Building

We apologize for the delay in our update. The Kleven fam has been busy building many aspects of our life here in Malawi. We will use this entry to get all of you, our friends, family and supporters, up to date with what we have been doing and where we are at in this new life.

First we have been building our language skills. This week we actually finished our formal training with our instructor Abambo Austin .  We are thankful to him as we can now greet our neighbors and have minimal conversation with the people we encounter with some comfort. We will now continue to practice as much as possible and study our materials on our own. It is definitely harder to learn a new language when you are older and have a little tribe to take care of.

 We have built our confidence in moving in and around the city of Lilongwe. A few weeks ago on a Sunday we were on our way to the grocery store and noticed a lot of people wearing red and white. It reminded us of a Badger home game day back in Madison. When we arrived at the grocery store and asked one of the friendly guys we see every week there “what is going on?” He told us that there was a big football (soccer) game between arch rivals Lilongwe and Blantyre. We decided to finish shopping and head to the stadium.

We arrived to a stadium that was screaming with energy and packed with people. We stepped into a stadium that is all cement seating surrounding the field. There were vendors everywhere making this “hissing” sound trying to get the attention of potential customers. As we walked around the filed we heard the familiar call of “azungu” as we passed all the spectators. Out of tens of thousands of people I am confidant we were the only people with white skin in the entire stadium. Most everyone was very welcoming to the family and we enjoyed the first half very much. After about the first half we were getting pretty hot and the girls were ready to go. As we were leaving there was a bad call by the ref and chaos broke out. As we were walking by a rowdy section, the crowd started throwing bottles onto the field and just as we passed, they rushed the field and tore down part of the fence. Phew!!! We were so thankful that we left when we did. All together, we had a great time and were glad we decided to go.

Most of our time now is spent building relationships. We have been getting to know our neighbor’s a bit better and are now much more comfortable stopping by while they are out washing clothes, cooking or working outside.  They are all very happy to listen to us try to say a few things or ask questions in Chichewa. It is awesome to see the smiles on their faces when we make the effort to hang out and communicate with them in their daily life’s.

We have also been singing and dancing even more with the children of the parish and also visited one of the two nurseries that the parish operates. There we saw a nicely run childcare facility with about 40 children and two teachers. Yes, only two teachers. We have learned that it is pretty common to have high child to teacher ratios here and honestly the kids were very well behaved and the teachers seemed to have great control of what was going on. It was a shorter visit but we sang some songs, danced and laughed with them all and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  We will visit the second nursery this coming week and really look forward to the opportunity.  

A couple weeks ago I finished a project building a shed for Sister Anastasia, one of the Teresian sisters. The building is made completely out of scrap pieces of metal that were in their rubbish pit, old speaker wire and strips of old tires. She wanted to build the shed for a manure project she is working on. The goal of the project is to create manure fertilizer (compost) out of all natural and locally available sources. Then to take it to the villages to help those that can not afford fertilizer for their crops and teach them how to make it on their own using their own resources. The dependency on chemical fertilizer for maize crops is a major challenge here in Malawi and it is something I hope to help on again in the near future. It was a fun project and I am grateful Sister asked me to help.

Lily has been practicing each week with the parish dancing girls and this past weekend danced for the first time during mass. She did an unbelievable job, and both Tonya and I couldn’t have been more proud of her. You can see a clip of the performance here. Her participation with the girls has built some beautiful friendships. They not only practice and perform together but also play and get silly, as girls will.

We recently finished building a grass fence around the property. We needed to put the fence up for the dog we will get in a few short weeks. The fence will also offer a bit of privacy when we need it. We love to play and be with our neighbors but sometimes a little space is nice. A couple of the employees of the parish and I constructed the fence. It is made of bamboo, grass and those strips of old tire. The only milled timber in the whole thing is what I used for the walk and car gates at he front. It was a great learning experience for me and I am also very glad to have it completed.

Last Friday, Fr. Somanje invited us to come to the Comboni house for the day and just hang out for the day. Fr. Somanje as really made us feel welcomed at the parish, at the house and just in general. We had a great day resting, the girls got to watch some TV and I didn’t have to cook breakfast or lunch. Josie and Lily played for a while with Fr. and he was a great sport in entertaining them dressing babies, putting clothes on the dolls and all. It was a welcomed day retreat and we are very thankful to Fr. for inviting us.

We actually have this whole last week to write about but I figured we’d put that together by the end of the weekend and get us all up to date. We thank God for bring us to the beautiful place and thank all of you for keeping up and supporting us. Please don’t be shy in emailing or writing to us. It is really nice to hear from our family and friends back in the states. Much Love from all the Klevens. Jacob