The next few days were really busy. Even though drives to the villages, distributions, meals, organizing, etc. move at an extraordinarily slow pace, we just didn't have much time to ourselves besides to sleep. The days started with buying fried rice dough balls from a little vender outside Limbadi Lodge, the crap hole we were staying in. We would also pick up fresh picked bananas and fried potato foldover type things. Breakfast ended up being great once we found that we didn't have to drink flavored corn meal milk and Chinese made potato chips like the local guys on our team were gobbling down every morning. We also preferred water at all times to Orange Fanta, which is the refreshment of choice here. So it's funny because we basically would eat the more traditional and cheaper items that were by far more healthy as well, and the local guys thought we were so wierd for not crushing cheap chips and soda in the morning and throwing the trash on the ground. Thats another funny thing, numerous times Mike or I would be looking around for a trash can and one of our local boys would grab the trash out of our hand and throw it on the ground for us, as if saying "I'll take care of that for you". Those local guys are really something. Overall they got the job done which was challenging even for them despite knowing Chechiwa (the local language), which was much appreciated. However I don't think they really had as much of charitable hearts as a typical donor or volunteer. Both those with the Government and Save the children all have great salaries for Malawi, and seemed to care but not to the point of helping the villages beyond their "job". However Gilbert, the guy doing most of the ground work to get everything set up, was really good and had a passion for what we were doing. I had a good time with our driver Emmanuel and Sydney as well as when I rode with other guys. They listen to tons of American music, a lot of rap and pop. At one point Jessie McCartney came on the radio and these otherwise tough dudes in the car with me turn around and are like "I love this music!". I. Just shook my head. The highlight for me was some of the off-roading we had to do to get to the remote spots. At one point we got both trucks stuck in muddy ruts as we were fishtailing up a steep sticky grade in the Lujeri tea farm. A bunch of locals came and pushed both cars up the hill, amazing what power in numbers can do. After they got the trucks out however they wanted paid. The one driver translated to me, and I explained that we weren't there to make money or hire people but were spending all our money buying nets and soccer balls for the children, and getting them to the villages. That was easy for them to bargain with, they just said that's fine just give us some of those. We then had to explain the balls were for the schools and the nets for mothers with children under age 5. It was all dead honest. They didn't really care though, like most places in undeveloped Africa, even adults have a sense of entitlement to help from the white man, it's like they think "of course their here doing charity work, who else would do it?". After a couple minutes of arguing, they said "ok, you are free to go", as if they were going to hold us there before. Entertaining. The disrespect goes both ways though. There is something extremely inappropriate about traveling to remote locations to provide aid via SUVs barreling through the dirt roads at kids in the way, no slowing down at all, blasting Tupac or some other gangsta rap and littering out the windows. I'm just like, "really"? Although that's just like Guinea. Even the Malawians with real jobs see themselves as way above the villagers in the food chain of respect. Class warfare prevails everywhere. There's also the typical amount net lossage from the way of doing business in Africa. Both in my team and the others, all us Western volunteers witnessed the locals flipping out on villagers that were trying to get a net who hadn't registered, or trying to sneak getting 2, however they had no problem taking some for their own keeping or those working with them. Anos proved to be completely incompetent at hosting foreigners, but we got by with making good relationships with our drivers and getting them to take us where we needed to go. Besides that we were just busy, hitting about 30 villages in a week. They were all great experiences, some more than others. At two I was introduced by Sydney and he translated as I explained to everyone who I was and how I was going to take their pictures and show them to people in he US to raise more money for nets. At some we gave demonstrations of how to use the nets, bringing a lot of laughter and fun to the visit, and at one I passed out candy to everyone there, which as expected was utter chaos. At others the village leader led them in prayer giving thanks for our visit, and at others it was heartbreaking as we left without providing everyone with a net. I do understand they have to draw the line somewhere, but it just didn't always seem reasonable.
