A little on the brighter side

Recently, many of my posts have been pretty heavy. And let's be honest, sometimes, that heaviness just gets to be too much. And honestly, though this past week has brought some twists, turns, and troubles I wasn't necessarily anticipating, there are many things starting to look up. AND THAT IS GREAT NEWS!

So some things from the past week. We celebrated Chaminade day here at Chaminade Mission on Friday, January 23rd. Traditionally, Marianist Institutions celebrate a day in honor of Chaminade on January 22nd, the day of Chaminade's death. For practical reasons, we moved it to Friday. The day was filled with great fun and sharing. Our goal in planning this day was to bring the different parts of Chaminade Mission more closely together. There are three schools running on this campus: Chaminade Boarding School, Chaminade Open School, and MIRACLE Technical College. From what we've heard and observed, these three schools haven't spent much time interacting in the past few years, and there has been a clear space between students, staff, and members of each of the schools. We aimed Chaminade Day to be a day to bring all of this people together under the Family Spirit inspired by Chaminade.

The day went quite wonderfully, starting with small groups (we called them families) facilitated by various members of staff from each of the school and including a generous mixture of students from different grade levels, different schools, and different classes. The family time was followed by a skit and talk about Chaminade. The skit was quite hilarious; we've got some real characters here. Then we started a variety show with a number performed by us volunteers and the Marianist brothers. Molly, Sarah, and I choreographed a dance, which we then practiced with the brothers. We used the song ABC, by Michael Jackson, and it was a BLAST! We then shared Mass, all ate lunch together, dance in a disco, and ended the day with a football match between the two schools. Aside from a few gliches, and the fact that all of us volunteers were absolutely worn out, the day was a HUGE success. We are all looking forward to next year when we can get the teachers and staff more intimately involved in all of the activities.

Then, on Saturday, all of us volunteers wanted to cut loose a little bit so we went out to Planet K dot A, the dance club here in Karonga, and danced the night away. We all were pretty tired, so we didn't want to stay too far past midnight, but we didn't have to try to hard to cut the night off. Planet K dot A has mirrors on all of the walls, and a number of the mirrors are a little bit broken. In the euphoric state I usually find myself in when dancing, I failed to take enough caution and put enough distance between myself and one of the broken mirrors. With one quick shimmy, a thrust-filled shake, and a passionate swing of my arms, my elbow made direct contact with the corner of one of the broken mirrors. About 30 minutes earlier, Molly had done the same thing, but since she isn't quite as passionate of a dancer as I, her injury was not much more than a paper cut. I on the other hand, had gouged a chunk of my elbow skin out an was bleeding profusely. Consequently, our night of dancing was over, and we fled the scene before I could get my blood on anyone (minus the man who grabbed my forearm because he was upset that I had stopped dancing). All in all, it was a really fun night, and my cut isn't really that bad. I will have a cool scar to tell people I got from dancing, but it's not anything that a standard band aid can't cover well.

Then this week, four of the six community members in my house went down to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. As a result, Kat and I were holding down the fort, and after our first one-on-one romantic dinner we thought it'd be really cool to have dinner with our cooks and their families. Our hope was to bring food over to their house and cook with them, but they expressed to us that they were "not ready" so we respected that. They did say, however, that they would be interested in coming to our house to make dinner with Kat and I, and they each brought one of their children: Speeway, who is Vicky's 7 year old daughter, and Tumpale, who is Alick's 2 year old son. They are both absolutely adorable, and it was such a joy to have small children in our house! We made a Vikcy's favorite meal, fish with cassava flour, and had a wonderful meal together. Kat and I walked them all home, and it was a great time of sharing with them. They are becoming more and more like family to me, so much so, that I don't think I can say much longer that they are like family--they are family to me. It was a great night, and the stars were absolutely beautiful to walk home under. (Oh! And don't tell the Malawian Aviation Department, but I walked across an airport runway for the first time in my life! Alick and Vicky live on the other side of the airport and we cut across the runway because doing otherwise takes at least twice as long!)

And finally, yesterday we invited all of MIRACLE staff over to our house for a social. MIRACLE has had a lot of stress going on, a lot of changes going on, and a lot of frustrations and difficulties. Going into yesterday, we weren't fully sure if all of the stress at MIRACLE would be a damper on the social, or if the social was going to be just the right thing for this time. The second proved to be true! We welcomed almost 20 or 30 members of staff to our house, and for many of them, it was the first time they were in our house, invited as guest, and as equals to us. We share minerals (soft drinks), popcorn, biscuits (cookies), and ground nuts with them. There were some board games played, much chatting, and even a good bit of dancing! By the end of the night, it was clear that all felt welcome and had enjoyed themselves. I must say our volunteer community did a great job of intermixing with all the different members of staff, moving around and chatting with everyone. It was also really cool to see the teaching staff, the support staff, and our voulunteer community intermingling so well. At the end of the night Sarah and I drove anyone home who needed it, and it was clear that it had been a great event. It set up an awesome precedent for future events, and we are excited about the prospect of bringing the MIRACLE and Chaminade staffs together with this type of event. Maybe even nicest of all, I got to have two awesome conversations with two of the women on staff at MIRACLE. Both are a good bit older than me, both have families and children, and both definitely have much more life experience than me. One of the challenges I've been facing here is figuring out how to interact and relate with people who are older than me, from a different culture than me, and who seem to have such different life experiences from me. Last night, I found ways to connect with both of these women, and I felt that I was finally starting to breach the gap between being a mere acquaintance with them into having more of a friendship with them. It was wonderful!

So all in all, it was a beautiful week! There are still some things within my community that are a bit tricky, and might only be getting trickier to deal with, but this week was also a new beginning for that in a number of ways. There are definitely going to be things that are very challenging for me to deal with, but I think there is great hope in what's ahead.

A few weeks ago, I think I mentioned that I felt like the dawn was starting to bring light to thigns around me, but that the sun had not yet shown itself. I don't want to jump the gun on saying this, but I think the sun might be showing a little sliver of itself as it's working it's way out from behind the mountains before me. I think the morning is here; it's time to start this new day.