Life in Majete

HOT
While it’s freezing in Holland, it’s hot in Majete! Hot, hot, hot! While you sit in the shade and do nothing at all, the sweat is just dripping down your back and face. A perfect temperature to play soccer of course, because Tinus is just crazy ;)
And with him the rest of the Majete soccer team. They are very happy Tinus is back and both him and the team are making the most of his stay in Majete. The first match was already the day after we arrived. They won 4-2.
Today (Saturday) they are playing in Mwanza, up in the hills where I hope for them it will be not as scorching as down here. Although it will probably does not make a difference for Tinus. Yesterday he went for practice and forgot his soccer shoes, so he played barefoot. After he came back and was taking out dozens of splinters, he replied: you have to try everything ones…

With that in mind…we went with Bertha to Blantyre some days ago. We have decided to sell her. She would not be happy in Holland and if we leave her here for another year or so, we can start all the repairs on her again, since all the seals will be dry etc. And we don’t know when we will be back. So we’ve hung up some A4-sheets in town and now we wait…hopefully we will find someone who loves her as much as we did!
We decided it would make more sense to leave her with a friend in Blantyre, because then people can have a look if they want and don’t have to get all the way down to Majete. But this meant we had to come back by minibus. Something we hadn’t done yet from Blantyre to Malawi. We are a big fan of the minibus! It’s so quit! You can actually have a conversation with each other. You don’t have to drive yourself. They have 5 gears (wow!) and can drive faster than 75 km/hour (double wow!). Maybe we’ll buy a minibus next time ;)
In Chikwawa we took a bicycle taxi. Also never did that. You just sit on the back of a bicycle on a cushion. And this was even more relaxed!

Lydia
We went to the market where a girl suddenly jumps out from nowhere and gives me the biggest hug in the world. Then she sees Martin and runs to him to give the same treatment. She is quite small and clumsy though and almost knocks him over when she parks her head in his stomach. It’s Lydia.
Lydia is a story on her own. She lives in Chikwawa and we first met her 2 years ago. She is retarded. She always begs for money, which we never give. ‘Gimme 200 kwacha for new dress’ used to be her standard sentence. But she never asks us anymore, because we never give her money. We give her water though, or cookies, or bananas, whatever we have in the car. I know she still has her parents, but I know that the people believe that if you cheat on your husband while being pregnant, your child will be retarded. I don’t think she has had the best start in life. I’m also afraid there are boys that take advantage of girls like that. She will find herself pregnant one day and has no clue on how it happened. But she always smiles and I hope in her head she thinks of everything as a game and her world just seems like a fun place to be.
When I was going through my stuff to choose what to bring to Holland and what to leave in Majete, I came upon a black dress and thought of Lydia. It will be a little bit big for her, but at least she has the new dress she always wanted…

Waterbuck anyone?
We arrived at the police station where our ride back to Majete was parked. The Majete scouts had caught a poacher and brought him to the police. The poacher in turn had caught a waterbuck and by law this can be sold after it has been confiscated. So the waterbuck was being slaughtered in the back of the cruiser. After they were done and the meat had been divided, Martin could climb in the back. The smell was just like eh fresh baked bread, roses and peaches ;) I got the front seat which was not as bad, but still I had to hold in my breath from time to time to avoid my stomach turning inside out…I just love Malawi. You can never tell what’s gonna happen next!

G4G – community visit
The people in the communities are very confused if they see us. We went back to Holland, right? Well, yes, we are going back to Holland, but are first back to see how the projects are going. And then they smile, because they never believed we would actually be back. When we tell them that although we have resigned from African Parks, we will still continue Gift4Gift, they smile even more.
We had some extra time in the morning, so I decided to visit one of the schools that applied for our schools-round. Phwadzi Full Primary School. I had the statistics about this school in front of me on the application form the headmaster had filled in. I could not believe what I was reading.

Phwadzi School: 1229 children, 8 classrooms, 6 teachers. Number of children in standard 1: 385!!!
That means 385 children in 1 classroom with only 1 teacher!!!
In total twenty schools have been identified to receive a fund of mk 25.000 (about € 130). The money can be used for education materials. But this can also mean blackboard paint or cement. Whatever the school decides itself is their highest priority. This school has applied for dictionaries, exercise books, grammar books and bags of cement and lime.
The headmaster was surprised that we actually visited him just because we had some questions about his application (what are the bags of cement and lime for?). We got a tour around the classrooms. Standard 8 had wooden benches. There were about 40 children in standard 8. Actually a high number for rural Malawi. That means out of the 385 of the children that start in standard 1, only 10% actually will get to standard 8. And I’m still talking about primary school here! The rest of the dark and musty classrooms were empty. The walls were eaten by termites and just old. Two classrooms had just been renovated. Bricks had been replaced and extra cement to make sure the building would not collapse. Ah, so that’s where the cement and lime come in handy as well…

When I’m back in Holland, I will take some time to describe more of the school and projects we have visited today (the school that is likely to disappear in the river this year because of erosion, the tin smith project and the oil pressing machine project) but for now I’ll only mention the CBCC orphan sewing project.

In Kalonga village live 123 orphans, of which 52 under the age of 5. At a certain point, some people in the community decided they had to arrange something to take care of these young children. So they came up with their own club, called CBCC. The CBCC feeds the children and give them pre-school education. This is done on voluntary base. With the money of G4G they have used half to buy flour and other ingredients to make sure they could feed the orphans for another season. With the rest they have bought a sewing machine. They found a tailor who wanted to give training to 10 older orphaned boys and girls. The chairman of the CBCC proudly told us that one orphan is done with the training now. His guardians where so happy, they bought him a sewing machine and he has now his own tailoring business!!!
The kids were just too cute. I had about 10 hanging on each of my hand when we were going. I glanced at Martin with the question in my eyes if we could not just keep all of them…but I already knew the answer. And we both believe it’s better to assist as much as we can here.

After a day of visiting different villages and projects I was absolutely exhausted, but it’s so worth it! Just to see how little things can grow to have big impacts! We will probably be back here somewhere in the next two years as well, to see how everything is going and to set up new projects.

So G4G is still going strong! I can’t wait to be back in Holland with a good internet connection and computer to finally make the website and all other stuff that’s in my head. We’re officially registered in Holland now as a foundation, so we can continue making new plans as well.
Also if you always wanted to go to Africa to teach or just help in any other way, get in contact, we will make it happen. There’s need for all sorts of skills, like bricklaying, computers, administration, painting, hygiene, anything!

Lots of love,
Amy and Martin

PS Martin came back full of adrenalin yesterday evening, they had won again! 3-2. And he had scored the first goal from 25 meters! The crowd of about 800 people all shouted and cheered and ran onto the field. Today they have another match on the homeground…