they ate last night.
So that leaves us here, back in bed, waiting for the miraculous healing of SP...
I would like to share a few details from my trip yesterday to Tsngano.
While Nate was bored at the hotel and struggling with his headache and stomach cramps, I was once again traveling on the worst road known to humankind (okay..maybe a slight exaggeration!). Seriously, though, the trip itself was enough to make me want to curl-up in a ball and fall asleep. The red truck, though better in handling the rough terrain as far as tires are concerned, has no suspension, so the whole ride I felt like my insides and outsides were being flip-flopped. At one point, I really thought my brain may have dropped into my stomach. We reached our destination safely, which to me is what really mattered after our last experience with the four flat tires, and we began our journey in handing out the buckets. I wrote in our journal last night that this was a humbling, maddening, and saddening experience all at once, and I think that there really is no better way to describe it.
The whole experience was humbling because as we passed out the buckets I quickly realized that these few items were no where near enough. These people needed so much more than the two bags of rice, bag of milk, salt, etc. that we gave them, yet they were all so grateful. I cannot count the number of blessings that were sent into the sky for me. The ladies would just shake their hands towards heaven and ask God to bless me over and over again. I did not know how to respond as I was only the messenger of someone else's gift, and it left me feeling only one thing
- humbled. I wish that I could have communicated better with the recipients as I would have said to them, "You have already been a blessing to me. Because of you, my life is forever changed."
The day was also maddening, though. It was like a slap in the face with the injustices that exist in this world. You may remember the woman I spoke of in one of my previous emails who has three young children and is quite destitute. Well, on Monday, she found out that she iss indeed HIV positive. You could see the sorrow in her face as she wiped sweat from her forehead. Her sorrow was certainly not only for herself but also for her three children. The injustice in all of this was that she is poor and sick because some man decided he needed a bed to sleep in while he was in Katzekera. She probably thought her marriage to the man was the happiest day of her life. Ironically, it was the beginning of the end of her life. The small bucket of items for her was like a truckload. She will undoubtedly conserve the items, so they will last months. Her children will receive a few invaluable months of decent nutrition because of that bucket. Most certainly, they will still all be hungry, but they will at least not be starving. I think, though, that Frecious offered to her the most comfort as he told her - from experience - that she could live a long life with the disease as long as she received the ARV treatments. For her, those three letters spelled death, but with the encouragement and example of Frecious and the healing power of the ARV drugs, death could be many, many years away for her. To me, that is one injustice being made right.
I think that I had to question God as well when I handed one of the buckets to the little boy we had met last week. His eyes spoke of a pain that I could never know, and the crusted blood under nose spoke of an illness that would his life short. Why should one boy have to know death so well? I know that God's comfort comes through the people that have been placed in his life to care for him, like his grandmother and Frecious. I wish that I could have offered him something more. Maybe I will just pray that God will do with that bucket what He did with the five loaves of bread and fish many years ago.
The day was also very heartbreakingly sad for me. On top of the pictures I have painted above, I was faced with the abrupt reality of life. When we arrived at a house, I remembered that it was the one where the man had been resting under a blanket outside. We never actually saw the man's face but instead spoke with his wife. She was taking care of him as well as an orphan she had welcomed into her home.
When we walked toward the house this time, though, I was told by Picard that the man had passed away. Just like that, my heart fell to the ground. We gave the bucket to the wife, and she praised God for me and the bucket. Yet, all I could think about is how this woman knows a strength that I could never muster. She had cared for her husband, diligently tending to his every ailments, and she, at the same time, found the strength to open her heart and home to a child that had nothing. I praised God for her, as she was the real messenger of God's grace and comfort that day.
We walked to another house that we had visited last week and were met by the son. He escorted us into a dark, round hut that is usually used for cooking. However, instead of the life sustaining piles of shucked corn, the figure that took center stage was the man we had visited last
week. He lay on the floor, paralyzed from the waist down by
Tuberculosis. Every breath he took you could tell came with incredible effort, and yet with all of his strength he mustered up enough breath to thank us for the bucket. The air felt so thick to me at that moment.
He was the last patient we were to visit that day, having handed out 16 buckets in total. Little did I know, he would be the last one we would visit at all since we woke-up this morning not able to make the the hard journey back to Tsngano. In a selfish way, I am happy that we did not go back. I do not know if my heart is big enough to handle any more sorrow. Yet, I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to walk into each of those 16 patients' lives. I have been blessed by them and hopefully changed for the better.
So...at the end of this email, I am left worrying about Nate who continues to feel the effects of a terrible headache, but I am also left thankful that we have been able to easily obtain drugs. We will soon be feeling back to normal, but the people I met yesterday do not have a normal. There is no drug that can wipe away their pain. And so once again, I am left humbled by the blessings we enjoy.
Do I believe that there is a God who allows such pain and suffering?
No, instead, I believe with all of my heart in a God who is using His
people to fight with all of their might the pain and suffering. I
believe in a God who will not stop fighting for His people until the end, and the good news is that the end will be the greatest victory of all.
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
P.S. Tomorrow we will pack, and Friday we will head to the lake. I am thinking that God helped us out by having us plan a nice resting period into our last few days. We can hardly believe our time is coming to an end, yet we are feeling like the time is right for us to go home...
Well, I wish I could say that I have great news to report today, but it seems that everything I have to say is either depressing or just simply not good. I will start, though, with our health.
After staying home yesterday and resting, we were hoping that Nate would wake-up this morning feeling like a million bucks. However, instead, we both woke-up not feeling quite right. Nate's headache and stomach cramping worsened, and I woke-up throughout the night with chills and sweating (not to mention a few stomach problems). We thought we would try to at least make the journey to the office, though, which is where we were suppose to meet up with Lonely to make the trip back to Tsngano area. When we got to the office, though, Nate's headache was in full bore. Lonely asked Nate to described his symptoms, and immediately after hearing them, she made a phone call to the hospital. She said we were going to take Nate to get tested for Malaria. Well, needless to say, this was a shock to both of us as we did not even consider Malaria to be an option; after all, we have been taking our medicine and using the mosquito net. :) Nevertheless, it was off to the hospital...
Since we are visitors (and white, I presume), we were taken immediately to a doctor in a private room where he asked Nate some questions and examined him. He said that Nate was going to need to get blood drawn because he was concerned about two things. He thought that either Nate had Malaria or a blood infection. Well, as soon as I heard the blood infection part, I figured that I better get examined as well :). We ended up both going to the laboratory to get blood drawn (lots of blood!)...I won't go into too much detail concerning that whole experience but will say that it isn't quite as sterile as in the U.S.
Nate was concerned about having a needle in his arm, and I was concerned about the dirty gloves that my lobotomist was wearing! :) Well, our blood tests came back negative for the infectious disease. Praise God!
However, the doctor was still convinced that we have Malaria, so he prescribed SP or Sulfadoxine B.P. (500mg) and Pyrimethamine B.P.
(25mg). This is a single dose treatment that is supposed to do its magic within 72 hours. If our symptoms do not go away, though, we are suppose to call Dr. William (he gave us his cellphone number...so different than in the U.S.) to tell him that we need to switch to a different medicine. The drugs were free as they are to everyone in Malawi (if you can find them). We mentioned to Dr. William that we were surprised that our whole examination was free as we pay a lot of money back home for such things. He said, as if it were common thought, "Well if it cost money, only the rich would be alive, right?" As I walked out of his office, I understood his point as I read the faces that looked up at me - saying that they were just happy to have enough money for the nsima they ate last night.
So that leaves us here, back in bed, waiting for the miraculous healing of SP...
I would like to share a few details from my trip yesterday to Tsngano.
While Nate was bored at the hotel and struggling with his headache and stomach cramps, I was once again traveling on the worst road known to humankind (okay..maybe a slight exaggeration!). Seriously, though, the trip itself was enough to make me want to curl-up in a ball and fall asleep. The red truck, though better in handling the rough terrain as far as tires are concerned, has no suspension, so the whole ride I felt like my insides and outsides were being flip-flopped. At one point, I really thought my brain may have dropped into my stomach. We reached our destination safely, which to me is what really mattered after our last experience with the four flat tires, and we began our journey in handing out the buckets. I wrote in our journal last night that this was a humbling, maddening, and saddening experience all at once, and I think that there really is no better way to describe it.
The whole experience was humbling because as we passed out the buckets I quickly realized that these few items were no where near enough. These people needed so much more than the two bags of rice, bag of milk, salt, etc. that we gave them, yet they were all so grateful. I cannot count the number of blessings that were sent into the sky for me. The ladies would just shake their hands towards heaven and ask God to bless me over and over again. I did not know how to respond as I was only the messenger of someone else's gift, and it left me feeling only one thing
- humbled. I wish that I could have communicated better with the recipients as I would have said to them, "You have already been a blessing to me. Because of you, my life is forever changed."
The day was also maddening, though. It was like a slap in the face with the injustices that exist in this world. You may remember the woman I spoke of in one of my previous emails who has three young children and is quite destitute. Well, on Monday, she found out that she iss indeed HIV positive. You could see the sorrow in her face as she wiped sweat from her forehead. Her sorrow was certainly not only for herself but also for her three children. The injustice in all of this was that she is poor and sick because some man decided he needed a bed to sleep in while he was in Katzekera. She probably thought her marriage to the man was the happiest day of her life. Ironically, it was the beginning of the end of her life. The small bucket of items for her was like a truckload. She will undoubtedly conserve the items, so they will last months. Her children will receive a few invaluable months of decent nutrition because of that bucket. Most certainly, they will still all be hungry, but they will at least not be starving. I think, though, that Frecious offered to her the most comfort as he told her - from experience - that she could live a long life with the disease as long as she received the ARV treatments. For her, those three letters spelled death, but with the encouragement and example of Frecious and the healing power of the ARV drugs, death could be many, many years away for her. To me, that is one injustice being made right.
I think that I had to question God as well when I handed one of the buckets to the little boy we had met last week. His eyes spoke of a pain that I could never know, and the crusted blood under nose spoke of an illness that would his life short. Why should one boy have to know death so well? I know that God's comfort comes through the people that have been placed in his life to care for him, like his grandmother and Frecious. I wish that I could have offered him something more. Maybe I will just pray that God will do with that bucket what He did with the five loaves of bread and fish many years ago.
The day was also very heartbreakingly sad for me. On top of the pictures I have painted above, I was faced with the abrupt reality of life. When we arrived at a house, I remembered that it was the one where the man had been resting under a blanket outside. We never actually saw the man's face but instead spoke with his wife. She was taking care of him as well as an orphan she had welcomed into her home.
When we walked toward the house this time, though, I was told by Picard that the man had passed away. Just like that, my heart fell to the ground. We gave the bucket to the wife, and she praised God for me and the bucket. Yet, all I could think about is how this woman knows a strength that I could never muster. She had cared for her husband, diligently tending to his every ailments, and she, at the same time, found the strength to open her heart and home to a child that had nothing. I praised God for her, as she was the real messenger of God's grace and comfort that day.
We walked to another house that we had visited last week and were met by the son. He escorted us into a dark, round hut that is usually used for cooking. However, instead of the life sustaining piles of shucked corn, the figure that took center stage was the man we had visited last
week. He lay on the floor, paralyzed from the waist down by
Tuberculosis. Every breath he took you could tell came with incredible effort, and yet with all of his strength he mustered up enough breath to thank us for the bucket. The air felt so thick to me at that moment.
He was the last patient we were to visit that day, having handed out 16 buckets in total. Little did I know, he would be the last one we would visit at all since we woke-up this morning not able to make the the hard journey back to Tsngano. In a selfish way, I am happy that we did not go back. I do not know if my heart is big enough to handle any more sorrow. Yet, I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to walk into each of those 16 patients' lives. I have been blessed by them and hopefully changed for the better.
So...at the end of this email, I am left worrying about Nate who continues to feel the effects of a terrible headache, but I am also left thankful that we have been able to easily obtain drugs. We will soon be feeling back to normal, but the people I met yesterday do not have a normal. There is no drug that can wipe away their pain. And so once again, I am left humbled by the blessings we enjoy.
Do I believe that there is a God who allows such pain and suffering?
No, instead, I believe with all of my heart in a God who is using His
people to fight with all of their might the pain and suffering. I
believe in a God who will not stop fighting for His people until the end, and the good news is that the end will be the greatest victory of all.
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
P.S. Tomorrow we will pack, and Friday we will head to the lake. I am thinking that God helped us out by having us plan a nice resting period into our last few days. We can hardly believe our time is coming to an end, yet we are feeling like the time is right for us to go home...
Read first
Hello everyone!
(This was written on Tuesday and sent on Wednesday when we finally made it into the office)
Due to some undesirable circumstances, I am writing you this afternoon from the hotel room we call home. Yesterday I started feeling a little groggy, and today I don't feel well at all! So Bekah left with Picard and Emanuel for Katzecara(sp?) to pass out the HIV/AIDS buckets we put together on Saturday. So you get to hear from me today.
Yesterday(monday) was quite uneventful. We spent most of our day in the office. It began with a SOM Staff meeting, where we were given the opportunity to meet Chet Burns, the missionary from Washington state living here in Ntcheu. He comes through the organization "Action International" we learned. He didn't stay long but we will be having lunch with him on Thursday to learn more about his family and the work they do here.
