Monday, April 14, 2008

Thako Village


Today we went to a village for church. When we arrived, there was a funeral in Thako village, which is the neighboring village, so everyone was gone. We decided to walk there to give our regards, which ended up being about 2 kilometers, maybe a little bit longer. After walking through 2 streams in flip-flops, up some shady rocks, (and no that does not me we went under a tree, these rocks were slippery and steep) and many maize fields, we arrived. The funeral is usually all day, so when we got there, the procession had already started. Everyone walks by and sings and then sits down and waits. Since we were not formally invited, we didn’t have to stay the whole day. We met many of the deacons, and the chief of the village. We sang a few songs, and then started walking back. It was really hot and with the altitude, we were all having a little bit of a hard time except for Chifundo. He thought it was quite entertaining that the white people were out of breath. This is the path that we took. If you look at the top of the hill that is the road we were heading for, when you reached the top of the hill, you were then about half way back to the village. It was a really neat experience because many women were carrying food or water on their heads and traveling on this path. I met some very sweet ladies.
Here is the entertainment, or what I thought was stinking hilarious. In Chichewa, would you like to know what Thako is?? Our supervisors shared with us that you don’t ever want to invite someone over for tacos because… taco or thako means your buttocks, or dairy ere, or you know whatever you want to call it. Also a volunteer team had done really well with not saying anything wrong in Chichewa, but at the very end of their week they were riding in the back of a truck and started saying taco bueno (which most of us would just be thinking you were talking about a restaurant), but that means nice butt in Chichewa. They got some really weird stares when they said it to other men in the streets. =) So when someone asked us where we had been yesterday, I was able to say we went to Buttville. I bet you can’t say that everyday. Hopefully none of you took offense to that…if you did, my apologies. I couldn’t resist, found it quite amusing.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Pens and Flat Stanley

So a very sweet girl by the name of Courtney
in Alabama sent me a letter. If you guys know about flat Stanley, then just ignore the next few sentences. Courtney’s class read about a boy who became so flat that he could go on vacation by traveling anywhere in a envelope. Well Courtney named hers’ flat Carly and Carly was sent to me here in Malawi.

When returning from South Africa I was blessed with some packages, one of them had pens in it from my church the others had m&ms. We handed out the pens to all of standard 7 & 8. The students were so excited. Then we gave all of the preschoolers and standard 1-6 a few m&ms each. It was there first time to ever have one. Try to remember when you had an m&m for the first time?? I bet you were a lot younger than any of these kids. If you look in the back there is a kid with his tongue sticking out, he has a blue m&m in his mouth. The other picture is with our standard 8 and flat Carly. I am pretty sure Carly had a very fun time. Courtney, if you read this, thanks for sending her our way!!

Saturday, April 5, 2008

We love to see you smile...


So what is the saying?? “it’s a small world.” You bet it is. At our singles retreat in South Africa I walked into the home and looked a girl and she looked at me and we realized that we knew each other. Turns out that we were in a crazy beginning guitar class at OBU. So across the world I run into a fellow OBUer. SO cool!! and all of you who would appreciate this, yes we did go with KaRip. It was such a great time of reconnecting and …we got to have McDs. The French fries are still as good as I remember. And who leaves mcds without a picture with Ronald himself? We definetely had to.