Rose’s mother was the second of nine children, and Joyce the sixth child in her family. When parents die leaving behind large families, it places a nearly impossible responsibility on older grandparents who are already struggling to find enough food, clothing and shelter with which to survive themselves. The arrival of 10 or 12 more mouths to feed, and bodies to cloth is insurmountable.

In an effort to cope with this national crisis the Malawi government, through a decentralization process, gave power to local communities to organize, identify, and assist needy people in their areas. According to Wilson Tembo, the Director of the Malawi Project’s southern warehouse distribution site in Thondwe, “These community based organizations are providing a positive alternative where the needy receive aid,” he notes. It was during a recent distribution of clothes and other supplies that Tembo came upon little Rose. After learning of her plight he continues, “Rose is the best symbol of many orphans who are left with only grandparents to care for them. These children lack essential things like clothes, school fees, food and housing. Because such a large gap exists between the need and the ability to get these resources to the children, the Msamba Community Based Organization came into existence at the grass roots, local level. Malawi has thousands of orphans who have no hope for the future. Many are innocent and many are orphans because of a 13.5% HIV/AIDS rate in the country. The Namikango Mission and Maternity Hospital is pleased to have the support of the Malawi Project, the Universal Aide Society, and Compassionate Resources Network in being able to help these community based groups, and especially to be able to make a difference in the lives of children like Rose and Joyce.”

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Scott Gordon, President of the Malawi Project, was at the site in July for the groundbreaking ceremony for the new hospital. Nearby was the growing stockpile of bricks. He observes, “Can you imagine a pile of 200,000 bricks made one brick at a time, by hand? This is the commitment of the impoverished village people in the area. They are determined to do all they can to get this hospital constructed, and the school underway. In a western culture where the heavy lifting is done with machines, it is hard to imagine making bricks by hand, one mold of mud at a time. Their commitment leaves ours something to be desired. We have ample heath-care, even though we complain at times over its cost. The fact is that we have new hospitals all over America. We have pharmacies, manufacturers, and abundant supplies of drugs and resources. We have doctors and healthcare workers available at a moments notice, and we have emergency response teams in nearly every fire station across the country. Malawi has none of these. No wonder they are so eager to have this hospital.”

The current value of a brick in Malawi is 2 Kwacha. That means the brick contribution is worth at least 400,000 Kwacha, or approximately $2,500.00. In a part of the country where the average person makes less than $1.00 a day, and unemployment runs 50%, this work is compounded in value.

More Than Simply Bricks
This is the villagers’ contribution to building the new hospital. But this is not their only contribution. With a Shoes for Trees program in place much of 2010 and 2011 the village people planted thousands of trees all over the property to enhance the beauty and value of the land donated for the school, hospital, and training center for helping develop self reliance in the local population, primary the widows and orphans. The program stopped, and the shoes ran out, but the village people did not. They have continued making bricks, planting trees, and cutting a road across the mountain to give access to the upcoming facilities. This work is all being done by hand.
Your tax deductible  donation is needed:

Online:

Via Mail:The Malawi Project, Inc. c/o Mike Ferris – Treasurer 1356 5th Ave, Terre Haute, IN 47807

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Malawi — It is often referred to as the “Warm Heart of Africa”. It is the home of a number of tribal groups. Generally they are scattered throughout the country by regions. The North, Central and Southern regions are distinctively divided by these political and historical backgrounds. Generally there is a demarcation of the main cultural tribes by the three geographical regions. The Tumbuka and Ngoni tribes with the Tonga tribe coming in smaller numbers dominate the northern region. The Chewa tribe is the largest and they live primarily in the central Malawi. The southern region is highly populated by the Yao and Lomwe tribes. However, this does not confine one to its tribe by region or district. Each region and district of the country has patches of people from other tribes living in harmony and unlimited peace. No wonder this is called the Warm Heart of Africa. Inter tribal marriages are not prohibited, and this further enhances the bonds of unity throughout the nation.

Built on four cornerstone principles by the father and founder of the nation, the late Hastings Kamuzu Banda, these principles are unity, peace, freedom and discipline. Although these principles are sometimes forgotten they still help to mold the nation in a friendly place both regionally and globally.

Although this nearly 50-year-old democratic nation still falls near the bottom of the world’s economic rankings, and the poverty level remains near the top, the strides towards a brighter Malawi are still being jointly fought by all Malawians. It is a country plagued with poverty, and few people can afford basic necessities. The lucky children may find a tablet of soap with which to wash their clothes. The unlucky ones must do without. Both are forced to walk many kilometers on rocky ground just to gather food, find firewood, and collect water. School classrooms are inadequate; and many children still access education studying under trees. The literacy rate is said to be at 62.7% of the population over 15 years and old.

