Cultural Differences and Having Fun (Day 13)

My favorite pic so far. "Rugrats" spying on our class.
The boys during lunch.
The girls who want my phone number.

We have just completed our third day of camp in the village of Mintundu. This village is about 40 miles from the city of Lilongwe but most of the citizens have never been here. The road is poor. There are few bikes and even fewer cars. The villagers are full of life, fun and happiness. It is interesting how little they have. Most students have worn the same cloths the three days we have seen them. They eat from mismatched bowls, without silverware and go home to small one room brick shacks. But they find enjoyment in the small things in life. Things that many of us take for granted because we are to worried about clothes, furniture and the “stuff” that we do have. Although their lives are filled with hardships the feeling that permeates the people is refreshing.

In our work with the campers this week I have noticed some real cultural differences. The first one is the different ways in which boys interact with each other. It has caught me by surprise to see one of the most popular boys in our class resting his head and arms across one of his male friend’s shoulder as he listens to me teach. I have also seen men walking down the street holding hands and the boys all huddled together, arms and legs linked and touching. It is so different from what I see even with my 3rd graders from home. Even at that age the boys will not show affection towards their friends for fear of being made fun of for being a sissy or maybe even romantically liking a boy. It is true that homosexual relationships are illegal here. So I wonder if the kids are less worried because it is not a topic like it is at home.

The kids and cameras. I know that most of them have never seen a camera, let alone a video recorder. Today though was very entertaining. My co-teacher, Leigh, and I were trying to take pictures of our students during lunch. Lunch is when the field staff (our translators) get a break. So it is often the awkward chance for the students to stare at the “white people” and us to stare back at them. We attempt conversations, but most of the time we cannot fully understand what each other is saying. So today we decided to fill the silences with some photo ops. It was a more difficult task than we thought. A camera is totally foreign to our students so even looking at it is something that they have to be told to do and trying to get them to smile is even harder. Without our helpful translator Leigh took 6 successive shots of myself and 4 other girls without success. We did not get a single picture with all of them looking at the camera.

Tomorrow is the last day with this group of kids. I will be sorry when our bus pulls out of the parking lot. World Camp will not come back to the same village for three years. They work on this rotation so that the students we worked with this year will all have graduated and there will be a completely new group of students to work with. It is interesting teaching so much sex and HIV/AIDS education. I actually think it is easier and less embarrassing for me because they cannot understand what I am saying. Many of the girls in Standard 7, the grade I am working with, have never seen a picture of the female anatomy. They do not understand that there are different holes for both types of waste and a completely different one for having a baby. Imagine “3 holes!!!” They giggled for 5 minutes. It was very funny to watch them put condoms on bananas, but even funnier to have them eat the bananas after we took the condoms off. These kids are mostly malnourished, we cannot waste 250 bananas. We even had races to see who could blow up the condom the biggest. All of these activities help them feel comfortable with sex and establish a feeling that they can talk about these issues and have a say in what happens to them.

When driving back from school today I glimpsed the heartbreaking reality of life here in Malawi. We were traveling on a road lined with different types of small shops all constructed out of a few tree branches and palm fronds roofs. One row of shops contained nothing but wooden coffins, some definitely child sized. I know that children die in the US everyday from tragic accidents but, to see these pint sized coffins for sale along a main roadway made me sad.

Overall everything is going awesome. I am having a great time. I cannot wait to go on a hike this weekend. We are going to hike up a local mountain. The views from the top will be great!!!