We forgot to mention in our previous email about our worship time on Sunday. We were SO encouraged by the opportunity to worship here with the CCAP (Church of Central Africa Presbyterian) in Ntcheu. They have 2 services one at 8am in English and one at 10am in Chichewa. We elected for the 8am service:) It was nice to hear a service in English as it was much easier to follow and were quite familiar with most of the service. As we arrived at about 7:55 we were welcomed by the man unlocking the doors to the church. We proceeded into the dark (no lights) sanctuary that was filled with rows of cement benches. We took a seat pretty much right in the middle. Then a man stood up and lead a few hymns, he kept encouraging the students to sing louder. Then he asked all the students in the back to move forward. We were now in the complete back of the crowd, still in the middle row. During the second hymn we were singing, everyone stood up and stopped singing! The elders and pastors entered in the front of the sanctuary, and the place started filling up. We later realized that this man was just giving us some practice for the songs we were going to sing, and following the grand entry of the elders the service began. It was at about this time that the sanctuary was beginning to fill up when I noticed I was not only the only white man in the sanctuary but I was the only man on the right side of the isle! The sanctuary is divided in two and the men sit on one side and the women sit on another. After singing some hymns/prayer the visitors of the church were invited to the front. We hadn't filled any "paper" out (as we didn't know we were supposed to!) but were still called to the front, for some reason they could tell we were visiting! :) We proceeded to walk up to the front to a sea of snickering where we were given the opportunity to introduce ourselves/where we were from/what we do. It was overall a great experiance and were so blessed by the passion of the MANY students and the church as a whole.
God willing tomorrow we will proceed back to Katzekara to pass out the other half of the buckets. Pray that my health improves and i am able to take this journey. Then Thursday we will have a day to pack and say goodbye to our friends in Ntcheu before we leave for Salima. Like we have said before it is so crazy that our time here is nearing the end.
It feels like only a few days ago we left the Winterfest team (Youth from IL/WI/IA) and were dropped of in Ntcheu. Once again we ask you to pray for safe travels back and forth to Katzekara, as some of you may remember is where we had the 4 flat tire day. Also pray that as we hand out these buckets the Lord would encourage these patients that so desperately need hope in the midst of suffering.
Blessings friends!
Nate and Bekah
(This was written on Tuesday and sent on Wednesday when we finally made it into the office)
Due to some undesirable circumstances, I am writing you this afternoon from the hotel room we call home. Yesterday I started feeling a little groggy, and today I don't feel well at all! So Bekah left with Picard and Emanuel for Katzecara(sp?) to pass out the HIV/AIDS buckets we put together on Saturday. So you get to hear from me today.
Yesterday(monday) was quite uneventful. We spent most of our day in the office. It began with a SOM Staff meeting, where we were given the opportunity to meet Chet Burns, the missionary from Washington state living here in Ntcheu. He comes through the organization "Action International" we learned. He didn't stay long but we will be having lunch with him on Thursday to learn more about his family and the work they do here.
We forgot to mention in our previous email about our worship time on Sunday. We were SO encouraged by the opportunity to worship here with the CCAP (Church of Central Africa Presbyterian) in Ntcheu. They have 2 services one at 8am in English and one at 10am in Chichewa. We elected for the 8am service:) It was nice to hear a service in English as it was much easier to follow and were quite familiar with most of the service. As we arrived at about 7:55 we were welcomed by the man unlocking the doors to the church. We proceeded into the dark (no lights) sanctuary that was filled with rows of cement benches. We took a seat pretty much right in the middle. Then a man stood up and lead a few hymns, he kept encouraging the students to sing louder. Then he asked all the students in the back to move forward. We were now in the complete back of the crowd, still in the middle row. During the second hymn we were singing, everyone stood up and stopped singing! The elders and pastors entered in the front of the sanctuary, and the place started filling up. We later realized that this man was just giving us some practice for the songs we were going to sing, and following the grand entry of the elders the service began. It was at about this time that the sanctuary was beginning to fill up when I noticed I was not only the only white man in the sanctuary but I was the only man on the right side of the isle! The sanctuary is divided in two and the men sit on one side and the women sit on another. After singing some hymns/prayer the visitors of the church were invited to the front. We hadn't filled any "paper" out (as we didn't know we were supposed to!) but were still called to the front, for some reason they could tell we were visiting! :) We proceeded to walk up to the front to a sea of snickering where we were given the opportunity to introduce ourselves/where we were from/what we do. It was overall a great experiance and were so blessed by the passion of the MANY students and the church as a whole.
God willing tomorrow we will proceed back to Katzekara to pass out the other half of the buckets. Pray that my health improves and i am able to take this journey. Then Thursday we will have a day to pack and say goodbye to our friends in Ntcheu before we leave for Salima. Like we have said before it is so crazy that our time here is nearing the end.
It feels like only a few days ago we left the Winterfest team (Youth from IL/WI/IA) and were dropped of in Ntcheu. Once again we ask you to pray for safe travels back and forth to Katzekara, as some of you may remember is where we had the 4 flat tire day. Also pray that as we hand out these buckets the Lord would encourage these patients that so desperately need hope in the midst of suffering.
Blessings friends!
Nate and Bekah
Monday, July 16, 2007
The Weekend!
Hello Everyone!
As we sit here in the confines of our "hotel" room writing this email, we are bombarded with the sounds of 60s, 70s, and 80s love ballads - like a bad infomercial - from a blaring, dilapidated FM radio. The first night we were in this room, the noise of this radio aggravated me as it threatened to disrupt my sleep. However, tonight, it is seemingly just a piece of the landscape for us. It mixes with the howl of the dogs, the scratch of the birds on the aluminum roof, and faint cries of the roosters to form a sort of symphony of sounds we have come to know as Ntcheu. There doesn't seem to be a quiet moment in town. Even as I
(Bekah) lay awake last night around 1:00am, enjoying a restless night of sleep, the calls of the town were still loud and clear. When we think about returning to our little house on 811 Pine Ave., we cannot help but think about how quiet it will be. We won't have the sound of hundreds of children running through the streets, shouting to each other in their playful tones. We won't hear the loud roar of the diesel engines as they pass by on the street, honking at the bicyclists to get off the road. No longer will the rumble of the market greet us as we walk out of our door every morning, and no longer will we hear that every present chant of "azungu" as we walk down the street.
We cannot say that we will miss many of these noises. In fact as I
(Bekah) was laying awake last night, I prayed to God to make them go away, so I could enjoy a few more hours of sleep. However, the fact that these sounds are now so familiar has made us realize that this place no longer feels like a country half way around the world but instead the neighboring town that we have visited often. We find ourselves no longer awestruck by the thatched roof houses and their round straw outhouses. We are no longer surprised when we are handed the key to the superette's bathroom only to find that it is a booth with a hole in the ground, the raised outlines of footprints indicating where you should stand as you squat, and the distinct aroma of other people's
previous bathroom excursions. The landscape has become a part of our
"normality" - just as the speed walkers, joggers, and the flash of little white Pontiac Sunfire with cigarette hanging out of the driver's side was our "normal" on 811 Pine Ave.
We find it hard to believe that it took so little time for our realities to shift dramatically, and yet we are starkly aware that we are now seeing much of Malawi through the same eyes as those of our hosts. For example, today we took a trip to Balaka with Lonely and Manuel to see Lonely's real home, where her children now live with their children.
When we arrived at her house, we were incredulous at how nice her house looked with its brick security wall, inner courtyard, separate kitchen, and neatly landscaped garden. Yet, only weeks ago, we would have walked into that same house and felt that it was "small" and "rundown".
Amazing how perspective can change when you become more aware of the housing structures that the majority of Malawians live in - definitely no luxuries like running water and electricity let alone the comforts of
not having to share your living room space with your sleeping space.
Our perspective has certainly been transformed, but the question is what do you do with your new set of eyes when you go home? Do you trade them back in for your old eyes? Or do you weep all the time as you view all the injustices that surround you? Or maybe, just maybe, you try to share your eyes with others, so they too can get a glimpse of the "other world". We know that when we return we will not be to able to share with all of you a clear, unfiltered view of Malawi, but we do hope that when we return we will be able to give you the image of how life in Malawi - though completely different, sometimes unbearable, and always filled with the air of poverty - is not strange or backwards. We hope that you will see that God is still God here - just taking one a more real, desperate role for most Malawians. We hope that we can be a bridge across two completely different lands.
While we were in Balaka today, we were also given driving tour of a huge Catholic complex. The Catholic church is doing an incredible job of
reaching out to the people in the Balaka and Mangotchi Districts.
Their complex probably covers a five square mile area and includes a secondary school, a nursery school, a clinic, a women's training center, and a boys vocational school where they also learn to sing and dance for a Catholic praise group. The amount of good that is being done in those five miles (and beyond as the sisters go throughout the district helping those in need) is so immense and such a bright beacon of hope. One mission, in particular, that Lonely finds to be literally life saving is the clinic. It is the one of the only places in the near districts that you can take an HIV patient to start the ARV drugs immediately without having to wait on a 100 plus list. We would take this simple fact for granted, seeing how we could walk into just about any hospital in the U.S. and be granted any and all necessary drugs, but here in Malawi the drug supply is in such shortage that people will drive hours to find medicine to battle diseases such as pneumonia. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Catholic church in Balaka happens to be the biggest Catholic church in the whole country (quite enormous really). People are drawn to the church because they see the loving kindness and goodness that God is doing through those sisters and fathers.
(We continued writing this on Monday morning.) We only have four more days here in Ntcheu. We will leave on Friday morning for Salima / Lake Malawi. We will spend a night there, enjoying the tourist hot spot for the country. Then we will head back to Lilongwe to wrap up a few loose ends and rest before we fly out to the Netherlands. We can hardly believe that our time here is coming to a close, but we are thankful for how much we have been able to learn and see in our short time here.
Thanks again for your support and prayers. Our prayer request for today would be that we could enjoy some good nights of sleep over the next four days. We have been trading sleepless nights. Saturday night was my turn and last night was Nate's. Plus, our bodies are starting to feel a little of the toll of the whole experience. Nate woke up this morning with an upset stomach (he is feeling better now), and I have been having some chest pains (or heartburn...not sure what exactly to call the feeling) for the last couple of days. However, overall we are feeling very blessed by the health we have been able to enjoy throughout these last weeks.
Many Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
As we sit here in the confines of our "hotel" room writing this email, we are bombarded with the sounds of 60s, 70s, and 80s love ballads - like a bad infomercial - from a blaring, dilapidated FM radio. The first night we were in this room, the noise of this radio aggravated me as it threatened to disrupt my sleep. However, tonight, it is seemingly just a piece of the landscape for us. It mixes with the howl of the dogs, the scratch of the birds on the aluminum roof, and faint cries of the roosters to form a sort of symphony of sounds we have come to know as Ntcheu. There doesn't seem to be a quiet moment in town. Even as I
(Bekah) lay awake last night around 1:00am, enjoying a restless night of sleep, the calls of the town were still loud and clear. When we think about returning to our little house on 811 Pine Ave., we cannot help but think about how quiet it will be. We won't have the sound of hundreds of children running through the streets, shouting to each other in their playful tones. We won't hear the loud roar of the diesel engines as they pass by on the street, honking at the bicyclists to get off the road. No longer will the rumble of the market greet us as we walk out of our door every morning, and no longer will we hear that every present chant of "azungu" as we walk down the street.
We cannot say that we will miss many of these noises. In fact as I
(Bekah) was laying awake last night, I prayed to God to make them go away, so I could enjoy a few more hours of sleep. However, the fact that these sounds are now so familiar has made us realize that this place no longer feels like a country half way around the world but instead the neighboring town that we have visited often. We find ourselves no longer awestruck by the thatched roof houses and their round straw outhouses. We are no longer surprised when we are handed the key to the superette's bathroom only to find that it is a booth with a hole in the ground, the raised outlines of footprints indicating where you should stand as you squat, and the distinct aroma of other people's
previous bathroom excursions. The landscape has become a part of our
"normality" - just as the speed walkers, joggers, and the flash of little white Pontiac Sunfire with cigarette hanging out of the driver's side was our "normal" on 811 Pine Ave.
We find it hard to believe that it took so little time for our realities to shift dramatically, and yet we are starkly aware that we are now seeing much of Malawi through the same eyes as those of our hosts. For example, today we took a trip to Balaka with Lonely and Manuel to see Lonely's real home, where her children now live with their children.
When we arrived at her house, we were incredulous at how nice her house looked with its brick security wall, inner courtyard, separate kitchen, and neatly landscaped garden. Yet, only weeks ago, we would have walked into that same house and felt that it was "small" and "rundown".
Amazing how perspective can change when you become more aware of the housing structures that the majority of Malawians live in - definitely no luxuries like running water and electricity let alone the comforts of
not having to share your living room space with your sleeping space.
