Accepting Privilege

During field visits in the rural areas I see an even starker dichotomy between the rich and poor. When we visit these rural villages we give each participant a piece of bread and a pop as refreshments. This struck me as something you wouldn’t see in Canada. Yet in Malawi everyone accepts the bread gratefully. Even though the communities I’ve visited so far did not have much they all welcomed us warmly and many even invited us to eat afterwards. Despite the warm welcomes my privilege was even more apparent here, so I tried harder to live and eat like a local and became self-conscious about enjoying any sort of luxury. Although the more I tried to live like a local the more homesick I felt and the less Malawi felt like home.