Nkhuku, nkhuku, CHIMBUDZI!

Yesterday, we went to Mpemba to start the fieldwork for the Couples' Study that I will be assisting with. Basically, the study looks at the acceptability of both couples based HIV voluntary counseling and testing and couples based family planning counseling in a rural area of Malawi. We spent about a week training counselors and then took a week to prepare for the study. Yesterday, we went to the field. The study is extremely sensitive so it isn't possible for me to attend the counseling sessions. Instead, me and the other Centre for Reproductive Health supervisors found somewhere to wait in the village. While we were waiting, the children became increasingly curious about the lone mzungu. They slowly made their way over to us. Instead of staring at each other with curiosity, I decided to teach them duck duck goose- a game from my childhood. Instead of using these animals that they don't know and using English (a language that they don't know), I decided to switch the animals to chicken chicken goat. I know a little bit of Chichewa so I went ahead and translated them to Chichewa. While we were playing, I noticed my coworker snickering in the corner. I asked why she was laughing and she informed me that I was, in fact, playing chicken chicken TOILET with the kids. The words for a big goat and a toilet are extremely close and I had confused them! Haha at least the kids waited until I had left to make fun of me. After duck duck goose, I tried my best to teach them red light green light but stuck with the commands of "come" and "enough" instead of trying to communicate about traffic lights. They didn't quite understand the part where you send kids back if they move so it basically became a race. All of the big kids kept winning so I broke it down into two games- one for older kids and another for the little ones. The kids are really cute- I wish I had more games to teach them. Going to the field all of this week so I have plenty of time to think about it.