We are absolutely LOVING it here!! The food, the people, the scenery, everything is amazing!
There is definitely a lot of laughing going on, both from us and from the students here. Already our weekends have been booked up with invitations from the students to go to different places. Last weekend we were taken down to Eshan Saturday night for dinner and Sunday morning for a bit of food shopping and lunch – the food here is so cheap it’s unbelievable!
In the first seven months of 2011, I did a placement with Lattitude Global Volunteering in Malawi. Malawi is a small country in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is extremely densely populated and is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world. Clearly, there is a need for volunteers. I was placed in a village in the centre of Malawi called Mbonekera (BON-A-KER-RA). To get to my placement, it took 3 hours from the capital; two on the highway and an hour on a dirt road.
This year some of our staff here at Lattitude will be taking part in Oaktree Foundation’s Live Below the Line campaign. Five staff members will live on less than $2 a day from Monday 7 until Friday 11 May and experience what it’s like to live below the poverty line.
Life at Tiny Angels is going well. I am plodding along very happy and healthy, and everyday something happens that surprises me, makes me laugh, makes me angry, makes me think, and makes me work hard. I am taking every day as it comes and soaking in every moment – the tough stuff and the beautiful stuff.
“Um… er, let’s see um… vegetarian?”
The girl continues to look at me blankly.
“Ve… um…. Vegetarianska? No meat?” I say again, very slowly. I can see the girl’s mind ticking over. Stupid Australian, she’s probably thinking. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really blame her.
Giving up, I point at the first thing on the menu, and hope. “That one.”
When I told people back home I was going to Poland, the first thing they said to me went along the lines of “Really! I hope you like cabbage!”