Our perspective has certainly been transformed, but the question is what do you do with your new set of eyes when you go home? Do you trade them back in for your old eyes? Or do you weep all the time as you view all the injustices that surround you? Or maybe, just maybe, you try to share your eyes with others, so they too can get a glimpse of the "other world". We know that when we return we will not be to able to share with all of you a clear, unfiltered view of Malawi, but we do hope that when we return we will be able to give you the image of how life in Malawi - though completely different, sometimes unbearable, and always filled with the air of poverty - is not strange or backwards. We hope that you will see that God is still God here - just taking one a more real, desperate role for most Malawians. We hope that we can be a bridge across two completely different lands.
While we were in Balaka today, we were also given driving tour of a huge Catholic complex. The Catholic church is doing an incredible job of
reaching out to the people in the Balaka and Mangotchi Districts.
Their complex probably covers a five square mile area and includes a secondary school, a nursery school, a clinic, a women's training center, and a boys vocational school where they also learn to sing and dance for a Catholic praise group. The amount of good that is being done in those five miles (and beyond as the sisters go throughout the district helping those in need) is so immense and such a bright beacon of hope. One mission, in particular, that Lonely finds to be literally life saving is the clinic. It is the one of the only places in the near districts that you can take an HIV patient to start the ARV drugs immediately without having to wait on a 100 plus list. We would take this simple fact for granted, seeing how we could walk into just about any hospital in the U.S. and be granted any and all necessary drugs, but here in Malawi the drug supply is in such shortage that people will drive hours to find medicine to battle diseases such as pneumonia. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Catholic church in Balaka happens to be the biggest Catholic church in the whole country (quite enormous really). People are drawn to the church because they see the loving kindness and goodness that God is doing through those sisters and fathers.
(We continued writing this on Monday morning.) We only have four more days here in Ntcheu. We will leave on Friday morning for Salima / Lake Malawi. We will spend a night there, enjoying the tourist hot spot for the country. Then we will head back to Lilongwe to wrap up a few loose ends and rest before we fly out to the Netherlands. We can hardly believe that our time here is coming to a close, but we are thankful for how much we have been able to learn and see in our short time here.
Thanks again for your support and prayers. Our prayer request for today would be that we could enjoy some good nights of sleep over the next four days. We have been trading sleepless nights. Saturday night was my turn and last night was Nate's. Plus, our bodies are starting to feel a little of the toll of the whole experience. Nate woke up this morning with an upset stomach (he is feeling better now), and I have been having some chest pains (or heartburn...not sure what exactly to call the feeling) for the last couple of days. However, overall we are feeling very blessed by the health we have been able to enjoy throughout these last weeks.
Many Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
Friday, July 13, 2007
Hello Everyone!
As I walked the streets of Ntcheu yesterday afternoon by myself, I was reminded of a great work of literature that I read many times during my college years, W.E.B. Du Boise's /The Souls of Black Folks/. In the beginning of his work, he speaks of being sharply aware of his "twoness," and though I do not pretend to fully understand the "twoness" he spoke of, I did feel like I could write my own story of "twoness" as I felt the gaze of many staring eyes. My twoness would be the "mazungu" white that they see and the reality of my "whiteness" that I know. If I could define myself through their eyes, perhaps this is who I would be: I would be the strangely, pale female who looks almost ghostly. I would be the symbol of wealth and money, which would require those that see me to shout "give me my money!" I would be the girl with the white, shiny hair that seems to glow when the sun hits it, and I would be the only "mazungu" that they have seen who walks from place to place. They would wonder, "why isn't this mazungu driving a car?" And I would be the girl who deserves to be stared at for long periods of time.
Of course, I know that my "whiteness" is not what they assume it be. I know that I am not powerful, wealthy, or superior (though wealth and power are all relative). I know that my "whiteness" is very different than the whiteness of a Bristish, or French, or German citizen. I also know that the history of my "whiteness" is not always something to be proud of as I remember the ways that we oppressed and enslaved the people of this continent or the ways that we continue to spread our "message of democracy" through strong handed and deadly tactics. I know that if they knew my "whiteness" they would not want to stare in amazement or bow in respect. I know that they would not get on their knees to wash my hands before dinner or insist that I eat the only chicken that they have bought in months. But they do not know that "whiteness", and so Nate and I must continue to live in a world where we could never fully understand how these people define us. I think that this is a "twoness" that everyone
should have to experience at some point in their life. It is a confusing, frustrating, and alienating feeling, but everyone should have that stark awareness of their own "twoness".
With that being said, we are still recovering from our trip on Wednesday. I haven't felt quite the same since, perhaps I have caught a little bit of a cold or something. I woke-up last night feeling like there was not enough blood flowing to my right leg. It was not completely numb or asleep, but it felt a little tingly. It feels a little better today (though still not completely better), but I have been a little tired today. I am hoping that a couple of "easy" days will give me back my energy before we head back out to the impact area on Tuesday.
Today we bought the items for the "AIDS Buckets" that we will hand out on Tuesday. The funds for this project were provided by Chosen Hope, the same West Michigan NGO that is paying for the schooling of orphans.
The buckets will include sugar, salt, powdered milk, a 20 liter bucket, 4 plates, 2 cups, toothbrush, toothpaste, bath towel, 1 kg of rice, oil, bath soap, laundry soap, Vaseline, and sugar. These will be of a great help to the patients we met this past week; we are excited to be able to hand them out. We will pack them up tomorrow and await the arrival of a the red truck from Lilongwe (we do not want to take the truck again!).
Thank you to everyone who has been sending us emails of support and encouragement. We appreciate your prayers and notes, as they are a refreshing and uplifting part of our day. We are amazed at how blessed we are, not only in the ways that we have mentioned in the prior emails but also through the relationships we have with all of you.
Thank you and God Bless!
~ Nate and Bekah
As I walked the streets of Ntcheu yesterday afternoon by myself, I was reminded of a great work of literature that I read many times during my college years, W.E.B. Du Boise's /The Souls of Black Folks/. In the beginning of his work, he speaks of being sharply aware of his "twoness," and though I do not pretend to fully understand the "twoness" he spoke of, I did feel like I could write my own story of "twoness" as I felt the gaze of many staring eyes. My twoness would be the "mazungu" white that they see and the reality of my "whiteness" that I know. If I could define myself through their eyes, perhaps this is who I would be: I would be the strangely, pale female who looks almost ghostly. I would be the symbol of wealth and money, which would require those that see me to shout "give me my money!" I would be the girl with the white, shiny hair that seems to glow when the sun hits it, and I would be the only "mazungu" that they have seen who walks from place to place. They would wonder, "why isn't this mazungu driving a car?" And I would be the girl who deserves to be stared at for long periods of time.
Of course, I know that my "whiteness" is not what they assume it be. I know that I am not powerful, wealthy, or superior (though wealth and power are all relative). I know that my "whiteness" is very different than the whiteness of a Bristish, or French, or German citizen. I also know that the history of my "whiteness" is not always something to be proud of as I remember the ways that we oppressed and enslaved the people of this continent or the ways that we continue to spread our "message of democracy" through strong handed and deadly tactics. I know that if they knew my "whiteness" they would not want to stare in amazement or bow in respect. I know that they would not get on their knees to wash my hands before dinner or insist that I eat the only chicken that they have bought in months. But they do not know that "whiteness", and so Nate and I must continue to live in a world where we could never fully understand how these people define us. I think that this is a "twoness" that everyone
should have to experience at some point in their life. It is a confusing, frustrating, and alienating feeling, but everyone should have that stark awareness of their own "twoness".
With that being said, we are still recovering from our trip on Wednesday. I haven't felt quite the same since, perhaps I have caught a little bit of a cold or something. I woke-up last night feeling like there was not enough blood flowing to my right leg. It was not completely numb or asleep, but it felt a little tingly. It feels a little better today (though still not completely better), but I have been a little tired today. I am hoping that a couple of "easy" days will give me back my energy before we head back out to the impact area on Tuesday.
Today we bought the items for the "AIDS Buckets" that we will hand out on Tuesday. The funds for this project were provided by Chosen Hope, the same West Michigan NGO that is paying for the schooling of orphans.
The buckets will include sugar, salt, powdered milk, a 20 liter bucket, 4 plates, 2 cups, toothbrush, toothpaste, bath towel, 1 kg of rice, oil, bath soap, laundry soap, Vaseline, and sugar. These will be of a great help to the patients we met this past week; we are excited to be able to hand them out. We will pack them up tomorrow and await the arrival of a the red truck from Lilongwe (we do not want to take the truck again!).
Thank you to everyone who has been sending us emails of support and encouragement. We appreciate your prayers and notes, as they are a refreshing and uplifting part of our day. We are amazed at how blessed we are, not only in the ways that we have mentioned in the prior emails but also through the relationships we have with all of you.
Thank you and God Bless!
~ Nate and Bekah
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Nate's Birthday
Good morning friends and family!
As you can guess from the subject line, yesterday was Nate's 26th Birthday, and I think that it might be one of his most memorable birthdays - not because his wife pulled a miracle and threw a big party
in his honor here in Ntcheu (I am no miracle worker!). Instead it was
memorable because it was probably the hardest day - emotionally and physically - that we have experienced here in Malawi. We set out early yesterday morning in the SOM truck for SOM's second impact area (Songa being the first). This area is in the southwest portion of Ntcheu district (for any of you who are trying to figure out our locations on a map). We traveled there with Lonely (HIV/AIDS coordinator) and Manuel (driver). Lonely and I sat up front with Manuel, and Nate sat in the bed of the truck- trying to stay warm in the cool morning breeze. In order to reach this area, you first have to go north to join up with a dirt road that will take you south and west. This road also forms the boundary between Malawi and Mozambique. When we looked to our left, we saw Malawi, and when we looked to our right, we saw Mozambique. Pretty amazing to think that there is nothing dividing the two countries, especially when we think about how our own country is building a wall between itself and Mexico. In fact, many of the Malawian people have farms on the Mozambique side because it is less rocky and therefore better farming land.
As we set out on the journey, we were expecting bumpy ride, but the road far surpassed our expectations. It seems that the government has been promising for a long time to pave the road as a shortcut to Blantyre for the many Irish potato farmers and traders that live along the border.
However, like most of its promises, the government has yet to follow through, and because the land is so rocky and mountainous, when the rains come, all the dirt is washed away, leaving only rocks. This caused some discomfort for us but not necessarily concern until we were about 10 km from our destination (of approximately 60km for the whole journey). This is when we experienced flat tire number two. There wasn't necessarily a lot of danger of us getting into an accident because we were only going maybe 15 to 20km per hour (or about 10mph) for most of the trip. However, the spare tire that we thought Manuel had done a good job picking out in Lilongwe after our first flat tire seemed to not be holding up to the pressure either, because by the time we reached our destination 20 minutes later, that tire was already showing signs of being flat as well (flat tire number three).
We left Manuel to figure out what do about our situation and followed Lonely to a government primary school. We were joined by Frecious who is the volunteer coordinator for the area (soon to be a paid employee).
He led us to the first patients we had come to visit. They were at the primary school and were two young children (seven years of age). Both are HIV positive. The young boy lives with his father and grandmother, having already lost his mother and sister to HIV/AIDS. His father is also positive, so his primary caretaker is his grandmother. The good news for these children is that they've been able to start the ARV drugs, so their immune systems are doing relatively well. Lonely, as she did with all of the subsequent visits, spoke with the children about how they are feeling, how their treatments are going, and to tell them that she would be back next week to check-up on them. After starting out our day with these two young children, Nate and I knew we were in for a difficult day.
We left the two kids and had Manuel drive us as (on the barely inflated
tire) to the area hospital. Lonely needed to stop here to speak with the director of the hospital about the following week's VCT testing (government sponsored HIV/AIDS testing week). As she later explained to us, the government has done a poor job of communicating the VCT testing times and locations to community members, so our job for the day was to get the word out. At the hospital we were joined by more SOM volunteers who are in charge of the HBC (Home Based Care) programs in the area.
Their job is to know who is sick in the community and follow-up with them. They are then to report to Lonely if they have anyone they think might be showing signs of having HIV/AIDS. These people have an amazingly difficult task...
>From the hospital, we went by foot to area villages (since the truck
was not in great condition). We walked probably 1 1/2 - 2 miles to the
first village. The whole time we were followed and surrounded by school children who had just been let out for lunch. They stared at us the whole walk, closing in on us from all sides. Nate and I started to get really uncomfortable, realizing that these kids weren't going to leave any time soon. We felt literally almost suffocated by the kids, and we think that Lonely was feeling a bit like this as well as she commented to the students about how they are just staring but not talking to us or practicing their English with us. Even when we sat down with the next patient, the school children didn't leave but instead crowded around the outskirts of our circle to stare at us. This is when I started to feel bad not for us but for drawing attention to the patients.
Unfortunately, I cannot explain each and every story of the 16+ patients we met with yesterday, but I can say that there were a couple of common themes. Number one, most of the patients had not yet been tested for HIV/AIDS, which is why Lonely wanted to meet with them to convince them to do so on Monday, but showed clear signs of having the disease (fever, diarrhea, TB, or open wounds). Number two, most had been abandoned by their husband or wife and left to be taken care of by their mothers or sisters. Lonely says that the problem with Malawian people (a HUGE generalization here) is that they run from their marriages as soon as the going gets tough. Finally number three, they had family members (children or spouses) who will probably also end up being positive.
