What is Raising Malawi?

Here's an overview of the program shortly after it was first conceived a year ago. I just watched the update video. I'm so excited to share that I am in it! I plan to post that as soon as it's uploaded on You Tube. Meantime, please watch this lovely overview. It's about 10 minutes.

Home of Hope Orphanage

Madonna is back in Malawi this week visiting the Home of Hope in Mchinji where she found her son David. I wrote a little about Home of Hope on an earlier blog entry -- remember the little girl in the rain? I took these pictures and video right before that storm rolled in.

The orphanage is run by Rev. Thompson Chipeta, a retired Presbyterian minister who himself grew up as an orphan. He established the orphanage with the idea of the children living in “home groups”, each group of up to 25 children being cared for by a “mother”. The mothers are usually widows who are given accommodation, food and a very small allowance, if finances permit. (Medic Malawi web site).

This is Gladys. She waddled up to me when I first arrived at the orphanage. She's a baby. She's a brick. I picked her up, a ball of expressionless dead weight in my arms. Jeffrey Sachs' wife Sonia, a pediatrician, examined Gladys a few months before I met her in February. I understand from Nathan (the director on the Madonna documentary who was with Sonia on that last visit) that Gladys has a curved spine and as evidenced by her bulging belly, other internal problems all due to malnutrition. She's not going to outgrow these problems.

I could feel her bendy spine when I held her. Even before I picked her up I knew something wasn't quite right. Her eyes remind me of my friend Ananya from grad school, so I had a special fondness for her.

I met the girl in the yellow dress when she was off by herself playing with broken glass. She was throwing rock-sized pieces of glass on a concrete sidewalk, shattering them all to bits. I took the glass out of her hands and started to pick up the pieces. The kids were running over it in their bare feet. I kept saying, "nooooooo" to teach them that broken glass was very bad. Some of the other kids decided to help me pick up the glass. They scammed me, giving me random pieces of trash pretending it was glass, saying "nooooooo" and then laughing their heads off for tricking me.

Truth be told, these are wild children! They reminded me a lot of the kids in Lord of the Flies.

They need so much. Parents would be a good start. Someone to be with them; teach them that it's not a good idea to smash glass for kicks. It'd probably help if they had a toy or two, but first things first. I mean, there are 500 kids here who are very much loved by the Reverend and his wife, but they don't have anyone really watching them and certainly no one to give them undivided attention and care.

Such is the dilemma with orphans, I guess.

Janja told me later that my little glass-breaking friend was new to the orphanage. She had arrived 8 days prior with her twin sister. The police brought them there after their mother hanged herself in their home. Sure seems like a heavy burden for a little girl to have to carry. I don't know that I could carry it....No friends. No mom and dad to love me. No one to explained to me why I was abandoned in such a horrible way. I suppose I would smash glass too.

On the upside if there is one, these kids are easily entertained. This little girl was fascinated with my toenail polish. I looked down and she was rubbing the color on each of my toes. I suppose little girls everywhere like to dress up and be pretty. They just don't have "stuff" to dream with -- no dolls, no feather boas, no fingernail polish, no nothing. I want to see that change.

I let a few of the kids take pictures with my camera. It was remarkable to witness. First, I gave my camera to this little boy here. He was grabbing it and touching the lens. Just crazy handling it. So I taught him, saying "nooooooo"... as I'd take his fingers away from the lens. I showed him to look through the viewfinder and put his finger on the top button. Then I explained, "PUSH". And I would press his finger down. A few more times of taking his fingers away from the lens and strategically placing his index finger on the button on top with the instruction, "PUSH" (an English word he had probably never heard before) and he quickly got the swing of it.

Then another little guy grabbed the camera away from him and was fumbling and being rough with it. To my delight, the first little boy taught him how to take a picture. My god it was so inspiring. He showed him the button on the top and said, "PUSH", just like I taught him.



Then I got the idea to let the girls try on my sunglasses. I would place these blingy-beauts on their eyes and say, "FABULOUS"!

There were a lot of kids, so I had to move fast from face to face. Put the glasses on their eyes and say, "FABULOUS"...then off to the next kid.

Then I noticed something that totally rocked my world. As I put my jumbo glasses on each coffee-bean-sized head, I looked at the eyes behind lenses.

The children were looking through the lenses as if they were a filter on the world. They clearly marveled at what they saw, taking it all in, looking all the way to the left and then all the way to the right before I pulled the glasses off and moved on to the next kid.

It was a such a wonderful metaphor. I wear the "rose-colored glasses" all the time. It's fun to wear, but it's just a perspective. It's not reality. Meeting these kids reminded me of that. They were teaching me as much as I was teaching them.

FABULOUS!

Here's a 3-min clip of the kids singing. Enjoy!

