Chiefs and children
Trip Start
Jan 13, 2009
1
7
11
Trip End
Mar 20, 2009
Salima,
Malawi
Thursday, February 12, 2009
1. LDG: SERVING LAKE MALAWI WITH WATER
2. LDG: CLINIC FOR 5,000
3. SWIMMIN' AT SUNSET
4. MWADZUKA BWANJI? (How was the night?)*
5. HIGH SCHOOL PERSPECIVES
6. PICTURE DETAILS LDGs
My trip to Salima (Lake Malawi) was great...packed full of interviews, school visits, and even a little swimming. Below you'll get a taste of each--hearing from village chiefs on the scarcity of water, LifeNets development grant applicant Nesta Phiri on building a rural clinic, and school administrators, teachers and students reflecting the challenges in providing, facilitating and receiving quality high school education. Tomorrow I depart to Balaka, Malawi to visit the clinic of Dr. Chilopora and the LifeNets orphanage nearby. When UCG youth in Portland, Oregon raised $5,000 for mosquito nets in 2006, LifeNets sent the money to Dr. Chilopora who bought over 2000 mosquito nets for the surrounding village. The village chief wrote to the Kubiks later that year to announce Malaria killed no man, woman or child since receiving the mosquito nets. Thanks again PDX youth! As a leader of that fundraising effort, I'm thrilled to visit the community and will happily capture the faces of children you protected from the malaria-carrying insects. You'll see more on that in next weeks' blog. But now on chiefs and children...
1. LIFENETS DEVELOPMENT GRANT: SERVING LAKE VILLAGES WITH WATER
Imagine the green of Kauai and the blue ocean of the Florida Keys and that's the land and sky of east Malawi. The beauty of the black, sandy beaches deserves a Ritz Carleton hotel. But just like many tropical destinations, the locals live in astonishing poverty--even from the perspective of other Malawians living in the world's third poorest country. Desperate villages surround the lake living without clean water.
"More than 5,000 individuals would benefit from a well," said Katambo village chief, Davison Jimson during our interview (through Wordsworth's translation) on Sunday afternoon. Chief Jimson and the retired chief, Larsha Wllie Kapisenie sat down to teach me about the need for water in their village. LifeNets plans to grant funds to Nesta Phiri to build a clinic in Katambo. In addition, LifeNets will partner with Rotary International to drill a borehole near the clinic for the village. To sustain over 5,000 people, the village has two boreholes and no clinic. The girls responsible for gathering water are limited by the amount they can carry on their head. They walk long distances in the dark, early morning on an empty stomach.
"Girls don't go to school because there is no food," lamented an older woman sitting in the audience at my feet on a straw-weaved mat. "They don't have the energy. They just gather water and sleep."
Many females resort to gathering water in the nearby river to save time and hassle from waiting in long lines at the distant borehole. But as you can imagine, drinking contaminated river water is the source of a number of problems--namely cholera and diarrhea. I naively asked what services the government provides. They chuckled. "The health department tells us that we shouldn't drink from the river...but throughout our lives we feel like the government has not satisfied our needs at all," says he village chief. Many Americans echo that last statement about their own government. But our complaints don't usually affect the health of our liver.
The chief of Mzembela Village which would also receive a borehole added that people drink from the nearby river where dead animals and human corpses are dumped: "Because of the problem we have, yes we drink. What else can we do?"
If girls leave at 6am, most times they return at 12pm without water. The older women push them out of line. When school girls leave early (5am or earlier) for the boreholes, they face another beast-malicious men. "...especially when girls wake up very early [for school], they cannot face a lion at this time...the lion is a man...the hyena is a man, so when they meet a man along the road, they cannot face them. They can be mishandled...or raped." The village chief emphasizes the importance of education to his village. People who stay in this village have no source of employment. Some sell tobacco or hand-made goods but most grow maize and sleep to fend off the hunger pains. With education, people can move to the city to hunt for employment and send their family remittances.
