One of the biggest highlights of this past winters trip to
Africa was having the chance to return to my home away from home for three
years Mwazisi, Malawi, and be reunited with all of the people I love
there. In the three years since I
left, a lot has happened in Mwazisi…for one thing, there are paved roads and
electricity in the trading center of Mwazisi now!
Something I wouldn’t have been able to imagine when I first walked down
the dusty road from the Bowe turnoff 6 and a half years ago, so I’m happy to
see that in Mwazisi “Chitikuko Yakwenda makola” development is moving
well.
I landed in Malawi 2 days later than I had planned to
because civil service strikes had shut down the airport in Lilongwe. So when I landed I didn’t waste any
time, instead of spending a night in Lilongwe, I immediately started
hitch-hiking north, and managed to make it to Mzuzu late that night, and
continued on to Mwazisi the next day
Since I left Mwazisi two different Peace Corps volunteers
have been placed there and have had a great impact on the community. Prashanth Gubala from Boston took over
for me and used his business and accounting skills to help the local People
Living with Aids (PLA) group start a teahouse as an income generator. He also worked with the same beekeepers
association I did, finished the construction of the agriculture extension
office that I started, and a whole slew of other projects.
Towards the end of Prashanth’s time in Mwazisi the Peace
Corps placed another volunteer in Mwazisi, this time it was a secondary school
teacher named Kristen Olsen. While
I was back in Mwazisi I stayed with Kristen, and got to see first hand how well respected
she is in the community, and what a great job she is doing at the secondary
school. It was really wonderful to
see that the Peace Corps volunteers that came after me have been such great
representatives of the Peace Corps and left their own mark on Mwazisi.
I spent 4 nights in Mwazisi, and it was a whirl-wind. I made the mistake of telling my
friends I was coming before I showed up, so they managed to fill up my schedule
for me. We had a full day meeting/workshop with
the beekeepers association the day after I arrived. I was amazed how many people showed up, and stayed
from beginning to end. I condensed
the material from my two-day workshops in Uganda, and managed to touch on every
topic in about 7 hours. The rest
of the week was filled with visiting old projects, meetings with village
headman, and mostly reunions with friends. These visits were mostly for meals and almost always
embarrassingly over-generous. This
extreme generosity mostly made me uncomfortable because I was there in February, which is the time of hunger
“nyengo ya njala.” The rains
usually start mid-December in Malawi, so in February they are just about to
harvest, but by then most people's stores from the previous year have run out,
and they start getting desperate for food. This year was particularly bad because of weak harvests the
previous year, all across Malawi I saw huge food lines at the ADMARC offices
which is a state run commodity trader who buys up people’s extra maize during
the harvest and eventually sells it back to them at a slightly inflated
price. While I was there several
people were killed at an ADMARC in Mzuzu because people rushed forward and
stampeded when the gates to the office were opened. I also heard reports of people robbing maize from each other, and of course
the number of people begging is significantly more during that time. Despite all of that, literally
everywhere I went I was greeted with the most overwhelming generosity in
Mwazisi. Nearly every shop I
walked into somebody offered to buy me a coke, and every home I visited people
cooked extravagant meals where they slaughtered a chicken or cooked rice which
is seldom eaten in the village, because it has to be bought from the lake
region. It is hard to eat your
friends most prized food when you know their families are facing desperate
times, but to not eat what is served to you as a guest would be very
rude.
It is very difficult to see so many people struggling and to
know that there is so little you can do to help, especially with these people
who are so generous to me. When I
did give money I tried to be cautious and discreet, because it can lead to
jealousy and resentment in the community. I also constantly reminded myself that better times were just around the corner with harvest time. Many people also approached me with bigger requests. One friend asked me to help him start a
community youth center, another friend asked me to help him start a natural
medicine business, the village headman wrote a long letter requesting that I
help build housing for an agricultural extension worker. I always told people I don’t have extra
money to spend on these projects, to which everybody inevitably replied, “You can raise the money in America.” I’ve seen too many people try to fund
projects remotely, and seen things run awry unbeknownst to the people raising
money in a far off wealthy country.
I didn’t pursue a career in international development because as a Peace
Corps volunteer I saw that often times even the most well intentioned
development programs or projects can lead to even deeper problems and
corruption. I realized that the
problems in countries like Malawi are far too complex for me to understand and
I don’t want to ever create bigger problems out of hubris in thinking I have
the answers.
The one thing I do feel comfortable raising money for is education or school fees. In my mind by
supporting the ambitious young people of Malawi as they try to better
themselves, we are investing in the future of the whole country. As a Peace Corps Volunteer a lot of my
time was spent working at the secondary school. I taught physical science, and history, and also led an
after school wildlife club that kept a tree nursery and a vegetable
garden. As any teacher might tell
you working with teenagers always has its challenges, but if you can be patient
and work through the temper tantrums and hormones, it gives you a direct link
to the energy and enthusiasm of the best of the young people in a community,
and in my opinion if you nurture and support that enthusiasm you have the best
chance of making a positive impact on the future of the community.
In Mwazisi I was very lucky to interact with a wide array of
outstanding young people, but so few of them have any opportunity to go further
with their education or live up to their full potential. For example my first year teaching Form
1 (freshman) physical science, I had over 80 students in my class, by the
beginning of the 2nd term I had close to forty students. When I taught the same group of
students in form two (sophomore year) I had close to 25 students in my
class, by the time they were in form four there were only fifteen students,
only 4 of which managed to get a passing grade on their Malawi School
Certificate of Education (MSCE) exam.
Granted some students did transfer to better schools where they thought
they might have a better chance of passing the MSCE, but most of the other
students were prevented from being able to finish their schooling because they
either couldn’t pay for school fees, or needed to work in their families
tobacco and maize fields, or they got pregnant and had to drop out. Some of my very best students from the
beginning didn’t make it through form three.
One example that was particularly heart breaking for me was
a girl who was a daughter of a friend of mine. I taught her in both physical science and history, she was
very quiet, yet also very poised.
She rarely answered questions in class, but her homework and essays
completely stood out from her peers, due to her tremendous comprehension. She somehow always managed to accomplish exactly what I asked for in a homework assignment, while most others in form 1 weren't even close. At the end of the year, she had the
highest grade in all of her classes, but the next year she didn’t come back for
form 2, when I went to ask her father what happened, he told me that she was
pregnant and going to get married.
I often wondered if there was anything I could do to help
the problem of students dropping out before they can succeed in school. The only solution I ever came up with was to support those who have
the ambition and opportunity to go further with their education, I believe the more successful
students that are able to progress in their education become,
the more serious the whole community starts taking education and the more
families support their children in completing secondary school and hopefully
they go further beyond in their studies.
