Journal

My trip to Malawi started well before I set foot at the airport.  It started as I watched my father’s life be taken away from him by an aggressive lymphoma and with his unfortunate passing in December 2015.  He was a great father and someone who always gave me support to push further in life, care for people and…. quite frankly…. a desire to see the world.  Despite having a stroke in his 30’s and being partially paralyzed, he had traveled to all seven continents.  With each trip there was a story.  He lived in Antarctica for a year in the 1960s during an early attempt to install a nuclear reactor for research and supply energy to the few residents in the brutal cold weather.  My siblings and I found out many years after one of his trips to Central America that he visited a small school and became upset that there was no reliable power for the children.  He took personal money and purchased a generator for the school without hesitation.  He always got emotional talking about a trip to The Great Wall of China and how Chinese soldiers helped to carry him up the stairs so he could experience the Wall from the top.  Events like these from my father’s past kept pulling on me as I reflected on my own life.  God has a plan and it is amazing how things can come together.

During the same period my father was losing his struggle to beat cancer I had joined a small group of men at Christ Church of Oak Brook (CCOB).  The group was led by Pastor Eric Camfield and we were brought together to review an unpublished book on discipleship.  The small group was good, but it was the sidebar conversations that brought me to Malawi.  Eric talked to me about an upcoming mission trip to Senegal and all the great opportunities there are to serve the Lord in the mission field.  It really resonated with me.  I’m sure I wasn’t as focused as I should have been due to the stress of life, but at the time I thought I had potentially put my name in the hat for a trip to Senegal.  It filled my mind with something other than sadness about the loss of my father and gave me a positive goal.  Then one-day Eric looked at me and said the Senegal team was full, but I would be good for an upcoming trip to Malawi.  I’m not even sure I knew that there was a country called Malawi.

God’s plan was right on target.  The CCOB team that went with me to Malawi were awesome.  We were led by Susan Zidlicky and joined by Jennie and Jim Garst.  Each of use had something to bring to the table.  Susan is an expert on the mission field.  She really knows her stuff and has a heart for serving.  Although Jennie was stepping out of her comfort zone, you could tell from the start she was traveling to make an impact.  She has a gift for getting things done.  Jim brought a strong back, a mind for engineering and the ability to put up with my sarcasm.  We were finding ways to serve in Malawi months before our trip.  We fundraised and were able to fill bags full of blankets, books, balls, clothes and so many other items to show our love for a country far far away.

The backbone and overall success of the trip goes to Villages in Partnership (VIP).  The entire organization is incredible.  VIP’s leader, Liz Heinzel-Nelson, has a heart for the Lord that is evident from the first time you speak with her.  She cares for each person in Malawi as if they were her child.  VIP has developed a network and community in Malawi that focuses on providing for the basic needs of the Malawians with a respect, intelligence and compassion that I wish I could see more of in the today’s world. 

Liz brought the best out of the team.  We had these great video calls before we left about what to expect.  It was so important to understand what we were flying into and how we can serve.  She skillfully told four Type A people to leave all our expectations back in Chicago.  Malawi doesn’t work on an American schedule.  We would focus on relationships and all the tasks would be taken care of in due time.  We had our bags packed, our minds in the right place and now it was time to travel.

As much as I want to go through each day of our trip and tell everyone how remarkable it was, I realize that it was done exceptionally by Justin Zelenka, a VIP staff member.  Justin met us at the airport when we landed in Blantyre, Malawi and never left our side throughout the trip.  We were also joined by two great people from Dallas, Texas.  Sydney and Randa joined us in Malawi as part of the VIP team.  Both of them have huge hearts for the Malawian people, especially the children.  They fit in great with our team and we were so thankful to spend our time alongside them. I’m going to let Justin’s journaling stand for itself, but I’d like for people to appreciate what I learned about myself and the beautiful country of Malawi.

