Exciting news this morning

May 31, 2008

We’ve had an exciting start for the day today, and the emotional roller coaster continues.  Our young friend Nelson Nkhoma, eldest son of the General Secretary of the Presbyterian Synod, which oversees the University of Livingstonia came down to Lilongwe to meet us, and to have dinner with David Chapman from the University of Minnesota as I mentioned in my last blog.  Nelson was one of the first class of graduates at the Livinstonia last fall and John helped him to apply for graduate school at the University of Minnesota, a few months ago.  Nelson has been waiting to hear about his acceptance, but since he has no access to internet at the rural school where he teaches had not been able to check the status of his application for while.

He took a night bus to Lilongwe to be our guests at the our hotel here so he could meet Daved, and arrived very early this morning, around 6:15am (actually it turns out the bus left Mzuzu early and arrived here around 2am and Nelson just slept on the bus waiting to phone us until this morning).  So we went for breakfast as soon as they started serving at 7am, and John suggested that since the hotel has wireless internet access he could get his laptop for Nelson to check email while we waited to be served.  It turned out to be a pretty monumental decision.  When Nelson went to check the status of his application, it said that the decision letter was posted and when he opened the letter learned that he had been accepted. 

It was a pretty amazing thing to witness, as he and John were both sitting across from me, and at first I was worried that Nelson had not been accepted since the look on his face looked almost pained.  Fortunately, I looked at John and could see him break into a big smile as he had read the letter over Nelson’s shoulder (and being a native English speaker, was able to speed read), and was waiting for Nelson to finish reading and realize what it said.  The look on Nelson’s face when he read the news was a mixture of shock, disbelief and ultimately joy that I haven’t had the pleasure of witnessing before, and almost immediately after it registered that he had been accepted, he started to weep with joy and try to hide his face because he was embarrassed to be weeping.  We were all weeping actually as we were the first to congratulate him, and he kept repeating “I have no words” and wiping his eyes on his hand and his shirt. 

So it turns out that when we have dinner early this evening with David Chapman, Nelson will be having dinner with one of his future professors.  The challenge that still remains will be helping him to arrange financing for this.  The cost of the airplane ticket alone is probably equal to more than Nelsons annual salary as a newly graduated Secondary School teacher, but hopefully with the connection of the Presbyterian church, a sponsor can be found for him in the US, maybe from one of the churches in the Twin Cities area. 

As John and I have talked about what we considered to be our greatest accomplishments and the things that have made us the happiest while we have been here, helping David Mhango get a good job was one, and John said that if Nelson got accepted into graduate school that would be his biggest.  After the events in Mzuzu, where we were worried that we had witnessed the destruction of one Malawian’s life (which thank goodness didn’t happen), in less than a week, we get to see a life changing event of a different kind.  And since Nelson’s Master’s program is in Education Management, we know that it will have an even greater impact on all of Malawi when he returns after his schooling. 

John and Nelson have gone to the airport to collect Jeff, and I am going to lay down for a bit as I have a little headache, but the excitement will continue, and the knowledge that our friends Steve and Mary Ellen will be coming back in March, and Nelson will be coming to the US in September will make the leaving easier as there will still be strong connections to this place.