Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

20 Nov

Is this what it’s like to be Bono or Bieber?

Posted by Pat Gilligan in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , .

My posts are a little out of sync right now because of the spotty internet access we had so I am not going to continue the naming convention I was using.

Today we visited a youth center in the World Vision Mlonyeni Area Development Program area. Once again the children are the highlight of this visit, there were so many of them and they were just clamoring to get up close and have a look at these strangers. This photo was taken as we pulled into the driveway of the youth centre. These children were the first to spot the World Vision vehicle and came running towards us excitedly waving and yelling something in their Chichewa language. The only thing I could make out was “mzungu”, which means “white person”, which we hear a lot. One of the translators tells us that the children are yelling out “our sponsors are here, our sponsors are here!” which has been burned in my memory and is still emotional to think about – if you just could have seen and heard how excited they were. I’m not sure where they got this idea because none of us were their sponsors.

And this is a couple of minutes later as we were trying to exit the Land Cruiser! I keep wondering – is this what it is like to be Bono or Justin Bieber? I’m quite certain the feeling couldn’t come close to this.

They had an entire program setup for us to see the kinds of things they were doing including a performance by this African/Reggae band, they were really good! The really interesting thing about this was that even though the band was using a mixer, electric guitars, mics, etc., there was no power! Actually, outside of major cities, electricity doesn’t seem to exist. So how did this happen? Another amazing World Vision project! They actually installed solar panels on the roof of this building which provided the power for the band as well as lights and a few other things around the complex.

When the band starting playing a lot of the older boys and young men ran to the front and started dancing! The guy on the right is “Wezzie” a World Vision staff member from Malawi and one of our translators. This man was absolutely hilarious, and this was a totally spontaneous act which had us almost falling off our chairs laughing. We will never forget this guy!

I included this picture for Andy – check out the drum sticks!

This seems a bit random but have a look at the following photo. One of our hosts takes me to this back room to show me something. He is quite proud to show me the work performed by the wood working group at the youth center. It seems they make coffins and sell them! I keep trying to ask why coffins, why not tables or shelves or anything? There is a bit of a language barrier and he is not really getting my point. The fact is there is a market for these and people are happy to get the good deal they get buying them from the youth center. He is very proud showing me this.

This young man was running a barbershop on the site of the youth center. He is using electric equipment that is powered by the World Vision solar panels and is leasing this small space from the youth center. This is a little girl getting the traditional cut that is apparently mandated by the government along with the school uniforms they all wear.

I asked if I could get my hair cut like theirs (I was ¾ of the way there anyway), and the barber indulged me. Again, the children didn’t quite know what to make of this “mzungu” in their barbershop; they crowded the doorway of the tiny bamboo structure to get a look at something they have never seen before. The price for the children was 30 Kwatchas, but was going to be 40 for me, I guess because of the size of my head. It somehow ballooned to 200 by the time it was finished.

So here we are preparing to leave and we are treated to the same send-off that we are getting everywhere we go.

Here are a few random photos of this visit to finish off this post (check out the homemade soccer ball, I actually left them 2 new soccer balls here, they had none)…

11 Nov

Day 2, Part 2, Malawi – Tembwe Village

Posted by Pat Gilligan in Children, Malawi, Uncategorized, World Vision. Tagged: , , , .

This morning we visited a village called “Tembwe Village”. I am going to have to keep this post relatively short and focus more on the pictures because we are packing up tonight for an early start to Lake Malawi, which is about a four hour drive from here. As I am writing this it is actually day 5 here, not day 2 but the days are so packed and there is so little time in the evening to write, not to mention the daily power outages.

Tembwe Village is similar in many ways to the village I wrote about in the previous posts, I have noticed however that the children here were not that afraid of us compared to the other village. We were greeted in a similar manner to which we were greeted the other day at the first village, absolutely amazing singing and dancing in beautifully coloured clothing, this seems to be a custom because it happens to us almost every day – It is absolutely an incredible experience, I love it. As you can see from the picture below, this is definitely a smaller group than the group that met us on our first day, the reason for this is that it is all women that belong to a breastfeeding club that has been setup by World Vision.

Very young children getting sick and dying is a big problem here and one of the major causes is because women have not had a proper understanding of breastfeeding. Most believed that feeding their babies occasionally was adequate, and their primary diet was some sort of corn meal that did not provide them with the required nutrition. They have also been taught generation after generation, that they should never feed their babies the first milk right after they are born. In fact the opposite is true, and without this first milk they are actually missing the antibodies required to fight off germs and disease. World Vision is aware of these misconceptions and sets up “clubs” in these villages to educate women on the correct procedure. Woman after Woman got up and spoke to the benefits they have seen since this education process has been established. They all acknowledged that their children were no longer getting sick and were growing up much healthier.

