My Favorite Photograph!

Hello everybody,

Thanks for following my blog, I’ve enjoyed your comments and feedback! I’m now back in Chapel Hill so I’ll be stowing my Malawi stories away in a special place until I can create more!

I’ll end with one last story to go along with my favorite picture. The story goes something like this. I had mostly given up any hopes of getting my little black duffle bag back since it was last traced in Frankfurt. The bag was in my thoughts regularly though, as the contents included tons of crayons for the little ones, my running shoes (which have great sentimental value as I learned how to do the moonwalk in these shoes during my breakdancing days in Austin), Trader Joe’s trail mix, girlscout cookies and chocolate. I told Innocent from the Tidziwe Center in Lilongwe about my missing bag and after he made a few phone calls, it magically appeared at the Lilongwe airport within days. I was pretty excited when I found out that the missing bag was no longer missing.

A nice gentleman from the Tidziwe Center drove me to the airport to get my bag. I was happy. I began eating cookies and chocolates from my bag at the airport. Then we got in the car to go home. On the way home, I spotted a young boy on the side of the road with a stick in his hand with things hanging off of the stick. When I asked the driver what the little boy was doing, the driver said, “You want more snack, something salty?” Excited about the prospects I excitedly answered, “Yeah, can we stop, I wanna see what that is!” To my surprise, dried, salted field mice had been strung across the stick. Young boys took this up as a livelihood. They spent their days catching field mice, dried them, salted them and then sold them to make money. So when we pulled over to check out this young fellow’s appetizers that were for sale, I gladly declined but handed him a box of girlscout cookies, which he gladly accepted. And that's how I came upon this lovely young lad, proudly displaying the product of his long hours in the field!