School Uniforms in Orphan Outreach

I’m finally getting around to blogging again.  The delay is certainly not because of a lack of things happening over here.  I blame busyness a little bit, but mostly I blame my procrastinating ways.  Hopefully I can make up for it with a few blogs in relatively quick succession. 

We are at the mid-term mark of the term, and I am very much enjoying my classes and my students.  I have the same group of students for John and 1 John as well as Doctrine of Last Things.  There are only 5 of them, but it works really well for discussion in class.  With that, however, it is very easy to fall behind on what I’ve planned to cover for the term.  I think the content that I prepared for the first lesson lasted through three!  Quite frequently they will pipe in with a huge and important question that requires much more than a quick answer.  Fairly often it is a little off-topic, but as they are third years (i.e. are graduating this year) and it is the last term, it is more important to answer these questions than to finish the syllabus.  Besides, education here works better contextually than systematically anyway, so it’s good to go with the flow.  I’ve also been trying new things in class like bringing a guitar to class and singing songs related to the course content (for Doctrine of Last Things it’s super easy to find choruses).  I’m opening up assignment possibilities too with options between sermons, papers, song compositions, and story-telling (within the African story-telling genre).  We’ll see what they all decide on.

A few of these pedagogical adjustments are the result of a week-long conference that I went to in Johannesburg, South Africa just before Easter.  It was a joint AIM-SIM (Africa Inland Mission and Serving In Mission) conference for those involved in theological education in southern Africa.  There were 44 people there, including both ex-pats and nationals from Mauritius, Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Namibia, and South Africa.  I think the best part of the conference was simply meeting and talking with people from all over and learning about struggles and activities in other countries.  Hearing things like a whole Bible school (well, a school of under 10 students) being run by one man (principal, academic dean, dean of students, lecturer, etc.) has helped me see how special a place EBCoM is.  It also turns out that student-food crises are not unique to EBCoM, but seems to be an all-too-familiar story all around.  

The whole group in Jo-Bug

There were four of us who came to the conference from EBCoM – 2 nationals, the Principal and Dean of Students, and 2 SIM missionaries.  The sessions were on various topics; the main one was on Celebrating Differences, which looked at identifying and adapting to/communicating well with different personality types/communication styles.  Other sessions included Teaching Preaching and Using Music for Theological Colleges.  Anyway, it was both an enjoyable and helpful conference, and the team of us that went from EBCoM have since run a session with the rest of the EBCoM staff to share a little bit of what we’ve learned and would like to enrich EBCoM with.  (Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, unfortunately I was down in South Africa just for the conference and didn’t manage to do anything else while I was there).

Patrick

Near the beginning of April I was invited to visit the home of one of the students, Patrick, in Zomba (the former capital, only about an hour drive from Blantyre).  He and his wife have begun a small school for teaching orphan children in his area.  While he is studying, his wife and a couple others are running things, but he goes there fairly frequently on weekends.  It is very encouraging to hear of his deep love for the children and his joy in being with them.  He bends over backwards to help them, and in addition to teaching, he and his wife also provide them with a meal every day.  Anyway, he had managed to work for and raise enough money to make up some school uniforms for them, and so he invited me for the occasion when he was going to hand them out.  (School uniforms for the younger ages seems to be a Malawi-wide thing for both public and private schools.  Unlike how I think they would be received in Canada, the children here were so excited to receive them, and for most, the uniforms were in much better shape than their own clothes).  So, I took a minibus up to Zomba for the occasion.  I didn't count on having to wait about an hour for the minibus to fill before we headed out though.  Unlike buses in Vancouver, minibus usually only leave when they are full, not according to any regular schedule, and for out-of-town buses, this can take quite a while.  Patrick met me when I arrived and took me through his village, introducing me as the alendo (visitor).  They seemed to be very impressed with my little bit of Chichewa.  He showed me his small school building, which had been provided by the village headman (lower-level chief).  After lunch, we went to another place where I was left to wait and chat with another man while Patrick got everything ready for the event.  We were left to wait quite a while and I was conscious of the time since it is dark by 6 and I still had an hour-and-a-half minibus ride back to Blantyre.  I think a little after 3 Patrick came back and things were ready. 

It ended up being a fairly big event with the village headman being there as well as representatives of a couple of organizations, the kids themselves, their guardians, and their teachers.  Oh, right, and as the azungu, I was the honoured guest.  Apparently, Patrick had told people that an azungu was going to come, but people didn’t believe him.  Haha.  It was actually a little over the top at some points.  I just wanted to be there to see a little of what Patrick was up to, and I’m not one who likes to be in the spotlight, but as the “honoured guest” I was asked to do the opening prayer, make a speech, and be the one to hand out the uniforms!  (I handed out the first batch of uniforms to the teachers, who got matching chitenjis as uniforms, but then relinquished the honour of handing out to Patrick himself.  Hopefully that didn’t offend anyone).  The program itself started off with some singing from the teachers and then from the kids, and then some actions/games with the kids.

After that was time for speeches from the different representatives, the village headman, and, of course, the azungu.  Then the uniforms were handed out and pictures ensued.  The kids were super happy to be receiving the uniforms.  Sadly, there was still not quite enough for all the kids, and there were some sad faces and tears as a result.  I’m pretty sure that by now all have received uniforms though.  I made a contribution to help things along, but at the same time I didn't want to give too much and spoil the good thing that's going on - i.e. grassroots resourcefulness.

By the end of the program, the day was getting on, and I needed to get back to Blantyre, so I said my goodbyes and made my way to catch a minibus home.  I arrived back in Limbe (the sketchier part of Blantyre) already a little after dark, and still had to take two different minibuses and walk a bit home, but all went well and I arrived home safely.

That more-or-less wraps up this posting.  I will just mention in addition (and leave the rest for pictures) that I had the opportunity to go to a wildlife reserve called Nyala Park here in Malawi.  It's a little artificial in that it's a relatively small area with tons of animals in it, but it's certainly far better than any zoo.  Those pictures, along with more from Zomba and Johannesburg can be seen here (http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.538942389776.2036314.180500047&l=f5cfbc0c65).  Also, for your enjoyment, just below is a short video of a monkey showing off.  I hope to have a couple more posts up before too long (i.e. not after 2 months again).  Thanks for reading.