Taken and edited from Matt Storer's 2011 Malawi trip notes (Nov 29 to Dec 7)
A knock on my door at 7 woke me up. I took the opportunity to shower because the water was available and ate a great breakfast of fried eggs with onions. By 8:15 am Tila and I were I in the Toyota with our driver, Amon who is a Muslim. We drove to the Ngoni tribal area to about 52 km to a community of 21 villages called Katsekera. (Tila is a Malawian who VisionTrust is considering hiring as a program lead for a future project in Malawi. He and I are researching Katsekera as a possible location.)
The drive took two hours on a dirt road through the low mountains where agriculture is the occupation. Corn and Irish potatoes are the main crops. The language spoken by the Ngoni people is called Chichewa – it is also the national language in addition to English. The Ngoni have a history of being heavy beer drinkers and having multiple wives. I found out that one their favorite non-alcoholic drinks is called Tobwa, you guessed it, made from corn. I tried it and don't necessarily recommend it - let's say it is an acquired taste.
My main goal on this trip is to find out the truth about the real needs and challenges faced by children living in one of the poorest and hardest hit with AIDS areas in the world.
One of the places we visited was home to two girls, Eva who is 15 years old and Lise who is 12 years old. Eva dropped out of school in standard 3. Lise is still in standard 6. Eva works in the fields to survive. They eat 2 times per day a meager meal of corn flour or potatoes. I asked Lise what subject in school is the most difficult. She said Math. I agreed ;-0 Then I asked her what subject was her favorite and she said English. Next I asked what she would like to do when she finishes school. She said, “A nurse so I can help people who are sick.” Lise does a lot of the cooking which is a big task as that means she makes the fire and gets the water. Like David, these two children have inherited a garden (land). Most the land is just passed down from generations. I asked who lives next door to them and found out that Eva’s older sister does. She is 23 and has a baby. Her husband left. She dropped out of school at standard 6 when she was a little girl. In addition to this sister, I found out that two aunts also live next door (by the way, Eva and Lise’s home doesn’t have a literal door). One aunt just died (has no husband) and the other aunt has AIDS.
It is a bit painful for me to press on with questions and dig for answers and how things work, especially when so much tragedy is involved. However, isn’t is interesting to discover that there is always more information to learn before drawing conclusions. For example, had I not asked Eva and Lise about other family members (aka who lives next to you), I would not have discovered that she has an older sister living next door, or that the aunt with AIDS and the older sister both have gardens too. And…they don’t work together on the gardens, they each work their own. Wow! When I discovered that they don’t work together, I was shocked. Why not? They need each other so much but in their culture, the norm is to do it separately. We will evaluate this behavior later and challenge them to work as a team to support those who are weaker.
A little about Village Housing:
The homes are small rectangular huts made from homemade clay bricks with either thatch or tin roofs. Most huts in the poor communities have dirt floors. The older style of huts are round. Most of the round huts are for the kitchen or storage or used by the super poor. As an example, Eva and Lise use a round hut that is about 6 feet in diameter – the length of your bed.
P.S. GREAT NEWS!
We will be starting a VisionTrust project in this community this January! More information on the proposed solution can be found in the Malawi Trip Notes 2011 (Dec 1-4). We will need start up funds for a motorcyle, office setup, a solar panel solution for electricity, and funding to support at least 40 children for the first 6 months. Total amount needed is $31,000. If you would like to support this project, go to www.visiontrust.org and click on donate. Then complete the description field with "Malawi Startup". Thanks!
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