Fifty-Three Percent Below the Line
The basic water sources remain unprotected shallow wells that supply the largest part of the population. Potable water is even inaccessible by many urban dwellers. Water taps are dry for the greater part of the year. Water authorities still depend on old malfunctioning equipment, when the precious commodity can be accessed at all. Despite the fact that 53% of the population lives below the poverty line the country’s inhabitants remain friendly and warm.

A fuel resource for the biggest section of the 13,931,831 inhabitants of the nation remains firewood. Each day starts with the girls actively involved in household chores. For school going girls, the collection of firewood to warm the bathing water is usually the first thing they do each morning. Firewood is needed to cook the breakfast. Although the burning of firewood is done with no feelings of guilt, the fact is that deforestation and soil degradation are on the increase at an alarming rate. The need for alternative means to firewood is coming very late. The direct ‘alternative’ remains the often-interrupted power generation by the only country’s controlled powerhouse — electricity Supply Corporation. Less than one quarter of the population is said to be electrified.

I Met a New Friend
This afternoon, I have made a new friend. Her name is Doricca Somanje. She is a Nyanja by tribe and hails from Mtuweni Village in Zomba. At her age, she might have collected dozens of kilograms of firewood for her family’s use. I asked for permission if I could take her friendly and beautiful face for the purposes of my article. She agreed, but with one condition, “Mutakachapisa mudzandipaseko changa” (After printing, please give me a copy of the photo).

One thing I observed from this little girl is that, without anything except freedom and peace of mind, a person is actually whole. I am not however, concluding that without the basic necessities, one is satisfied, but I have grown to realize that peace and freedom are fundamental properties for any human being, whether they are rich or poor. Despite the fact that she has almost nothing, Dorica still manages a smile that reveals the country’s warmth. Her daily life depends on firewood as a source of fuel. To her and other villagers electricity is not an alternative at all.

Such a Warm Smile
It is such wide smiles that Malawians are blessed with that make the country home to everyone. If one has not visited Malawi, one must be living in an incomplete ‘world’. This is the warm heart of Africa — the nation known for her poverty as well as being a nation of friendly people.

Physical features are enormous in this centrally located African nation. Mountains, hills, rivers, lakes, animals, national parks, all are in large numbers. This is the nation that houses the great African rift valley lake, Lake Malawi, the great Mulanje Mountain, and several attractive destinations that are patiently waiting to be visited. But above all of them, the thing you may take home with you above all else are the smiles of the people.

By Wilson Tembo, Manager Malawi Project Warehouse Thondwe, Malawi

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Sitima Village, Zomba, Malawi… Msamba Community Based Organization provides physical and moral support to the local community with a major focus on the orphans, elderly and HIV/AIDS support group members. Their outreach extends to at least sixteen villages with a population of over six thousand people.

Situated eight kilometers northwest of the Namikango Mission, this community-based organization has a sound work structure of voluntary workers who combine resources to reduce the suffering of their community. With the government’s decentralization policy in place, village organizations are encouraged to provide solutions to the problems they face.

Registered with the local government’s social welfare office, Msamba is authorized to receive donations to serve the community.

A major focus of the organization is to provide preschool services to children below five. These services prepare them to begin their primary education by introducing them to academic basics.

Secondly, Msamba has created a group for HIV positive people. They meet weekly to share their challenges and encourage each other. Discrimination is a major problem, as well as the serious lack of nutritious food. The Msamba group carries out small income generating activities to support group members. Supplies like soap, salt and used clothes are provided to the needy. .

The elderly are another target group that Msamba Community Group assists. Culturally many elderly people are regarded as witches. In many instances, they are deserted and helpless. In this community, however, there are not such issues. Martin Bernard, the organization’s coordinator, reports, “Such issues are widespread of course, but in this area we have never experienced this to an extreme, where the elderly are chased out of the village after being accused of practicing witchcraft. However, many of their supposed victims and children are indeed victims of HIV/ AIDS. These elderly are escorted to the clinic when they are sick and their home surroundings are swept, to ensure cleanliness all the time, to check the spread of disease

As a preventive measure to the widespread effects of the deadly HIV/AIDS and its rocket speed spread amongst the youths, Msamba has a youth arm that disseminates the HIV awareness message to the community. Discussions through different means including debates and drama are conducted to develop skills and share knowledge on the dangers of the HIV/AIDS.