There are so many stories that impacted me during my time in Malawi, but I’d like to share two of them.  Our group had the chance to have lunch with villages on a couple of occasions.  What happened when we showed up with goat and chicken meat was very much like a Christmas Day dinner.  As is the tradition, the woman cooked and the men… well… the men sat away from the women and talked.  We can figure out if this was a good or bad cultural activity another time because what happened with the men is important.  Prior to one of our lunches, we were able to sit on the floor of a partially built clinic.  The floors were concrete, no electricity, no glass in the windows and they made due with some stools and blankets for the men to sit on.  The women were outside under a tree cooking the food using “three-stone” fire pits.  The conversation was simple at first.  Men like to talk about the weather and crops.  But during this gathering I had saw an elderly man sitting off by himself.  I asked one of the Malawian VIP staff who the man was and I was told it was a vice-chief of the village.  I apologize that I don’t know his name, but I’m sure I never said it correctly and wouldn’t do it justice if I tried to write it out.

I decided to move over to the man and introduce myself.  He spoke English, which boggles my mind how I can come from the United States with only English and this man who has never lived with electricity and water can carry a conversation in at least two languages and probably more.  As we spoke his eyes were mostly closed and his voice was low.  We found out a little bit about each other.  Most of the focus was on me and where I was from.  As the vice-chief became comfortable with me, his questions became more direct.  He asked if I was a Christian and about my faith.  He asked me where I was lived and about my family.  Then he opened his eyes and looked directly into my eyes with a strong and sincere stare.  With a strong clear voice, he asked, “How are you going to bring God’s blessing to me?”  Wow.  My answer didn’t matter because he was asking about my intent and my actions.  Where was my heart and how was God being glorified by my actions?  To me, this is an unspoken question that many Malawians are asking of all missionaries.  The question wasn’t about gifts or trinkets.  It was about faith and love.  Just as Liz had prepped us before we left, we were going to focus on the relationship and the material stuff will take care of itself.  The vice-chief got me one last time before we started to eat.  He gave me a warm smile and said, “Don’t forget about me.”  I promised him he would not be forgotten, but it is a real question for people in need.  A simple visit and a nice meal is a great day, but he lives there every day and wanted to know that people from other countries care about him in a Godly way.  We ended up having a wonderful time of fellowship over the food (only because the women are superstars and did all the work) and leaving the village with smiles and great memories.

My second memory was replicated multiple times in the fields of Malawi.  On the first full day in Malawi we had the chance to visit a farmer and we had a tentative idea that we were going to work in his field.  Frank, a Malawian VIP staff, was an expert in conservation farming and wanted to discuss with the farmer a way to keep moisture in the field during the dry season.  Our job was to clear a field of agricultural waste left behind after the harvest and remove the ridges in the field to make it flat again.  It’s no big deal for someone with a tractor, but all we had were some basic hand tools.  When I say basic, I mean basic.  They were heavy sticks with a large blade attached to it.  It worked as a hoe and a hammer.  What farmers can do with that hand tool was impressive. 

The experience really became surreal after about 30 minutes into the field work.  Forget the fact that the Malawians didn’t have on shoes and that they were out working us like Lebron James playing my 10-year-old son in basketball.  What was special was that we had member of the Malawi VIP staff with us named Mada.  I was in a field with the farmers, their neighbors, VIP staff and Jim trying not to complain and enjoy the day.  We weren’t expecting any lunch and there was no water for our Malawian friends near us.  Jim and I had some bottled water that we kept in the van just in case, but we didn’t want to drink it in front of everyone.  Then, out of nowhere, Mada starts to sing.  When I say sing, I mean with a voice that should be in the soundtrack of a Disney movie.  As she was clearing the field her voice was so joyful and full of praise.  As if there was a producer off to the side, all the Malawians start to sing along.  It was magical.  There was not interruption of effort, just praise to keep people going.  I asked Frank what the words meant.  He laughed and said that the lyrics mean that if the world would end today they would be thankful to be with each other.  What a powerful moment.  This song was sung in many villages by many people.  People with so little are so thankful to be alive, enjoy what they have and share the day with each other.  I smiled every time I heard the song.  It, to me, is the soul of Malawi.

Everyday in Malawi was filled with memorable experiences.  We visited schools, made bricks, fixed a bridge and visited with the neediest of the Malawians in the rural communities.  I came home feeling good about the world and feeling I’ve traveled further in my walk of Christian faith.  I’m thankful for my CCOB teammates and the Malawians I was fortunate enough to meet.  I hope and pray that I can return and continue learning from them and sharing God’s love.

