Finally, Another Blog

Sorry it’s been a little while since we last wrote. The internet place closes at 4:30 pm and is on the opposite side of town as our youth project. Plus, we’ve had many recent days without power – including the first part of today. I’ll try to make up for this, and do a little recap of the last two weeks.

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Two weekends ago, we had a great opportunity to visit the family of Wallace Salanje, one of our youth leaders at the centre. Wallace grew up in Mukuta village, about a 1.5-hour bike ride from Balaka town. The morning of our journey, we woke early to a divided sky – sun before us, foreboding clouds behind us. We met at Margaret’s place to get our bike taxis and started off toward the now shrinking patch of blue sky. Only 30 minutes into our journey the clouds caught up to us. The rains were torrential and within minutes we were soaked through and freezing cold (not a good day to wear a white shirt). Our bike taxis pressed on for another hour, through the mud and the muck until we FINALLY arrived at Wallace Salanje’s village.



We caught the Salanjes off guard, as there was no way to communicate with them as to when we were coming to visit. Even so, they prepared a nice meal of rice for us and made us feel at home. They even gave us their clothes to wear so ours could dry. After visiting for a few hours (and doing a family photo shoot), the rains had subsided enough for us to journey home. It was a long, exhausting, and ever memorable day. Wallace’s parents were so happy to hear that their boy was a good and respectful student. Wallace boards at a secondary school in Balaka town, so they don’t get to see him often. Our visit showed them how thankful we are for his help at the centre, and really boosted their confidence in their hard-working son.





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Last week we spent a lot of time with our youth centre staff. Margaret led a session on personality types. The Eneagram is a popular personality tool here in Balaka (it originated in Italy) and Margaret really enjoyed teaching on how we are all parts of one body. Some people are the hands, others the feet etc. We learned that I’m a number ONE – the perfectionist. Margaret is a number TWO – the helper/servant. Dustin’s a number NINE – the dreamer. We’re still working on Mr. Ngumbi and Isaac.

We had some sessions on various topics related to the youth center. One was HIV, and an effective integration of messages into our activities. We had observed that some of the dramas and songs the youth perform about AIDS focus only on the woman’s role – often a demonized role of woman as prostitute. We talked about the danger of focusing so heavily on this area, and not on men’s responsibility to their wives and families. We discussed why HIV is so prevalent here and used these answers to branch into a talk on holistic approaches to HIV.

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This week we have been meeting with Wallace and Grace, our two strongest youth leaders, to discuss a new segment of our youth program. While the youth centre is going strong, we see so much potential for learning in even smaller groups. In the States we were researching programs like the Boy and Girl Scouts etc, and trying to find equivalents that might be relevant to Africa. We failed to find anything close to what we were looking for. As such, we’re working on our own sort of curriculum. This will be keeping us very busy in the coming weeks.



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On another note, we now have new cell phones (the others were stolen). Our numbers are 08764420 and 08764421. If you want to call us you can find decent calling cards at www.callingcards.com. Just remember when you call to dial 011 + 265 before our number. You will also likely need to remove the first ‘zero’ of our number (just start with eight).

Also, we are moving into a new house by March 1. Our current landlord is raising the rent and we don’t feel like the place is worth the price. We’ll now be staying in Majiga One (that’s the name of the neighborhood), which is closer to the youth centre and the market etc. We think it will be a good move. It’s also a better place to house future volunteers!

Gotta go! Hope life is treating you well.