After we learned of this village based organization that is working so hard to meet it’s community’s challenges, supplies from the Malawi Project were taken to support them in this wonderful work.
By Wilson Isaac Tembo

Next week: Meet Mary Saikolo and 4-year-old Chisomo Rodrick

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What is it that makes Malawi children appear to mature quicker than children in Europe or America? The question was posed to Mama Cecelia T. Kadzamira.

“Perhaps our children mature so quickly because they live such a difficult life in the village,” Kadzamira explains. “Life is hard and they must learn quickly how to survive. Little girls begin at 3 or 4 to play at carrying water on their head to cook meals. They will follow their mothers back from the river or well carrying water just as she is. Then when she goes to prepare the meal for the family the little one goes to her little group of sticks, and pretends she is also cooking a meal. Play to them is living life as they see it in their family. They do not have toys, as children do in the west. Their play imitates real life.”

Kadzamira continues, “They do not have television and other things to distract them. They only observe what they see their parents doing. It is the same with the boys, as it is with the girls. The boys start very young working in the fields with their fathers. They too, mature very quickly because of the hard work the entire family must undergo in order to survive. By the time they are 5 or 6 they work in the field beside their fathers and older brothers to cultivate, plant, weed, and harvest the family crop. I think this causes our children to mature very quickly.”

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Guardians Rush to be First

A quiet, overcast morning greeted the morning at the Namikango Maternity Hospital in Thondwe, as a light wind seemed to drift aimlessly with no purpose. People began to gather near the old guardian shelters veranda. Most of the people were there in order to care for a patient in the maternity clinic. Some came just to cheer their loved ones, or to bring food for the expectant mothers. Numbers of children accompanied them.

The Director, Bisani Mphongolo, accompanied by the Contractor, entered the new structure. Inside are fourteen fireplaces with steel rods to support cooking pots. Electrical lights and black painted stands are the final touch.

The guardians watched as the men moved to officially carry out the handing-over ceremony. They posed for the symbolic handshake outside the A-frrame structure. It marked the end of a long construction journey.

As word went out that the kitchen could be used, excited guardians rushed in search of firewood, matches, water and pots, each wanting to be the first to use the new kitchen. The situation could be more fitly called a competition. Each wanted to make a name as “the first woman to use the new Namikango Mission Clinic’s kitchen.” This wasn’t surprising. Every person wished to be associated with the best.

If it were a competition, Rashida M’baluku would have been declared the winnner. She quickly started a fire, and got her small pot ready. Rashida hails from Rifa Village of Tribal Authority Mulambe in Zomba District. She had been at the clinic for the past two weeks preparing food for her younger sister who is expecting a baby.

After using the old kitchen on several occasions, Rashida described the new kitchen as the best. “We’ll not be waiting for one another now.” The old kitchen only had six cooking stations. With fourteen fireplaces the new kitchen

will be able to accommodate all of the guardians at the same time. This will make a difference at peak times when the guardian shelter is filled with people taking care of their relatives in the clinic.

The woman pointed out additional advantages of the kitchen, contrasting it with the old. “When it’s raining, the rain splashes were making their way to the fire place. When it is hot in summer, coupled with the fire heat, it was unbearable.” The new kitchen definitely improves the living standards of both expectant mothers and their caretakers. The levels of hygiene will certainly improve following the strategic positioning of the kitchen that allows little or no dust to blow inside. There will be no waiting for them to cook, and the new kitchen has added beauty to the clinic’s face.

-Wilson Isaac Tembo

(The Malawi Project is proud to have the opportunity to provide the funding for the construction of the kitchen at Namikango.)

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Looking Beyond the Cane's End

Her name is Kusala, and if you are at the Namikango Mission you may see her. Every morning she goes with her mother to the market. She is a grade 2 pupil at Msamba Primary School, a school located less than 5 kilometers from the mission. Her family earns a living selling sugarcane, and during school holidays she joins her mother in carrying the cane to the roadside market and selling it. With six members in the family, Kusala’s mom earns about $4.00 a day. This means each family member lives on 66 cents a day. When asked how she feels carrying the cane on her head, Kusala says, “my family has no choice; we must eat, having clothing, and it totally depends on selling the cane. I don’t enjoy carrying them on my head, they are very heavy.” This business earns her a pen, a pencil, exercise books and soap.