One of the women (kneeling) is giving a demonstration on how they make corn meal. The lady standing is “Ivy”, our World Vision contact that has setup all of our visits and acts as our translator.

This is the community bathroom…

And, this is the toilet…

I’m still a bit of a curiosity here, the children are usually a little reserved and shy at first, but once they have had their picture taken, they can’t get enough. They actually swarm you trying to get their face in front of the camera yelling “jambala” (I would be amazed if that is the correct spelling), which means “take my picture”, and “me”, “me”, then they giggle and laugh when you show them their image on the camera. Nothing gathers a crowd faster than that here.

This is a typical reaction; this young girl hovered around with the other children at first in a curious manner, but would run and hide if I pointed the camera at her – finally she reluctantly gave into it as though something might happen to her, laughing the whole time. Once they show an interest in having their picture taken I would concentrate on making sure I got their picture. Once I do it always appears to be the greatest thing to them. The innocence of these amazing children is absolutely unbelievable, we have now seen hundreds of children up close and I have yet to see an exception to this.

After the demonstration in the village, we returned to our meeting place at the edge of a large field with 2 rough soccer goal posts setup. This was a good time to give the children of the village one of the soccer balls that I had brought along. You can barely see the ball in the photo below, but after an invitation to come and put their hands on it and get their picture taken at the same time we had pretty much all of the children in attendance touching the ball. If you would like to see what almost all children use for a soccer ball, have a look at the next picture. I mentioned to our driver one day that I wanted to find someone with one of these homemade balls that would be interested in trading me for a new one. The next morning he showed up to pick us up and had this ball, sent from his son to trade me for a new one. I didn’t notice it immediately, but it appeared as though this ball had never touched the ground. He confirmed for me that when his son heard the offer that was on the table, he spent his evening making this ball!

As you can see, the homemade ball is significantly smaller than a standard #5 ball, but it is quite amazing how it is put together. Now that I have seen them all over the place, they are normally covered with some plastic garbage bags to make them waterproof. You will see in future posts that I am giving away a few of these to schools and other organizations wherever we go. In all of these places, with the hundreds of children I have now seen, I have not seen one real soccer ball.

After the kids played soccer for a little bit, this one ended up being the caretaker of the ball…

7 Nov

Day 1, Malawi – Can’t imagine ever being the same after today

Posted by Pat Gilligan in Malawi, Sponsor, Uncategorized, World Vision. Tagged: , , , .

Today was the first day of my adventure with World Vision in Malawi, and to be totally honest, if they told us that we had to go home tomorrow I would feel that everything would have been more than worthwhile. This day started out with about a one hour drive outside the capital city of Lilongwe.

Driving around outside the city of Lilongwe is in itself a very eye opening, and almost heart-breaking experience. The highways are busy enough with traffic, but the view of everyday life on the side of road practically everywhere you go is unbelievable. An almost constant stream of people either walking or on beat-up old bicycles on either side of the road is always evident. Mothers carrying youngsters in brightly coloured cloth, cleverly wrapped around themselves, often carrying items of all description on their heads including water, suitcases and other kinds of packages. People carrying items from branches to other things of value, anything, possibly an old bicycle rim or other things that would have long been in the dump at home, are common here. Children in tattered, colourful clothing play together on the side of the road with sticks or rocks or mangy looking dogs, sometimes standing alone, occasionally waving at our Land Rover. Domestic animals including goats, pigs, chickens, guinea fowl, bony cattle and mangy dogs are everywhere, but not in any kind of enclosure, barn or paddock, they roam freely on the side of the road, quite often standing in the middle of the road.

Often when you go to a country that is known for poverty, you will see a mix of people living in some level of poverty mixed with other more middle or higher class residences. This is not the case here – it is all the same kind of house and there is no mistaking the blatant and rampant poverty – there is no exception to this that I have seen. My first view of this was in driving from the airport, it was more than a little shocking to me and I actually felt myself losing my composure (actually everything I could do to not cry to tell you the truth). I have found that even after one day of constantly seeing this, I am getting used to it, and I wanted to make that I commented on this while the feeling was still fresh, I didn’t want to become desensitized and not report exactly what I felt.

