fishing

shoutout to my man tony and my girl michelle for the awesome video post! this one's for you guys.


we continued our second day today at school whose name i do not know. again, this time, my partner and i are working with the teachers of the school showing them the teaching methods that worldcamp employs and the curriculum that we present to the students.

i am amazed that even the teachers at the schools hold a certain degree of selfishness. i assumed that it was present only among the children and that they would mature and grow out of it, but the teachers that we are working with this time are extremely greedy. today they started asking us for extra pens and then they demanded that they keep the materials that we used to show them how to create a simple solar oven.

it is interesting because they say that it is difficult to teach without the proper resources such as glue, scissors, charts, or diagrams. and so then they ask us if they could keep the diagrams and materials that we bring to show them effective ways to teach. and yet i know that the materials that we use can be created themselves, but they are just not creative enough, or dedicated enough to do so. and i find that the teachers are too materialistic to see our goal for malawi.

worldcamp believes in the saying, "give a man a fish, feed him once, teach him how to fish, feed him forever", or something like that. we press for the importance of education rather than giving gifts. there are plenty of NGO's that come to places like this and just drop off junk and leave. but we want to give them something more valuable. we want to give them the knowledge that can empower the lives of the children to live stronger and healthier lives.

and we know that it works. worldcamp cycles through schools every 3 years and one of the schools that we went to 3 years ago, one of our coordinators got a chance to speak with a student who was participated in our three day camp back then. he said that it is not worth it for him to engage in risky behavior if it can potentially ruin his life by HIV. that is power in education.