A bit more history behind this area is that it is a huge Irish potato farming area. Traders come to the area looking for potatoes to bring back to the markets in Blantyre or Lilongwe. They find wives in the area (even though they probably already have a wife back in the city), so they can have a place to rest their heads when they are there. They begin families with these women, creating sometimes large families.
However, as soon as their wife shows signs of illness or the potato crop runs out (whichever comes first), they run back to the city and their first wives - leaving behind a trail of disease. Many times they know that they are carriers of HIV/AIDS but never disclose the information until it is too late. Thus the region has been an area filled with death and sorrow.
For example, we met a young woman, only 25 years of age, who was the mother of three young children. She had been abandoned by her husband who went back to his first wife. This young woman was not only left destitute as shown in the clear signs of undernourishment in her children (yellowed eyes, protruding bellies) but also sick. As Lonely said as we walked away, this young woman has big problems. She will probably find out next week that she is HIV positive, and then she will probably also find out that her children are as well - all by the young age of 25 (which happens to be the same age as me).
Or take Frecious for example... Frecious is a role model to the community because he was one of the first to be willing to be tested.
He came back positive and so did his wife and daughter. Thankfully his two sons and other daughter have not returned positive results yet, but death has become somewhat commonplace to him and his family. He now cares for his brother's ten children as well after both parents died, and he looks after his sister's child after her husband ran away.
However, because of his courage to stand up and accept his HIV positive results, he has helped many others in the community figure out what has been ailing them and helped to educate the community so as to slow down the spread of the disease. Plus, he and his wife and daughter are now receiving the ARV drugs, and they are doing remarkably well. Nate and I both said to Frecious that we admire him for the amazing work he is doing and for his courage.
We ended our day of visiting around 3:30pm, completely exhausted from walking many miles and from facing such grief and despair. We felt very ready to climb into the truck and head back to town. However, this is where the issues of the truck came back into view. Manuel had said that he thought he figured out a way to get the tires patched by a local mechanic, so he had left us around 2:30pm to have the man fix the tires. At around 4:15pm, Manuel met us at Frecious' house (after we had enjoyed a lunch of nsima and scrambled eggs), and we set out with two patched tires (one as a spare). About 30 minutes into our journey (with a good hour left), the first patch gave out. We had by this point taken on another passenger to join Nate in the back, so the three men climbed out to change the tire to the spare. We were all a little worried by this point the second patched tire wasn't very "patched," so we all said a little prayer that we would make it home. We all climbed back in the truck and were headed on our way again by 5:30pm. About 30 minutes later, the second patched tire gave out. We were then feeling pretty low as we were in the middle of nowhere in the pitch black night.
Manuel found someone to pull over who had a bike tire pump, and they tried pumping up the tire enough to get us to a better location (more off the road and in a little less of a desolate location). We had by this time called Picard who was back in Ntcheu, and he said that he thought he had found us a tire that would be brought to us. All we had to do was wait... :) By about 7:30pm, after the tire had given out completely 1km from where we had pumped it up, we were met with our hero
- the man with the good tire. By about 8:00pm, we were on our way, praying that this tire would in fact make it. At 8:30pm, when we pulled into Chando, completely exhausted and hungry (and Nate freezing from sitting in the back of the truck), we found ourselves simply amazed at how much one day could bring and how blessed we really are.
Next week we will be going back to this area to hand out "AIDS Buckets"
to some of the patients that we met. We know that these buckets will be welcomed necessities, but we also know that they will never be able to provide the comfort and strength that they will need to face the days ahead. We will pray that God, the great provider, will cover them in his protective arms.
So...HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATE!... :) Another a year of life has been granted to him, and it has started with the stark reality that we are truly blessed.
Blessings and prayers,
Nate and Bekah
As you can guess from the subject line, yesterday was Nate's 26th Birthday, and I think that it might be one of his most memorable birthdays - not because his wife pulled a miracle and threw a big party
in his honor here in Ntcheu (I am no miracle worker!). Instead it was
memorable because it was probably the hardest day - emotionally and physically - that we have experienced here in Malawi. We set out early yesterday morning in the SOM truck for SOM's second impact area (Songa being the first). This area is in the southwest portion of Ntcheu district (for any of you who are trying to figure out our locations on a map). We traveled there with Lonely (HIV/AIDS coordinator) and Manuel (driver). Lonely and I sat up front with Manuel, and Nate sat in the bed of the truck- trying to stay warm in the cool morning breeze. In order to reach this area, you first have to go north to join up with a dirt road that will take you south and west. This road also forms the boundary between Malawi and Mozambique. When we looked to our left, we saw Malawi, and when we looked to our right, we saw Mozambique. Pretty amazing to think that there is nothing dividing the two countries, especially when we think about how our own country is building a wall between itself and Mexico. In fact, many of the Malawian people have farms on the Mozambique side because it is less rocky and therefore better farming land.
As we set out on the journey, we were expecting bumpy ride, but the road far surpassed our expectations. It seems that the government has been promising for a long time to pave the road as a shortcut to Blantyre for the many Irish potato farmers and traders that live along the border.
However, like most of its promises, the government has yet to follow through, and because the land is so rocky and mountainous, when the rains come, all the dirt is washed away, leaving only rocks. This caused some discomfort for us but not necessarily concern until we were about 10 km from our destination (of approximately 60km for the whole journey). This is when we experienced flat tire number two. There wasn't necessarily a lot of danger of us getting into an accident because we were only going maybe 15 to 20km per hour (or about 10mph) for most of the trip. However, the spare tire that we thought Manuel had done a good job picking out in Lilongwe after our first flat tire seemed to not be holding up to the pressure either, because by the time we reached our destination 20 minutes later, that tire was already showing signs of being flat as well (flat tire number three).
We left Manuel to figure out what do about our situation and followed Lonely to a government primary school. We were joined by Frecious who is the volunteer coordinator for the area (soon to be a paid employee).
He led us to the first patients we had come to visit. They were at the primary school and were two young children (seven years of age). Both are HIV positive. The young boy lives with his father and grandmother, having already lost his mother and sister to HIV/AIDS. His father is also positive, so his primary caretaker is his grandmother. The good news for these children is that they've been able to start the ARV drugs, so their immune systems are doing relatively well. Lonely, as she did with all of the subsequent visits, spoke with the children about how they are feeling, how their treatments are going, and to tell them that she would be back next week to check-up on them. After starting out our day with these two young children, Nate and I knew we were in for a difficult day.
We left the two kids and had Manuel drive us as (on the barely inflated
tire) to the area hospital. Lonely needed to stop here to speak with the director of the hospital about the following week's VCT testing (government sponsored HIV/AIDS testing week). As she later explained to us, the government has done a poor job of communicating the VCT testing times and locations to community members, so our job for the day was to get the word out. At the hospital we were joined by more SOM volunteers who are in charge of the HBC (Home Based Care) programs in the area.
Their job is to know who is sick in the community and follow-up with them. They are then to report to Lonely if they have anyone they think might be showing signs of having HIV/AIDS. These people have an amazingly difficult task...
>From the hospital, we went by foot to area villages (since the truck
was not in great condition). We walked probably 1 1/2 - 2 miles to the
first village. The whole time we were followed and surrounded by school children who had just been let out for lunch. They stared at us the whole walk, closing in on us from all sides. Nate and I started to get really uncomfortable, realizing that these kids weren't going to leave any time soon. We felt literally almost suffocated by the kids, and we think that Lonely was feeling a bit like this as well as she commented to the students about how they are just staring but not talking to us or practicing their English with us. Even when we sat down with the next patient, the school children didn't leave but instead crowded around the outskirts of our circle to stare at us. This is when I started to feel bad not for us but for drawing attention to the patients.
Unfortunately, I cannot explain each and every story of the 16+ patients we met with yesterday, but I can say that there were a couple of common themes. Number one, most of the patients had not yet been tested for HIV/AIDS, which is why Lonely wanted to meet with them to convince them to do so on Monday, but showed clear signs of having the disease (fever, diarrhea, TB, or open wounds). Number two, most had been abandoned by their husband or wife and left to be taken care of by their mothers or sisters. Lonely says that the problem with Malawian people (a HUGE generalization here) is that they run from their marriages as soon as the going gets tough. Finally number three, they had family members (children or spouses) who will probably also end up being positive.
A bit more history behind this area is that it is a huge Irish potato farming area. Traders come to the area looking for potatoes to bring back to the markets in Blantyre or Lilongwe. They find wives in the area (even though they probably already have a wife back in the city), so they can have a place to rest their heads when they are there. They begin families with these women, creating sometimes large families.
However, as soon as their wife shows signs of illness or the potato crop runs out (whichever comes first), they run back to the city and their first wives - leaving behind a trail of disease. Many times they know that they are carriers of HIV/AIDS but never disclose the information until it is too late. Thus the region has been an area filled with death and sorrow.
For example, we met a young woman, only 25 years of age, who was the mother of three young children. She had been abandoned by her husband who went back to his first wife. This young woman was not only left destitute as shown in the clear signs of undernourishment in her children (yellowed eyes, protruding bellies) but also sick. As Lonely said as we walked away, this young woman has big problems. She will probably find out next week that she is HIV positive, and then she will probably also find out that her children are as well - all by the young age of 25 (which happens to be the same age as me).
Or take Frecious for example... Frecious is a role model to the community because he was one of the first to be willing to be tested.
He came back positive and so did his wife and daughter. Thankfully his two sons and other daughter have not returned positive results yet, but death has become somewhat commonplace to him and his family. He now cares for his brother's ten children as well after both parents died, and he looks after his sister's child after her husband ran away.
However, because of his courage to stand up and accept his HIV positive results, he has helped many others in the community figure out what has been ailing them and helped to educate the community so as to slow down the spread of the disease. Plus, he and his wife and daughter are now receiving the ARV drugs, and they are doing remarkably well. Nate and I both said to Frecious that we admire him for the amazing work he is doing and for his courage.
We ended our day of visiting around 3:30pm, completely exhausted from walking many miles and from facing such grief and despair. We felt very ready to climb into the truck and head back to town. However, this is where the issues of the truck came back into view. Manuel had said that he thought he figured out a way to get the tires patched by a local mechanic, so he had left us around 2:30pm to have the man fix the tires. At around 4:15pm, Manuel met us at Frecious' house (after we had enjoyed a lunch of nsima and scrambled eggs), and we set out with two patched tires (one as a spare). About 30 minutes into our journey (with a good hour left), the first patch gave out. We had by this point taken on another passenger to join Nate in the back, so the three men climbed out to change the tire to the spare. We were all a little worried by this point the second patched tire wasn't very "patched," so we all said a little prayer that we would make it home. We all climbed back in the truck and were headed on our way again by 5:30pm. About 30 minutes later, the second patched tire gave out. We were then feeling pretty low as we were in the middle of nowhere in the pitch black night.
Manuel found someone to pull over who had a bike tire pump, and they tried pumping up the tire enough to get us to a better location (more off the road and in a little less of a desolate location). We had by this time called Picard who was back in Ntcheu, and he said that he thought he had found us a tire that would be brought to us. All we had to do was wait... :) By about 7:30pm, after the tire had given out completely 1km from where we had pumped it up, we were met with our hero
- the man with the good tire. By about 8:00pm, we were on our way, praying that this tire would in fact make it. At 8:30pm, when we pulled into Chando, completely exhausted and hungry (and Nate freezing from sitting in the back of the truck), we found ourselves simply amazed at how much one day could bring and how blessed we really are.
Next week we will be going back to this area to hand out "AIDS Buckets"
to some of the patients that we met. We know that these buckets will be welcomed necessities, but we also know that they will never be able to provide the comfort and strength that they will need to face the days ahead. We will pray that God, the great provider, will cover them in his protective arms.
So...HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATE!... :) Another a year of life has been granted to him, and it has started with the stark reality that we are truly blessed.
Blessings and prayers,
Nate and Bekah
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Long Weekend
Hello Everyone!
We pray that you had a blessed long weekend and enjoyed some time with family and friends. It was a holiday weekend here in Malawi as well as they celebrate their independence day on July 6th. However, the SOM staff stayed busy and worked through the whole weekend. We joined them in their activities, which included a quarterly meeting for CBCC volunteers on Friday, a prayer session on Saturday morning, a trip to a Kid's Camp on Saturday afternoon, a chief installation ceremony on Sunday, and a trip to Lilongwe on Monday. Our email would be too long if I tried to cover everything, so I will try to cover just a few important things.
