Home Stay: Day Two

            Today I woke up really early because I couldn’t sleep very well.  I was sleeping in a mud house in the mchezi village of Malawi outside of Lilongwe.  I was sleeping on a raised platform of plywood, so it wasn’t very comfortable for me.  I woke up to Austin knocking on the door to tell us that they had boiled some water for us to bath with.  He showed me outside where they had built a mud hut and there was a blue bucket of warm water to take a bath with.  I ended up washing my face and getting my hair wet, but that is about it.  We ate some rice porridge for breakfast and then we headed to the fields.  Austin only has about one acre of land because he is retired, but that still requires plenty of work.  Zion and I wanted to try out the work in the fields to see what it was like, so he showed us. 

Zion and I with our tools!

            On our way out there, we began to get a following of kids on their way to school and other village members who wanted to see the white boys work the fields.  Also, there was a road that ran right next to the field that we were going to work in, so there were plenty more villagers who stopped to watch.  Austin showed us how to use the makeshift hoes to turn the dirt that had been settled by the rain and we got to work.  It did not take very long at all for me to recognize how back breaking and difficult this work is.  After working in the field for about thirty minutes, I already had a blister and we were running out of time before we had to be back at the CBO. 

            We went back to the CBO to work on the SWOT analysis and to present our analysis to Chris.  My group worked hard to take the information that we learned yesterday from talking to the boys in the youth group and organizing it in a way that will help them move forward successfully.  We came up with the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and then wrote them down on a lard piece of paper to help us present it.  We then presented our findings to Chris and he agreed with everything that we said and didn’t have much to add to it. 

Finishing up our SWOT analysis before our presentation.
Photo by Marie Freeman

            After our presentations, it was time to head back to the world camp house for lunch.  Zion and I decided that we wanted some pizza instead of any leftovers, so we headed to the pizza place nearby.  After that we had some time to hang out and then a guy came by and played the drums for us and taught us a couple of dances.  For the rest of the night, we just got to hang out.