You start to realize just how lucky we are to have the sun giving so much light to us every day as soon as you find light difficult to get from other sources. Even those that have electricity, there is not enough power for everyone in the country so it is common to have several power outages a week that can last up to days at a time.
I hope this along with the pictures and videos, can give you an idea of what life is like in Malawi! This is the life they were born into, and so for most this isn’t living poor, it’s just how it is. Just like many of you likely don’t consider yourself poor, but compared to a mansion of a billionaire it might seem that way. It all depends on the perspective from which you look at it. This is something that I never quite understood until seeing it with my own eyes!
On a fun note: everything you hear about people carrying things on their heads here is completely true! You find that people (mostly women) carry just about anything on their heads. I have seen people carrying buckets of water, water bottles, backpacks, textbooks, wooden planks, food, clothes, groceries, purses, and just about anything else you can imagine on their head. I always find it so impressive and have tried to do it myself, but for me it is impossible even though they make it look so easy.
This is helped in part by the fact that many women shave their heads just as the men do as part of the culture. In fact, you won’t believe this, but at my school they do random hair length checks in the classrooms! They will make all the students stand up and will inspect each student individually. Every time they check for something different, and will do checks multiple times a week.
