For months now we have felt like our lives have been so slow at our site. For the most part what we have been doing has been focused on the school. SInce our school is a boarding school, it can feel like an island between two villages. The teachers are definitely in a different economic situation than the surrounding villagers. Recently we met "our guy" to connect us to the village. He has been helping us with our gardens for free, but essentially in exchange for our help with development projects in the village. He is actually in the farming group that we are connecting with the groundnut sheller. Suddenly we feel busy (busy as in I am still reading a book a week)! We have been meeting with the chiefs, the reverend, and the community to assess the needs. An interesting side note is that "want" and "need" are the same word in Chichewa, so Malawians frequently interchange the two. Most of what they listed are truly needs though. It will just be impossible for us to do all of it, so we will have to narrow it down a bit. Here are some of the things they came up with:
*Some kind of orphan rehabilitation and orphanage
*Care for those living with HIV/AIDS
*Care for the elderly
*Another borehole (they only have one in the village)
*Some kind of pump for irrigation in fear of the coming food shortage
*Fixing a diesel powered maize mill that supports orphans, elderly and people with AIDS
*A fence to keep goats out of a garden that provides nutritional supplements to people with AIDS
*Soccer ball for the youth group (CHECK! We had one from Peace Corps but were waiting to identify a group. We are also able to give them a solar powered radio that they will be able to listen to radio shows directed towards preventing HIV/AIDS)
My response, "Uff-da!". Brian's response, "I just want to play hockey." No really, we do plan on focusing on a couple of issues, but are investigating the resources that already exist in the community. We also need to look into what grants are applicable to these needs. We will keep you updated!
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