Into the Village

Another day at Adziwa, another great day at Adziwa. You can’t go to Adziwa without having a great day. How can you, when everywhere you look someone is smiling, singing a song or playing a game. Life is so simple here, yet so blissful. The biggest joy can be found in the smallest thing.

Lusungu and me

Today, we (Lusungu and I) were going deep into the village as we had met with most of the families on the Adziwa side. While we could knock out families really easily on the Adziwa side, that wasn’t nearly as possible within the village, as the families of the Adziwa program are spread out. Since Lusungu is new on the job, she doesn’t know where all the families live, so Joy went with us as well. We had lots of time to talk in between visits, but mostly Joy and Lusungu talked in chichewa to each other, occasionally they would talk to me. Lusungu asked how I knew that Damien was the one that I was to marry. I explained to her past relationships and how my relationship with Damien was very different. There were things that she could totally relate to. She was saying how she wanted to be married by the time she was 27 and have kids by the time she was 30. She also shared with me how her family lives in England now and how she visits there occasionally but could never live there because it’s too cold. She prefers Malawi over England.

During our journey through the village, we came upon a maize mill where there were several women dancing and singing. I didn’t really think much about it because it seemed pretty normal, right. As we continued walking, the group of ladies left the mill and were behind us, carrying their bags of maize on their heads and singing as they were walking. Lusungu informed me that their was a wedding this weekend and that more than likely this was the groom’s family and they were getting gifts of maize to take to the couple to be and that they would meet up with the bride’s family to deliver the gifts. How I wish I could go to a malawi wedding.

kids playing in the pit

Again, we headed back to Adziwa for the feeding program and also to feed ourselves. After lunch, we had Awana with the kids and today, we had a few extra hands on deck as 4 of the youth men from CCBC came to the village and for some, this was the first time to see it. Matt brought his guitar and him and Moses (one of the CCBC youth) took turns playing songs in english and chichewa. Pete told the bible story about the fish and the loaves. The kids decorated little fish for their craft. After craft the kids played a good old game of toss. Matt and Ellie made a game using 3 circles and a lane and the kids could aim for whatever circle. out of the 5 playing whomever got the best “score” would move onto the finals. The kids love any game and are so unlike the kids in America in this regard. How vast the differences are of this culture and our culture, yet they are so similar. We told the kids see you later when it came time to leave and we headed back to the hotel. Dinner was quite enjoyable, while I cannot remember the exact conversation at this point, I remember quite a bit of laughter.