As night closed in around us we hugged the kids goodbye and made our way back to our rooms to wash up, have dinner and enjoy a night of bonding over “Catch Phrase” and poker. We kept Robbie up until the wee hours of the morning, which was only a problem because he was preaching the next morning. But despite their fatigue Robbie and Bonongwe (who had emceed the entire 5 hour plus choir competition with his usual verve and intensity, and had then stayed up past midnight working on the new boreholes that VIP was drilling) delivered an excellent sermon together the next morning at church. We also had the opportunity to watch the VIP Choir (consisting of Gayle, Nicole and John Anderson, Sandra Hurlbert, Jordan Heinzel- Nelson, Enoch Smith, Sydney Chikalema and Isaac Mawlabu) performing alongside a local Malawian choir, who had been provided with matching shirts by Gayle’s church four years ago when she had first come to Malawi. So many people went up to the front of the church together that Trudy got caught up in the wake of all the bodies and ended up performing along with everyone else, even though she had not practiced any of the songs or accompanying dances. The choirs, Trudy included (or perhaps especially), did a wonderful job and earned an ovation from the entire congregation.

After church it was time for what is for many the most emotional part of the Friendship Trips: home visits to the most vulnerable families in our catchment area. These families, generally as a result of disability, disease or death, struggle to make ends meet even more than their neighbors. They are often led by elderly widows or orphans and they may lack the familial safety net that many other Malawian villagers rely on. During a drought, flood or famine it is the vulnerable families who suffer the most, as they are the people living on the knife’s edge between survival and catastrophe.

We broke off into pairs, with each pair scheduled to visit two vulnerable families, accompanied by a VIP staff member to help translate, as most Malawians living in the rural villages do not speak English. Tory and I were paired with Frank, who as an orphan raised in the villages, had once come from a vulnerable family himself. The first home that Frank took us to was the home of an elderly widow who cared for some of her orphaned grandchildren. She wasn’t certain how old she was, but one of her middle-aged daughters, who lived nearby, told us that she thought that her mom was 89. We sat together on the ground talking about her life and everything that she had seen over the years. She told us that while she had endured drought and famine in her youth, she had no doubt that droughts were becoming more and more common in later years, a trend which both she and almost all scientists attribute to the effects of global warming. After talking for a few more minutes about the weather and how her harvest had been the last few years (2016 had been bad because of the drought, while 2017 had been better, though she was still anticipating running out of food before the next harvest) the talk moved to the children who had gathered around us.

We asked her if all of her grandchildren went to school and she proudly told us yes. This was impressive enough by itself. As an elderly widow she needed help in the fields and with household chores, and she told us that her grandchildren would wake up early, work with her in the fields and help gather water and fire wood for a few hours, go to school, and then help her again in the afternoon. Almost all of the grandchildren were younger than 10. As we asked each of the children in turn what grade they were in and how well they had done in school that year, her oldest grandson told us, in confident English, that he had finished first in standard 5 at Nyambwe Primary school that year. It was amazing to hear that a boy from one of the most vulnerable families in his village could have finished first in his grade, when he had so many other responsibilities and burdens in his young life. In a whispered discussion, Tory and I decided that we should give the boy one of the LuminAIDs, small solar powered lights that Liz had given us, which we each carried in our backpacks. VIP has given out LuminAIDs, which can be recharged each day and which will last for over 5 years, to top students for the past several years now. The LuminAID would allow him to read, study and see late into the night, something that we hoped would both reward, and allow for the continuation of, his academic success. As we handed it to him and showed him how to use it, he beamed with pride and happiness, thanking us for the gift and showing it off proudly to his grandmother, brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts.

