We want to wish you all a Happy New Year and a special thanks to everyone that supported our projects with your contributions during our Holiday Fund Drive! We are pleased to announce we met our goal and couldn’t have done it without your donations. We did some mild celebrating in Asheville after a long afternoon of planning. We’re working on a new website as we launch into 2011 to announce some wonderful partnerships and new projects that the entire team can’t wait to share.
Our first group of Service Interns left for Malawi last week and finally arrived in Lilongwe on December 31 to bring in the New Year with our field team. We have a small group of 6 interns this month that will kick off what will be an exciting year. They will be sending updates as often as they can so you can reminisce or simply stay up on what we are doing on the ground in Malawi.
This week we wanted to feature some early insights of Catherine Mannon a World Camp intern from Centre College in Kentucky.
“After a long stressful journey to Africa, we finally arrived in Lilongwe, Malawi on Dec. 31. My first impressions of Malawi, B-E-A-UTIFUL. The weather is comparable to Florida in the summers, and the rains seem more infrequent than I expected. So far it only rains about once during the middle of each day. We have been busy from the moment we arrived, reviewing curricula and songs everyday as we make final preparations for the first day of camp. My excitement is almost uncontainable as I anticipate working with the kids! We have met the World Camp Field Staff we'll work alongside for the next month and shared our first traditional meal together, nsima. For those that might not be familiar with nsima, this is a maize (corn) flour mixture that you eat with your hands and is accompanied by a traditional relish. They showed us the proper way to shape out a small spoon pocket from a handful of nsima and scoop up the relish to form the perfect bite; I’m definitely not a pro yet! We have already visited the Ministry of Hope Crisis Center, a care center for babies ranging from newborns to 2 years old. They provide great care and nourishment for babies that can be dropped off by mothers unable to care for them. Mothers return to pick up their children at the age of two when hopefully they will be better able to care for them. Unfortunately, sometimes parents do not come back. It was a great experience to share some love with these infants. It is amazing how despite cultural differences and geographical distances babies are all the same! They all need and want to be well fed, clothed, protected, and have human interactions. All babies cry, smile, can be happy or sad, want to play, explore, and experience!”
We’ll be sharing more field reports all month so stay tuned!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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