Day 4 in Malawi! Not a whole lot happened
today, so it should be a short post. Also, today marks another day without
internet (mostly), so I want to reduce how much writing I put up.
Last night after I wrote, I was feeling
really anxious. This year I’ve been struggling with social anxiety, and it was
psyching me out last night. I was actually surprised that I had felt okay
mostly until then around the group because this is the kind of social situation
that would usually make me really anxious. Luckily, I felt fine all day today
and really, all I need to remember is to be myself. If I’m stuck inside myself
being anxious, I’m not myself, which just makes the anxiety worse, and it’s all
very cyclical. So if I focus on being myself, everything is okay.
Today we got to go to the Mzuzu University
campus! They call it Mzuni, which I think is adorable. The campus is
surprisingly large for a school with 4000 students, and it’s incredibly lush. Like
pretty much everywhere in Malawi, there’s green everywhere you look. Paul’s
friend Lucky, who’s working on his PhD at Mzuni, took us on a tour. After that,
we went on a driving tour of Mzuzu, toured the market a bit again, picked up a
lot of alcohol, and came home to The Oasis.
My favourite moment today was after we got
home. All 18 of us were hanging out together, without anyone else there. That
was the first time that happened! We all just sat around drinking beer (or
cider/wine for those of us who are non-beer drinkers), and at one point I just
looked around at the faces of my peers and thought, “This is perfect.” We have
such an amazing group and this place is so beautiful and peaceful. I feel so
lucky.
It’s kind of sad that I wrote all of that
without remembering that I got my news about med school today. I’d expected to
get wifi at the university, but that didn’t work out. I started stressing at
lunch, so one of the girls suggested that I go to an internet café (since our
meals take FOREVER with that many people, I had time). I got waitlisted, which
meant that I didn’t take the time to tell my family/ friends. In hindsight,
that may not have been the best choice, but I figure that eventually I’ll get
internet access with my laptop (there’s talk of getting wifi for The Oasis, and
we can connect at Mzuni once we give the tech guys some code for our devices),
and then I’ll let them all know. Really, there’s no news, so they can wait a
few days. I also got a lot of support from my classmates, which was really
nice.
Something fun was that Paul took us to the
house he’s building! It’s just bricks in the vague shape of rooms right now,
but it was still cool to explore. His house is also situated on an absolutely
beautiful spot, so the view was nice.
Today’s low point came right around the
time of our arrival at Mzuni. We parked right near their library. The reason
that’s noteworthy is because a little while ago, they had an overnight fire in
their library that was started by the electrical wiring. Their whole building
was gutted and all the books burned. The broken glass from the windows still
littered the ground outside the building’s shell. We all stared at it for
awhile, talking about how devastating that must have been for the university
and its students. When Lucky took us on our tour, he told us that the fire has
caused people to donate all these new books, while all the books that burned
were old. While that was good news, it was still very much making light of a
bad situation. We’re planning to hold a book drive once we get back to Canada
so we can help Mzuni re-stock their library.
Despite that sad moment, I’m riding on a
high today. Things are great. I wish I’d gotten accepted to med school, but
being waitlisted really isn’t bad.
-Jen
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