Day 18: Mzuzu

We were on the road this morning by 6:30 having told Emanuel, a teacher and our main tailor in Mzuzu, that we’d meet him at his school by 7:00. It was great to see him. I love having him as part of our team. He showed me the sewing room where he makes MoonCatchers and teaches 20 students to sew. The even more wonderful part of this is that his students are deaf so he does all this with sign language. The room is large and airy and has big cutting tables down the center. There are both treadle and electric machines so the students can experience using both. Below are photos of us with Emmanuel and Olipa - our coordinator in Malawi. They loved the shirts we brought them.

We headed for our first school Bwabwa Primary School and taught a class of primary 8 girls. It was great to see Emanuel working with these kids. He has made wonderful visuals for them and fully involves them in the material.

After distributing the kits we went to see the toilets and found that the only water available was on the other side of the campus. We decided to buy two water buckets and 2 cups, one for each of the upper class toilets for girls to use when changing their pads. Olive, one of the teachers, offered to buy the supplies when she was next in town, kindly saving us from having to provide transport. It was lovely, problem solving this concern together and coming up with a doable, inexpensive solution.

Next we went to Baula Secondary School. We found the girls writing exams so decided we’d do some one on one interviews with girls who have been using our kits. What we found instead were girls who had received menstrual cups from another organization and many of them were afraid to use them. Menstrual cups are fabulous and I highly recommend them in the right situation. Because these girls were choosing not to use them they were left with nothing to use. We will go back soon and do a full MoonCatcher lesson with them and give every girl a kit. If they choose to use the cup that’s fine but ours is a solution that won’t frighten them. I must admit that I also have concerns about the ability to properly sanitize cups. We are working in places where there is always dust in the air and keeping things clean is a constant battle.

I always think about how important it is to have everyone at the table when trying to solve this ongoing problem of menstrual needs. I think all ideas are important and valuable and never want any of us to feel like this is a competition. It is all important work.

We had lunch in Mzuzu at a place we went to last year. It was relaxing to sit with Olipa, Emanuel, Charlotte and myself just chatting and enjoying some down time.

Fabric shopping was next on the agenda and then we brought Emanuel home and said farewell. That’s the hardest part of this work. We make friends and then see them so seldom and have to say goodbye.

One of my favorite parts of the day was getting Olipa’s car washed. In Malawi it’s all done by hand and took about an hour and a half. Both inside and out were totally soaped, scrubbed, rinsed and eventually dried. I’ve never seen such a thorough job done. It made me exhausted just watching but I loved how dedicated these three young men were to their work. All of yesterday's mud and muck is gone and tomorrow we can head to Lilongwe in a clean car.

We bought rice for Olipa at the outside market and came back to our hotel to catch up on emails, blog posts and texts. Yep! We finally have some WiFi.