One more blog to summarize my time in Malawi and finishing off Africa… Let's go!
Okay let's be really real for a second. Malawi was hard for me. It was a weird time of being halfway through the race but still having halfway to go, a time of sickness and exhaustion, a time of questions and distance.
It was a country that I thought would be so easy to leave but when the time came, it wasn't. I realised how unsettled I am by how this country is barely scraping by and how hard life is. Take a look at one of my journal entries of me processing, maybe ranting a little of what I have seen in the country of Malawi.
"This is the most my heart has broken for a place, this is a beautiful country full of beautiful people, a place that has been so hard for me but for all the reasons you don't think. This is a place where girls drop out of school because a man offers to buy them a pair of new shoes, the girls who don't drop out of school risk getting assaulted on the way there and there's literally nothing they can about it. If these girls make it to school, usually they won't be given a seat, let alone a place inside; they must peek their heads through the window in attempt to gain an education. This is a place where a man is so weak and sick he can't walk but he can't afford to stop working. He needs medical attention but he chose to take his two sick children instead and can't afford the $3.50 needed to care for himself. This is a place where people's only grasp on God and salvation is that it's a chance to escape the situation they are living in.
I'm so broken over these problems, so broken and I don't know what to do. All I know is that something needs to change…"
I've heard many stories and have seen firsthand the hardships Malawians face everyday but through this all I have also seen change. 100 bibles being passed out to our girls school; their first bible ever in their native language, 5 women and 1 man giving their lives to the Lord in our final bible study in the village. Countless dresses being passed out to at risk and vulnerability girls. 200 girls staying in school to get an education. I will never forget this encounter I had with a teenaged girl, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I asked her. "A doctor" she answered. "Why?"
"So that I can be the first doctor in my village."
What strength and courage to go after her wildest dreams when everyone around her isn't and to make that lasting impact. I pray that this sweet girl continues to dream big, work hard and never gives up.
This isn't the end of Malawi, this is the beginning, it's so easy to get discouraged and lose hope but there is hope for this country and change is coming.