Wants to be a nurse

Carrying sugar cane for 10 kilometers is not simple for a seven-year-old. However, she tries to look beyond the end of the cane’s length. “I want to be a nurse, so I work hard at school,” she explains with excitement. Her life, and future demands a lot on her if she is going to become a nurse. Malawi is the home  to many children like Kasala whose lives are subjected to adverse poverty due to the loss of parents who die of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

Growing up in a Yao tribe in southern Malawi, Kusala has a mountain to climb if she is to realize her dream. Many cultural practices lead to girls such as Kusala becoming sexually active long before marriage, and this can easily lead to HIV/AIDS, or other problems that will bring about the loss of any promise of a productive future. For her to realize her dream of being a nurse Kusala will have to look well beyond the end of the cane.

Reported by Wilson Tembo,

Namikango Medical Warehouse Manager

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Man Carrying a Drum

In the circles of those who work in Africa from the west there are a number of funny little antidotes that begin with, “You’ve been in Africa too long when …” and you fill in the blank with some sort of situation that is unusual in the U.S. or Europe, but seems quite at home and normal in Africa.

A number of these situations have confronted various members of the Malawi Project teams that would have been extremely unusual in the U.S. but were commonplace in our eyes in Africa. Among those are the feats of strength that are visible when we saw the extremely heavy loads carried on the heads of Malawians because of the lack of adequate devices to get the items from one place to another. For them it is normal to pick something up and put it on their heads. For us it is impossible. This fact was seen one afternoon as I had made my way to a place near the road where I could shoot a particular person coming down the road after the workday. She had a walking disability and I had asked if I could firm her determination as she made her way to the bus stop each afternoon. I got to the scene ahead of her and waited. Several people passed me as I sat on a log and waited. Then it struck me. Great pictures of human strength and determination were passing me repeatedly, but they appeared so “normal” I was missing the picture.

I corrected the problem by quickly snapping pictures of the next couple of people who passed. I later took an excursion to gather some more pictures of people carrying loads on their heads. It is an amazing feat and one that should remind us of the struggle faced day after day deep in sub-Sahara Africa in a land that is so poor that possessions and goods can only be transported on people’s heads.

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How Can a Student Write Without a Pencil?

Malawi Project
3314 Van Tassel Drive
Indianapolis, Indiana 46240

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     Zomba Central Hospital, Zomba, Malawi … We tiptoed into the hospital room of the men’s surgical ward at the Zomba Central Hospital in southern Malawi. It had been less than a week since Kasonga, a minister and teacher at the Leadership Training School in Mponela had been in an extremely serious accident. He was riding in a pick up truck filled with 15 people. The pick up overturned and two of the occupants were killed. Kasonga, 80-year-old was thrown from the back of the pick up and sustained a possible ankle or leg fracture and a 12-inch gash all the way across his skull.

Laying There Sound Asleep
    The bandages had been removed from his head and when we entered he was facing the window side of the bed and sleeping soundly. We had taken meals to him the two previous days and did not want to leave until we were sure he had enough food to last the day. Malawi hospitals do not feed most of the patients and a caretaker must be there to care for the patient and prepare meals. Since Kasonga was so far from his home in the central region of Malawi we wanted to make sure he was had an adequate supply of food and other items he might need.

I Am Doing Just Fine
    We awakened him gently and he turned with his trademark smile and greeted us. "How are you doing," we asked? "I am doing just fine", said the man lying in the hospital bed with a big gash in his head and unable to walk. Most people would not be so positive under the circumstances but we had never seen Kasonga without a smile, and even in these serious circumstances he was quick to greet us and assure us of his well-being.

    "What do you need," we asked? A number of items started running through my mind even before he could ask. Soap. Sobo, the favorite drink of most Malawians, bread, peanut butter, a blanket, what? The list went on. His answer came unexpectedly.

    "Raisins", he responded. "Raisins for the churches to prepare communion," he said.

    Even in such a life-threatening situation Kasonga was concerned about the churches having enough raisins while he is away in order to be able to boil them and prepare communion on Sundays.

    Thanks to a recent donation of raisins from Daniel Shipley in Knoxville, Tennessee we were able to supply Kasonga with six large packages of raisins for the churches. Daniel has been sending raisins to Malawi for a number of years after he learned of the disastrous famine in 2001 and 2002, and started a campaign to get help into the country.

Yet Another Request Later in the Day
    Later in the day we traveled about 40 miles to Blantyre and a meeting with a building contractor Peter Mahone. Mahone is from the Angoni tribe and is a warrior type, quick at wit, and quite outspoken.

    "Did you bring raisins," he asked? We were not surprised by his request. It comes from so many parts of the country and in so many of the villages. Raisins are cooked and used for communion on Sundays, and raisins are very expensive and often in short supply. The part Daniel is playing to help the churches through his campaign to send raisins to Malawi is being seen in so many places.

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