Day 17: Where to begin?

What a day! It was truly one of those, I-can’t-quite-believe-it days, that we sometimes have in Malawi

We left Mtunthama early after a short meeting with Peter and a sad goodbye to Andy, Alice, and Mary.

We headed for Rita’s school. That’s not it’s real name but we call it that because a lovely woman named Rita asked several years ago if we’d help the school where her children were educated.

Lingadzi Primary School is a government school. Unlike in the US where you can expect at least some level of furnishings and amenities, many schools here are missing basic necessities. For example, this one has only a handful of desks yet has an enrollment of 839 students. These few desks need serious repair so mostly the children sit on the floor during classes. We don’t get involved in desks because we provide menstrual supplies and I try not to let “mission creep” leak into our work. Yet, I intend to reach out to other organizations to see if they can help to remedy this situation. For one thing, girls cannot learn if they are sitting on the floor with no writing materials and no place to do that writing.

But mostly we visited this school because several months ago I heard that the girls changing room had been seriously damaged by heavy rains and was completely unusable. The head teacher had reached out to me asking if we could help finance a new building. Today we discussed a design, looked at the site, talked about materials and made a plan. I feel adamant that the community be part of this project and I’m hoping to find other organizations and individuals to donate as well. I’d like to see a collaboration of labor and money that everyone can feel ownership of and pride in too.

We left midday for Mzuzu to check in on our other sewing center. On the way back to the main road while driving on the seriously potholed, rutted, and flooded side road to the school, we tried crossing a muddy lake-like piece of the road but got stuck. Ten men appeared, as they do in Malawi, and after a lot of discussion, and failed attempts finally put lots of bricks and sticks under the drowned tire and pushed the vehicle to safety. They even washed it once out of the mess.

The excitement wasn’t over though. We began to hear a strange noise and pulled off the road to investigate. The passenger side front tire was leaning in a weird way and only 2 of the 4 screw things were on. Again, men appeared and with all sorts of makeshift tools, took the wheel off, realigned it and stole a few bolts from the other tires and we were off again.

I gave out lollipops to all the kids that had gathered to watch the repair and gawk at the “mzungus”.

Finally, back on macadam, we drove carefully to a garage and then sat for a couple of hours while they took the wheel back off, banged on something for a while, drove into town to buy more nuts and bolts and then reassembled everything. Charlotte and I sat on the sidelines reading and watching a weird caterpillar thing that carries a house made of sticks on its back. Well, this wouldn’t have happened if not for the car mishap!! The labor for that 7 person, two hour repair, cost 15,000 kwacha which is roughly $8.91.

We are at our guest house and have had a dinner of nsima and fish with a dollop of greens on the side. We never ate much today though we had stopped for water and bought some cookies and nuts that helped to tide us over. We are tired and looking forward to a good night's sleep. It’s cool out so we have perfect sleeping weather.