2025-08-19 Mulungu akhale nanu

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Ready for take-off!

The almost-university-students we've been meeting and working with during these last days stopped by in the morning for a final group photo all together. Mulungu akhale nanu: May God go with you.

We've planned several times to spend a a couple of hours in the local town for some fabric shopping. (If that doesn't sound fun, bear with...) Thompson took us down, and dropped us by shops Gillian and Ruth know of old. 

One of the oldest shopping streets in Mchinji

It's wonderful what you can buy here: nuts and bolts (probably on the buyer to match the two); tool-heads, tool handles, and strips of inner-tube rubber for binding the two together; pipes, metal in all shapes and forms, cables, timbers... To me it still has the feel of a frontier town in a Western. 

And alongside all the gritty practicality...

Sudden colours of Africa

...this rush of colour! Ruth chose designs with particular friends in mind, and to replenish her stocks for "making" back in the UK. I'm not a patient shopper but I felt no hurry to leave. Among my choices was a pattern picked out by the next customer, too. "It's a beautiful design. I want to make a wrap for myself," said Elizabeth. I felt validated in my selection.

Moving on we stopped for groceries at a new single-story complex - a parade of a few modern-build shops, with proper parking and an open-sided covered restaurant. The town is on the grow, and as we headed back up the road north towards the Home - Mchinji National Forest Reserve to our left -  we wondered how soon the town would be filling in the as-yet sparse development to our right. 

By the afternoon, plans has slipped by a couple of hours and we had only a brief meeting with HOH management, our joint aim being to reach decisions on immediate and near-term spending from UK charitable funds. There was a good atmosphere, with inclusive leadership from Executive Director Linda as she drew her team into the conversation. 

Paper airplanes. Popcorn. Apples. Happy!

In the late afternoon a wonderful mix of ages and stages of young people gathered on the grass outside the Guest House - "little-ies" through to a few of the uni students - and joined by some of the staff. Somehow one or two of the smallest knew how to throw the paper airplanes we'd made earlier with javelin-like power. We started to back-fold the planes' tips to make them less pointy!  "Where's mine?" asked one of the Clinic staff. Lots of inclusive who-can-throw-the-furthest / over that / under that fun.

Then much crunching. Not a kernel, not a core remained, of the pans of popped corn and the pyramid of bright red apples Gillian bought from town. Less healthy snacks are available locally in abundance. We're aware that at least one dentist may be reading this blog (SD we mentioned you might come here again... ;)
 
Aware that for some of us it's our last evening here, it was almost dark before we stopped singing, clapping, rapping (sounds very cool in Chichewa), and generally larking. 

I won't try to smooth the ending. It's always a wrench. 

Mulungu akhale nanu, Home of Hope

Alex.


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