The First Day in Kumponda

We woke up at 7am. TODAY WAS THE DAY. This was the morning Daniel took us five and our translator, Jarvis, to Kumponda to meet with the committee especially made to advise and help us achieve our dream of creating a bicycle powered maize mill in their community.  As we drove out of the depths of the city, our surroundings gradually changed from local stores and milling people to farm land and frolicking children. 

As our car bumbled down the bumpy roads to Kumponda, we were met with waves and smiles from everyone, especially the children.  One boy with his school backpack chased us all the way down the road, not stopping his smile for one second. 

Once we got in front of the chief’s house for the meeting, we discovered some interesting playground equipment. Definitely missed the seesaw back home!

After a few playground shenanigans, the committee members started to arrive and warmly welcomed us in Chichewa.  Not all of the committee members were able to attend the meeting due to being busy in the community, but we met five out of the ten members! Their names were James, the committee chairman, Erissy, Agnes, Flone, and Alice. It warmed my heart to see such a representation of women as well, seeing as other places in the world are still working towards equal representation in their leadership, including our own!

During our meeting, we discussed the goals of our trip and how we want to work together with the community.  Our goals are to build one sustainable bicycle powered maize mill, learn more about the community and their agricultural practices through surveying, continue to build a relationship with the community, and build a map with the community members to better understand Kumponda as a whole.  The committee members were very supportive, excited, and asked many questions to understand the project! It went incredibly wonderful, and in Daniel’s words, the project is a “dream come true” or “maloto akukwaniri tsidwa”.  We ended the meeting with some cold Coca Colas :)

After the meeting, we saw some local Kumpondan children along with path smiling and looking our way.  I asked them if I could take their picture, and as you can see, they enjoyed seeing the results!

Their beautiful smiles couldn’t even truly be captured by the pictures taken :)

Showing me the ropes on how to make my derpy faces even derpier!

When we said goodbye, we waved out the window to each other as the car drove away.  This made us even more excited for the next visit to the community!

We then headed to various mechanical, hardware, and agricultural stores to start our hunt of materials.  For the next few hours, we found many of the materials we needed to begin the construction of the maize mill. A successful day indeed!

Big love to the other EWB teams, India, Nicaragua, and Thailand as they are on their trips! They are doing big things and deserve lots of support :) Thank you for everyone supporting us back home, hope you are all having a majestic break!

-Jennifer

The Beginning of Malawi

There’s a lot to be said about being uncomfortable on an airplane for 5 hours.. then 13 hours.. and then 5 more.

Patience was key as we flew into the future - 10 hours into the future!

We had a good time, although very very sleepy.

We’ve been making many friends!

And we’re having fun.

A huge comfort of the 13 hour flight came in the form of a warm and wet paper towel at 4am to wipe our arms, hands, and faces. Also, each seat had a touch screen on the back of the plane seats to play games, watch movies, and listen to music. Chris quickly found out the Sudoku game timed you and had a top ten leaderboard; he felt a little bad for filling the entire board with his top scores.

We all met some very interesting people on the planes. One person we met was returning to Ethiopia after being in the USA for 9 years starting a life of their own in a place they felt they could get an esteemed education and job. When we begin landing in Ethiopia, he came to tears, and exclaimed “I miss my mom so much.” It was a joy to connect with him.

Finally arrived in Malawi!

Taken from the trunk of our moving car.

So much to explore in Malawi!

Our hotel and its hallways!

Brick Structures!

Brick-making structures made of bricks!

AND GECKOS!

Among many other unique Blantyre, Malawi features. 

The rainy season welcomes us every day around noon to 3pm.

Order of business, got some Kwatcha! One USD exchanges for 625 kwatcha - even more if you bargain on the streets!

The ever important grocery shopping :]

Who wants bananas?

I don’t know why anyone would give this name to a cookie.

It’s been truly amazing to meet Daniel Mwakemeka. He’s the leader of the organization we’re working with called Action for Environmental Sustainability. We’ve been spending most of our time with him - joking around, eating food, talking about the work we’ll be doing in the Kumponda community, and visiting different areas within the city of Blantyre.

Today, we played some basketball with Daniel! Spencer and Daniel were first to the court.

Blantyre is nothing like any city we’re used to – no big buildings, just hundreds of people either walking and carrying something like wood or fruit, or driving around in cars packed to the brim with people. Everyone is busy at work, laughing with friends, or both.

It’s such a pleasure to finally be in Malawi. Tomorrow morning begins our time in the Kumponda community. We’ve met so many warm and welcoming people. Although the education system functions on the English language, most people don’t speak any English, so we’ve been learning bits of Chichewan everywhere we go. We’re so excited to meet the Kumpondan community members tomorrow!

Shout out to the EWB Cal Poly India, Thailand, and Nicaragua teams! Much love! We hope everything’s going great for you all. Friends and family back at home, so much love as well! Thank you for your incredible support.

Departure LAX-->Washington DC

Howdy Team!

Here we are in LAX with our prego-packs, so stoked to be getting through security and onto this plane to get some good sleep. It has been a good drive and trip over from SLO. We left around 4, didn't hit too much traffic, and got driven to the airport by a first class service, shoutout to Jesse Bluestein's parents for letting us park on their street and for their willingness to take us to LAX. 
The team will be working hard throughout the trip to keep this blog as up to date as possible, but working even harder to find, fab, and finish our Maize Mill assembly for the loving community of Kumponda. Another shoutout to the other travel teams who are also doing great things this winter break, we wish you all the best of luck. A final shoutout goes to the Malawi team back here on the ground, as this would not be possible without all of your hard work, mentors and students alike. This is the first post of many; we will touch base again when we arrive in Blantyre! Keep on truckin'.

-Spencer