Day 28 - To the village

Walking into the rehab centre gets a little more difficult with each day as you know that you're counting down the days until you won't get to see these kids anymore. As we were setting up the room for therapy, one of the kids, J, walked in and climbed onto our small trampoline. We had just introduced this activity to him last week and he was a little apprehensive about it. He went from sitting on the trampoline to kneeling the last Thursday. Today, however, he pretty much initiated the activities, which was wonderful to see.

Another girl in the behavioural challenge class, B, walked in and looked like she wanted to jump on the trampoline, so we helped her on and stabilized her, and she had lots of fun. We also assessed a girl in this class to see if we can transition her to the preschool. We walked to the school to do a quick trial today and will be doing another one on Thursday. As soon as we walked in, the preschool kids, especially the ones that we know and see all the time, surrounded us and once again gave us lots of hugs. I love preschool kids.

In the afternoon, we were sent out to Kalulu village, which was about an hour ride on the minibus. Once again, we had an interesting time squishing on the minibus. It was also interesting learning about the pricing. There's no set price! The staff member we went with told us that as we were transferring to take another minibus, that a few guys came to her and asked for a few different amounts even though we were getting off at the same place. The one we took, first the guy asked for 600MK each, then went down to 450MK. In the end, we only had to pay 300MK each for that long stretch. What a deal! She was such a superstar! =)

I was very excited to go to the village. Similar to the home visit, it was such a great opportunity to see  life in Malawi. Not to say that we haven't experienced that, but it has a very different vibe and your interaction with the people is different as well. As we got off the minibus, I could feel all the eyes just looking at us. However, this was not the same as the home visit we did last week. Although I was a foreigner, I felt welcomed in this place. While walking down the path, we saw a mama goat and her two kids. The staff laughed at Luisa and I as we were so excited. We quickly grabbed our devices to take pictures of the goats. We're such city girls.

While we were waiting for some more children to show up at the nutrition and outreach clinic, more and more of the local children showed up outside. Since we hadn't started our rehab clinic yet, I went out to talk (or tried to with my limited, limited Chichewa) to those kids. Then I had about 15 kids or so who started to follow me around as I walked the grassy hill. When I noticed this, similar to our time at VOH, I started doing really silly things, and they all copied. When I sat down, I started picking at the weeds that were around. There was this thing that I did when I was a child, which was to pick up these weeds and pull straight down the stem, then the flowery parts would be like confetti in your hands. Which then you would either throw it or blow it out of your hand. The kids saw me doing this and was really interested. I let them blow the weeds out of my hand and they seemed to have lots of fun. It quickly turned into this activity where they would run and get the weeds, then wait for me to slide my fingers down the stem to pull off all the flowers to put into their hands. We'd then wait for everyone to have some in their hands and blow it off together. It was so much fun and so rewarding, how such a simple activity kept the kids engaged. I could tell that they really enjoyed it and was excited about it.

Playing with grass with the village kids.

When I went back into the room to observe what the rehab tech was doing with some of the kids, the children I was playing with all gathered at the door and looked in, waiting for me to come out to play with them. It was so funny because all of them just crowded around the front foot and blocked the doorway. Although only a few children showed up to the outreach clinic, it was such a great experience. There was this boy, P, who has cerebral palsy. His hands and knees were very calloused and rough. It reminded me of the skin of an elephant, with just how rough it is. When you interact with him and do your buddy handshake with him, he would have such a big bright smile on his face.

This is P.

This little cutie is E.

We also met this little girl, E, who is 1 of 5 children. She is 3 years old and super malnourished. Her wrist was the width of my thumb. The circumference of her leg was equal to my thumb touching the tip of my index finger (opposition).

One of the houses in the village.

Since we many minibuses were full, we started to walk on the highway back to the city (thank goodness Kathy came to pick us up soon after). View on our walk back.

Our God

Water you turned into wine, 

opened the eyes of the blind 

there's no one like you, none like You!

Into the darkness you shine 

out of the ashes we rise 

there's no one like you none like You!

Our God is greater, 

our God is stronger, 

God you are higher than any other.

Our God is Healer, 

Awesome in Power, 

Our God! Our God!

And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us.

And if our God is with us, then what could stand against.

What could stand against.