After many hours of air travel I make it to Lilongwe, Malawi - I'm travelling with Kathi from Arizona and we are greeted by Mark - our team leader! I'm punchy and silly - but can't wait to join the rest of the team at the Kuka Lodge. I'm reunited with 2 other Habitat buddies that I built with in Kenya. We head to bed - big days ahead.
Our first moments on the job site are always overwhelming - singing, dancing, so many smiling faces - they are beyond excited to see our bus pull up - for a while we are the Beatles.
We meet the 2 families we are building for on this trip. Patuma is a 70 year old grandmother caring for her 2 grandkids. Their parents have passed away. Christina is 54 and caring for her children and her grandchildren - there are 7 of them in this family. Both families are living in single room mud houses with grass roofs. The rainy season is coming in November and they both desperately need new homes with roofs - to keep the rain out and to reduce the number of mosquitos indoors. The pics below are what they look like - the roof photo is Patuma's actual roof - we were inside her home. She is 70 years old and sleeps on a dirt floor. We were about to take care of that.
After a quick masonry lesson we are turned loose. The new 3 room homes will be built with mud (Matope!) and red clay bricks. After we construct the home, they will come back and plaster a portion of the outside and all the walls inside. They are a HUGE improvement from what these families are currently living in. Building is fun and goes quickly - our teachers are patient and fun. We are a team of 11 woman and Mark - I think they are expecting us to NOT be able to handle the work load - we quickly proved them wrong. :)
That's a picture of Patuma carrying bricks - many of the people in the Village pitched in and helped, especially the kids. Plumblines are installed with string and nails and we keep on keeping on....
All the while the kids are hanging out - entertaining us - and keeping smiles on our faces in the 100 degree heat.
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| I built that. :) |
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| The littlest girl in the center of this picture had the most beautiful smile - you just had to tickle her or dance with her to see it. :) She was one of my favs. |
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| Home made guitar - this guy is a budding engineer. |
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| The band. :) Really great to work with!
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Our Habitat rep in Malawi was Phenious - he's awesome. He grew up near this village, completed secondary school and went on to University. Now he's back in his hometown helping others. That's amazing. We paid a visit to his primary school and met the headmaster and teachers. They have 150 students to a classroom - the teachers make about $100 a month. It's hard to believe any student could learn in this type of setting - and that's why so many kids don't finish school and remain in poverty. The government is to blame and nothing will improve until this problem is corrected - they need to lift themselves out of where they are. It's heartbreaking and frustrating.
While taking much needed water breaks we would bust out our cameras to capture some of the joy we were surrounded by - here's a few of my favorites...
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| Regina - my brick carrying partner! |
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| MC teaching the ABC's |
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| Can we have a ride on your oxcart?! |
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| Lunchtime! |
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| In the kitchen |
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| Ishmael - so sweet. |
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| Selfies! |
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| A pack of 3 year olds - they ran around together the whole time - precious. |
So the building progressed and we began to install the roof and floors - The roof is sheet metal - so much better than grass! And the floors are constructed with the broken bricks with concrete poured on top. Mark bought both Christina & Patuma mattresses - to keep them off the cold concrete floors.
So we get as much done on the houses as we can - and we will wait for Phenious to send us completed pictures - Our team did a great job and we are so happy to have been able to get the roofs on both homes.
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