The ATL Journals: Part 5– Well Done, Shoo-Ah

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Most students in the Migowi villages don’t begin learning
English until they are in the 6^th grade. But its different for these kids. Pastor Duncan’s vision
is to dramatically improve the secondary schools’ student’s education, so that
they can become the doctors, accountants, teachers, pilots, and lawyers that
they want to be.

This is a feeder school, and is run by two volunteers Monday
through Friday. They have no real curriculum, and do their best to teach the
children whatever they can. Every day, a different volunteer mom cooks porridge
for the kids, and at 12noon after they eat it, the children take their bowls
and walk on home, barefoot and smiling.

Right now, they are meeting in a building that doesn’t
belong to them; they are borrowing it in the mornings from a local church.
Damson said that someday they would like to own their own property for the
nursery school, pay the volunteers, and purchase some reading books for the
children. I asked him how much it would cost to do that, and he told me that
purchasing the land would cost about 15,000 Malawi kwacha, which is about $110
UD dollars.

I started thinking back to my pre-school days, and
remembered the little carpet sample squares that we sat on, and the large
bookcase of brightly colored children’s books… and the beanbag chairs and apple
juice with graham crackers for a snack, followed by a sandwich, juice box,
fruit cup, and milk cup for lunch. We had a playground with bouncy balls, a
sand box and swings… please don’t get me wrong; I am thankful for how God
blessed me then, and how hard my parents worked to provide for me. I don’t
curse those blessings… I just see them in a different way now.

These children were so precious, and
completely content with their bowl of porridge, sitting on red dirt floors in
torn clothes, with no carpet samples, bouncy balls, books, or fruit cups. They
don’t know anything different. They all sat close together in a little clump in
the corner as they ate their porridge, even though there was plenty of room to
spread out, and they shared their food with each other. One little boy finished
quickly, and so a little girl got up and dished out some of her porridge into
his bowl and then plopped down next to him.

Most kids didn’t have shoes, and I found myself wanting to
call up my friend in the states who works for a shoe company and see if they
would donate some… but I stopped in my thoughts. I don’t need to be
Americanizing these kids and subtly adapting them to my culture. If anything, I
need to be adopting THEIR culture. They’ve been living without shoes for
generations here in Malawi… they don’t have concrete that heats up, or the
risks of glass bottles on the road, or really any reason why they would need
shoes. They are just fine…

In fact, I recently heard a story about a woman who brought
hundreds of shoes to a city in India,
of all shapes and sizes. When she came back a year later to visit the people,
they had taken apart each shoe and used the components for various things…
shoelaces to hang dried fruit… the fabric as patches on old clothes…

I like they way they live in Malawi. Simple.
With the earth, and by the earth. I liked washing my own clothes by hand and
lining them out to dry. I liked eating only rice and eggs with tomatoes, and I
liked the fact that I had left 75% of the things I brought on the Race to begin
with back in Swaziland (thinking we would be going to Zimbabwe)… Right now in Malawi, I have
one pair of shoes, 2 pairs of pants, 4 shirts, a sweatshirt, my toothbrush and
paste, and my pillow and blanket. And that’s more than I need.

Out of the mouths of babes the Lord has ordained praise, and with their
sweet, pure way, my spirit could not help but join them. This thing we are
doing out here is not about going to places to change the people, but going to
love them not as their Savior, not as kings, but as servants. Its less about
bringing Jesus to them, and more about helping them to recognize the Jesus Who
is already among them.