Into the Village

Last weekend, I went into the village with Ewa to bring some food to a few homes of elderly or sick people without.  Mr. Kulapa went with Gary and Ewa first to be show them where the houses were and to introduce them to the people that needed the most help.  The type of village we were heading to is the type of place where electricity, indoor plumbing, and any hope that the people speak English ends.  In order to get to this particular village we exited our gate on to the dirt road and instead of turning right which normally brings us to the parish, the town, or the market, we turned left. 

 

The first house we stopped at was only about a 10 to 15 minute bike ride away.  Some clarification is needed concerning the word "house" since my definition has changed slightly.  Now when I refer to a house, it only means that there are walls, a roof, and some sort of hole or space as an entrance.  This is all that can be assumed by the word "house".  Anything less than this such as walls but no roof or an obvious space where there should be a wall doesn't quite qualify, and while it might soon be a house or is still being used as one, it is still at the very best, an incomplete house.  Now if a house has glass windows, concrete floors, or a tin roof instead of grass then I would probably say it was a "nice house".  Anything extra such as electricity, plumbing, or perimeter walls usually bumps it up to a "really nice house". 

 

The house we came to first was just a "house".  It had all of the necessary walls and a grass roof, but that's about it.  I remember it as having concrete floors, but now that I think about it we were sitting on mats so that probably distracted me enough to not realize the floors were dirt.  There were also a couple of windows, but they were lacking the common window characteristic of having some sort of barrier (glass, screens, bars, curtains, or chicken wire) that prevents just anything from entering through them.  Not much distguished these windows with just holes in the wall other than there distinct rectangular shape.  I suppose the mats could have been used to prevent rain from coming in, but as it was the greater portion of a row of bricks in the places that weren't holding up the roof were missing so the rain would probably have entered anyways.  Despite some of its drawbacks, it was a house and the situation could have been worse so let's not start complaining about what we have.

 

The first woman we visited was named Maria.  I have a difficult time judging ages, but I would say she was in her 40's or 50's.  This judgment is also likely affected by the fact that this woman probably had AIDS.  We went in and found her resting on a mat so we sat on the mat beside her.  We were followed in by a group of children that were probably not hers, but they might have been relatives or neighbors curious about the visitors.  We talked with her for awhile with the little Chichewa that we know, myself understanding the main point that she did not want us to forget about her.  We then filled a basket with corn flour brought to us by a girl with a look that she took care of things and prayed the Our Father with them.  We said goodbye shaking her hand and those of all the children that were not too shy or afraid to touch us and went to the next house.