MalawiBlog Number Two

I am in Africa.

It’s quite exciting. Very green and stuff. So far though we’ve spent pretty much all of our time in Mabuya Camp training and things with the other volunteers – so I haven’t got vast amounts of exciting things to tell you about the country as yet. But I can confirm that the road from the airport was pretty top notch!

Anyway, I thought I’d share some interesting GAP-YAH psychology with you. I’ve been trying to name it but I can’t quite – I was thinking about ‘greener-grass-syndrome’, but I’m going to go with ‘good-news-guilt’. What I mean by good-news-guilt is that when you find out more about your placement and where you’re staying, good news is bad news. Whenever you hear someone say, ‘Oh, yeah, apparently we have electricity and showers at our placement’, their voice is saturated with the cocktail of guilt and disappointment that comes from talking to a bunch of people who won’t have showers or electricity, and have just been telling you that they’re really glad about that because they didn’t come to Africa for it to be comfortable!

I am not immune to good-news-guilt. It crept up on me over the first 24 hours (we are apparently at the nicest accommodation out of anyone). But then I dragged it out of my subconscious and had a think about it. And really it brings you to the question – why are you here? And I’ve thought about it, and I think the main reason I’m here is because I love the idea of just serving and loving people 24-7. I did a falcon camp a few years ago (a Christian holiday camp for kids who wouldn’t get one otherwise) and I just loved it, because you forget everything else and you get up in the morning and worship Jesus and then all you do for the rest of the day is try to make people happy. It just felt like what being properly alive is all about. And the less boring, non-love-distractions you have to deal with, in my opinion, the better. So I’m hoping this is going to be like a giant version of that – with none of the things that distract me – just loving people and loving God for seven months in the middle of a beautiful beautiful bit of the world. I mean I’m not trying to make you all jealous, but that’s the life, isn’t it?

So, in short, I think it would be fair to describe my outlook as pretty optimistic!

That’s it for now I think – so until next time, if you pray, I’d love it if you could pray for me and the guys I’m doing this with, and if there’s anything anyone would like me to pray for, I would love to do that just drop me a message!