This morning I resolved to hang in there a little longer with the slasher workers, and I made it about one and a half hours before quitting. Those workers are amazing. This village covers dozens of acres, and they clear pretty much all of it over the course of a couple months. In about a minute of slashing, they cover about 5 times as much area as I do. At least today they didn’t keep redoing the areas that I thought I had finished. I was the only mazungu (white person) working with them today, and it went really well. At one point, one of the kitchen workers at the nearby dining hall called out something that made all the slashers laugh. Matthews, one of the slashers, explained that the kitchen worker had asked them why they were giving me such bullsh*t! I just smiled and said it’s because I’m the new guy. During our brief breaks we talked a little bit… about where we’re all from, how many children we have, etc. They gave me some pointers on slashing and even sharpened my blade for me! I look forward to going back there with them next week. (Tomorrow is a national holiday, so there’s no slashing.)
Later that morning, Nick and I went to start preparing the front gate for a new paint job. A lot of the spots on the gate are covered in streaks of rust and dirt, and the paint is peeling off under the bright African sun. Today we were just scrubbing it with some soap and water—a little bit tedious, but it gave us a chance to work together and experience life outside the gate (even if it was 1 foot outside). During that time, a Malawian girl, probably 12 or 13 years old, came up and said she’d like to join Rafiki because she is an orphan. I knew that Rafiki only took in younger orphans, so I asked one of the gatekeepers to come talk with her. He gently told her the policy of the village and gave her directions to another aid agency in Mzuzu who could help her with school fees (what she was really asking for).
Later, I spoke about the experience with Susan, who said that school fees are outrageously expensive—unaffordable for most Malawians. Thus, the children don’t get much education, and the cycle of poverty and dependence continues. We also talked about Rafiki’s policy of only taking in young orphans. (They do, however, also offer education to about 40 teenage girls from the surrounding areas, and this girl at the gate may have qualified. I really don’t know if that’s true, though.) Essentially, Rafiki is putting almost all its resources into providing everything for 100-200 children per village. They receive food, shelter, clothing, a family structure, high quality education, health care, and protection. The hope is that in this environment, the children will be well-suited for becoming future doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc. for their country. Thus, a generation from now the seed that is planted in these children will grow and positively affect the lives of thousands and millions. I understand that policy, and I pray it works, but it’s difficult to see so much given to these children and to turn around and see thousands of other children living in absolute poverty. This weekend we’ll be going out into the surrounding communities a little bit, so I’ll be able to see firsthand the contrast between the village and everything outside it.
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It truly was a beautiful day today. The sun was shining in a sky with big, puffy, white clouds. The birds and butterflies flew around the yards. The flowers were blushing with reds and purples and oranges, and I just had to take some photographs as keepsakes of how beautiful it is here. There was this one bird that I tried to photograph, but it kept flying away from me. It’s about the size of a hummingbird, and it sipped from the flowers, but it’s wings beat too slowly to be a hummingbird. It’s plumage, however, is what really caught my eye: sleek and shiny, green and yellow. Maybe tomorrow I’ll catch it on film.
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This afternoon I played with some of the children at the playground here. They were an absolute, exhausting joy as they kept calling to me, “Uncle! Uncle!” One wanted to be lifted up into a wooden stand, and then 8 others—having seen me do this—wanted the same thing. I can’t remember how many times I helped a child climb across the monkey bars, lifted boys and girls up and down from the wooden stands, and smiled into their laughing faces. One little boy in particular wanted just to be held as I walked around. He couldn’t have been more than 2, and he reminded me of my own Will, back in Indiana with his Mommy and grandparents. I finally had to call it quits, but not before playing a game of tetherball against two of the aunties (I won).
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