To Africa, With Love

Columbians Form A Bond Of Compassion And Friendship With An Impoverished African Village

By Gretchen Pressley

Sweating under the hot sun … showering in cold water … sleeping in rudimentary structures designed purely to keep out the elements … this is not everyone’s idea of a dream vacation.
But for 10 Columbians, a two-week trip to the Makalani Village in southeast Africa was the trip of a lifetime.

The organizers of the trip, Nick and Bethany Slangon, are co-directors of INVEST Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides tutoring, school fees, uniforms, food and health care to the 85 orphans of the Makalani and Kasiyafumbi villages. Nick is a native of the war-torn country of Liberia. In the midst of Liberia’s civil war, Nick was rescued and taken to Malawi where he received his college education. He dedicated his life to the mission field and developed the INVEST ministry. The mission trips started in 2007 when the Slangon family organized a smaller group to go to the Makalani village. It was such a success that they began organizing yearly trips for Columbians who felt compelled to make a difference in the lives of widows and orphans.
“When we come, it’s kind of like Christmas for the kids,” Slangon says. “It’s a special time of year, it gives them something to look forward to, and it’s like a family reunion with members from around the world.”
The group of 10 Columbian, comprised of people from all walks of life including college students, ministers, business owners, an insurance agent and an educator, met the Slangons at Woodcrest Chapel at 8 a.m. on Jan. 13. After three days of travel that routed them through Detroit, Amsterdam and Nairobi, they arrived in Malawi, Africa. And that’s when the real adventure began.

The extreme poverty of the region takes its toll on the health of the children. Many of them only get breakfast, provided by INVEST. Disease is common. It’s not unusual for the residents of Malawi to get malaria 30 to 40 times during their lives.
AIDS has had a devastating effect on this continent; the men of these villages die young. The Makalani village is populated with widows and grandparents trying to take care of the many children left behind in the aftermath of the region’s devastating AIDS epidemic.
Melody Parry, who was making this journey for the first time, recalls how the children immediately surrounded her as she entered the village. They were a little shy at first, she says, but when the group began taking pictures, the kids became curious. As they looked at their digitized faces on the cameras, they began talking and asking questions, which developed quickly into games and laughter.

About 75 children attend class at the simple school outside of the village. The blistering hot classrooms are little more than tumble-down sheds, but the children willingly go to school and learn what they can.
They have no textbooks or electricity, and the chalkboard is so chipped it is almost illegible. Although lessons are taught in English, the students resume their native language of Chichewa when they return home. It is difficult for teachers to gauge how well their students understand the concepts they teach. Because village society frowns on questioning those in authority, students rarely ask for detailed explanations.
The school does boast a few success stories, though. A girl named Irene is excelling in school. INVEST is supporting her financially and hopes to send her to college in Lilongwe, the capital. After college, Irene wants to return to the village as a nurse to provide better health care to the children.
During their stay, the group saw a critical need for a passenger bus to transport the children to school. The 10-mile round trips are dangerous, especially for the female students who are at risk of being raped while walking to school. INVEST is now kicking off its Buy A Seat On The Bus campaign and soliciting donations of $250 per seat to address this need.

One goal of this mission trip was to supply the village with fertilizer to help with their crops. In this part of the world, thriving crops are the difference between eating and starving.
The mission group headed into the field to help spread fertilizer and take care of the village corn crop. The first challenge was digging into the ground without any of the customary gardening tools. The widows used large sticks to open holes among the cornrows, the volunteers put fertilizer into the ground, and the children stomped the holes closed.
Jacquelyn Ward, an assistant principal at Lee Elementary School in Columbia, remembers marveling at the care the residents of the village put into their crops. “I didn’t see a weed anywhere,” she says. “They take care of everything they have.”

The crop field was where Parry first caught sight of the boy she had traveled so far to see: 12-year-old Kingsley Mwale. Parry and her family have sponsored Kingsley for the past two years, providing support through INVEST to help make his life a little more comfortable. Although Kingsley didn’t understand how the sponsorship worked, he did understand that Parry had come from the United States to be with him. After that, Kingsley rarely left Parry’s side during the next 10 days.
“It was such an amazing relationship to watch,” says Ward, whose sponsored child, Violet, had malaria during the visit and wasn’t able to participate in the activities.
Lynda Baumgartner, co-owner of Columbia’s Image Technologies, also had a special child she clicked with during the trip. Daniel Joseph is a good student, but what drew Baumgartner to the 15-year-old were his leadership qualities, she says. The quiet young man was fluent in English and the other children paid attention to him. Daniel was as curious about Baumgartner’s life as Baumgartner was about his.