After giving the rest of the family the small gifts that we had brought with us, blankets, clothes, flip flops and toiletries, Tory and I shook hands with everyone and followed Frank to a house located roughly 100 yards away, down a narrow dirt road that cut through trees and a few other properties. As we approached we saw the homeowner, a young woman in her 30’s, bent over a fire, preparing to make Mandazi, which she and her children would then sell along the roadside for 50 kwacha each. She asked one of her daughters to mind the fire for her and came over to shake our hands and gestured for us to join her on a mat that she laid out for us, on the ground next to her home. As we talked, two kids sat down in mine and Tory’s laps. The boy who sat on Tory’s lap had been adopted by the young woman after his parents had died, but no one was sure where the little girl that sat on my lap had come from. I asked the woman if maybe she wanted to adopt her too, to which everyone politely chuckled. After talking for a few more minutes, and just when I had started to wonder if the little girl was potty-trained, I began to feel, with increasing horror, a wet spot growing on my pants leg. “I think she is peeing on my leg,” I whispered urgently to Tory, who immediately began to laugh. As I moved the little girl to the side and stood up I found that she had indeed peed on my leg, and soon everyone was howling with laughter. “It looks like you will be adopting her” Frank said to me as he patted me on my back and grinned.

After cleaning my pant leg off with some wet wipes, Tory and I asked if we could see inside the young woman’s house. She said yes and we followed her inside. As we ducked our heads under the door frame, we suddenly found ourselves plunged into darkness. I remained frozen at the entryway for a moment until my eyes began to adjust to the darkness. I kept waiting for shapes to appear out of the gloom but nothing did. After thinking something must be wrong with my eyes, I slowly realized why I couldn’t see anything: the room we had stepped into was completely bare. There was no furniture in the room, no pictures on the walls, and no carpets on the floor. There was nothing except dirt and bits of straw that had fallen from the roof. I looked up at the ceiling and saw that rats had chewed away pieces of the roof, leaving small holes that allowed dull beams of dusty light to penetrate into the darkness of the room. In the rainy season the rain must leaked all over her floor, turning it to mud. We walked into the other two rooms and listened as another translator (Frank had waited outside as it is not proper for a grown Malawian male to come into a woman’s home) told us that at night her chickens and goats came in to the house to sleep on the floor with her and her children. There were only three rooms in the entire house and all told it was smaller than the bedroom I had grown up in back home.

I stood inside that dark house for what could have been a few moments or several hours, as everything I had experienced suddenly caught up with me at once, the shock of which forced me to remain motionless. I thought of the 89 year old woman that we had just met and I realized that she had spent all the long years of her life living in a house just like this. She had been born in a house like this and she would die in a house like this.

I was suddenly struck by how unjust it all was. Why was my life so easy? Why had I been given so much, when these women that I had just met had been given so little? The reality that confronted me was so at odds with everything that I believe to be right and fair. I had unlimited opportunities, I had received a world class education, I had the freedom to chart my own future, I was able to travel the world, seeking love and friendship, discovering the wonders of this planet, while these women would never leave the villages they had been born in. They would always be here, sleeping on the floor, left to the mercy of the changing seasons year after year. For the first time in Malawi I became frustrated. Frustrated that the randomness of birth consigned billions of people to lives of hardship and poverty. Frustrated that my own country is so willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on arms and weapons, useful only to destroy and kill (or more likely collect dust) while we can’t seem to spare much for people living in unimaginable poverty. Frustrated that the whole world seemed to have their priorities completely backwards. Frustrated that we organize our societies around, and build cults dedicated to the worship of, excessive accumulations of wealth, while ignoring those whose basic needs are not fulfilled. Frustrated that I couldn’t do anything about all this.

But slowly my frustration turned to amazement. Amazement because, despite the challenges, the endless setbacks and roadblocks, the seeming powerlessness of any one person to fix a problem so daunting, people like Liz carried out the small, slow, steady work to begin changing the world year after year. VIP is too small to end poverty in Sakata by itself, let alone in all of Malawi or the world at large. But we can’t just throw up our hands and do nothing. Each person has to do their part, however big or small it may be, and person by person, family by family, village by village, lives will begin to improve. As we bought some Mandazi from the woman and walked back to our car, I was reminded of an old story I used to tell my students:

