Moni mayi & bambo, muli bwanji?

Hi everyone, how’s things?

I can’t really wipe the smile off my face at the moment… Not much more than 24 hours in the country and I just love it, there’s still so much more to see and explore, but I just know I’m in the right place! This is going to be positively sensational!!

The last few days have been an amazing journey, I flew out of Melbourne on Saturday evening, the 24 hours after that were a pretty big struggle for me...mostly absolute complete exhaustion and pretty emotional about saying goodbye to people I love, but also to what has been safe and comfortable for me….i think I underestimated the impact of that… with the many goodbyes, and lots of chats with people about what I was about to set about doing, the reality of it really sunk in a bit that night, anyway, short story… lots of tears and a bit of “I can’t do this anymore” and I finally got myself on the plane to Johannesburg more washed out than I have ever felt in my whole life…within a few minutes the lady sitting next to me had asked a few little questions about where I was going, what I was doing, and she copped a very teary TJ!!! But of course, nothing short of a miracle, God had placed exactly the right person next to me for my 15 hour flight, she was a Christian who grew up in Zimbabwe, missionary parents, and had just experienced a massive move in her life relocating her family to New Zealand, so pretty much couldn’t have been a better person to share my fears with, chat about my plans, get excited about them, be encouraged, prayed for, and totally loved and encouraged by a complete stranger. It was remarkable. Timely reminder that God is with me every step of the way, pretty excellent way to start the journey!

Crazy long flight, I slept only about an hour, watched some movies and had to keep pinching myself that I was actually flying to Africa. Wow.

We (a few other AVI volunteers heading to different parts of Africa) arrived in J’burg and were greeted by Dennis, our skillshare orientation guy, who then took us all to Pretoria where we stayed for the first two nights. Pretoria is a very student oriented place, and at times didn’t even feel as though I was out of Australia. We wondered around a bit to find a place for dinner, which by the time we had sat down and ordered all realized it was actually 5:30am on our old time clocks… so pretty much the longest day of my life at nearly 24 hours straight..! Finally sleeping was sensational! I struggled a lot with jetlag over the next few days, and I’m still not really over it yet, still waking up in the middle of the night thinking its time for breakfast! very weird!! Monday was a great day of orientation, although I did fall asleep accidentally on a few occasions. We took a visit to the Australian embassy, met the high commissioner and the Ausaid program rep for Africa. That was pretty awesome, as they briefed us all on how important volunteers on the ground are at helping appropriately spend the aid budget, teaching us about how to apply for funding grants that may be relevant to our organizations or anything that we see happening that is worthy of financial support… it was very interesting!

But now I’m in Malawi, and I just love it! Lilongwe is really quite big, it’s the capital city of Malawi, and there’s lots of people around!! I still havn’t seen all of it, but tomorrow will be an exploring day! On the flight in to Lilongwe, I was amazed to see little villages, exactly as I’d imagined. Just dry flat land, with circular huts and straw covered roofs, goats and chickens roaming freely, with amazingly dressed women carrying giant loads of all sorts of things on their heads…just balancing there…I think I need to learn how to do that, its awesome! Its very dry at this time of year (winter) but the weather is sensational!!!! I had breakfast outside this morning in the beautiful warm sun, just lovely!! 

Oh my favorite bit of news… Tamara is actually a local name, its rather common her in malawi, directly from the Chichewa language, which has brought much delight to all locals when I have told them my name, so far it has been an instant connection. Everyone keeps asking me where are you from? Have you been to Malawi? Have your parents been here? How did you get this name? they say I was meant to be a local, I was meant to be here, one lovely lady said “welcome home”. So that’s been pretty fun!

I also totally enjoyed the first supermarket visit, just so fun seeing everything look so different! As I expected anything local is totally cheap, but anything imported is terrible. Nutella is $15 dollars for a small jar. Milk comes in these funny little square plastic bags. Oh and the currency here is kwacha, and the biggest note in their currency is equivalent to our $5, so if you have to pay for anything big, you pull out a giant wad of money. 100 kwacha = 1 dollar (approximately)

Today we had a big day of culture training and language learning which was sensational, I learn heaps of things, we had an amazing tutor who works fulltime for the American peace core, he does all of their training (local Malawian) and he was so very funny, and we learnt a lot in one day!

Emma is an English girl who worked for skillshare as a volunteer many years ago when she was 21 and now has, as she describes it, the best job in the whole world… and I thinks she’s right, she has lived, worked or volunteered in many different African countries, and now she lives in an African village by the lake, as the only white person (mzuzu) and freelances as a journalist/photographer for NGO’s, so whenever hey want to collect stories, or do promotion to assist in funding etc. she’s on the job. Its just amazing, she has awesome stories!! Anyway, how she fits into the picture, is that one day a week she works for AVI as the on the ground contact, so she’s our go-to-girl if we have any troubles.


Malawi has an amazing feel about it, the people are so very beautiful and friendly, i learnt today that malawi is the only african nation without war in its history, which is another reason why its called the warm heart of africa, and it certainly feels that way!
I haven't even been to my new home or met the people i will be working with... i technically still haven’t arrived yet, but God has so clearly confirmed for me, that this is were i am meant to be right now, so that’s a start… now the next challenge’s are on the horizon.. yay! The possibilities are simply endless!

Oh I have so much more I want to share, but I need to sleep now.

Look forward to hearing from you!!!

Love TJ