Sunday, June 12

We went to town and tried to buy fabric but the place was closed. Most stuff was closed since it is ‪Sunday morning‬. We stopped by the wall, and walked back to the lodge. We got to hang out and relax for a little bit before the fundraiser. The fundraiser was set up to help raise money for the families and now orphans of fallen law enforcement. We were told we would be auctioned off at the fundraiser event this afternoon to help raise money. This was interesting and we that it was funny. We got there early to help with dances. Wildly gave us a few beers and they gave us some rice and meat for lunch. We danced with kids for about an hour and a half waiting on people to show up. It was suppose to start ‪at 12:30‬ or 1 and it finally started ‪at 2:30-3‬. We have gotten use to the Malawian way with time.

It was a mock wedding and the ladies danced in and the couple followed. The little girl that was on our laps earlier had grabbed a little boys hands and they started dancing in behind the couple until someone went to get them. It was so cute! The talking part was hard to understand what was going on because someone would say something over the microphone and all of the upper class women would go dance and throw money on the ground as donations. This happened so many times and I found out at the end that different regions or districts were going up to donate money and celebrate. Annie and the commissioner went up early time.

They had food bowls that they were selling for 10k and apples for 15k that Annie bought. Then w e played musical chairs with women and men in the upper class party. I came in third before a lady almost yanked the chair out from under me! Lol It was a fun time! We ended up cutting all of the food into small pieces, that should of been smaller, to hand out to all the children that had attended. These children had come from nearby villages or the city of Zomba. There were so many kids and not enough small pieces of food. They were trying to keep kids in a line for us to hand out pieces but those lines turned into a mob really quick. It was a very overwhelming and emotional situation. These young kids were scrambling and shoving us over to try and get ‪1/5th‬ of a banana or a few crumbs from a muffin. All you can see is desperation in their eyes from them being hungry. As our baskets were coming to the end we still had hundreds of little hands surrounding us that didn't get any food. After getting back to my seat thinking about that made my heart hurt for them. So many kids walked away empty handed. We felt like we were in two different worlds because the people that were under the tents were all upper class and the people surrounding were poor. As the rich bunch threw money on the ground, the kids were scrambling to get any crumb of food they could get. This puts a lot into perspective.

They did have dancing and one of the men dancers pulled Jennifer from her seat to dance with him. The sun was starting to set and we didn't know how much longer it would last. But you could see the crowd was starting to get smaller and smaller because they didn't want to walk home in the dark. People would start running because they knew exactly how long it would take them to get home before it got dark. Then it started raining pretty hard which is a little uncommon during this time because it's their dry season. We stayed under the tents and the people who weren't under tents started to run home. We soon after got in the car and went back to the lodge.

When we returned, we gathered down at the restaurant for dinner to discuss what had happened today. We learned that many different people had thanked us in their speeches and the commissioner thanked us all for the clothes we had brought to donate. It was a very emotionally exhausting day.

Julie