June & July Adventures with Loz

This here is a photo of miss Lauren Cutler who arrived in malawi on the 14th of June and left again on the 16th of July. Here we are enjoying Nandos the day before she flew home! We had THE MOST fantastic time!! lots more details to follow in the next few days....

Why wouldn't you love a country when....

• You can wear what ever you like! Any fashion is ok! Any clothes can be worn together, any colour, any style..doesn’t matter!
• It only costs $3.50 for a doctors consultation, a blood test and some medicine. Only an extra $1 if you need an xray
• Soft drink comes in glass bottles and cheaper to buy than water!
• Its not at all hard to get proposals for marriage
• people wash each others hands before we eat – a lovely experience
• A meal can be made with very few ingredients – not always a good thing!
• You will laugh and smile more times in a day than you ever have before.
• Bathing naked and washing your clothes in the Lilongwe river is very normal
• The only tolls you have to pay is when crossing the wooden bridges of Lilongwe river. It can be more like a ride at an amusement park if its windy or the construction has been a little dodgy.
• You can walk into a market and you will have instant personal sales assistants who will not only find anything you ask for, but may even offer you a seat to wait on while you look.
• You will be encouraged to catch a minibus despite wanting to travel in the opposite direction
• You can wear thongs every day of the year. So much better than real shoes!
• You’ll never be judged for how many sugars you have in your tea, as it will never be as many as the locals
• You are instantly beautiful, and will receive compliments from everyone if you clothe yourself in national wear
• You can befriend someone instantly with a smile and a simple greeting
• You can make friends for life without even speaking the same language
• It only takes little things to make a persons day
• People know how to really smile
• You are greeted on the streets by people who really DO want to know how you are
• Guys wear pink hats
• You can squat for the toilet anytime you like
• They fill up your petrol for you
• The only food you can buy “drive through” is sugar cane and bananas
• The sunset is spectacular - bigger and more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen
• People sing and dance in public with no inhibitions
• You’ll learn to love to sit in silence and just BE
• You can be entertained for hours with nothing at all
• Thousands of dollars will be saved having children. No prams, pushers, cots, just chitenji on the back.
• You can see world class soccer (well nearly) at the local field for no money at all.
• Peek hour in the capital city is about 20mins from one side of the city to the other
• Lots of money is saved on decorations – you just need white paint for the trees and multicoloured toilet paper
• There are 5 sets of traffic lights and one two lane highway in the capital city
• You’ll learn how to easily love people. without words.
• Life is not ruled by the clock, but by the sun.
• Children can play for hours, and don’t need any entertainment
• Not so many choices. So less decisions
• You can enjoy many dinners by candlelight
• The mangoes are amaaaazing!!!
• You can be an endless supply of nali sauce (did anyone know its made in Malawi?!)
• Your electricity bill is only $8 for a month
• Picking your nose is not only ok, but is common practice even in the middle of conversations.
• You would be terribly unlucky to be booked by the police for an unroadworthy car. Even if your windows are made of heavy duty glad wrap and sticky tape, the door is held on by your passenger, the bumper is made of bamboo and rope or if you use hazard lights as a replacement for your headlights.
• The sounds of people laughing, living & doing life are louder than the sounds of cars and electricity and sirens and television and washing machines and vacuums.
  
  
  
  
  

May Update

I realize that May was a long time ago, but a friend of mine just sent out her Christmas letter from last year, so I figured its NEVER to late!!! More current news is on the way!! For those of you faithfully checking for my updates, im sorry for letting you down. Its hard to catch up when you get behind!

• The kids still love coming over to play after work and on weekends. They can play for hours and hours with very little to entertain them. I love their spontaneous performances of songs, dances and acrobatics the most…. Their enjoyment of the simple things in life is absolutely contagious! I have grown to love these kids immensely. Not sure how I will ever say goodbye!

• I’m making a crazy number of cakes, and everyone still loves them! In general the last few months have been big cooking months…. I had lots of people over for meals which also coincided with our worst month of electricity resulting in candelight dinners every second night. So I have now become a pro cooking on the fire outside! Probably also become a little pyromaniac… I can light a fire in no time at all now.


• Work has been busy, the winter months have been a little cooler here, so the numbers have dropped for a while, giving me some extra time to make lots of resources & toys for the kids. As a team it has given us the chance to evaluate some of our programs and look into ways to become more involved out in the rural communities, which has been really exciting. I have been successful in some funding proposals through aus aid to purchase an earmould making laboratory for hearing aids. Yay!
  
• Harvesting season has been and gone, the tall green maize fields are back to their dry dirt state again. . I spent some time during May helping my friends harvesting their fields. Some of the most exhausting work I have ever done, AND a great deal of fun…


• The last weekend of May saw the first ever “Talents of the Malawi child” musical festival hosted at SOS. It was absolutely sensational, heaps of singing, dancing and cheering! Basically it was an inter-orphanage singing competition. The commentators were children from the timveni radio station, (kids targeting all sorts of different childrens rights issues) Fantastic program! My favourites in the festival were the SOS marimba band of course (but I guess im biased!) and an acapella boys group who had the most breathtaking voices I have ever heard. They were from the reform school up in the mountains (which is actually a kids prison) They have done, seen and experienced things we could never imagine possible from such young children, so to hear them sing about their experiences and see the joy when the crowd went crazy…. wow… it was like a movie moment. everyone was crying or cheering or doing both. I will never EVER forget it! And lastly the boys with the home made instruments. Just awesome. The guitar was made from a Gerry can, some wire and a carved plank of wood, the drums were made from bamboo, maize bags, string, tin cans, and wire. They were amazing, they could dance like I have never seen anyone dance before. Unforgettable moments.


• Met some fantastic French Canadian nuns who run a street kids ministry in town, spent some time visiting their project and learning so much more about kids on the street. Learnt a few lessons about the underground begging agents who steal kids from villages, promising them food, shelter and income in exchange for “work” but who never deliver on the promises and take all of their incomes.


• The first Lady of Malawi passed away, so it is officially a month of mourning, there was a big state funeral that was televised on the local Malawi stations. I went to a friends house and we all sat around on the floor watching the funeral which was rather fascinating. I must admit there was a lot of giggling happening from all of us at times. At the grave side ceremony which was HUGE, the played a very cheerful big marching band performance of old lang sine (??spelling?)… which only reminded me of fun new years parties, and seemed rather out of place. There was also a little disaster when the coffin got stuck going down, and THEN these contractors came in with a giant cement truck. Men in bright blue overalls and matching hard hats all marched in with wheelbarrows and shovels to fill the grave with cement before the tombstone was revealed and sealed. Rather bizarre.


• Oh great news about Rhoda!! Things are moving along nicely and rather miraculously! Air Malawi have offered two free tickets from Lilongwe to J-burg, then one of Rhodas sos sponsers has offered to cover the flights to Australia. We are still in the process of communicating with some doctors in Adelaide for the surgery. So that’s all rather exciting. I am continuing to look into other leads as well, because Rhoda will need many surgeries over the years, but every step is exciting! Thankyou to all of you who have responded to this need in some way! You are a blessing to Rhoda’s life!!! I will keep you updated!!!