Today was our first day at the Kamwama camp in Malawi. We’re split up in to teams of two for the teaching, but the beginning of the day is the best part. We drive up in a bus, and the kids come RUNNING at us from all different directions screaming and waving with huge smiles. When you get off the bus, they all want to touch you and hold your hand and give you high 5’s.

The groups are split up based on school standard, which is different than the U.S. They go up a standard based on how well they are doing in school, so there are all different ages in each standard. My partner and I and a translator have standard six for this group, which is surprisingly a very attentive group of kids. There are 21 in our class. The highest standard we have is eight, and there are only four in the class. One of our translators said this was because most kids leave school to work at home by the time they know enough for standard eight.

The schools are hardly schools at all. There are three buildings which are just dirt concrete floors with dirt brick walls and some tin for the roof. Everyone sits on the floor, and they do not have their own writing utensils.

Malawian kids LOVE school. They come to school because they want to learn, instead of being required to come. They sit perfectly quiet and wait for your every word. After three hours of sitting in a hot, dirt classroom listening to a translator, they still look at you waiting to here more.

We brought them lunch (nsima) and they ate their lunch in the classroom. When lunch was done, two girls ran off behind the school and found some twigs to sweep out the class. We never asked them to clean or anything. It was really something.

They also LOVE duck, duck, goose, although they don’t quite understand the concept. Towards the end of the day they were starting to get it. In the beginning, we made up a team song (something in Chichewa) which they sang every chance they got with SO much energy. We were all sweating (it was about 80 degrees!) but they never lost energy throughout the day (we were there from 10-4).

Really inspiring day for us, so we have a group reflection tonight. Side note, one of the guys (Jay) and I were assigned to make dinner tonight which ended up being a complete success.. and we even got dessert (even though we went waaaayyy over the dinner budget!)

I’m exhausted!! Also, I’ve found that the less you take showers here the less you get bit by mosquitos. Uh oh!! haha