For my new friend Christine, it was home! Yep, for two years Christine lived in that house. Well, it wasn't a house, actually. It was a hut, made out of mud, in a place called Malawi, in Africa. Christine went there to teach English to 150 schoolgirls, and stayed in the hut with a mother and her 12-year-old sister.

What a change from her real home in Tulsa, Oklahoma! There Christine had the regular things -- a house, her own bed, a refrigerator. Here she slept on a mat on the dirt floor, made a fire with sticks, and spoke only a few words of the language of Malawi - Chichewa.

Yikes!

Why did Christine leave Oklahoma? Why did she go so far away, where she didn't know anyone? Why did she sleep with spiders??

Christine did all of this to make a difference. As part of a group called the Peace Corps, she taught girls to speak English. She taught them how to stay clean and healthy. She showed them how to build houses out of mud.

Even though Christine was the teacher, she learned a lot, too. She learned how to pound corn into flour. She learned how to make a fire out of rocks and twigs. And she learned how to carry water on her head!

Neat!

But most of all, Christine learned that no matter how far away you go, people are still the same. A smile means the same thing in Malawi as it does in Oklahoma, and people in Malawi laugh and make friends, too.

Stephanie

Please email me at: stephanie@ustrek.org