Something else happened today that I will never forget for the rest of my life; World Vision took us to a remote village this morning to see the kind of work that they have done on behalf of child sponsors in the area of health and sanitation. While this work was impressive, it is the reception that we got that completely blew me away. This village is called “Domo”, and is a remote village so far off the main roads that had we not been in the Land Rover, we never would have made it. Quite honestly, I’m not sure if anyone had any idea of what was about to happen, but as we negotiated this very rough path through the reddish dirt “road”, some children started appearing on the road. They waived, and started running after us.

These children were from the village that we were going to and I had no idea what was in store for us. Remember that my limited, but only experience with this country is a lot of people that just looked as though they were doing anything they possibly could to scratch the barest of existence from this country.

It turned out that the village of Domo was a small place with no stores, no business of any kind, just approximately 400 people growing tobacco, or whatever they can to support their families. Many of these children are also supported by World Vision sponsors.

To provide some further context, something we did not find out until later was that most of the people in this village had never seen anyone that didn’t look like them, including white people (or “mzungu” as they call us)! Believe it or not, young children were crying, and not with glee or happiness, they were afraid! Happily this situation did not last and the children couldn’t get enough of us, especially when we showed them their pictures we were taking of them. This turned out to be a real ice-breaker with the children, because almost all of them had never seen their own image before.

As we pulled into the village in our World Vision Land Runners, what seemed like hundreds of people, women in beautiful brightly coloured wraps, many carrying children either on their backs or in front of them in simple cloth slings, mostly barefoot, children of all ages wearing all manner of simple little coloured dresses or t-shirts, some with slogans or sayings on them, also mostly barefoot, and men wearing long pants and a variety of coloured button up long and short sleeve shirts all wearing shoes, singing the most amazing tribute song to us! They were singing in their native language, which is Chichewa.  According to our translators, the song went something like this:

We are excited to welcome our visitors!  You have travelled all the way from Canada to visit us!

Have a look at this video – this is what was happening as we exited the trucks.  Apparently they made this tribut song just for our visit, and we have no idea how long they prepared because an entire ceremony followed which I will detail below this video.  This was the 2nd of many times today (including as I write and recount the experience right now) that I just about totally lost it and started crying.  This is hard to appreciate, and is why I am making sure I write it down now, I know that when I get back to reality I may not include things like this, but it is important and was that impactful on all of us.  Have a look at this …

This wasn’t all that happened today, but it is getting late and apparently we do this all over again tomorrow so I am going to post a part 2 to this tomorrow.

6 Nov

Arrival in Lilongwe, Malawi

Posted by Pat Gilligan in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

After leaving from Schipol Airport in Amsterdam Saturday evening around 8:30, we landed in Nairobi Kenya, on Kenya Airlines, at approximately 7:30 the following morning. A quick one-hour layover and we were off to Lusaka, Zambia, also with Kenya Airlines. We stayed on the plane waiting for our flight to Lilongwe, Malawi, our final destination. Our proximity to the equator was very obvious at this point as the air conditioning on this particular Boeing 767-300 wasn’t functional while the engines were not running.

After all of this travel through so many different airports on an unfamiliar continent, the sight of our World Vision contacts waiting for us at the Lilongwe Airport was a welcome sight. We have been speaking with each other for several months now on conference calls, email and social networks, it seemed like we knew each other for a long time when we finally met. This is a photo of us getting ready to leave the airport with the World Vision group, they have two SUV/Jeep style vehicles for transporting us around the country over the next couple of weeks. They immediately took over looking after our luggage and making us feel welcome. The girl on left is Joanna, she is from World Vision Canada and is our guide for this trip. The two gentlemen on the right are our drivers “Innocent” and “Cosmas” (yes, his name is really “Innocent”).

Joanna has done this all over the world for World Vision and she really gives you a lot of confidence in her abilities to understand local culture, know what to do and what not to do, etc., and basically pave the way to make this a great experience for everyone. She arrived several days before we did to make sure that everything was ok and to check out our accommodations around the country. One thing she discovered is that there is a gas shortage here which causes people to line up for gas for hours only to have the station sell out before they get any gas. One of our drivers lined up at 3:00 AM the other morning to get gas and still hadn’t got any by 10:00 AM. She has managed to secure enough for our trip. One other issue is that when there is no gas, finding supplies can also be difficult. One critical thing we need here is bottled water, we have been highly advised to not touch anything that has been rinsed in tap water, it can quickly ruin a trip like this.

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