I know that there are many people in this world who do not believe that there is a God, but I believe that sometimes in life there are events that take place that make it difficult to deny God's presence. We feel that we have had a few of those experiences over the last couple of days. Mostly these are circumstances where we feel that God's protective hand was upon us. The first situation took place on Saturday afternoon when we experienced our second trip on public transport. To give you a little background on my perspective, on our first trip from Lilongwe to Songa, we saw approximately four accidents, a couple involving mini-buses. Justin, who was driving us, said that he did not like taking mini-buses because they were often overloaded and drove too fast. Therefore, my perception on mini-buses is "they are accidents waiting to happen." When we climbed on board the mini-bus in Ntcheu on Saturday afternoon at approximately 2:15pm with Naomie, we felt like we knew what to expect after our first trip. However, by 2:45 when the bus hadn't yet left the stop and impatient Nate grumbled about sweating in the plastic coated (imagine a plastic tablecloth) seats, I was starting to wonder if we had boarded the right bus. Finally at 3:00pm, when the bus was fully overloaded (six rows of four people in a van the size of an old Volkwagon van), the driver and his sidekick (the one who tries to convince people to take our bus and collects the money) decided we were ready to take off. About a half mile down the road, we had to stop for a loose basket for carrying chickens to the market that was tied to the outside of the mini-bus; the sidekick jumped out and untied it. He brought it into the mini-bus for the owner to carry above his head (don't worry, I took a picture!). This was the point when I began to pray that we made it to our destination as there was barely enough room in the bus to breathe, let alone move. About twenty minutes into our journey, I noticed that not only was our bus leaning to one side, but our driver was also driving very fast down the middle of the road. I looked over to Naomie and noticed that she had a look of fear on her face as well. She said to me, "our driver is not driving well!" I thought then, "it will only be by the grace of God that we arrive at our destination" and decided to close my eyes for the rest of the journey.
By the grace of God, we did arrive at our destination, and we all hopped and shook the stress out of our bodies. Nate and I looked at each other and both took deep breaths of relief.
Our second "hand of God" experience happened yesterday on our way to Lilongwe. We rode there with Manuel in SOM's Toyota Ranger (about a foot wider than a Chevy S10) truck (the three of us squished in the front seat for the 2 1/2 hour journey). When we drove through the police barricade on the outskirts of Lilongwe, I quickly put on my seatbelt (so as to not give the police an excuse to give us a hard time). Just past the barricade, we all heard this huge pop and then thud, thud, thud. Manuel had a look of panic on his face as he tried to slow the vehicle down as it lurched to the side of the road. I thought about the accidents we had seen on our trip (they seem to be fairly
common) and prayed that we didn't go sideways into the ditch. When we came to a jolting stop, Manuel let out a huge sigh of relief, and we all got out to inspect the damage. It seems that we were driving on a terrible tire to begin with as the tire had shredded as it burst.
Manuel said we were blessed to both be safe and to have had it happen in the location that it did. Thankfully, we were only a short ways from Justin's house, which is where the spare tires for SOM vehicles are kept. We could have easily been on a mountain when this happened. Nate and I both realized quite quickly that God had a hand in protecting us.
The last experience took place on our way back from Lilongwe and wasn't exactly one experience but the whole ride. In Lilongwe, we knew that Manuel had to pick up building supplies for the projects in Songa, but we were a little startled by how many supplies. If you can imagine this for a moment, the lumber that Manuel had to pick up was about one and a half times the length of the vehicle, so they tied this lumber, so that it stuck above the roof of the truck and reached to about a two feet off the ground at an angle. We also had heavy metal rope, glass panes, bags of plaster, paint, and a few other items. Our vehicle by the end of loading was sitting close to the wheel wells. After knowing that our tires blew on the way there, I was a little worried. Then to top it off, Manuel said that he was going to drive very slow back to Ntcheu (about 35 miles per hour), so the trip was going to take a little longer. Also, since we took off around 5:00pm, there was little daylight left, and Manuel commented on how he didn't care much for night driving. We quickly learned that he was telling the truth because as soon as the sun set he started to drive in the middle of the road. As we passed cars that were going about twice as fast as us, they turned their right blinker on, which means in Malawi that you need to get over because that driver thinks you are driving on the wrong side of the road. Literally, we felt like we were inches from the passing cars. I closed my eyes as every car passed. To top off the stress level I was feeling, we passed a three ton truck that was carrying bags of maize and people who sit on top of the maize as a mode of transportation. The truck must have been going too fast down the mountain because an accident happened, and Manuel told us that it must have been fatal because there were police involved. Let me just say that when we arrived back at our hostel at 8:30pm (3 1/2 hr trip) I stumbled out of the truck with numb legs and a thankful heart.
All of these incidents, however, are only parts of what we really experienced over the last couple of days. We feel so blessed by what we have been able to see. For example, on Sunday, we went to a chief installation ceremony. These ceremonies are rare as they only happen when a new chief is selected after an old chief has died. The ceremony was filled with traditional dances, colorful red clothing, and beautiful masks. We were honored with seats with the district (our state) government dignitaries and were fed dinner at the new chief's house. We look forward to sharing the pictures from this ceremony with all of you as they speak of a rich history and tradition enjoyed by the Ngoni people of Malawi.
Also, this morning as we walked to the office and the strong winds blew the red dust into our faces and eyes, I thought about how much our perception has changed in just the short while we have been here.
Yesterday, when we went back to Lilongwe, we were surprised by how "rich" everything looked. Only weeks earlier, we had thought that living in Lilongwe was uncomfortable, and we were skeptical of eating the food in the local restaurants. This time, though, we thought that Lilongwe looked like the lap of luxury, and we jumped for joy at the opportunity to eat in one of the same restaurants that Justin had taken us to on our first day. As we shopped in the Shoprite, we were surprised at how big the store seemed, and we felt a bit gluttonous as we purchased some familiar foods to last us the next couple of weeks (South African apples, granola cereal, oatmeal, coffee w/o the added taste of chickory, and pasta sauce). We, also, were relieved to not have the constant chant of "azungu!" from small children as we were two of many "azungu" in the city. However, I was also thankful to return to the slow pace and simplicity of Ntcheu this morning as well. I think that might be a sign of me feeling more "at home" in our surroundings here. Life is not easy for the people here in Ntcheu, but for some reason, I feel like life is more "raw" and "real" here.
Okay, that is all for today as Picard has already accused me of writing
a book :). Many blessings and prayers to you friends and family! We
love you all and keep you in our thoughts and prayers daily.
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
We pray that you had a blessed long weekend and enjoyed some time with family and friends. It was a holiday weekend here in Malawi as well as they celebrate their independence day on July 6th. However, the SOM staff stayed busy and worked through the whole weekend. We joined them in their activities, which included a quarterly meeting for CBCC volunteers on Friday, a prayer session on Saturday morning, a trip to a Kid's Camp on Saturday afternoon, a chief installation ceremony on Sunday, and a trip to Lilongwe on Monday. Our email would be too long if I tried to cover everything, so I will try to cover just a few important things.
I know that there are many people in this world who do not believe that there is a God, but I believe that sometimes in life there are events that take place that make it difficult to deny God's presence. We feel that we have had a few of those experiences over the last couple of days. Mostly these are circumstances where we feel that God's protective hand was upon us. The first situation took place on Saturday afternoon when we experienced our second trip on public transport. To give you a little background on my perspective, on our first trip from Lilongwe to Songa, we saw approximately four accidents, a couple involving mini-buses. Justin, who was driving us, said that he did not like taking mini-buses because they were often overloaded and drove too fast. Therefore, my perception on mini-buses is "they are accidents waiting to happen." When we climbed on board the mini-bus in Ntcheu on Saturday afternoon at approximately 2:15pm with Naomie, we felt like we knew what to expect after our first trip. However, by 2:45 when the bus hadn't yet left the stop and impatient Nate grumbled about sweating in the plastic coated (imagine a plastic tablecloth) seats, I was starting to wonder if we had boarded the right bus. Finally at 3:00pm, when the bus was fully overloaded (six rows of four people in a van the size of an old Volkwagon van), the driver and his sidekick (the one who tries to convince people to take our bus and collects the money) decided we were ready to take off. About a half mile down the road, we had to stop for a loose basket for carrying chickens to the market that was tied to the outside of the mini-bus; the sidekick jumped out and untied it. He brought it into the mini-bus for the owner to carry above his head (don't worry, I took a picture!). This was the point when I began to pray that we made it to our destination as there was barely enough room in the bus to breathe, let alone move. About twenty minutes into our journey, I noticed that not only was our bus leaning to one side, but our driver was also driving very fast down the middle of the road. I looked over to Naomie and noticed that she had a look of fear on her face as well. She said to me, "our driver is not driving well!" I thought then, "it will only be by the grace of God that we arrive at our destination" and decided to close my eyes for the rest of the journey.
By the grace of God, we did arrive at our destination, and we all hopped and shook the stress out of our bodies. Nate and I looked at each other and both took deep breaths of relief.
Our second "hand of God" experience happened yesterday on our way to Lilongwe. We rode there with Manuel in SOM's Toyota Ranger (about a foot wider than a Chevy S10) truck (the three of us squished in the front seat for the 2 1/2 hour journey). When we drove through the police barricade on the outskirts of Lilongwe, I quickly put on my seatbelt (so as to not give the police an excuse to give us a hard time). Just past the barricade, we all heard this huge pop and then thud, thud, thud. Manuel had a look of panic on his face as he tried to slow the vehicle down as it lurched to the side of the road. I thought about the accidents we had seen on our trip (they seem to be fairly
common) and prayed that we didn't go sideways into the ditch. When we came to a jolting stop, Manuel let out a huge sigh of relief, and we all got out to inspect the damage. It seems that we were driving on a terrible tire to begin with as the tire had shredded as it burst.
Manuel said we were blessed to both be safe and to have had it happen in the location that it did. Thankfully, we were only a short ways from Justin's house, which is where the spare tires for SOM vehicles are kept. We could have easily been on a mountain when this happened. Nate and I both realized quite quickly that God had a hand in protecting us.
The last experience took place on our way back from Lilongwe and wasn't exactly one experience but the whole ride. In Lilongwe, we knew that Manuel had to pick up building supplies for the projects in Songa, but we were a little startled by how many supplies. If you can imagine this for a moment, the lumber that Manuel had to pick up was about one and a half times the length of the vehicle, so they tied this lumber, so that it stuck above the roof of the truck and reached to about a two feet off the ground at an angle. We also had heavy metal rope, glass panes, bags of plaster, paint, and a few other items. Our vehicle by the end of loading was sitting close to the wheel wells. After knowing that our tires blew on the way there, I was a little worried. Then to top it off, Manuel said that he was going to drive very slow back to Ntcheu (about 35 miles per hour), so the trip was going to take a little longer. Also, since we took off around 5:00pm, there was little daylight left, and Manuel commented on how he didn't care much for night driving. We quickly learned that he was telling the truth because as soon as the sun set he started to drive in the middle of the road. As we passed cars that were going about twice as fast as us, they turned their right blinker on, which means in Malawi that you need to get over because that driver thinks you are driving on the wrong side of the road. Literally, we felt like we were inches from the passing cars. I closed my eyes as every car passed. To top off the stress level I was feeling, we passed a three ton truck that was carrying bags of maize and people who sit on top of the maize as a mode of transportation. The truck must have been going too fast down the mountain because an accident happened, and Manuel told us that it must have been fatal because there were police involved. Let me just say that when we arrived back at our hostel at 8:30pm (3 1/2 hr trip) I stumbled out of the truck with numb legs and a thankful heart.
All of these incidents, however, are only parts of what we really experienced over the last couple of days. We feel so blessed by what we have been able to see. For example, on Sunday, we went to a chief installation ceremony. These ceremonies are rare as they only happen when a new chief is selected after an old chief has died. The ceremony was filled with traditional dances, colorful red clothing, and beautiful masks. We were honored with seats with the district (our state) government dignitaries and were fed dinner at the new chief's house. We look forward to sharing the pictures from this ceremony with all of you as they speak of a rich history and tradition enjoyed by the Ngoni people of Malawi.
Also, this morning as we walked to the office and the strong winds blew the red dust into our faces and eyes, I thought about how much our perception has changed in just the short while we have been here.
Yesterday, when we went back to Lilongwe, we were surprised by how "rich" everything looked. Only weeks earlier, we had thought that living in Lilongwe was uncomfortable, and we were skeptical of eating the food in the local restaurants. This time, though, we thought that Lilongwe looked like the lap of luxury, and we jumped for joy at the opportunity to eat in one of the same restaurants that Justin had taken us to on our first day. As we shopped in the Shoprite, we were surprised at how big the store seemed, and we felt a bit gluttonous as we purchased some familiar foods to last us the next couple of weeks (South African apples, granola cereal, oatmeal, coffee w/o the added taste of chickory, and pasta sauce). We, also, were relieved to not have the constant chant of "azungu!" from small children as we were two of many "azungu" in the city. However, I was also thankful to return to the slow pace and simplicity of Ntcheu this morning as well. I think that might be a sign of me feeling more "at home" in our surroundings here. Life is not easy for the people here in Ntcheu, but for some reason, I feel like life is more "raw" and "real" here.
Okay, that is all for today as Picard has already accused me of writing
a book :). Many blessings and prayers to you friends and family! We
love you all and keep you in our thoughts and prayers daily.
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
Monday, July 9, 2007
We thought that we would try to post a few pictures because we stopped at an internet cafe in Lilongwe while we are here updating our Visas. High speed in Malawi is not quite "high speed" enough, but we will try anyway. Hope that you enjoy! 
Here is Bekah in Amsterdam Airport... writing our first group email!
Bekah is showing off her Malawian water carrying abilities. Imagine that the women here just carry this water without any hands... Bekah would have spilled it all down her front, that's for sure!
