The weekend

It is Saturday afternoon and I can hear children, a flute playing and our new friends from the University of Washington working with Flemmings to prepare for their Monday workshop on child mental health.  The wind is rustling the trees a bit, I am waiting for some clothes to dry and for our trip to A1 Indian restaurant in Mzuzu later tonight.

This morning I started the day with a brisk 1 mile walk to the Library to use the internet – I would be in a lot better shape if I had to do this at home!  I experimented with taking a walking path back to the guesthouse since it looked shorter to do that rather than the road.  I found a path that wasn’t too steep or slippery and cut the distance home a bit while I had a little adventure – at one point I just followed a kid on a bike as I can’t always tell where the pathways are since it is all dirt in the dry season here.

We had a pretty easy going day today with some work on our project, which we now think we may complete by the end of next week.  I read a little, did some laundry by hand to hang on the line and had a short nap after lunch.  We called some of our Malawian friends and are shocked by the cost of a call.  A 4 minute call cost about $1 US which is just crazy when we have a call plan we use from the US to call people here that only costs about $.10 per minute – so it would have been half the cost to call them from the USA.  Phones take up a huge part of people’s limited resources here, but communication is so vital people will pay for it.

Now it is Sunday and we just returned from Flemmings village where we visited his mother and attended the small church his Father dreamed of building and which Flemmings promised his Father on his deathbed that he and his brothers would complete.  We were most honored guests, sitting at the front of the church next to Flemmings who was preaching as a church elder.  We learned later that they had wanted one of us to preach and he explained that they could not spring that on us – such things were not done in America!  Thank goodness!!

Here is the church service with a little boy making himself comfortable.

The village is about 25 miles but takes about an hour to reach because only half that distance is paved and the dirt roads here are usually in pretty bad shape with this one as no exception.  Flemmings and his brothers have built his mother a very nice house by  Malawian standards, the inside is finished with cement rather than being bare brick and it has a corrugated iron roof, not thatch.  Of course it is far enough out that it has no electricity or running water. 

Here is the house.

Flemmings, of course was welcomed with great love by his family, and we were shown such love and respect too.  It is hard to accept being treated so well for no reason except that we are “visitors from America”.  We were asked to say a few words, entertained with more wonderful singing and music from handmade instruments, and after the service were invited to join in the dancing and singing.  The nursery school from the village was there and our friends from Washington had soap, stickers, books and some other gifts for the adorable kids. 

Here I am with the women from Washington, joining in the dancing and singing.

His mother had prepared a light lunch for us with tea, and after some family photos we headed back home to Ekwendeni.  Another amazing day!!

Here is Flemmings with his Mom and family.