If you remember a few months ago I told you I wanted to know the people in the village by name. Each person has a story, each person has value. Therefore here are some of the people of Malawi. These are the people I learned to love in the village, here are a few of my favorites. Something Amazing had the opportunity to help some of these people out.
1. Chino
Chino is a man of many trades, he owns a bicycle repair shop, a few bicycle taxis, is a priest, and he always has a few bee hives in which he keeps. I met Chino on the first few days I was here in Malawi. 
The first few days I needed a bicycle fixed, at first, he tried to over charge us, but we promised if he gave us a good price we would only come back to him. This friendship formed and we now stop by his bike shop every day. One day Chino invited me and Tarik (the German I lived with) to go see his bee hives. Not realizing we were going to collect honey, it was probably one of the single handed dangerous things I’ve watched here. Chino and his brother, with no protective gear other than long sleeves, started making a fire under the bees nest to make them sleepy. As the flames got higher and the bees got lower, all I could hear is Chino saying. “Don’t be afraid, but be careful.” After about 30 minutes of battling bees, we got the sweetest honey I have ever tasted. Chino recently got he be stolen, which greatly affects his business. Sometimes in life, you have to reward amazing people when life tries to get them down in life.
2. Vincent Msiska.
Vincent is the Manager of the local organization I partnered up with, Kingfisher. He is dependable, hard working, and wonderful family man. 
Vincent is my number one person here in Malawi. He makes sure we are safe, that we have a translation when needed and that no one tries to take advantage of us. He makes sure everything is in place when we are going to help local people in the village. Vincent has 2 young daughters, Patience age 6 and Theleza age 3. An example of the type of father Vincent is, one day I gave Vincent 6 Oreos from my care package I got. For my knowledge, he ate all the cookies and we went on about our day. Later in the day, we stopped by each of his daughter schools to pay school fees and he proceeded to give 3 cookies to each daughter. I thought this was extremely sweet due to not always having the ability to buy sweets for his daughters. Sometimes it is the small things in life that can make a child’s day better. Something Amazing has sponsored his daughters in order to go to school. Vincent is also our proud manager back in Malawi over one of our new employees.
3. Mr. Konchera.
Mr. Konchera is the standard 6 teacher at the primary school I teach at. He is one of my favorite teachers at the school. In the beginning of my time here he seemed to never show up, but the last month he has been wonderful. Mr. Konchera said once about the strike, “I will teach my students. It doesn’t matter about the money at this point. The government doesn’t know this child, but I do. My kids will not do good on the end of the year test if things
continue this way.” He was the first teacher to acknowledge that the teachers are directly related to how the students can progress in society. Not many teachers were able to figure that out. I will forever have respect for the man. We also made a deal that if he came on time and to school every day for two weeks we would take him to the lake with us, for a mini vacation. He is in his later years in life and has never seen Lake Malawi which is only an hour from him.
4. Patience
Patience is a young girl, Vincent met a few months ago. Her mom has had leg cancer for the last 12 years. This makes it impossible for her to work or make any type of living. Patience mom was confined to crawling on the floor due to a lack of a wheelchair, we took her to the hospital and became aware of a program that provides wheelchairs for free. Patience struggles in school but really wants to learn and become better. I tutored her twice a week in English and math. 
She seemed to improve with the extra help that she got. Patience lived in subpar living conditions with the lack of food, a proper house and fully taking care of her mom. Patience and her mom slept on the floor of her brother’s house, not receiving a lot of food and unsure how long they could stay in the house. One of Something Amazing’s volunteers decided to help build Patience and her mom a house. Through trials and tribulations, she finally got a house. (I’ll post a blog about the house later.) One of my favorite memories of Patience was when I took Patience to get her new uniforms and asked if she wanted to pick up a little snack since we were hungry. Many children in Malawi do not get a chance to a be a kid since they are constantly taking care of their parents o the family. Patience is one of those kids, so when I asked her if she wanted a snack her eyes lit up as she grabs bags of chips to take to school. Patience and her mom are part of Something Amazing’s empowering the community program, we have and will continue to help with school supplies, school uniforms, and food.
You can help by clicking the link to the right.
Every day I miss the people of Malawi. Every day I feel as though I should be back over there. Many people did get on my nerves during my time in Malawi. Just like how a child gets on a parents nerves, that parent doesn’t stop loving that child. I will always love the community in Malawi, and maybe there is more to this story.
