Full Circle yet Still Progressing

Malawi has finally entered its winter season. Three days ago, I saw my breath in the morning chill, and the swimming pool is now out of the question by even the most dedicated users. Reminiscing of sleeping with a space heater by my bed a few months ago is like looking into the wrong end of a telescope. My first experiences of Malawi can’t be as far away as they seem! Yet, the time where I felt so lost here which is synonymous to me with the cold weather in Africa really is about 7 months behind me.

I’ve now been in Malawi for 9 months, and life here seems just that-ordinary life rather than the adventure and novelty I felt for the first 6 months. The missionaries on campus have become family to me, the classroom a familiar and fun work home, and driving on the left side of the road a norm. But the Malawian government and powers-that-be must feel for my loss of sense of adventure, because they’ve ensured I remember I’m not in Kansas any more. For the past three weeks, people of Lilongwe (particularly within a three mile radius of me) have had serious water shortages, not from lack of water, but from lack of electricity. Apparently, a large part of the local power company machinery has been malfunctioning and won’t be repaired for another three months. While those of us living on campus are completely spoiled with our generator, we have no recourse against the effects on our running water. My first thoughts in the morning are no longer hopes for water long enough to take a shower at complete leisure, but I wake up wondering if anything at all will come out of the faucet enough to put in a bottle so I can simply wash my face with it. I suppose I’ve had good practice with the ’94 flood in Georgia which was considered a national crisis where waters supplies were shipped in across the country. And I also went a month without a shower while hiking in Wyoming after my Sophomore year in college. But I had hoped that time of my life was at an end. Honestly, I suppose I’m glad to have this one little hardship considering I feel I ought to be “roughing it” to earn my title as missionary. Showers are overrated anyway, right? Good perfume and a headscarf work just as well, and I now save all those body oils that soap companies are constantly claiming their products don’t eliminate! As the Ingalls family says, “With any loss comes some gain,” or as my nana says, “there’s a silver lining to every dark cloud.”

Aside from the adventure of our water (electricity) shortage, I’ve been preparing mentally to say goodbye (at least temporarily) to Pam Forster, a missionary here who’s been a mentor and become one of my dearest friends. She flies to Ireland for her summer furlough next Thursday. It’s odd to think of staying behind without her since she’s been in the country for four and a half years now and has shepherded me through the learning curve of missionary life. I feel like I’m graduating from Malawi 101 with her leaving. In fact, to carry the graduation simile a bit further, I feel the same sadness about the end of this year as I did when I graduated from college. Each day, I try to enjoy the sounds of the birds, the sun and horizon, my students, the community, and all the peculiarities of this place that I know I’ll desperately miss when I leave.

Along with the upcoming changes of long-term missionaries beginning to take their furloughs and short-term teams arriving for the summer, this week has been a bit of a mile stone in the classroom. My seventh graders are the only language arts group that I teach solo so their approval and performance matters a great deal to me (Lorliee MacLean and I teach either two or three days each of sixth, eighth, and tenth grade language arts). But Tuesday was an all time low for me in with the seventh grade; I felt discouraged with class discipline and my own efforts and abilities to teach. But yesterday was a breakthrough. For the first time in my short teaching career, I saw light bulbs going on everywhere as I reviewed (for what seemed like the billionth time) the parts of speech in a sentence, and in particular, verbs. The class was so excited about catching on. Literally, I felt the energy and response all over the room. Students were calling out answers and asking questions in an orderly fashion. We finally came to an understanding of what they didn’t know that I could help teach. And at the end of the lecture, they actually clapped! Of course, I’ll find out today with their grammar exam the true retention and impact of that hour. But I now know what it’s like to bond with a class. I feel like a mother of teenagers! And I’m just 26! How fun to have the best of both worlds-having the energy to encourage and discipline in love these young adults with insecurities and hormones since and yet not having to LIVE with them.

Yet another development has brought me closer to my seventh grade girls. Despite the brevity of our time left in the academic year, several students expressed interest in a women’s Bible study. Two girls from the seventh grade class, Jessie and Bronwyn, have been studying Ephesians with me for the past three weeks. God answered our prayers to grow the study, and we had two new additions this afternoon, Sunny and Sidney (pronounced Shinie), sisters from the tenth and ninth grades respectively. God does bless our efforts! Those girls are precious to me and I feel tremendously privileged to share in their growth of understanding in the scriptures. I see all the talent each young woman possesses intermingled with their unique personalities and I just can’t WAIT to see what God’s going to do with and in their lives!

We have 4 weeks of class left. Please pray that the words of my mouth would be encouraging to the students, and the teachers and I would finish with a flourish. Also, I covet your prayers for a weekend retreat the middle school teachers and I are organizing for the ninth and tenth graders. We will hike Nkhoma mountain again but spend two nights at the foot of the peak rather than simply make a day trip of it. Please pray that God will speak to the hearts of these young adults. They struggle with so many things: insecurity, frustration with Malawi as a developing country, identity as missionary children, and the complications of being children of parents who chose to leave their country of citizenship for whatever reason. As I’ve seen in my life, God often uses our struggles to reveal himself to us when we’re honest with him. My prayer is that the students will understand that God isn’t just something we study about and abstractly discuss to create a morality with which to live. I want them to taste and see that He is good. And lastly, pray for our talent show occuring Friday, May 18th. This may seem like a silly request, but any time students perform, they leave themselves vulnerable to feelings of rejection and anxiety. We want this to be a safe-haven for their expressions, not a stunting, inhibiting popularity contest. A ninth grader, Mitch Easter, approached me about three days ago. With a serious countenance, he said “Ms. Holliday, um (glance down, flip long, frat-boy hair), we’re hosting a talent show to raise money for the new classrooms. Would you be a judge?” Relieved that his request was much more light-hearted than his demeanor indicated, I replied in the affirmative. Then, out of the manila envelope with which he had been fiddling, he pulled the flier with my name already printed as a judge! Frighteningly, I see myself in them. And I realize I sound like my parents when I say that. Yikes. Maybe it is time to come home.