During my talks with village chiefs over water scarcity, my personal 5 Liter bottles were in the car; still chilled from freezing over night. My walk to fetch water is less than 20 meters. There is no danger of facing malicious men on the way to get a drink or older women wanting to get theirs first. It's clean, refreshing and plentiful. What a luxury.
2. LDG: CLINIC FOR 5,000
Nest Phiri has big plans for her clinic. They sound small--her tools will only be a weighing scale (standing and hanging), stethoscope, blood pressure machine, thermometers, kidney dish, forceps, and scissors maybe plasters and bandages for wound dressings. Her staff will consist of a medical assistant, herself as a nurse, a cleaner and a watchman. They plan to provide medical treatments and drugs for "simple diseases" like malaria and diarrhea...for over 5,000 villagers! People will travel far to receive treatment and Mrs. Phiri wants to provide drugs at an affordable price. Patients will be educated on how to prevent such diseases as malaria. With the help of LifeNets, the Katambo village may have a clinic and borehole by this time next year. This will source new lifeblood to a community of thousands.
3. SWIMMIN' AT SUNSET
Along Salima's main strip--lined with fish vendors, road bike shops and taxis--I bought two trout for dinner, transported them on the car side mirror (pictured), and quickly dropped them off with Wordsworth's relatives be cooked. The sun was setting as we hurried to Lake Malawi for a swim. Most Malawians cannot afford transport to the lake (about $27 round-trip from Lilongwe) so we treated the adventure like a trip to Walt Disney World. With less than an hour of play time, we splashed and raced in the warm water. I taught Wordsworth Freestyle and Breastroke and described how surfers catch a wave while the others took pictures and played on the swings. When dark came, the local artists said I would be eaten by hippos and they arrayed their artwork and jewelry on the sand for sale. I bought four beautiful oil paintings and two necklaces for MK3,800 ($22.35) from boys who claimed this money would support their high school education. Before leaving, we each had to drink a bottle of Fanta (since Fanta is orange, Wordsworth still thinks that it must be good source of Vitamin C for Malawians.) The total cost was MK750 and we paid MK1000 but the bartender left us for 20 minutes without bringing the change. This trickery is common. Giving a tip is not common. He won't get a tip so he abandons customers without giving them their change. Wordsworth hunted him down and retrieved the stolen money. The change of MK250 (US $1.79) is what Wordsworth makes in 5 hours as a primary school teacher. He can't afford to leave that kind of tip.
4. MWADZUKA BWANJI? (How was the night?)
We ate our fish, sima, rice and beans at 9:30pm after getting back from the lake. "You haven't eaten Chambo (fish) until you eat the head!" Wordsworth exclaims as he ate the brains, gills, teeth and bones of the entire fish head. (So far, his wife Roslyn is the only one I've met who doesn't eat the calcium-rich fish bones. Most eat bones since milk is very expensive and only a luxury.)
As Wordsworth would say, "I fought the sleepies away" to read the first part of UCG booklet "WHAT IS OUR DESTINY?" to his relatives Sampson, Ulema and little Ruth. They like me reading, but it takes 30 min to discuss two pages after turning to all the scriptures.
I slept soundly with the multitude of inch-long cockroaches*. Only once did I ask Solomon to graciously extract one caught INSIDE my mosquito net. They seemed to enjoy the veil as they slid down it like a slip-and-slide throughout the night. EWE...
So, that was my first night in a village. I was pampered with the best accommodations in the house: a mosquito net, pad, blankets, soap and tissue paper and I went to bed with a full belly (which has become a bit slimmer since I arrived one month ago). We left early in the morning after our sunrise run on the open road.
5. HIGH-SCHOOL PERSPECTIVES
Salima Secondary School (Government) & Mvera Secondary School (Community)
--from the teacher--
I was late for my 7:00am Geography class at the government-funded Salima Secondary School (high school / boarding school). Though I was not in the school uniform, I tried to blend into Mr. Kapanda's senior geography classroom. The 60+ students were learning about Denmark and small-scale farming methods. Mr. Kapanda put a world atlas on the chalkboard adjacent to the graffiti covered walls and talked enthusiastically in effort to capture student interest. Students took notes on the stationary provided by the school. At 7:40AM students rushed to the second of their eight classes that day and Mr. Kapanda sat down to answer some questions.