Enjoy this video of us at a birthday party. The little kids can dance!
Until next time,
Stay awesome
Jill
In school, I met a bunch of wonderful kids who were eager to learn. A willingness that isn’t even comparable to most Danish student’s – and even my own by that age. This makes it even more unbearable when most of the teachers don’t show up for work. However, it pushed me into performing actual lessons for the kids. Since I’ve never taught in a school before, this was quite nerve wrecking. But I realized that anything is better than nothing – and we sure had fun! My background in social education work gives me another perspective on how kids learn, and the teacher of grade 5 was definitely surprised when I made the whole class jump around like kangaroos from Australia! But this is a balance. From what I’ve learned about volunteering in Africa, you must respect and understand the culture to be part of it. And in this position, you can share knowledge – and both parts get wiser.
My money was short, but I realized something after worth: maybe I could have both given the woman a house and employed people in the process of building it? The locals expected me to – “cause I’m the rich white person” – but I was too focused on just having a finished house for them to move into. Luckily I will keep on learning every day – and volunteering abroad teaches me a lot.
The roles of men and women are simply: the women are the main providers, whether that is bringing home money, taking care of the children, or doing all of the house duties. The women are to go fetch water, get firewood, or sell the harvest. Men and women are not respected on the same level and I have experienced this first hand. For example, an older gentleman that works at the campsite asked Ernest (A fellow Malawian female) to go fetch water, since she was busy I went instead. I got about 5 liters of water,(4 really big bottles of water) which I had to walk about 10 minutes in total to retrieve the water. It was not a far walk but can become difficult due to the amount of water I was carrying. When I returned about 20 minutes later, the older gentlemen asked, “Why I only got 5 liters of water instead of the 15 liters?” This would have been a fair question if 5 other guys were not simply just sitting around doing nothing. I simply replied, “Your welcome for the 5 liters of water, and one of your other men can go get the other 10 liters.” It is seen in this culture that, fetching water, regardless of how far or how heavy it is a women’s job. I have walked into rooms and have not been acknowledged solely due to the fact I was a woman. This has made me want to flip many tables. Many of the times I am by far the most qualified person in a room, due to experience in teaching, almost fully completing a degree, owning a nonprofit, and have done lots of research on developing nations, but I have been overlooked due to my gender. This is their cultural I cannot change it I must accept it. Now I simply stay quiet and observe the people around me.
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The class periods are about 25 minutes long, many times after a class period the teacher will call for a break, which should last about 10 minutes, but usually last roughly 30 minutes. There have been many days that teaching has been disrupted for the students to build bricks or pick corn in the field. I have not truly understood this method completely, and probably never will due to the cultural difference. It is very often that school has finished at about 11:30 am and all the students are sent home.
Something Amazing will be donating new uniforms to the students that do not have a uniform roughly 35. We also will be repairing the broken uniforms and making them like new. The students have a sense of pride when wearing these uniforms. We want to ensure each child can feel a sense of happiness when coming to school and not a sense of shame because they cannot afford a uniform. School should be a place of refugee when a home situation is not ideal. Something Amazing has hired a local tailor which will help make all of the uniforms for the students within the next few weeks.
Riding my bike to school for forty minutes, past beautiful mountains and many Maze (corn) fields is absolutely breathe taking. Saying, “Mwawuka,” (Good morning) to every person and they respond, “Nauka Makola Kwalimwe” (Good morning, I am Fine) gives me a sense of being welcomed into the community. Having all the students run towards you as you ride into school. Or all the students staring while I speak English, gives me a sense of curiosity from the students. Coming home to a wonderfully cooked meal by my Host family and eating dinner together as family. Gives me a sense of a family away from home. Even though all of these things happen daily; a large part of me struggled this past week.
The way that the students must learn is through memorization because there is only a textbook enough for the teacher. Many times teacher will show up to school an hour late or not at all. This makes learning disruptive, or for that day there is no learning that happens. These are systematic problems that needs to be address. 
Thankfully my house has running water, electricity, cold clean drinking water, regular showers (only cold water, unless you want to heat up water then using it like a bucket shower), a normal toilet and lots of food. The unknown before coming put a lot of fear into my mind and heart. “God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love and a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7. Now that I am here and settled there was no reason to even be fearful. One thing I am trying to conquer is the spirit of fear, over the next few months that will be my personal project. Even If I was in a less than desirable situation, I can always adapt and make the best out of any situation.
ExperienceSomethingAmazing 