Shawna's Malawi Q&A

Shawna did not have time to send me an email to forward to everyone this week. Instead she sent me her response to someone else's email, and I converted it (quite naturally) to a Q&A format. Such are the powers I have been granted. Hope you enjoy. These are encouraging, and some are pretty funny.
God Bless,
Isaac Sumner (isaacsumner@gmail.com)

Q: [Did you celebrate the 4 th of July?]
A: We actually did celebrate the fourth with sparklers and a cook out with other Americans and a few Malawians.

Q: Is there one [child] that stands out to you?
A: There are a few but with so many kids I haven't really bonded just with one, [not] yet anyway. There is this boy who always comes and gets me because he swings from my arms. I don't know how, but here I'm kinda strong. Two boys would hold my arms or hands and I would lift them up and they would play chicken, and then I had 4 on me. After that, though, I couldn't pick them up.
Either pitiful pretty (sic)--there are so many pretty babies and people. There are only a few who aren't. Funny story--there is this one boy that I had kinda picked out and all the girls said he was my twin. He laughs and smiles a lot. So he looks about 3 or 4. Tessa and I would pick him up to sit in our laps and we would talk to him like, "Where's Joe Joe?" and he would laugh; he has the cutest laugh. That's why I picked him out. Anyway we went out to eat on Friday night and we were talking to Drew and Denice (our leaders) and they said that he is 15 years old!!!!!!!!!!!! Hahahaahaha. He has Webster's disease (which isn't funny) but we were picking him up and acting like he was a little kid, good land! But his mind isn't that developed so it's not that bad. But Tessa and I laughed for a long time. ha

Q: Do you teach and do something all day or do you have time to do something else?
A: On Mondays and Wednesdays we teach from 9:30 to 12 which doesn't seem like long but it seems like forever because their lessons are so short and then it's hard to communicate and some of the things I'm teaching I don't know about like Malawi's plant life. But it's fun and I enjoy it. It's just a little hard at times. After lunch we usually go to widow's homes and help them. Tuesdays and Thursdays are different things. We go to the villages a lot. Help with the feeding program. There is also a farm--Chitipi Farm--where there are about 30 kids living there. We went the other day and moved 30 lb boxes of rice (probably around 30 each) and we did it by carrying them on our heads! I didn't get it at first and I was just carrying it with my arms and that gets tiring very fast with your arms over your head, but when I did get it, it was easy. Then I jump roped with the girls, and we helped shell peanuts and mash them. We also go and do their devotions at night on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Q: Do you have to put them to bed or bathe them?
A: No we're not actually living with them.

Q: Are they all school age or babies too?
A: All [ages].

Q: Are the people that went nice or annoying?
A: My team is pretty good. Two of our girls are sick. I think there's like a 12 hour flu going around I feel bad for them. One of them is Monica who's one of my best friends. I hope no one else gets it.
It's the short term teams that have had really rude people with them. [The Malawian people] are the nicest people I've ever met. It makes everyone else seem mean ha.

Q: Can you understand [the Malawians]?
A: Pretty well, they have a hard time understanding me. Ha. haha

Q: Does there skin look dry and ashy?
A: Yeah, it does


Q: How can a dirt floor be clean every thing just put in its place?
A: I don't know, but it is swept up and clean, but all the kids are so dirty they look gray because of the dirt, but after I get home that's how it is for me too. But they get baths.

Q: Are [those children] that have flies swarming [on them] going to the school or are they excluded?
A: It's pretty much everyone who has flies swarming. But some with open wounds have them worse than the others. Those kids have been in the outer villages.

Q: Do they have the…necklaces [that stretch people's necks]?
A: No they don't have that here.

Q: Have you gotten scared?
A: Just at night when me and Monica have sat up talking really late we'll hear things and scare ourselves just because we had been talking about break-ins before, but that was only twice and it wasn't really scared.

Q: Are you out in [the country or city]?
A: I'm staying in the capital but it's still country. Our house is like in a nicer part, but where we go are villages that have chiefs and stuff.

Q: [So] you haven't seen [many] animals?
A: Well, I have. There are a lot of chickens and goats, dogs, but not scary wild ones. Ohhhh yeah, when we went to the lake we saw baboons really close up. The lake is soo pretty. It looks like an ocean. There were waves…

Q: So its been cold?
A: Yeah, at night, in the sun it's fine though.

Q: Have you had rain?
A: It rained the second day we were here, which they said was rare, so that's neat that we got to see it.

Q: [Why are] the moon and dipper are [upside down]?
A: [We are on the] other side of the earth. I can see open sky if there is no trees.

Q: So the food is not bad?
A: No, I like it.

Q: Do you get to eat with them?
A: When we were at the farm we had sweet potatoes but they had porridge. We usually eat at ABC (college) because the short term teams eat there and we clean up after them. We have a cook.

Q: Have you eaten any meat?
A: I have. I don't eat much of it, but I figure it's ok. There are baby chickens everywhere and I want to pet them, but I don't.

Q: What does the fish taste like here?
A: I just ate fish for the first time yesterday we went to the lake. It was really good. And I ordered nsima with it and everyone thought I was crazy. I'm turning into a Malawian.

Q: Have you eaten bug!
A: Not on purpose, that I know of.

Q: What are you drinking?
A: We drink water that goes through a filter. I brush my teeth with the water though and clean my fruit. There's also Sobo-kinda like orange Kool-Aid. kinda. It's good. We have fruit juice but it's kinda expensive so we don't get it very much. We usually drink water.