Once upon a time an old man was walking along a beach the morning after a terrible storm. As he walked along the shoreline, watching the last of the storm clouds disappear out over the ocean, he saw that the sand far ahead of him was colored differently than the rest. He continued walking, thinking that the storm has churned up the silty shoreline and covered it with a different kind of sand. But as he got closer he saw that it wasn’t the sand at all, the beach was covered with starfish as far as the eye could see. As his gaze carried him further down the beach he saw a little girl picking up the starfish one by one and throwing them back in the ocean. The old man walked up to the girl and asked her what she was doing. “The starfish have been washed onto the beach by the storm,” the little girl replied. “If they stay on the sand the sun will dry them out and they’ll die.” The old man gave the little girl a patronizing smile, shook his head and said, “Young lady. Stop and look for a minute. The starfish extend for miles down the beach. There could be millions of them. Even if you stay here all day you will never make a difference.” The young girl paused and considered the old man’s words for a moment. Then she bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. As it splashed safely back into the water she looked back at the old man and said simply, “I made a difference to that one.”

Tory, Terra, Trudy, Sandra and John Anderson woke up early on Saturday morning as they accompanied Frank on a trip out to Mpoola village, the heart of VIP’s beekeeping initiative. VIP currently has 16 hives in Mpoola Village and when the beekeepers harvested in June, these hives produced enough for 25 bottles of honey. The honey was then sold to generate income for the beekeepers to spend on school fees, home improvements and further investments in their business. The Mpoola beekeeping project has become so successful that farmers in the nearby villages have expressed interest in becoming beekeepers as well. In June, Frank conducted a three day training session for two new groups from Ngomano and Liti villages so that they could learn how to care for hives and begin to enjoy all of the benefits that a healthy bee population can bless a community with. One of the best things about the June training session was that it was not just led by Frank and government officials. The experienced members of already existing beekeeping clubs volunteered their time so that they could help train other farmers as well. This is something that I noticed about VIP projects from the very start. People who have benefitted from VIP training and investment, do not try to jealously guard their position and hoard their knowledge, they become ambassadors for VIP, spreading knowledge and advice and even working alongside their countrymen, even if they don’t stand to gain anything themselves. This sense of community and generosity by ordinary Malawians marked every project that I worked on.

While Frank and the Bee Team were hard at work in Mpoola, Enoch, Jordan and Gayle made their way to the all-day choir competition that Enoch would be leading. Enoch and a group of judges would be listening to some of the best choirs from the villages around Zomba, and by the end they would pick out the 16 best individual performers to form a select choir. As for the rest of us, we were heading back to work on the Sakata Bridge. The first friendship team had spent a long day at the bridge, gathering heavy stones and river sand for constructing the cement and stone foundation of the new bridge. Today we would be helping to carry away the timbers of the old bridge and begin building a supporting pillar. Carrying away the timbers was no easy task. Over 20 feet long, the timbers must have weighed close to a thousand pounds. It was important that we worked together to move them not only to get the job done quickly, but to avoid injuries. Years ago a group of villagers had been moving similar sized logs, and one man had his thumb crushed when it was unexpectedly dropped. We quickly found that we were not only facing the dangers of the bridge, but of Mother Nature as well. As we began to loosen the soil that had been packed around the timbers of the bridge since its construction we began to unearth all manner of dangerous creatures. The first animal we noticed was a particularly large centipede that crawled out of its burrow as the pickaxes began to crash through the soil around it. Centipede venom, particularly from larger species like this, can be extremely painful, though not generally fatal to humans.

A few minutes later as our team of about a dozen began to lift the first log out of its groove Liz, who was standing on the other side of the bridge taking pictures called out “snake, snake SNAKE!” We dropped the log back on to concrete support (I would like to say in an organized and safe manner, but as the person closest to the snake, I can’t actually be certain of that) and took a few steps back. Or at least most of us did, after catching sight of the black snake uncoiling from its lair about a foot or so from my arm, I ran to the other side of the bridge before turning back to check again. While we couldn’t be sure what kind of snake it was, Mwalabu tentatively identified it as a juvenile black mamba. After removing the two potentially venomous animals, for the safety of everyone involved, we were able to get back to work on the bridge, this time without incident. While we had been moving the timbers, a group of Malawians were digging a large trench in the mud near the river for the bridge’s supporting column. It was really striking to see two chiefs down in the trench, shoveling out mud and getting steadily dirtier, all for the benefit of their people.

