Exploring different career options, the Malawian way...

This week has brought exceptional opportunity for career options here in Malawi!!

Monday, we were eye 'doctors' as we checked the K5 and 1st graders' eyes to make sure they didn't have major vision problems. Remarkably, none of them had any real issues, and the overwhelming majority had 20/20 vision in both eyes. The hardest part was helping them convey to us the fact that they could see the letters or which way the E was tumbling. The littler ones don't know their letters very well, but the tumbling E chart was pretty much impossible, even with a Tumbuka-speaking Auntie around to explain to all of them. It was very interesting, to say the least.

Tuesday, we became preschool teachers because the K3 class' teacher needed to go into town to the doctor. She is 7 months pregnant (about) and hadn't gone in to see the prenatal medical officer because she works on Tuesdays. The staff people got wind of that and gave her the day off to get that taken care of, so she left very detailed lesson plans for us that were amazingly easy to follow. Auntie Lakoni was there with us, so we close to outnumbered the 8 children in the class. They're learning how to speak English and say their colors, shapes, hold books properly and to generally have a little bit of structure. I actually enjoyed it, but am not considering changing my major to Early Childhood Education or anything like that.

Today, a crisis nursery in town brought 10 of their babies and toddlers in to our clinic so we could run HIV tests on them and give them physicals. All were HIV negative, which is amazing since most come from families where the mother is dead, cannot care for them or are abandoned by one or both parents. This place, in theory, will send them to live with extended family or have them adopted once they begin to eat solid food and aren't considered 'babies' anymore. That is remarkably hard to do, though, because the families make themselves scarce, especially if they know they will not be able to feed the child. Some of these children are candidates for Rafiki, which would be great. Twins, Adam and Eve are possibly the brightest ones-Dr. Tan has her eye on them in a big way. They are not too far behind on growth and are close to 'normal' on height/weight charts. With proper nutrition and all, they could catch up pretty quickly. We had our first experience with dirty cloth diapers that soak through and Danielle got spit up on. Otherwise, it was fun, although slightly overwhelming. At one point, I was holding Hilda, the littlest baby and a toddler at the same time.

Tomorrow we get the last 6 or so babies from this nursery, so having only 6 will seem like a breeze!!

Friday we will have the opportunity to become first grade teachers as Madam Bonnie and Uncle Ralph need to go to Lilongwe to pick up new mini-missionaries and get more pages for Ralph's passport. Right now he is here without one and that is a problem. So, Bonnie has prepared lesson plans for us and gone over them, so we will take on 18 of the brightest kids around and try to teach them something. They will get to go home early and have lots of free play time outside that day. These children speak great English, though, and are so very smart, that they will give us no problem, I don't think. Discipline is a non-issue here; children just behave and get punished justly if they don't-quite different from a lot of American 5 year olds!!