Mama Evelyn

Mama Evelyn is the lovely young woman shown here.

She is ambitious, energetic, hard working, a wife and a mother. She runs the Grace Farm Shop where the farm workers can purchase soap, seed, peanut oil, lotion, batteries, etc. without having to walk into the village. She carries her son Benjamin everywhere she goes on her back in a getinge.
This is the traditional way that Malawian mothers transport their youngest child.
She asked if she could be my friend and touched my heart deeply. Her hospitality and acceptance of me as a strange white American woman challenges me to be hospitable and friendly to people in my community who are from other cultures and in need to someone to reach out to them the way she reached out to me.
I asked if she would teach me to do my laundry they way she does the laundry for her family. We went to the creek and I found out that elbow grease is the main ingredient and that the skin on my hands and wrists is soft and not suitable (at this time) for the hand washing of clothing. After scrubbing only one skirt in the manner that she showed me--rubbing it with a cake of pink soap and scrubbing it against my opposite inner wrist--my wrist was bright red and very sore. Mama Evelyn finished several items while I did only two. My clothing items were only dusty, not heavily soiled, so there was not a need to beat them on the rocks in the creek the way heavily soiled items are cleaned. We rinsed them in the creek and then walked back to the house to hang them on the line to dry. Now keep in mind that this creek is the water source for the nationals. They use if for watering their animals, drinking, cooking, washing their clothing, bathing, watering their gardens, etc. While my clothes were still wet they smelled of the pink cake of soap. Once dried they smelled a little questionable.
One afternoon I invited the ladies to come to Bronwyn's yard to paint finger nails. This had gone over well with the orphan girls the day before. Only Mama Evelyn and one other lady (one of the two house mothers) came that afternoon, but after seeing their nails another lady showed up unannounced that evening for her manicure and pedicure.