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Tuesday Jun 23, 2009

From Malawi to Norfolk

My Global XChange team (GX team 88) have now completed Phase 1: our 12-week stay in Malawi. Now, it's onto Phase 2, for which we'll be spending 12 weeks in a host community in the UK. For the lucky team 88, that means 12 weeks by the sea in Kings Lynn, Norfolk! We'll again be volunteering with local organisations, living with local families and learning about global citizenship together, but of course this phase will be a totally different experience; Malawi and the UK really are worlds apart, and just as the Malawians have a lot to learn from living in the UK, we UK volunteers and our host community have a great deal to learn from the Malawians and how they judge and cope with life here. I'm personally really looking forward to this opportunity to learn about hardship in the UK, as I've always lived in a fairly comfortable environment, in an area with relatively few social problems. Kings Lynn is also far more diverse than my virtually monocultural home, so that living here will give me a far deeper insight into the diverse make-up of our country.

There are a few things to consider before I get started. Our team is down from 20 to 18; we’ve lost a program supervisor to illness, and a malawian volutneer to discipline (though she'll be coming back soon, after an apology and commitment to be better!). Because of these problems, we’re stil in London, and will be here for nearly 2 weeks in total, though we were meant to leave for our new host community -King’s Lynn- just a day after arriving here!

This caused some emotional confusion after all the excitement and anticipation built up around phase two. As one volunteer said, rather poetically in his gruff Welsh accent, “up feels like down and left feels like right”! But we’re over the initial troubles now it seems, and are actually really enjoying London. We've had chance to explore our nation's capital with people who've never left Malawi, and we've had loads mroe time to bond as a team before being sent to individual host homes in counterpart pairs.

It’s been really special showing the Malawians the UK. Only one has ever been out of Malawi, so escalators, lifts, huge multi-storey buildings, fast trains, the tube, big red buses, our nice clean, finsihed-looking streets, Primark, even beds with mattresses and hot showers… everything is unfamiliar to them. We're worried by the idea they're forming that, “The UK is a thousand thousand thousand thousand times better than Malawi”; UK volunteers all felt a lot happier in Malawi, where people are so friendly and communities are so strong.

The Malawians haven't been impressed by everything of course. We did a tour of London on Saturday, and although seeing the Queen on her birthday and visiting the missionary Dr David Livingstone’s grave were higlights, they weren’t so impressed by the naked bike ride we stumbled excitedly upon. “It was disgusting” was the comment of my own counterpart!!! He thought that people with such disgusting bodies (his view, not mine!) shouldn’t be allowed to show them in public! Others were more openminded, and enjoyed the chance to see what white people looked like underneath their clothes!

Immediately after this, we walked along the south bank near the London Eye, where there were all manner of street performers, again celebrating the eccentricity and individual freedom integral to British culture. My counterpart very much enjoyed the street performers' acts, despite believing that they were using Malawian-style magic to acieve their feats. I tried to use this opportunity to explain the importance of this freedom and individuality in British culture,and thereby highlight the wonderful side of the naked bike ride. He aggreed freedom was very good, but when I then swung it round to the naked cyclists’ case... well, "freedom, yes, but with clear restrictions"!

He he. Still it’s all good and they do seem to be enjoying life here.

Posted by Sally ( 9:46 AM )
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