A Volunteer's True Episodes Out of Africa

As I was leaving JFK International Airport for Africa via Paris, I was excited and looking forward to the adventure. This would be the first time I would visit the Dark Continent and remain there for four years. I was to assist in building and establishing a technical school for the Malawi government in central East Africa. In 1967 when I first set foot on the African continent I had no idea how exciting it would be. After spending four years there, I never did get over my initial culture shock, and I was always learning something new about the indigenous people on the Dark Continent. I had looked forward enthusiastically to beginning my new life’s experience. When I landed in Nairobi on my flight from Rome, I was picked up at the airport by missionaries and taken to their mission in Kenya. There I spent my first night sleeping, or trying to sleep, in Africa. In the middle of the night I opened my eyes only to find several gray flat spiders that moved about at a relatively high speed in search of flies and other small flying creatures. From that midnight until dawn I slept with one eye open. This was my first shocking experience with the small creatures in Africa. After spending about five days in Nairobi visiting various missions and observing the animals in the wild, I then moved down to Malawi where I began my assigned work establishing a technical school for the Malawi government. Technical or trade schools were vitally important to the underdeveloped country’s efforts to attain better housing and sanitation for the Malawians. The primitive villages were prone to disease, especially malaria, tuberculosis, and dysentery. Today we could include HIV-AIDS in the list of prevalent diseases in Malawi.