Happy Passover &
Plague- and Locust-free Easter!
On our way back from Lake Malawi, we meet children selling locusts by the roadside.

The Reaping starring Hilary Swank opened this weekend. I want to see it so I can better understand the old testament. I went to Catholic school growing up and heard a lot of these stories, although they never really made much sense to me. Who's afraid of a grasshopper?

There was a bad outbreak of them a few years ago in Northern Africa -- Mauritania, Niger and Sudan. A BBC report (10/03) explained that desert locusts are normally solitary insects but when climatic conditions are favorable they can rapidly increase in number.

As adult, winged insects they form swarms that can travel in tens of millions and travel great distances, crossing international borders in search of food.

They can devastate crops within minutes.

"And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt; very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such."—Exodus. X: 14.

What's really whacked is that this stuff really happens. In 1987 to '89 a swarm of locust traveled from Sudan to India. I wonder if global warming had anything to do with the plague conditions. It's like we need to actually see the polar bear drowning before we consider the impact of how we live our lives. Sadly, I think I would have to see a small army of locusts in my apartment before I would bother changing out all my light bulbs to a more eco-friendly variety. Even now, I'm conveniently convinced that my little light bulb does not feed the bigger problem.

But I think that's the whole point of all those "wrath of God" stories. It *is* our individual accountability. I still didn't make that donation to pay for my carbon footprint from my trip to Africa. It's going to be about $300. I have the money....it's just not a priority yet. See. That's the consciousness I need to change within me. I'm working on it. And yes, I'll make that donation.

"And the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red Sea; there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt."—Exodus X: 19

We are still in the window of time called, Pesach (Passover). It started last Monday at noon and ends tomorrow, sundown. The name "Passover" derives from the night of the 10th plague, when the Angel of Death passed over the houses that had lamb's blood over their doorposts, thereby sparing the first born.

You know...I'm the first born. Although I'm a girl, so I don't think I would've been killed. (David, you would've surely been snuffed out, so you really should think about this kind of stuff.)

I am working on my ego, which is the spiritual point of the holiday. The work you did this past week on your ego can help to eliminate its control over you. I am doing the work, as best I understand what that means. For one, I haven't eaten any bread this week. Bread (and wheat and rice, I think) represents ego (expanding) so, you don't want to eat that. That's why everyone's eating matzo. It's unleavened (commemorating the hurriedly-baked bread the Israelites ate on their hasty departure from Egypt). Matzo is actually an important spiritual tool for making a connection to higher consciousness. Nice thing about living in New York is that it is very easy to come by. I'm getting some fresh matzo ball soup for lunch.

I'm not Jewish. But I study kabbalah. The old testament story of this holiday is the Exodus and freedom of the Israelites from ancient Egypt. In kabbalah, you decode the story. "Israelite" is anyone on a spiritual path. Egypt represents "ego". The point of this week is to gain freedom from your ego....leave Egypt so to speak, forever.

I don't want to go off and float on a mountain as a practice of my spirituality. My goal is to transform my ego and love my life and laugh at it and soak in everything. Some days are just perfect for that. My whole trip to Africa was like that.

Here's me and my new friends Delia and Megan discovering and enjoying Africa. Megan is a native Botsie (Botswana) who just took a position as head chef at the lodge where we were staying. So, Malawi was new to all of us and we were all in a mindset of discovery.

We went to a club to celebrate Megan's birthday (she's 22 I think, but a very old soul). It was the end of my and Delia's trip. We stayed out till 1 or 2 am and planned to head out to Lake Malawi the next morning.

Before the sunrise, maybe 4:30 am, the three of us spilled into the car all hung over and sleep-deprived. Our tour guides for the day were Guy Pickering (who owns/runs the Kumbali Lodge) and his friend Peter (who saved my life when I nearly drown. I'll share more on that later.)

We drove several hours and woke up to some of the most majestic sights on the planet. This is actually one of the best days of my life. The whole trip, every minute of it, we laughed ourselves out of our minds.

This clip is 3:19, and worth a watch if you're at all curious about African bug delicacies. According to Wikipedia, locusts are the only invertebrates considered to be Kosher food. So, if you keep kosher, this little recipe might help you mix things up a bit. I had no plans to try the "desert shrimp", as they're called, but I'd eat that before I would eat mice (like Guy describes) or flying ants, which Megan and Delia ate a few minutes later as we continued down the road. I'll post that video in a bit.

I think Megan is describing a recipe for cooking caterpillars here. I just love her accent. We bounced along in the car like this the entire trip. I get road sick just looking at it. Imagine driving 5-6 hours this way! Was it 5 hours? I don't even remember. But it was ridiculous and glorious, and random and perfect.

The bumps were all part of our joy.