This is just a small image of how many children were at Kid's Days in Songa. They filled the whole soccer field...
Just an image of us at sunset in Liwonde National Park...
Nate with Naomie's adopted twin sons (Stanley and Dixon)... we keep saying that we're going to take them home with us. Naomie said we can only take Stanley (in the white sweater).
Here is Bekah in Amsterdam Airport... writing our first group email!
Bekah is showing off her Malawian water carrying abilities. Imagine that the women here just carry this water without any hands... Bekah would have spilled it all down her front, that's for sure!
This is just a small image of how many children were at Kid's Days in Songa. They filled the whole soccer field...
Just an image of us at sunset in Liwonde National Park...
Nate with Naomie's adopted twin sons (Stanley and Dixon)... we keep saying that we're going to take them home with us. Naomie said we can only take Stanley (in the white sweater).
Friday, July 6, 2007
A Quick Note
Hello friends and family!
So since we had a difficult time sending emails over the last couple of days, we thought we would catch up on what the rest of the week has been like for us.
Our fourth of July was pretty anti-climatic as far as celebrating as we assume most of you did. There is another American family in the area.
He is working for Action International, and he threw a party for the holiday. However, we were not invited! (more on him later)
We did go to two of the local secondary schools in the area. The first one we went to was the District Secondary school, which means it is one of the nicer schools in the area. It is a boarding school, so all but maybe 3 students live on site in dormitories. We had the chance to peek in one of the dormitories, and it was quite similar to a college dormitory except that the rooms were two sets of bunk beds. That is all that would fit in those rooms. Overall, though, the school had nicely kept grounds, pretty nice classrooms, and from our limited perspective a good teaching staff. However, they still had a huge shortage of textbooks (and the ones they have are old), very few library books, and only 3 computers that worked (for a student body of over 600). After leaving this school, we walked across the road to the second school, Community Day Secondary School. As I mentioned before the education structure, this school is on the bottom level. Therefore, the school has much less funding and is not very well kept. Unlike the district school, this school had no windows and very small classrooms. However, we are reminded still that the students who get to attend this school are blessed and have a much better chance of becoming career people after school than many youth their age who either cannot afford school or drop out due to early marriage or family obligations. The neatest part about both of these schools, though, is that SOM pays for about 16 students to attend these schools (16 orphans). Even more exciting to us is that these students now have a connection to West Michigan as a few of these students are being supported by Chosen Hope (a West Michigan based NGO started by Jane Graham and her partner).
After touring these schools, we headed out in the afternoon on our first public transport experience. To briefly give you a description of these transportation services, just picture an old Volkswagon van with 5 bench seats that each seat 4 people. Our bus was FULL to the max, and we were packed in there like sardines. This scared me a little as I could just picture our bus flipping over on the narrow roads. We rode this bus to and from a Kid's Club with Naomi. This Kid's Club was about a ten minute ride to area where one side of the road is Malawi and the other side is Mozambique. We can officially say that we have been to Mozambique now! :) We had a great time with the kids, handing out soccer balls and some Skittles. The students were especially excited to receive the soccer balls as they normally play with a rock wrapped in newspaper and plastic bags (all tied together with strips of rubber taken from old tires). The students cheered for us, singing songs of thanks. We felt very appreciated, but we also realize that we should be the ones appreciating these students as they showed an incredible love for God and a resiliency against the trials they face. We thought later about one of the songs that the youth sang during their Kid's Club time. They sang a song about fighting against HIV/AIDS. We realized that this would not be a song that would even cross the mind of our youth to sing. These youth face completely different challenges than our youth in the states, and therefore, God to them takes on a completely different image. God is a warrior to them, and they should therefore be warriors too. They should fight the diseases and enemies that attack them with the strength of God. Many times in the states, we view our relationship with God as very individualistic. However, here they cannot view their relationship with God outside of their community. It is a communal relationship, and it must be because they are fighting their battles together.
This brings me to the second half of this email. We have been struggling a little over the last couple of days - feeling homesick, feeling like we've been left without much guidance, and feeling a little useless. We are realizing that much of our feelings are cultural. We thought that we would be more scheduled, have more day-to-day living guidance, and would in general be made to feel more useful. However, we were forgetting to look at life through the eyes of the Malawian culture. We were not making the connection that we come from a "low context" culture where we do not assume that everyone "knows" our systems of life (such as how to order in a restaurant, how to call a taxi, how to shop, etc.), so we are more apt to explain everything upfront or write detailed instructions. Here in Malawi, the culture is much more "high context" where in general people live in a system of a shared and assumed history and life process. Therefore, our guides (the SOM staff) do not necessarily think about the need to help us or explain to us how life functions here. This can be frustrating for us and leave us longing more for the comforts of home, but we are trying to change our viewpoint to see more of where they are coming from and to explain more to them our needs. They are more than willing to help us when we ask.
The realities of cultural differences are very evident to us. There are times when we think, "we would never do it that way," and we know that there are times when our hosts are probably thinking, "crazy Americans!" God is making it very real to us, though, that there is a need when doing mission work to really study the culture of the people you are trying to reach. We cannot assume that our modes of ministry, our modes of life, and our understanding of Scripture and God are the "only ways." For example, I mentioned the other American missionary in the area. We have been told that he came here with the desire to work with all the pastors from the different churches in the area, so SOM helped him out by setting up meetings for him with the pastors.
However, when all was said and done, he said he only wanted to work with the Presbyterian pastors and their Presbyterian volunteers. The SOM staff was shocked by this. They thought that this was ridiculous because he was dividing people instead of working together with everyone. As Naomie said, he is splitting communities into sections - only giving money to the Presbyterian people and leaving the rest out.
Naomie said that this is very much against their culture. However, for Nate and I this isn't surprising as this is how Christianity functions in the states. We split ourselves up by our denomination, then by our individual churches, and then by our small groups within the church. We are not a very community based society. There is much for us to learn from the Christians here in Malawi (and in reality the rest of the majority world church). How much more good could we as a Christian body do if we left behind our theological differences, our worship style preferences, and our self-centered natures to join together in one voice to praise and worship God and do His work? Something to think about...a beautiful vision to have.
Please pray for us that we will feel more at peace in our situation, that we will learn to communicate across cultures, and that God will continue to teach us lessons.
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
So since we had a difficult time sending emails over the last couple of days, we thought we would catch up on what the rest of the week has been like for us.
Our fourth of July was pretty anti-climatic as far as celebrating as we assume most of you did. There is another American family in the area.
He is working for Action International, and he threw a party for the holiday. However, we were not invited! (more on him later)
We did go to two of the local secondary schools in the area. The first one we went to was the District Secondary school, which means it is one of the nicer schools in the area. It is a boarding school, so all but maybe 3 students live on site in dormitories. We had the chance to peek in one of the dormitories, and it was quite similar to a college dormitory except that the rooms were two sets of bunk beds. That is all that would fit in those rooms. Overall, though, the school had nicely kept grounds, pretty nice classrooms, and from our limited perspective a good teaching staff. However, they still had a huge shortage of textbooks (and the ones they have are old), very few library books, and only 3 computers that worked (for a student body of over 600). After leaving this school, we walked across the road to the second school, Community Day Secondary School. As I mentioned before the education structure, this school is on the bottom level. Therefore, the school has much less funding and is not very well kept. Unlike the district school, this school had no windows and very small classrooms. However, we are reminded still that the students who get to attend this school are blessed and have a much better chance of becoming career people after school than many youth their age who either cannot afford school or drop out due to early marriage or family obligations. The neatest part about both of these schools, though, is that SOM pays for about 16 students to attend these schools (16 orphans). Even more exciting to us is that these students now have a connection to West Michigan as a few of these students are being supported by Chosen Hope (a West Michigan based NGO started by Jane Graham and her partner).
After touring these schools, we headed out in the afternoon on our first public transport experience. To briefly give you a description of these transportation services, just picture an old Volkswagon van with 5 bench seats that each seat 4 people. Our bus was FULL to the max, and we were packed in there like sardines. This scared me a little as I could just picture our bus flipping over on the narrow roads. We rode this bus to and from a Kid's Club with Naomi. This Kid's Club was about a ten minute ride to area where one side of the road is Malawi and the other side is Mozambique. We can officially say that we have been to Mozambique now! :) We had a great time with the kids, handing out soccer balls and some Skittles. The students were especially excited to receive the soccer balls as they normally play with a rock wrapped in newspaper and plastic bags (all tied together with strips of rubber taken from old tires). The students cheered for us, singing songs of thanks. We felt very appreciated, but we also realize that we should be the ones appreciating these students as they showed an incredible love for God and a resiliency against the trials they face. We thought later about one of the songs that the youth sang during their Kid's Club time. They sang a song about fighting against HIV/AIDS. We realized that this would not be a song that would even cross the mind of our youth to sing. These youth face completely different challenges than our youth in the states, and therefore, God to them takes on a completely different image. God is a warrior to them, and they should therefore be warriors too. They should fight the diseases and enemies that attack them with the strength of God. Many times in the states, we view our relationship with God as very individualistic. However, here they cannot view their relationship with God outside of their community. It is a communal relationship, and it must be because they are fighting their battles together.
This brings me to the second half of this email. We have been struggling a little over the last couple of days - feeling homesick, feeling like we've been left without much guidance, and feeling a little useless. We are realizing that much of our feelings are cultural. We thought that we would be more scheduled, have more day-to-day living guidance, and would in general be made to feel more useful. However, we were forgetting to look at life through the eyes of the Malawian culture. We were not making the connection that we come from a "low context" culture where we do not assume that everyone "knows" our systems of life (such as how to order in a restaurant, how to call a taxi, how to shop, etc.), so we are more apt to explain everything upfront or write detailed instructions. Here in Malawi, the culture is much more "high context" where in general people live in a system of a shared and assumed history and life process. Therefore, our guides (the SOM staff) do not necessarily think about the need to help us or explain to us how life functions here. This can be frustrating for us and leave us longing more for the comforts of home, but we are trying to change our viewpoint to see more of where they are coming from and to explain more to them our needs. They are more than willing to help us when we ask.
The realities of cultural differences are very evident to us. There are times when we think, "we would never do it that way," and we know that there are times when our hosts are probably thinking, "crazy Americans!" God is making it very real to us, though, that there is a need when doing mission work to really study the culture of the people you are trying to reach. We cannot assume that our modes of ministry, our modes of life, and our understanding of Scripture and God are the "only ways." For example, I mentioned the other American missionary in the area. We have been told that he came here with the desire to work with all the pastors from the different churches in the area, so SOM helped him out by setting up meetings for him with the pastors.
However, when all was said and done, he said he only wanted to work with the Presbyterian pastors and their Presbyterian volunteers. The SOM staff was shocked by this. They thought that this was ridiculous because he was dividing people instead of working together with everyone. As Naomie said, he is splitting communities into sections - only giving money to the Presbyterian people and leaving the rest out.
Naomie said that this is very much against their culture. However, for Nate and I this isn't surprising as this is how Christianity functions in the states. We split ourselves up by our denomination, then by our individual churches, and then by our small groups within the church. We are not a very community based society. There is much for us to learn from the Christians here in Malawi (and in reality the rest of the majority world church). How much more good could we as a Christian body do if we left behind our theological differences, our worship style preferences, and our self-centered natures to join together in one voice to praise and worship God and do His work? Something to think about...a beautiful vision to have.
Please pray for us that we will feel more at peace in our situation, that we will learn to communicate across cultures, and that God will continue to teach us lessons.
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Official Visits
Hello everyone,
I am writing this once again in the dark. It seems that we are going to have to get used to a nightly ritual of losing power for a couple of hours. We are growing quite used to the candle light - in fact we are more familiar with its soft glow than the sharp brightness of a light bulb. I wanted to take the time, however, (since I have so much of it) to write up a little bit of what we have been doing in the past day or so.
I did not write this earlier, but yesterday we were taken on an extensive visitation tour of Ntcheu. We began the day going to Ntcheu Hospital. Let me just say this, pray for us that we will not have to go there over the next couple of weeks. The hospital is split into wards - the pediatric, labor and delivery, female, male, contagious diseases, and HIV/AIDS. We had the unique opportunity of walking through all of the areas of the hospital. Each ward is simply one big room with rows of hospital beds. The first two rows are the critical patients, the second two rows are the upgraded patients, and the last rows are the chronically ill patients (diarrhea for example). The only thing separately the critically ill patients and the rest was a half wall.
The hospital was packed, and the nurse said that they did roughly 20 deliveries a day. They tried walking us through the contagious diseases area, but I tried my best to not enter the room. The nurse who showed us around said that most of the cases were TB cases, which is a big problem in Africa. Children now are getting the vaccination shots, but parents never had them. Our last stop in the hospital was the HIV/AIDS clinic. We walked into a packed room of probably 20 people sitting around waiting. Little did we know was that all 20 were waiting for their immunity boosting drugs. We spoke with the head nurse in the hospital who told us that the hospital is only given enough medicine to for 50 cases a month. She said that they had stopped putting people on the waiting list in June because they had already fillled the list for August with over 200 people. She said that they do hundreds of tests every month throughout the district. Many people are getting tested now to find out their status because they are finding out the test is free.
