Within

Here comes the Best Part, as I promised.

It's also the most complicated... It's about love, of course.

I've actually been thinking about writing this post many times, but I just haven't done it yet... I still don't really feel like I know what to write, but I'll just write anyway.

I've started to write poems again, something I'm happy about. Last time I wrote poems was during high school. I'll post the poems as soon as they're finished.

About love. I've realized that love is something that comes step by step and that you can't really know if someone is "right" or not, whatever "right" means. It's not about "asking the question" or something like that, it's more about just being yourself and if you end up spending lots of time with someone, then probably something will happen if both of you are interested.

So just taking things step by step is actually the best way, because then you also get to know the other person more, otherwise you just see the sides that she/he is showing to you.

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I should also say something about my work here, since things actually really are happening!


This week me, Mitsue and Anna are having meetings with preschool committees, since the preschools are closed during the easter because people are harvesting their maize now.
We are bicycling sometimes one hour to arrive at one preschool where we meet between five and eleven preschools in the surrounding area. We are talking to them about how to make their preschools independent and strong.

Every preschool should have a school fee that the parents need to pay, so that they can buy sugar for the maize porridge that they serve the kids.

The preschool should also make sure that they collect six bags of maize for one year (every bag is 50 kg) if they have fifty kids (adjusting the number of bags if they have more or less kids). They need to buy chemicals for this maize so that it won't get rotten or eaten by insects (unfortunately the only solution).

The best thing is if they collect more bags of maize than they need and store them, because then they can sell the bags in januari when the price is much higher (because it's dry season and no maize is growing). This way they can earn money.

We are also talking to them about using compost, natural pesticides and companion planting, as well as budgets and IGA's (Income Generating Activities). We are trying to involve them in the meetings as much as possible, so we ask them what IGA's they have and what ideas they have, so that it's not only us standing there and talking.

We are having our supervisors with us as well and they are making the translation for us. After the meeting we give them one bag of soya beans so that they can plant it together with their maize, because the soya helps the maize to grow a lot. We also give them some bread and Sobo (saft).

Sometimes they are really listening and those times it really feels good, because we're really doing development work. Other times they just ask us for more things and don't realize that we've been talking about independency.

This is the very problem in Malawi, that people are depending on others to help them, instead of trying to solve their own problems. Many people are just sitting around and are waiting for someone to come and help them, because they see other people that are doing nothing and still recieving lots of help. This is why we always try to work with the people, instead of just doing everything for them.

So, now I've written a lot, hope you're satisfied for now!

I'll write more some other day, now I have to sleeep...