Camp Sky

Sometimes you get to teach students who you can tell are always thinking; only in Malawi have I ever felt bad for those kids. One of my students, Ken *, is one of those kids. Ken reminds me of a close friend back home, or at least, the fifteen year old incarnation of him. I don’t know why; maybe it is his smile, or the way he lingers over the Encyclopedias in the Library, poring over articles about foreign countries.
It takes a while to ‘crack’ a classroom, especially one where nobody speaks English, but Ken made it easy for me when I started teaching last December. I could glance over into the back corner where he sat, his head ranging about above his peers, who would inevitably be hunched over their work, weather they understood or not, and he would shoot me looks that clearly said ‘they’re lost’, or ‘speak more slowly’- and at rare times, a slow deliberate nod when they understood.
Another student who made an impact on me was Olivia*. I noticed the way she stood, I liked that she held her arms akimbo, she was one of the only girls I had met at the school who isn’t afraid to stand up straight, and with the way her ears stuck out, she reminded me of a pitcher. When I started in December her English wasn’t great, but has since improved dramatically. She comes into the library at every break, often with a question. When she arrives it is usually with a whispering posse behind her who watch as she walks up to my desk with an open book and asks a question like ‘what is in the middle of the earth?’ This sends us on a frantic search for books with pictures of volcanoes and diagrams of the earth’s crust. She was the student who sold me Hector the puppy for three dollars, and, poor girl, reminds me a lot of myself.
I take my bike into town every Friday, and pass groups of students on the way. They shout greetings at me and scatter out of my way as I go by. On one particular trip into town, Ken came to talk to me while I was buying a pumpkin from the vegetable stall. Always polite and smiling, Ken told me that he was going to visit his father in the hospital, and that his mother was already there. I didn’t realize at that time that in Malawi, people only go to the hospital to die.
The following Monday, I taught my lesson as usual, and Mondays are never good. I teach the first period of the day on Mondays, so students come to class late or tired. Most days the room is not swept on time, so I need to wait until the dust settles before I can teach. This Monday was the same as the rest, so I left annoyed. I was halfway across the yard to my desk in the Library where my mug of coffee waited when I noticed Olivia tramping down the hill behind me, her coltish limbs flailing.
“Miss,” she shouted “wait wait” I stopped to ask her what she wanted, expecting some whimsical question about lightening or the changing of the seasons. Instead she said: “Don’t yell at Ken today. Yesterday he lost both his parents, so if you see him, and his head is down, he is thinking of his parents.” Before I could respond, she turned heel and plodded back up the hill.
Ken still comes to class every day. He is polite and works hard. Olivia still asks questions, and has made her way through our best science and animal books. I enjoy teaching them, but I know that these kids have the cards stacked against them. I decided to invite both of them to Camp Sky, the annual summer camp Peace Corps volunteers in the Education sector organize. It isn’t much, but maybe the encouragement will be good for them, because I have to believe that education in Malawi can work.
Every successful Malawian that I have ever talked to about education has cited the impact of a single person or event to their success. Last week, while I was helping out with training in Dedza, I talked to one of our language trainers, Dinah, about her own experience growing up in Malawi. Her father was a teacher, and he decided to send his daughters as well as his sons to school. Her aunt advised against this, echoing the public sentiment that the girls would only go to school and become pregnant, but her father said he needed to be able to look his daughters in the eye and say he tried. Dinah went on to finish her education, and now has a job teaching Chichewa to Peace Corps trainees. She told us that with her first paycheck, she went out to buy sugar, soap and bread and brought it to her aunt and gave it all to her, saying “here, this is the pregnancy I came home from school with”. Her aunt cried, and now encourages her own granddaughters to go to school.
While I was in Dedza, I also got to meet William Khambwa, also known as ‘The Boy who Harnessed the Wind’. William’s family could not afford to send him to school, so he spent his teenage years studying on his own using books from his community library. During a drought, he decided to try to build a windmill so his family could irrigate their fields. His community thought he was crazy, but he was able to use a windmill to generate electricity for his home, which attracted international attention, landing him a scholarship and a book deal. We wanted to get William to come to Camp Sky so he could speak to the students, but he starts as a freshman at Dartmouth soon, so he couldn’t make it, and came to speak to the Peace Corps trainees instead. I wasn’t expecting him to be shy like my students, but he was. He stood in front of us, talking about his engineering in terms that were far over my head, but he did it in a way that was gracious and calm. We asked him about his plans for the future, and he talked about his plans for attaining his degree in Electrical Engineering, and his hopes to work in sustainable alternative energy fields. He runs a camp for children in his community so that they can make their own windmills, and has since sent his friends and family to school. What would have happened if not for that Library?
I suppose that’s the thing about Peace Corps, or maybe about life in general. You never know what the event will be that will be the catalyst for change, and it is selfish to demand that you see the world improve before your eyes, but you have to keep trying anyway. I think that Olivia and Ken can really do something great for Malawi someday, but life isn’t going to be easy for them. Going to this camp could really make a difference, maybe the goat dissection my friend Jenn has planned will make Olivia decide she wants to be a doctor- or maybe Alexis’ writing classes will inspire Ken to become a journalist. I don’t know what will happen, but these kids can show me if I let them.
Today Ken and Olivia came to visit me in the library to talk about what to pack for camp- they are both bright with excitement. I told Ken about William’s windmills, and loaned him my copy of The Boy who Harnessed the Wind, hopefully we will be able to visit the original windmill during the camp. The two were so happy that I didn’t want to tell them that we are in desperate need of funding for Camp Sky.
I’d love my students to have a chance to attend, if you would like to help, please follow the link below if. My students and I send a ‘Yewu Ukongwa’ to you for reading.
*Names have been changed (mainly so that ‘Mericans can pronounce them)