Wednesday was a great, fun, exhausting day. I think we are all a bit tired from everything we’ve already done this week. We never stop moving here but it is always interesting and fun. On Wednesday, most of the group went to visit local primary schools. We helped to clean the schools by sweeping with the local homemade brooms (made with small branches held together in your hand) and then mopping with old t-shirts on their hands and knees. We went to visit the classrooms where they spoke with the students. The students had lots of questions such as,” What do you eat in America? What do you do for fun? How many languages do you speak? Do you have HIV/AIDS in America? Did you bring a car over with you on the plane?”
While the rest of the group was at the schools, a few of us went to a village to help cook our lunch. We prepared a large community meal for well over 100 people. We cooked outside under the trees over small fires that they built between bricks. They used corncobs, sticks and corn stalks for fuel. We chopped greens, shelled peas and pole beans, and ground nuts (peanuts). We ground up the peanuts with a giant mortar and pestle and added them to the food. We also roasted peanuts and ground that up for the most delicious peanut butter I have ever tasted. We fetched water from the well and carried it back to the cooking area about 200 yards on our heads! We also helped to cook nsima, the local version of cooked cornmeal. To complement the nsima we made “relishes” that are eaten alongside: mustard greens, pumpkin leaves, and sweet potato leaves cooked with tomatoes and ground nuts, okra, and pigeon peas; and goat cooked with tomatoes. All the food was delicious! We sat on the ground in groups of 3-4 and ate out of shared bowls using our right hand. Yes, we wash our hands beforehand by pouring water from a cup over them. After the meal we all thanked the village and the chief for providing such a wonderful meal for us! We all feel blessed to be here.
After the meal we went to see Triza and gave her grandmother medicine for her cough. We passed a large funeral for a chief who had hung himself. No one knows why. We also stopped at a store that sells chitenges, the large cloths that we wrap around ourselves every day.
Now we are packing up. I can’t believe that we leave tomorrow for the safari. I am looking forward to it but I am also sad to leave Zomba and the people of VIP. They do a lot of good work around here.