Four Sugars in Your Tea

 2/24/08 

The sugar keeps disappearing.  Every morning at the break of day, 5:15 around here, our night guard and the chief guard of the area gather on our khondi (porch) for their morning cup of tea.  My routine is to awake at 5, put water in the water cooker, make the tea and toast, and serve it with a full sugar bowl.  I watched the other morning.  Four teaspoons in each cup…so the serving was sugar with tea not the other way around.

 Ruth had the answer.  In a calorie deprived country, four teaspoons of sugar is a significant amount of calories for the day.

The lack of basic resources especially the rural areas still amazes us.  It is basic stuff:: enough food; a roof on your hut that does not leak, clothes to wear with no gaping holes; a chance to go to a primary school with less that 100 kids in first grade with one teacher. Then there are school fees for secondary school impossibly high for any subsistence farmer; and basic health care such as early treatment for Malaria and now HIV.

We take all of this for granted back home.  Not here! 

The consequences are many:: life expectancy at birth is in the mid forties; marriage and pregnancy at 13 or 14 exchanged so  some man will supply food and housing; violence and discrimination against women.

The casual observer to Malawi would miss a lot of this.  For sure they would notice the poverty.  But the sinister effects of the lack of the basics is seen when you visit and work and get into the rhythm of life in the rural villages.

This last weekend we were able to take Felix, deputy director of MCV and his wife Miriam hiking up Mount Mulanje, the third highest mountain in Africa.  They have a one month old baby and needed a nanny when Miriam begins again teaching in her primary school. They found Grace an 18 yo near the mountain who agreed and we brought her back with us yesterday.

Grace’s story is typical.  Here dad is dead, her mother is “ insane”. She lost a baby within the last year.  She has no husband and she lived with her brother.  See finished the 6th grade, speaks no English, never traveled more than 50 miles from home, and never had seen Lake Malawi which occupies one third of her country.  After one interview, and discussion with her brother, and checking with some local folks they asked her to come and she agreed.

She packed all her belongings.  They were bundled in a three foot square piece of cloth tied together by the four corners – her entire earthly possessions.  Her five hour trip to Mangochi last night might as well have been to the opposite side of the earth.

And yet with all deprivation Malawi has many pluses.  There is a national campaign directed toward violence against women.  We saw robust tea plantations yesterday around Mount Mulanje producing export quality tea.  Excellent Mzuzu Coffee is grown in the north.  If the rains continue as they have, an excellent maize harvest will be available at the end of April.

However Malaw’s greatest resource is the people.  Friendly, sensitive and generous with what little they have, Malawi is known as the “Warm Heart of Africa” even compared with its surrounding neighbors.   I am reminded of the old camp song “I wave my hand to all I see and they wave back at me”.  I never wave this much back home.

It is Sunday morning.  I just had a knock at the door.  It was the night guard, dressed and ready for church.  He wanted 20 kwacha, about 15 cents, to use for the collection plate this morning. 

This is Malawi!!

The Promised Land and the Land of Promises

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Tom Nighswander

Mr. Sibale, MCV Director was asked by the local Catholic Bishop how Palestine and Malawi were similar.  Sibale guessed poverty- no; hot weather – no; poor people- no.  Finally after a few more guesses he gave up.  The answer from the Bishop:  Palestine is the Promised Land;   Malawi - the land of promises.

And so it is.

The main road from Mangochi to the Malawi Children’s Village, a twenty minute stretch, has two ¼ mile sections of sand interspersed with hard potholes, remnants of a tarmac road that used to be.  We were told on our first trip in 2000 that is was soon to be repaired. This never happened.   In fact this year it has gotten worse with the rains.  Not to worry we are told, the contractors have been hired and have to be finished by September or face penalties.  

The current president made the election promise four years ago to build 20 girls boarding hostels so girls could live away from home and attend school.  None have been built.

Of course there are supply problems.  I mentioned in a previous note that the country was out of cement for three months last year. Currently the country has been out of kerosene for the past five months.  Kerosene lamps and candles supply the light for the huts and houses throughout the country. The teachers at Ruth’s sister school told us this morning this is why they are usually in bed by 7 pm.

When we lived here some years ago, the country ran out of petrol(gasoline).   The police and military did not even have any.  The problem was Zambia petrol trucks delivered all the petrol to Malawi and they ran out of truck tires.  It has not been nearly that bad recently, but reasonably priced good quality goods are hard to find. 

The folks in this fifth world country are at the mercy of goods from out of the country.  They are expensive even by US standards.  Car parts, computers, any electronic equipment, stoves, refrigerators, PVC pipes, cheese, wine and a thousand other items all have to come from outside the country frequently through Dubai.  For rural Malawians, small radios and batteries are all imported. All of this is more expensive than we would find at home and not near the quality.  I did buy two tires for our small car manufactured in Turkey.

The supply problems and cost make the accomplishment of the Malawi Children’s Village even more impressive.

The Promised Land or the land of promises!

From scrub brush, baobab trees and dambos (marshes), a 20 acre Malawi Children Center Campus has been built in the last ten years.  The local Yao tribe and other Malawians who live here are amazed.  This is the orphan support center for the 2500 orphans who live with guardians or a grandparent in the 37 surrounding villages.  The only orphans in residence at MCV are between 10 or 20  infants  up to two years old whose mothers have died of AIDS.  They remain at the center until they have regained weight, and are ready to return to relatives in the villages.

The Campus consists of a nursery, clinic, vocational training school (only one of eight certified schools in the country), secondary school, library (with high speed internet), experimental gardens, fish ponds, and a cow corral supplying fresh milk. 

The vocational training school provides instruction for carpentry, tailoring, auto/diesel mechanics/ brick-laying.

But what you don’t see is even more important.  The hard work is out in the villages.  “It takes a village to raise a child” and MCV is supporting the infrastructure in the catchment area.  Primary schools are being assisted with building of pit latrines, and additional classrooms, books and desks.  Irrigation schemes including the use of treadle pumps are subsidized for purchase; village houses are repaired or built new for families housing orphans.  A bed net program distributes and monitors their use from all pregnant women and children under five.  Supplemental food is supplied for the neediest.  Clothes and blankets are provided to orphans as needed. 

Over the last ten years, thousands of orphans have been fed, had clothes, a proper thatched roof over their head and gone to school.

Jonathan is a success story.  He now is in his early 20’s and first came in contact with MCV in 1999.  His father had died of HIV AIDS and his mother could not care for him.  With the support of MCV he finished primary school and attended one of the best secondary schools in the country.  Post graduation and with the support of MCV, he attended the polytechnic school in Blantyre and graduated with certification in information technology.

 Today he teaches computer science at the MCV’s secondary school, provides IT support to the MCV campus, manages the video production studio and is in charge of the data storages from MCV’s administrative offices.   He could find easy employment throughout the country.

MCV is a success because it is owned and operated by Malawians.  The director and his staff are the local champions and they all have ownership of this program.

The land of promises or the Promised Land!!

For all of you who have contributed to MCV, it has been a great investment.  For others who have been fortunate to come here, you are remembered and are welcomed back.  All of you are playing your part indeed to make this the Promised Land.

 This is the “Warm Heart of Africa” and these gentle people will be forever grateful.