Soon the trench was finished and we could begin filling it with the cement and stones that the first team had gathered at the site over a week ago. We formed a human chain and began passing down buckets of concrete and river sand which would form the base of the new pillar. After VIP’s contractor, “Mr. Number One,” the lead foreman on the Sakata Bridge project, determined that enough cement and sand had been added, we began to pass down armfuls of stones to add to the cement. We stood in the line together for over an hour passing down the stones, sand and cement, sometimes laughing and joking with another, sometimes breaking out in a song to make the work go easier, sometimes in silence. But working on that bridge was one of my favorite activities of the entire trip. I spoke to my roommate Hastings about it later that day, and we had the same thoughts. As we worked we both felt like members of a team, a team without position or class, where no one was elevated above or sunken below anyone else. Regardless of whether we were rich or poor, black or white, a chief or villager, a pastor or layperson, a physicist or a farmer we all were doing the same thing, working together as a single unit for the benefit of hundreds. It was a powerful experience and when we had finished work for the day, we left our Malawian companions with handshakes and hugs before heading off to watch the end of the choir competition.

When we arrived at the church where the competition was being held, we were ushered to seats immediately behind Enoch and the other three judges, Jordan Heinzel-Nelson, Isaac Mwalabu and Mada, VIP’s new health and nutrition officer. When I asked Jordan how the previous choirs had been, she replied that they had been excellent, with one children’s choir even moving her to tears. As another choir began to perform on the raised platform at the front of the church I saw that Enoch, a professional musician and record producer, was in his element. As the choirs sang he would listen to them from all different vantage points, even making his way onto the stage softly clapping and dancing along as he began to pick out the different voices. Eventually he and his fellow judges narrowed all the choirs down to the 16 who they felt had the strongest, most interesting voices. These 16, representing all ages and genders, from a little girl of 10 to a host of elders 7 times her age, would form a new select choir. Enoch is not yet sure what this choir will become, but he knows that he wants to come back to Malawi and continue to work with them. His dream, still far off, is to find a way to get some of them over to the U.S., where they can perform in front of some of our church partners, allowing them to experience the beautiful and unique music that left Enoch literally speechless when asked later that day to explain his emotions on listening to the various choirs. Malawi does not have the same reputation for music that some of the larger countries on the African continent, like Nigeria and the Congo do, yet. But with the recent success of the Zomba Prison Project, a collection of prisoners and guards at the Zomba Prison whose first album was nominated for a Grammy, and the power of local Malawian choirs I am sure that is going to change soon.

After the choir competition was over I drove back to the farm in the back of Joe’s pickup truck with Hastings, Tory, Jordan, John Anderson and some of our translators, while John Hurlbert rode in the cab with Joe. Joe dropped us off at the base of the dirt road that leads up to the farm and we jumped out, waving goodbye to everyone and telling them we would see them tomorrow. We made our way up the hill joking and tossing around a ball, and we were soon joined by a throng of local kids who wanted to join in the fun. Everywhere you go in Malawi you will see crowds and crowds of unaccompanied children. Part of the reason is that Malawi is a very hierarchical society in terms of age, and most adults just don’t spend a lot of time with kids. Another reason is the HIV epidemic that has ravaged entire generations in Malawi. There are over a million orphans in the small country of 17 million people, many of whom have been forced to watch as one or both parents have slowly succumbed to the dreaded disease. So whenever we have the opportunity, our friendship teams love to spend time with the kids, playing with them and giving them attention. What should have been a twenty minute walk turned into an hour, as we played catch, raced, tickled, played leap frog and walked with the kids up the hill. As darkness closed in around us, we hugged the kids goodbye and waved as they passed out of our vision into the veil of the night. I smiled as I watched them go, reflecting that it’s the little unexpected moments like that, when you walk through towns and villages, and open yourself up to the opportunity to connect with people you would never otherwise meet, that are sometimes the most rewarding experiences.