The mission team played with the children daily. When it rained, they introduced the kids to Musical Chairs, Hot Potato, Heads Up Seven Up and the Hokey Pokey. On the first day, none of the interpreters were around. The mission members had to rely on their nonverbal skills to act out instructions for the children.
“It was an amazing experience to have that language barrier but then be able to overcome it,” Ward says.
Afternoons were for volleyball and soccer. The team also taught the children how to play kickball. The kids didn’t care who won. They didn’t care how they divided up the teams. They didn’t even care if they played by the rules. They just wanted to have fun, Baumgartner says.
In fact, once they got the rules down, the kids were so quick that Baumgartner and Parry, the two team captains, began to “cheat” by grabbing the legs of the children on the opposite teams. This turned into a wrestling match between the captains, who wound up in a heap of adults play-wrestling each other.
“We looked up and saw the kids just staring at us in awe,” Baumgartner says. “They had never seen adults playing for fun.”

On Day 7 of the trip, the group took 72 kids on a two-hour bus ride from the village to Carolina’s Resort at Lake Malawi. This was the first bus trip for most of the children, not to mention their first time out of the village.
The mission group stayed in hut-like structures near the campsite, and the children slept on the beach in tents purchased by the INVEST volunteers at a Columbia Wal-Mart. It was the first time these children had seen a tent and although the accommodations were snug at best, the children had nothing but smiles at being out of the village for the first time.
Away from the routine of their work, the children were free to have fun, and the adults took this opportunity to get to know the children behind the masks of survival each wore. The children “were out of their comfort zone in a place where it was totally restful and recreational,” Slangon says. “And our team was out of their comfort zone, too. The lake provided a neutral setting. They really seemed to click and INVEST in each other.”
When they returned to the village, it was almost time to fly back to the United States. The group put on a happy face during the goodbyes, but each was dying on the inside, Baumgartner says. “Before we went back to the village for the last time, we discussed not crying. The children would not understand, and we were afraid it would scare the little ones.”

A few weeks after she returned home, Parry received an e-mail from Slangon, who had spoken with Kingsley’s headmaster at school. Kingsley was a new person, he said. The not-so-studious boy was suddenly in class every day and paying attention to his lessons with a smile on his face.
Parry had given Kingsley hope, the headmaster said. He now knows that somewhere out there is an adult who truly cares for him.
Baumgartner left a memento with Daniel. She had brought a wind-up flashlight with her on the trip and gave it to Daniel before she left.
“He just kept screaming, ‘Oh thank you, thank you. Now I can see at night,’ ” Baumgartner says. Although it is difficult to keep in touch with this brilliant young man, Baumgartner says she will continue to network with INVEST and others she met in Africa to set up support for gifted students such as Daniel to continue their studies.
Ward is conducting weekly assemblies at her school about the different aspects of what she experienced. The presentations are having an effect on the Columbia youngsters, she says. After one assembly, a parent approached Ward in tears and said, “I want to tell you what an impact you’ve made on my son.”
Each of the volunteers has taken a piece of Africa home with her. Ward is much more aware of her spending and hopes to discontinue some of the more materialistic aspects of her life, she says. She is trying to slow down the pace of her life, she says, to “take in the moments.”
Parry says she has found it hard to accept her life in America with the same spirit she did before she left.
“Anyone who has taken a mission trip and has seen all this extreme poverty is changed,” she says. She says she doesn’t take her life for granted, and she understands how lucky she is to lead the life she does.
Baumgartner calls her Africa experience the “trip of a lifetime.” She loves traveling and enjoyed learning about the history and culture of the village. But best of all, she says, she got to “make a kid smile for a day.”
Slangon loves the frequent trips she takes to Africa. She wants most of all to communicate that one person can change the lives of children wherever they want to help.
“You can make a difference,” she says.

INVEST is a Christian-based, nonprofit organization that provides agricultural development and educational training to orphans and widows in rural Malawi, Africa. Learn more about the INVEST program at www.investinc.info.