Hello all. Today (monday) we started our first day of volunteering. I’m not sure which was the most difficult part of the day: waking up at 7, walking 20 minutes in the hot African Winter, or feeding/ changing/ cleaning/ playing with 16 babies, or avoiding the sketchy men on our walk back home.
So yes, today we volunteered at the Crisis Nursery that is a part of the Ministries of Hope which is a partner of Raising Malawi. So the morning began with our walk to the minibus stop outside of shoprite where we were courted into the van that said Area 49. We were told by a reliable source that the minibus costs 100 MK so we brought 400 MK to give them and they took it no problem. So we flung ourselves into the back of the minibus. I’ll give a description, but if anyone has read gaby’s blog from
Picture it: old white dirty 15-seater van… well… 3 seats in the front 4 in the second third and fourth rows… filled out the window with people. The seats are in relatively stable conditions, but the seat on the side folds up so that you can pass behind it . well I ended up on that seat. I don’t think my mother would have approved seeing as how I did see one seatbelt in the van but I think it was a joke. Oh, and the seat was basically a sea-saw… with every turn my body flipped 45 degrees as well. But it was fine. No injuries. We weren’t going very far. And the people were nice, mostly just entertained to watch 4 azungus (aka white people/ foreigners) in the minibus oh, and get ripped off. We only find out on our ride back that it costs 80 MK per person, not 100. Regardless, we make it to our destination on the side of the road at which point we begin our journey to the Crisis Nursery which is in a very nice residential neighborhood full of beautiful houses. The walk from the main road to the house was about 20 minutes. I was hoping that I would get a little bit of a tan from this adventure, but it doesn’t look like that’s happenening. Anyway, while we’re walking, we realize we’re walking with one of the caregivers that works at the nursery so she made sure we ended up at the right house.
Once there we washed our hands, took off our shoes, and went right to work. We arrived at around 10 am and there was already a missionary group there from
Oh, side note: the infants at this nursery are anywhere between 1 day and 2 years old and usually either one or both of their parents have died or they were found or for some other reason, they cannot be taken care of.
So the day went on like that.. playing with and taking care of the kids. Feeding them a yogurt snack, nsima lunch, and a banana snack in the afternoon. Shohini went from never changing a diaper before to changing 3 in one hour. Hahaha. At one point they ran out of diapers so we had to use cloths, which was a first time experience for me. The caregivers happily showed me what to do, but I think they laughed at this azungu. Oh well.
Anyway, after a long day of babies we were exhausted and terrified to have children of our own. We walked back to the main road to catch a minibus with the nurse from the nursery, so we were able to ask her questions and things.
We retired home early and are now relaxing. That’s all we have for today. Tomorrow we are meeting with the organization NOVOC (Network of Vulnerable and Orphan Children) in order to better understand what we are doing and seeing at our placement sites. The rest of the day we will be at the Crisis Nursery. Today is June 1st. We will hopefully have FREE 24 HOUR WIRELESS WIFI INTERNET by next week so hopefully there wont be 5 long posts at once.
Oh, and for all of you that thought we weren’t ACTUALLY doing anything here, we told you we would…
Highlight of the Day (besides the babies): Man sitting next to me in the back corner of the minibus decided it was easier to climb out the window to get out instead of having 5 people move for him to get out through the door. And he did.
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