Saturday Activities

Saturday, June 8

            This morning we were allowed to sleep in for a bit, which was nice for those who actually are capable of sleeping in. I don’t know what it is but my body cannot physically stay asleep after 5:00am here. Also, two doors down from our room, the people blast mosh-pit music like there’s no tomorrow and the goats and roosters like to constantly remind us that they are alive and well with all their calls and what not. It does scare me though to think that considering the 6-hour time difference, 11:00pm American time my body is wide-awake. So that’ll be interesting when we return. It was nice to get up and shower though and not have to be fully ready until 11:00am. I went to breakfast with Liz around 8:00am and we stayed there until about 10:15am. We weren’t planning on staying so late but people just kept showing up and we kept staying hungry (the usual). After breakfast we all loaded up in the van and went over to Annie’s House for the 40 day marking of her Mother’s death. Here in Malawi, it is a tradition to have a ceremony for the deceased 40 days after they have passed. Annie’s mother passed away from bad health and due to Annie being such a loving person, she invited us to the ceremony to represent her mother. People who are invited to these ceremonies are considered family, so it was such an honor to have Annie personally invite us. When we arrived there were a lot of people sitting in front of a memorial so we quickly sat down. Everything was in Chichewa so I honestly cannot tell you what was being said but from just looking at people’s faces, I felt the pain that they felt.

            After the ceremony we were fed lunch at Annie’s. We all felt terrible because they had us go eat first but we didn’t feel it was right for us to go before family. Here in Malawi, it’s tradition to put the guests first and have them eat separately. I cannot say that I really liked this because I felt really secluded from the whole ceremony. Being a white individual already makes me a minority here but I have never felt such a separation between people. It almost felt like we were being treated differently because we are American and expect different and better treatment than others; it made me feel uneasy. As we left though, Annie came up to us and gave us the most loving hugs and told us how thankful she was for us coming, so that made things a lot better.

            We then headed off to the Chifundo Chathu Orphanage close by. I was really excited to get there and play with the kids but they immediately sat us in chairs, while everyone else was on the floor and did skits for us in Chichewa. I was really hoping we were going to get to talk and interact with the kids and grandmothers but I didn’t get to talk to anyone, which really made me upset. Once again, sitting in the chairs while everyone else was on the ground made me feel very separated from them. I know that they just wanted to make us feel at home and welcome but I honestly don’t like it when they treat us better than others. I would have been so much happier if I were able to sit on the ground with the kids to be able to have interaction with them. The kids all looked so eager to come up to us but they kept telling them to go sit, which none of us wanted. Some of the girls were able to pry them over to their laps and luckily I was able to talk to one little girl who sat in Leigh’s lap. Our visit was really nice and even though I didn’t understand the language of the skits, they were great, but I do wish that we could have had more time there. We left the Orphanage around 4:00pm because it would take us about an hour to return to Annie’s and due to the sun setting so early here, we couldn’t afford to be on the roads very much after dark. When we returned to Annie’s we had the night to ourselves. Liz and I caught up on blogging and watched some movies on my computer. Tomorrow we are getting up to go to Annie’s church and go to a party in the afternoon that she is throwing for us!

Until then,

Xoxo