First days and things are already moving along.

I apologize for spelling and grammar. These posts are written “on the fly” and posted when I’m able to get to wifi connection.

The group has all arrived. I can’t say that the airport pickups were uneventful though. I had one volunteer arriving on the 9th and the rest arriving on 2 different flights on the 10th. In both cases I waited until all passengers (or I thought all) had exited the baggage area and then I had to work my way into the baggage and visa area and search for them. My volunteers were the last out of the area and the last to get visas. A little stressful on my end, but all of them were completely happy and excited to be in Malawi. Flights from the USA are long, but once we were all together everyone’s spirits were great.
Our first afternoon and evening went quickly. Getting adjusted to new surroundings and meeting new people makes the time fly by. We had a great dinner all together and then all went to bed by 9pm.
The group knew we had an early morning so nobody fussed about heading to bed early.
Monday morning was our first volunteer day. The group was excited to make the walk to Adziwa and get a tour. I wanted them all to get the lay of the land and see what past groups had done in the community and then learn the details of what we hoped this group could accomplish. We always start with a plan and let everyone know things may change, but having a target is always best.
We actually ended up accomplishing more than what we had planned for he day. The group met the children and head teacher as well as the teachers helpers. We also of course spent time with Tovia and her little one Long. Tovia provided us with a tour of the entire community and answered questions about the garden and Learning Center.
After the tour our volunteers split up to dig the holes needed for the TippyTaps. Last week I had the community decide where they wanted the four hand washing stations to go. We marked the spots and the ladies dug each hole. It looked much easier than it ended up being. Seems that’s always the way 🙂
After digging we went to see Tovia’s storage room. This is where all of the learning materials and toys are stored. It was in desperate need of a complete clean out. The volunteers all worked well together with Tovia and begin creating piles of things that needed to be sorted and piles of things that needed to be thrown away. There were some small struggles between what we thought needed to be thrown away and what Tovia wanted to throw out. I understand that it’s hard to let things go when supplies are so hard to get. Some of the items really needed to go though. Many of the mattresses and stuffed toys were old and I knew had never been cleaned. This can cause illness for the children so I stepped in and explained why we couldn’t keep them. Some tense moments, but in the end everyone understood why certain items had to be thrown out or burned and not passed along to other people or kept at the center. The job was dirty and big! Lots of dust, lots of things to sort and even some scrubbing that needed to be done. We saw a huge improvement though. After a few hours of cleaning we took a break for lunch.
Since we started early and had accomplished so much we decided that after we ate we would try and get the project to a stage that we could walk away from it for the day. We put everything back in the store room and locked it all up. I needed to organize concrete that would be needed tomorrow so I went to handle that. Once I was done the group was also and we headed back to our village.
A few of the volunteers are wearing FitBits and we figured out that even before we arrived back we had all already walked over 12,000 steps! This was a big surprise to all of us!
Now the group is sitting outside having their language lesson. I’m sure tonight will be filled with lots of practicing and teasing each other about what each of them was able to remember. This seems like a smart group of women so I think they will all be experts for tomorrow’s walk through the community 🙂
We will be setting the hand washing stations in concrete tomorrow and continuing the storage room clean out. Everyone is getting along great and having a good time. All the volunteers send love to those of you waiting on updates.