Eddie, the one who is the first in his village to go to college, wanted to see us before he started school.  As it turned out, however, he had to go earlier than expected and won’t be able to see us again before we leave.  So regretful of this change of plan, he made sure to go to visit Diana last weekend to drop off copies of a small booklet full of his own original poems with the names “Sunge,” on one and “Chimwewe” on the other.  These, he knew, are the Chichewa names given to us by our family.  My name, Sunge, means, keep her and Deena’s means happy.

Along with his poems was a message from Diana that he is so sorry he can’t see us and wishes us a good rest of our time in Malawi.  We were touched not only by the inspiration singing in his verses, but also by the fact that he traveled, inevitably a decent distance, just to drop these off for us.  Eddie, I am quite certain, is going off to school to do big things.  One day, we’ll read about what he does for this world.