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