The hospital also provides counseling to those that test positive, trying to get them to make the right decisions so as to not spread the disease any further.
This leads us into our second stop - SOM's HIV/AIDS Therapy Clinic about ten minutes outside of Ntcheu. This clinic is the first of its kind in the district because it will be distinctly for children. It will be a boarding house for children who have tested positive for HIV/AIDS.
Lonely, the HIV/AIDS coordinator, will live on sight in houses built for staff. They will also do testing and counseling there as well, and they hope after Lonely has gone through the government training to be able to provide some immunity boosting drugs at the clinic as well. The clinic will be an amazing service to the communities/villages in the area. They will come from many km's away to reach this clinic.
For the rest of the day on Monday and the beginning of Tuesday we spent our time being introduced to important people in the district government. We met the commissioner of the hospital, the district commissioner (like the Mayor of Holland but covering a much larger area), the district education commissioner, the district social services commissioner, and the chief of police. Naomi was our guide for all of these appointments, and we appreciated the opportunity to meet with so many officials. We wish we would have had more time to plan ahead on what questions we would ask, but it was nice to have them know who we are and why were are here. The education commissioner was especially interesting to speak with as he provided a lot of insight into the education system in Malawi. The education situation is not good right now, and the commissioner is the first to admit that children who graduate from secondary school now and those that graduated 15 years ago did not receive equal educations. He says that those are that graduate today are in a much worse situation than those from years ago. Perhaps one of the interesting points that he mentioned was the fact that they are losing large numbers of teachers every year. He said that part of it is because the last president stopped the teacher colleges (for some unknown reason), part of it is because teachers are switching occupations to a position that will pay better (government teachers start out making about 1,000 kwacha per month or $7.50), and part of it is because they are losing on average 3 teachers per month to death (most often because of complications with HIV/AIDS). To give you a brief idea, though, as to how the education system works in Malawi, let me describe the structure. All students can receive a free education through Standard 8 (8th grade). Then at the end of 8th grade they take a test to see where they will place into Secondary School. If they test really well, they will be sent to a National Secondary School somewhere in the country where they will be boarders. If they test at the second tier, they will go to a District Secondary School where they will also be boarders. If they test at the lowest tier, they are sent to an area Secondary School where they will commute to school. The average cost for those that board is 7,000 kwacha a term. But only 500 kwacha goes to the government to pay for tuition costs. So with that amount of money, one can imagine how good the textbooks, technology, and teaching quality is for most schools.
We are learning to adjust to life here in Ntcheu. We are told that we should get used to not having power every other night for about two hours. We moved to a bigger room in our Chando Hostel, and we bought a two burner electric hot plate. We can now make popcorn for a nightly snack, which makes us both excited. We also boiled water for coffee this morning, so we are trying to make the best of our living situation. Once you see pictures, you will understand why we say "make the best of it". We will not have hot water for every shower we realized. We will just have to enjoy the warmth when we get it. We are also realizing that sometimes winter in Malawi really is winter.
Yesterday was very cold (50s), and last night the wind howled through our porous windows. If we come back to Malawi again, we will make sure that we bring warmer clothing!
We hope that you are all doing well and pray for you constantly. We are so thankful for all of your love, support, and encouragement. Thanks for taking the time to read my long emails. I know that they are probably a bit too long, but there is so much to describe that it would take pages upon pages to fully paint the true picture.
(We tried sending this message yesterday, but it did not work. SO you are all getting this a day later than we wanted. We will write more
later.)
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
I am writing this once again in the dark. It seems that we are going to have to get used to a nightly ritual of losing power for a couple of hours. We are growing quite used to the candle light - in fact we are more familiar with its soft glow than the sharp brightness of a light bulb. I wanted to take the time, however, (since I have so much of it) to write up a little bit of what we have been doing in the past day or so.
I did not write this earlier, but yesterday we were taken on an extensive visitation tour of Ntcheu. We began the day going to Ntcheu Hospital. Let me just say this, pray for us that we will not have to go there over the next couple of weeks. The hospital is split into wards - the pediatric, labor and delivery, female, male, contagious diseases, and HIV/AIDS. We had the unique opportunity of walking through all of the areas of the hospital. Each ward is simply one big room with rows of hospital beds. The first two rows are the critical patients, the second two rows are the upgraded patients, and the last rows are the chronically ill patients (diarrhea for example). The only thing separately the critically ill patients and the rest was a half wall.
The hospital was packed, and the nurse said that they did roughly 20 deliveries a day. They tried walking us through the contagious diseases area, but I tried my best to not enter the room. The nurse who showed us around said that most of the cases were TB cases, which is a big problem in Africa. Children now are getting the vaccination shots, but parents never had them. Our last stop in the hospital was the HIV/AIDS clinic. We walked into a packed room of probably 20 people sitting around waiting. Little did we know was that all 20 were waiting for their immunity boosting drugs. We spoke with the head nurse in the hospital who told us that the hospital is only given enough medicine to for 50 cases a month. She said that they had stopped putting people on the waiting list in June because they had already fillled the list for August with over 200 people. She said that they do hundreds of tests every month throughout the district. Many people are getting tested now to find out their status because they are finding out the test is free.
The hospital also provides counseling to those that test positive, trying to get them to make the right decisions so as to not spread the disease any further.
This leads us into our second stop - SOM's HIV/AIDS Therapy Clinic about ten minutes outside of Ntcheu. This clinic is the first of its kind in the district because it will be distinctly for children. It will be a boarding house for children who have tested positive for HIV/AIDS.
Lonely, the HIV/AIDS coordinator, will live on sight in houses built for staff. They will also do testing and counseling there as well, and they hope after Lonely has gone through the government training to be able to provide some immunity boosting drugs at the clinic as well. The clinic will be an amazing service to the communities/villages in the area. They will come from many km's away to reach this clinic.
For the rest of the day on Monday and the beginning of Tuesday we spent our time being introduced to important people in the district government. We met the commissioner of the hospital, the district commissioner (like the Mayor of Holland but covering a much larger area), the district education commissioner, the district social services commissioner, and the chief of police. Naomi was our guide for all of these appointments, and we appreciated the opportunity to meet with so many officials. We wish we would have had more time to plan ahead on what questions we would ask, but it was nice to have them know who we are and why were are here. The education commissioner was especially interesting to speak with as he provided a lot of insight into the education system in Malawi. The education situation is not good right now, and the commissioner is the first to admit that children who graduate from secondary school now and those that graduated 15 years ago did not receive equal educations. He says that those are that graduate today are in a much worse situation than those from years ago. Perhaps one of the interesting points that he mentioned was the fact that they are losing large numbers of teachers every year. He said that part of it is because the last president stopped the teacher colleges (for some unknown reason), part of it is because teachers are switching occupations to a position that will pay better (government teachers start out making about 1,000 kwacha per month or $7.50), and part of it is because they are losing on average 3 teachers per month to death (most often because of complications with HIV/AIDS). To give you a brief idea, though, as to how the education system works in Malawi, let me describe the structure. All students can receive a free education through Standard 8 (8th grade). Then at the end of 8th grade they take a test to see where they will place into Secondary School. If they test really well, they will be sent to a National Secondary School somewhere in the country where they will be boarders. If they test at the second tier, they will go to a District Secondary School where they will also be boarders. If they test at the lowest tier, they are sent to an area Secondary School where they will commute to school. The average cost for those that board is 7,000 kwacha a term. But only 500 kwacha goes to the government to pay for tuition costs. So with that amount of money, one can imagine how good the textbooks, technology, and teaching quality is for most schools.
We are learning to adjust to life here in Ntcheu. We are told that we should get used to not having power every other night for about two hours. We moved to a bigger room in our Chando Hostel, and we bought a two burner electric hot plate. We can now make popcorn for a nightly snack, which makes us both excited. We also boiled water for coffee this morning, so we are trying to make the best of our living situation. Once you see pictures, you will understand why we say "make the best of it". We will not have hot water for every shower we realized. We will just have to enjoy the warmth when we get it. We are also realizing that sometimes winter in Malawi really is winter.
Yesterday was very cold (50s), and last night the wind howled through our porous windows. If we come back to Malawi again, we will make sure that we bring warmer clothing!
We hope that you are all doing well and pray for you constantly. We are so thankful for all of your love, support, and encouragement. Thanks for taking the time to read my long emails. I know that they are probably a bit too long, but there is so much to describe that it would take pages upon pages to fully paint the true picture.
(We tried sending this message yesterday, but it did not work. SO you are all getting this a day later than we wanted. We will write more
later.)
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Day 2 in Ntcheu
Greetings everyone!
We are excited that we are able to write emails a little more often now that we are in a place where we can connect to a phone for dial-up service. We pay 600 kwacha for about two days worth of telephone connection, which is approximately $4.00. Kind of expensive, but we are happy to pay that price to communicate with all of you.
I am writing this email as we sit in the SOM office in Ntcheu, which is about a 12 x 12 office with one desk and 6 people working in it. We arrived in the office this morning at around 8:00am after walking from where we are staying, about 3/4 of a mile away. We are currently living in Chandu, a hostel, that is at the level of a motel. They rank sleeping places here as hotel (best), motel (next best), and resthouse (last best). We have decided to stay in the hostel permanently instead of renting a house as we thought that it made more sense since we will only be here for 18 more nights. If we were to live in a house, we would have to buy a bed, furniture, connect the electricity, pay for water, hire a security guard, and hire someone to clean the house for us. Though the hostel is not a place we would normally choose to stay in the U.S., we are happy to be there. There is a gate in the front with a watchman there all day, and we have someone who will clean the place whenever we want. Plus, all we pay per night is 1,000kwacha or about $6.80 per night. Plus, the most exciting news is that we have HOT water for showers!! That is what really clinched the deal for me as I stood in a steaming shower last night and thanked God for this simple luxury.
Life is different between Songa and Ntcheu we have already learned.
First, it is much colder here than in Songa. The temperature today is in the low 60s, and we are realizing that we did not bring enough warm clothing items. Ntcheu is much more of the city living, not like the small community living in Songa. We don't walk or ride bikes to as many places, but instead use the SOM truck to travel to places that are of any significant distance. They do many activities in the communities in Ntcheu district, but with the mountains that surround this area, it takes a long time to go from one place to the other. Plus, unlike Songa, we are surrounded by shopping options - 3 superettes
(supermarkets) and one wholesale place. These are not like grocery stores in the U.S., though, as we cannot buy fresh produce there - just bread, butter, sugar, soap, etc.
We haven't quite figured out yet how we are going to cook for ourselves yet in our hostel room, but we think that we may be buying a hot plate and a pot. However, for the last two nights we have been eating at Naomi's house. Naomi is the Evangelism coordinator for SOM in Ntcheu district. She lives in a 500 sq ft house with her sister, Jane, her three sons, and Jane's son. We have enjoyed getting to know them, and they have shown us incredible hospitality. Naomi has also said that she and Jane will wash our clothes for us. We feel bad about having her do this as the two of them already work so hard. Naomi for example is currently building her own house (she's been working on it for 3 years now), growing her own crops, taking care of her sons, and working full time for SOM. We are amazed at her kindness and resourcefulness.
That is all I will write for now as we have much more to do today, but I hope that you have gotten an idea for where we are now living.
We miss you all and pray for you daily. We look forward to hearing more news from home!
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
We are excited that we are able to write emails a little more often now that we are in a place where we can connect to a phone for dial-up service. We pay 600 kwacha for about two days worth of telephone connection, which is approximately $4.00. Kind of expensive, but we are happy to pay that price to communicate with all of you.
I am writing this email as we sit in the SOM office in Ntcheu, which is about a 12 x 12 office with one desk and 6 people working in it. We arrived in the office this morning at around 8:00am after walking from where we are staying, about 3/4 of a mile away. We are currently living in Chandu, a hostel, that is at the level of a motel. They rank sleeping places here as hotel (best), motel (next best), and resthouse (last best). We have decided to stay in the hostel permanently instead of renting a house as we thought that it made more sense since we will only be here for 18 more nights. If we were to live in a house, we would have to buy a bed, furniture, connect the electricity, pay for water, hire a security guard, and hire someone to clean the house for us. Though the hostel is not a place we would normally choose to stay in the U.S., we are happy to be there. There is a gate in the front with a watchman there all day, and we have someone who will clean the place whenever we want. Plus, all we pay per night is 1,000kwacha or about $6.80 per night. Plus, the most exciting news is that we have HOT water for showers!! That is what really clinched the deal for me as I stood in a steaming shower last night and thanked God for this simple luxury.
Life is different between Songa and Ntcheu we have already learned.
First, it is much colder here than in Songa. The temperature today is in the low 60s, and we are realizing that we did not bring enough warm clothing items. Ntcheu is much more of the city living, not like the small community living in Songa. We don't walk or ride bikes to as many places, but instead use the SOM truck to travel to places that are of any significant distance. They do many activities in the communities in Ntcheu district, but with the mountains that surround this area, it takes a long time to go from one place to the other. Plus, unlike Songa, we are surrounded by shopping options - 3 superettes
(supermarkets) and one wholesale place. These are not like grocery stores in the U.S., though, as we cannot buy fresh produce there - just bread, butter, sugar, soap, etc.
