Life in Malawi

Daily Life

As you can see from the pictures, I have a very nice house to stay in. It is located on Stephanos Foundation compound. This is a space somewhere down a dirt road behind the Chileka airport where I landed when I came here. It houses an office complex, 4 hostels for girls in the VTC (Vocational Training Center – basically like a technical college), 4 boarding houses for children in the primary school, a doctor/tailor office, a few other employee’s houses (like mine), a maize mail, the primary school and VTC classrooms. The compound is not totally surrounded by brick walls and barbed wire. However there are guards posted at every entrance for security reasons. That’s just something that is done here.

In general, Malawians are very friendly and I don’t have to worry for my safety here. When I drive in unfamiliar places, I stop anywhere and ask people for directions. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be wise. I try to avoid driving or being out at night. After all, my skin kind of glows in the dark.

Weekly, at Stephanos, there are week openings and closings to attend. Also, I have been sitting in class with the Standard 8 students (what we call grade 8 in Canada) when they have Chichewa class. It’s been helpful to gain exposure to the language, and slowly but surely add more vocabulary. I almost never go outside of my house without taking a bag which has my water bottle, a notebook and pen and most importantly, my dictionary!

Everything I do lately, is planned around my Chichewa lessons. I have a few weeks left of my official training and after that, I will have to see what I do.

Sundays

Sundays, as usual, I am awake between +/-6AM. The sun is shining brightly, the roosters are crowing, birds are singing and everyone is awake. I enjoy my quiet time for a few hours since the church service starts at 10AM. Since it is located just outside of the compound I don’t need to leave until 9:45. The church service starts with a lesson from the Westminster Catechism before moving into the church service. It mostly looks like a service in Canada with a few minor differences.

Everyone recites the Apostle’s Creed after the reading of the Ten Commandments. Also, when it is time for the Sunday collection (which happens after the sermon), everyone walks to the front of church to deposit their money in the basket placed there for that purpose. The elders go first, then the men and boys, and then the women and girls. (Also, men sit on one side of the church, women on the other). There is also no organ. In Malawi, singing is done with introductions by the lead singer – which can be anyone. It’s hard to explain. Some songs are only sung by the choir, others by the whole church. For the rest though, there are a lot of similarities in the order of the service.

Often after church, I have been eating lunch with some of the children. I end up talking somewhere and then someone shows up with a plate of food for me. Eventually I make my way back to my house to spend some time reading, etc. I will also try to listen to a sermon in the evenings.

There is only 1 service per Sunday. However, here on the compound there is Sunday school for the boarding children at 4pm. There is time for some singing, Bible reading, prayer and of course, a Bible story.

Like almost every other day of the week, I prepare for bed +/- 9:00. It’s almost like the day just shifts up a few hours. It’s completely dark already by 6PM and the only thing that happens here after dark is midweek prayers for the boarding children (similar to Sunday school on Sundays). After spending some time cooking – for some reason, I have to do that multiple times a day – I enjoy a bit of time here in my house, before crawling into my bed, closing my mosquito net with clothespins and falling asleep to the night noises (think crickets chirping, owls hooting and dogs howling – maybe even the occasional hyena). zzzzzz