Writing Activity

On our second day in the village of Khwamba, my group’s enrichment activity was a writing workshop for the older kids. I knew that we were going to teach the kids about paragraph structure, but I didn’t know how much I would learn from them. I expected the kids to write about topics like playing football (soccer) or hanging out with their friends, but their responses surprised me and made me realize how intelligent and driven they are.

For me, the most memorable paragraph was from a boy who wrote about his house. His topic sentences were: “My house was destroyed,” “I want to repair my house,” “I want to buy some materials for repairing my house which was destroyed such as door, rock and many others.” When I told him that these were really good sentences, he smiled and showed his friends beside him what he wrote, who then smiled back at him to say good job. This interaction threw me for a loop and made me very happy. It made me realize how supportive Malawians are of one another as this interaction would not have gone this way in the US. In America, he likely would’ve been ridiculed and discouraged by the other kids because of the competition and judgement that exists in the US. This simple interaction between Malawian children made me realize the flaws in American society and how deep the sense of community and support runs in Malawi. This gave me hope for Malawi because they are a young country that is backed by a very intelligent, kind, and driven generation of children. I wish we had this sense of community and encouragement in America because many kids give up on their goals and aspirations because they are afraid of being made fun of in school for things they cannot control. I admire the Malawian community so much and hope that we too can adopt their sense of encouragement and optimism.