We haven't quite figured out yet how we are going to cook for ourselves yet in our hostel room, but we think that we may be buying a hot plate and a pot. However, for the last two nights we have been eating at Naomi's house. Naomi is the Evangelism coordinator for SOM in Ntcheu district. She lives in a 500 sq ft house with her sister, Jane, her three sons, and Jane's son. We have enjoyed getting to know them, and they have shown us incredible hospitality. Naomi has also said that she and Jane will wash our clothes for us. We feel bad about having her do this as the two of them already work so hard. Naomi for example is currently building her own house (she's been working on it for 3 years now), growing her own crops, taking care of her sons, and working full time for SOM. We are amazed at her kindness and resourcefulness.
That is all I will write for now as we have much more to do today, but I hope that you have gotten an idea for where we are now living.
We miss you all and pray for you daily. We look forward to hearing more news from home!
Blessings,
Nate and Bekah
Monday, July 2, 2007
Finally!
Hello everyone!
Finally, we are able to send another email (which will make this a long one). As we sit here writing this email the night before we'll actually get to send it, we write in the dark - once more without electricity.
We are in Ntcheu, which will be home until July 20th, and we are supposed to have power right now. However, the Malawian government is slow to fix three of their five hydro-power generators, so Ntcheu has been shut off from power for the night while a city south of us Liwonde gets power. Crazy the things we don't think we'll ever have to worry about.
So where have we been for the past week? Well, we have so much to tell, but we'll try to give you the highlights only. We were in a rural district near the southern portion of Lake Malawi named Songa. Songa would be perhaps what we would label as stereotypical Africa. There is no power, no running water, grass/thatch roof houses in pods of four and five, handmade brick structures, wells (if you are one of the lucky
villages), and unmaintained dirt roads. Save Orphans Ministries (SOM)
has a base in the district near the village of Songa (just part of the district). Their ministry is composed of an evangelism portion that leads Kid's Clubs in numerous villages (like mini Sunday school hours held in the afternoons after school is out), CBCC's (Community Based Care Centers - for children 3 yrs and under, like a preschool run by volunteers in the villages), Kid's Days (held once a year where 1,000 plus kids show up for an all weekend vacation Bible school activity where they are fed breakfast and lunch), and a private Secondary School and Kindergarten School on the campus of SOM. They also have an agricultural ministry (teaching sustainable farming methods), IGA groups (income generating activities), and an HIV/AIDS care ministry (testing, treatment, prevention, and counseling).
Also on SOM's campus is a guesthouse and missionary house, which is where we stayed with the team of American students and their sponsors (mostly from a collection of churches in Wisconsin and Illinois). We joined them in the activities that had been planned for them for the week; specifically building a teacher's house, leading Kid's Clubs, visiting CBCC's, and generally participating in the lifestyle of the Songa people. To give you a taste of what we did we thought we would first give you an itinerary of our daily life and then specifically describe one of our final activities in Songa.
Our normal day started at 7:00am to the sound of the roosters (actually we started hearing them around 3:00am). We ate breakfast with SOM team members around 8:00am (white sweet potatoes, bread, and granola w/ powdered milk). We had a group devotion at 9:00am with the Americans, community members, and SOM people. Then around 9:30am we headed off to either the construction site, CBCC's (biking 6 miles in the mountains on
1 speeds with terribly uncomfortable seats), or walking to Kid's Clubs.
We had lunch with everyone around 12:30pm (usually more like
1:00-1:30pm) which consisted of either goat or chicken, enseema (corn flour mush is the best way to describe this), and greens (mustard leafs, onions, tomatoes). Then around 2:00pm we either headed back to one of the projects listed above or a special activity planned for us until around 5:00pm. We usually tried to take a hot bucket shower (water boiled over the fire) before dinner, which was at 7:00pm (same menu as lunch). We had devotions again at 8:00pm and then either went to bed or watched a movie compliments of a power inverter hooked to Justin's car and a tv on the hood. These movies were really for the enjoyment of the village children who flock from km's away to see this rarity.
Life in Songa became pretty routine, and we look forward to sharing pictures with you to describe the entire beauty, serenity, and simplicity of life in Songa. Sure we struggled without power and running water, but the people of Songa and SOM made our life comfortable enough (plus Bekah got to master carrying buckets of water on her head!). SOM did a wonderful job of structuring the week in a way that allowed us to truly experience a portion of how life is carried out in Songa. For example, the final day James, the SOM agriculture coordinator, led us and the other Americans to a field along the river given to SOM by the area chief to show us how farming is done in Malawi. We cleared the land of the banana trees and prickly weeds, planned a vegetable nursery, and dug water canals to carry water from the river. At first we have to admit that we were a little confused on how the whole process would work as it didn't seem to fit into our American model of farming, but James was a patient teacher and showed us how Malawians truly care for the earth and their precious water sources. It was tiring work, but we felt like we had been given a glimpse into how difficult farming can be without irrigation, tractors, and the such. Many hours of labor go into each and every small crop.
We left Songa on Saturday morning and headed off to Mvuu Camp in the Liwonde National Park for our 24 hour safari experience. The experience only confirmed to us that Malawi is truly an amazingly beautiful country, with gorgeous mountains, sunsets, and animals (elephants, hippos, impala, crocodiles, warthogs, and beautiful birds). And though we were spoiled with our own room, electricity, running hot water, amazing meals, and cold drinks, we were made starkly aware of the way in which many tourists come to Malawi and see only that part of the country. They don't experience what life is really like for the people of Malawi. One thing we wish we could change is the way that places like Mvuu (which is owned by Dutch South Africans) make lots of money on tourists like us and never give back to the people of Malawi. For example, when their main road to the camp became impassible, people started traveling on a dirt road through rural villages. The consequence has been the tearing up of those village people's roads and a stirring up of the dust throughout their villages. The Mvuu people, however, pay nothing to upkeep this new dirt road. These type actions are what makes Justin and James (our hosts from SOM for the safari) sad and angry.
So now we are back to where we began in this email, Ntcheu. We came here this afternoon and are currently renting a room in hostel for 800 kwacha ($6) a night - for that price you can imagine what our room might look like. We will be moving into a house on Wednesday that was found for us. We will pay around 3,000 kwacha a week for the house ($20). We have no idea what it looks like yet or really what to expect, but we are grateful to the people of SOM in Ntcheu who have worked hard to prepare for us. You will read their names continuously over the next couple of weeks, so we will just list them off for you briefly. There are five of them. Lonely - the HIV/AIDS coordinator for Ntcheu and Songa areas, Naomi - the Evangelism cooridnator for Ntcheu only, James - the Agriculture coordinator for Ntcheu and Songa areas, Picard - the IGA coordinator for Ntcheu and Songa areas, and Frasier - the construction coordinator for the new HIV/AIDS therapy center in Ntcheu. Their work is vast and comprehensive, and we look forward to working with them over these next three weeks.
Please pray for us as we continue to adapt to our new surroundings, continue to miss home, and continue to struggle with being the "outsiders". We miss you all and pray for you in our daily thoughts.
We hope to hear from many of you soon with news from life back home.
Much love and blessings!
~ Nate and Bekah
Finally, we are able to send another email (which will make this a long one). As we sit here writing this email the night before we'll actually get to send it, we write in the dark - once more without electricity.
We are in Ntcheu, which will be home until July 20th, and we are supposed to have power right now. However, the Malawian government is slow to fix three of their five hydro-power generators, so Ntcheu has been shut off from power for the night while a city south of us Liwonde gets power. Crazy the things we don't think we'll ever have to worry about.
So where have we been for the past week? Well, we have so much to tell, but we'll try to give you the highlights only. We were in a rural district near the southern portion of Lake Malawi named Songa. Songa would be perhaps what we would label as stereotypical Africa. There is no power, no running water, grass/thatch roof houses in pods of four and five, handmade brick structures, wells (if you are one of the lucky
villages), and unmaintained dirt roads. Save Orphans Ministries (SOM)
has a base in the district near the village of Songa (just part of the district). Their ministry is composed of an evangelism portion that leads Kid's Clubs in numerous villages (like mini Sunday school hours held in the afternoons after school is out), CBCC's (Community Based Care Centers - for children 3 yrs and under, like a preschool run by volunteers in the villages), Kid's Days (held once a year where 1,000 plus kids show up for an all weekend vacation Bible school activity where they are fed breakfast and lunch), and a private Secondary School and Kindergarten School on the campus of SOM. They also have an agricultural ministry (teaching sustainable farming methods), IGA groups (income generating activities), and an HIV/AIDS care ministry (testing, treatment, prevention, and counseling).
Also on SOM's campus is a guesthouse and missionary house, which is where we stayed with the team of American students and their sponsors (mostly from a collection of churches in Wisconsin and Illinois). We joined them in the activities that had been planned for them for the week; specifically building a teacher's house, leading Kid's Clubs, visiting CBCC's, and generally participating in the lifestyle of the Songa people. To give you a taste of what we did we thought we would first give you an itinerary of our daily life and then specifically describe one of our final activities in Songa.
Our normal day started at 7:00am to the sound of the roosters (actually we started hearing them around 3:00am). We ate breakfast with SOM team members around 8:00am (white sweet potatoes, bread, and granola w/ powdered milk). We had a group devotion at 9:00am with the Americans, community members, and SOM people. Then around 9:30am we headed off to either the construction site, CBCC's (biking 6 miles in the mountains on
1 speeds with terribly uncomfortable seats), or walking to Kid's Clubs.
We had lunch with everyone around 12:30pm (usually more like
1:00-1:30pm) which consisted of either goat or chicken, enseema (corn flour mush is the best way to describe this), and greens (mustard leafs, onions, tomatoes). Then around 2:00pm we either headed back to one of the projects listed above or a special activity planned for us until around 5:00pm. We usually tried to take a hot bucket shower (water boiled over the fire) before dinner, which was at 7:00pm (same menu as lunch). We had devotions again at 8:00pm and then either went to bed or watched a movie compliments of a power inverter hooked to Justin's car and a tv on the hood. These movies were really for the enjoyment of the village children who flock from km's away to see this rarity.
Life in Songa became pretty routine, and we look forward to sharing pictures with you to describe the entire beauty, serenity, and simplicity of life in Songa. Sure we struggled without power and running water, but the people of Songa and SOM made our life comfortable enough (plus Bekah got to master carrying buckets of water on her head!). SOM did a wonderful job of structuring the week in a way that allowed us to truly experience a portion of how life is carried out in Songa. For example, the final day James, the SOM agriculture coordinator, led us and the other Americans to a field along the river given to SOM by the area chief to show us how farming is done in Malawi. We cleared the land of the banana trees and prickly weeds, planned a vegetable nursery, and dug water canals to carry water from the river. At first we have to admit that we were a little confused on how the whole process would work as it didn't seem to fit into our American model of farming, but James was a patient teacher and showed us how Malawians truly care for the earth and their precious water sources. It was tiring work, but we felt like we had been given a glimpse into how difficult farming can be without irrigation, tractors, and the such. Many hours of labor go into each and every small crop.
We left Songa on Saturday morning and headed off to Mvuu Camp in the Liwonde National Park for our 24 hour safari experience. The experience only confirmed to us that Malawi is truly an amazingly beautiful country, with gorgeous mountains, sunsets, and animals (elephants, hippos, impala, crocodiles, warthogs, and beautiful birds). And though we were spoiled with our own room, electricity, running hot water, amazing meals, and cold drinks, we were made starkly aware of the way in which many tourists come to Malawi and see only that part of the country. They don't experience what life is really like for the people of Malawi. One thing we wish we could change is the way that places like Mvuu (which is owned by Dutch South Africans) make lots of money on tourists like us and never give back to the people of Malawi. For example, when their main road to the camp became impassible, people started traveling on a dirt road through rural villages. The consequence has been the tearing up of those village people's roads and a stirring up of the dust throughout their villages. The Mvuu people, however, pay nothing to upkeep this new dirt road. These type actions are what makes Justin and James (our hosts from SOM for the safari) sad and angry.
So now we are back to where we began in this email, Ntcheu. We came here this afternoon and are currently renting a room in hostel for 800 kwacha ($6) a night - for that price you can imagine what our room might look like. We will be moving into a house on Wednesday that was found for us. We will pay around 3,000 kwacha a week for the house ($20). We have no idea what it looks like yet or really what to expect, but we are grateful to the people of SOM in Ntcheu who have worked hard to prepare for us. You will read their names continuously over the next couple of weeks, so we will just list them off for you briefly. There are five of them. Lonely - the HIV/AIDS coordinator for Ntcheu and Songa areas, Naomi - the Evangelism cooridnator for Ntcheu only, James - the Agriculture coordinator for Ntcheu and Songa areas, Picard - the IGA coordinator for Ntcheu and Songa areas, and Frasier - the construction coordinator for the new HIV/AIDS therapy center in Ntcheu. Their work is vast and comprehensive, and we look forward to working with them over these next three weeks.
Please pray for us as we continue to adapt to our new surroundings, continue to miss home, and continue to struggle with being the "outsiders". We miss you all and pray for you in our daily thoughts.
We hope to hear from many of you soon with news from life back home.
Much love and blessings!
~ Nate and Bekah
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