"I teach geography, home economics and biology," said Mr. Kapanda who graduated from a prestigious government university with a degree in geography six years ago. Now he's expected to teach biology while he hasn't taken biology since high school. This makes some lessons very challenging to teach. Students rely on Mr. Kapanda's oral description because there is no laboratory to do hands-on learning.
"I don't have knowledge of biology at that tertiary level, so I don't know what takes place in a laboratory," said Mr. Kapanda. "The biggest challenge is the pupil to teacher ratio...as you saw, there are just too many students to answer their questions....there are issues of vocabulary with no ample description for terms in their language...and we are using textbooks that the headmaster used when going to school over 30 years ago!" (And still there is only ONE older-than-dirt textbook for 120 students.)
In summary: "most students fail to understand what we are trying to teach...this is a national problem."
All these conditions frustrate teachers. "Most Malawian teachers are not dedicated because of so many factors that I cannot even mention...To be here in my sixth year is very unusual."
--from the students-
Students face many motivational challenges. At school many are thinking of their struggling families back home. If students have made it to high school, they have already excelled in the Malawian culture. Now, parents and grandparents have already begun to depend on them as the bread-winners of the family.
"I want to be a doctor," said Peter Kambule, a senior at Salima Secondary School. "Mathematics and physical science are my favorite subjects...I like playing football and chatting with my friends...and then I study for four hours per day. I am familiar with a computer and get to go on for about one hour per week."
Peter sounds like a student worthy of being a "breadwinner" for any parent. But the pressure gets to him. "In my family, there are nine [children]. Eight are in school. Four are here [at Salima Secondary School]. My parents have to pay for all of us and they have a hard time coming up with the money." Peter's situation is very common. His friend Zachariah said that he has to ask his friends for money to pay the school fees.
When I asked, "Do you feel you are doing well here in school?" they both responded, "no." They think about their family struggling to make due back on the village farms.
An investment from an outside donor like LifeNets alleviates so much stress on students. At Mvera Community-Day Secondary School is LifeNets scholarship recipient Chufundo. He wants to be an electrician after graduating from university. His favorite classes are the hard sciences-like math and physics. When he speaks, the words fight through a strong stutter. He said that his biggest challenge is social alienation. Thankfully, with the help of LifeNets he has money for school fees, boarding and transport and he can focus on school rather than harboring the financial guilt so many other teenage students bare. Rather, Chufundo is proud that he can ASSIST his parents! He goes home on holidays and is able to aid his mother in caring for his disabled father in a wheelchair. LifeNets will continue to pay for his education until he graduates from Mvera next November.
--from the administrator-
Administrators sweat about holes missing in their institutions: laboratories, internet, updated textbooks, one special-needs teachers, and protein. It seems that the administrations should be working harder to rake in the money, but even the government aided schools have shallow funds. So since there are not enough "Teaching and Learning resources," the administration focuses on sparking DISCIPLINE, MOTIVATION and DEDICATION within the spirit of the school community. Unfortunately, the rest they merely hope for...
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Again, it was a great trip to Salima and Lake Malawi. Next week will feature Dr. Chilopora's clinic and the LifeNets orphanage.
Thanks for persevering to THE END!
6. PICTURE DETAILS: LDGs
1. Recipient: Katambo village (chiefs pictured) via Nesta Phiri (pictured)
Project: Borehole
2. Recipient: Mzembela Village (chief & wife pictured) via Grace Ben (pictured)
Project: Borehole
3. Recipient: Wordsworth Rashid
Project: Grocery store
4. Recipient: Loveness Luwanja
Project: Salon
5. Recipient: Mr. Njewa
Gift: Wheelchair
6. Recipient: Area 23 via Njewa family
Project: Rebecca's Well
