Tim shows National Geographic to the Blue Hippos class

That first day, I felt like a fraud—and desperately hoped the children wouldn't notice. I had no issues with people randomly deciding to teach Arts & Crafts or Ethics, but for some reason I felt that Tim and I really should have more experience to teach Photography.

Tim and Precious prep for class.

The Yellow Giraffes examine the goods.

The digital cameras we'd received from generous donors were a random assortment—and all borderline obsolete. We had barely enough time to familiarize ourselves with the various systems before teaching the kids how to use them.

The first day ran on a special schedule, with an extra-long assembly and extra-long homeroom. Our homeroom of sweet Blue Hippos featured three WAO boys—Benson, Happy and Hamilton. We started off having each child state his or her name and desired occupation in front of the class while we handed out t-shirts and nametags. I tried to commit the names to memory and by the end of the week I had more than half down pat; not amazing, but better than my fellow volunteers!

Tim's answer to my nervous pleas to form a teaching plan while still in New York had always been "let's wing it." So when we finished passing out t-shirts and nametags in a matter of minutes, we panicked and hit on charades as a time-waster. Of course in Malawi it doesn't make sense to act out a TV show or movie—the students simply mimicked a favorite activity. When this ran out of steam, we asked for jokes; Sunny, one of two Indian kids at camp, immediately came out with "Roses are red, violets are blue, whenever I see shit, I think of you." I let out a gasp of laughter before remembering I was a responsible adult; Tim was much better at looking stern.

Desperate now, we decided to start the photo class early, The kids were remarkably well-behaved, but our lecture on composition & light, and examples of photo narrative from National Geographic produced only mild interest due to the tempting presence of 12 digital cameras sitting before them.

WAO boy Happy snaps a photo of partner Mary.

The Blue Hippos play charades

Lunch in the teachers' lounge

The Yellow Giraffes practice using the cameras

After some in-class experimentation, we loosed them on the playground. The kids were natural models, posing variously on top of swings, carousels and slides, with the budding photographers finding creative angles quickly.

Amazingly, we still had time left when we returned to the classroom. More desperate than ever, we asked for riddles. Sinthembire quickly stood out as a memorable student; with closely-cropped hair, lanky body manner, and low hard voice, she would rush through a riddle, barely making eye contact, then quickly raise her hand to share another. My favorite was Sunny's again—the classic riddle about getting a fox, chicken and corn across a river but Malawi-ized to feature a goat, lion and vegetables.

During lunch in the teachers' lounge, I soon realized organization was the least of our problems. These cameras, each several years old, simply could not hold a battery charge through four hours of class. We scrambled between classes to charge them, using every available socket in every available classroom—unfortunately stumped by our lack of voltage converters—but by the last class of the day the cameras were dying left and right. Poor Red Lions! After this experience, we borrowed every converter plug in our group and managed to keep most of the cameras charged on the subsequent days.

We headed back to Rosemary and Moffat's house for a celebratory dinner. In addition to having a great—if nutty—first day, it was also Eli's birthday. The special meal featured strange individual pizzas made by someone in the back of People's Food Store, fresh salad, cake and an odd, custardy ice cream.

Celebrating Eli's birthday

During dinner I noticed Benson seemed to be getting more withdrawn rather than less—we were saved by the general friendliness between Rubina and David. It was sort of funny when Benson and David admitted they normally did not spend extra time together; we told them they'd better get used to it because Rubina and I certainly did!

After dinner Rosemary explained that they did not give physical gifts for people's birthdays; the gift instead was kind words bestowed on the celebrant. Heather made a game attempt to compliment her special partner's sweet nature and beautiful smile.

Wilson dropped us back at good ol' Mzuzu Lodge, and we decompressed over a few beers in the fluorescent rec room. This was it. Camp Malawi had started with a bang.

To find out more, please visit the We Are One Malawi website.

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