Idah's Village - Misomali

There is an entire world in Malawi that I’ve come to know something of over the last couple of years, and that I know few folks from a background like mine would ever have the chance to really see. Malawian folks refer to it, with a smile, as ‘the village’ as if it’s one place anyone can go to find a simple, straightforward, and strenuous way of life. In reality ‘the village’ is most of the country, since Malawi is something like 70-80% rural. While there are certainly things about village life that seem to translate from place to place—the pace, the food, the ubiquitous animal crap—every village has its own energy, its own feel.

Over the last week or so, I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of visiting the villages of two of AGE’s scholars studying at Providence Secondary School, Christina Michael and Idah Savala. Marco Baringer, a photographer who is collaborating with AGE to produce a photo essay and staying in Malawi for a few weeks, accompanied me. Idah’s family lives in a small compound made of two houses. One shelters Idah’s mother and younger siblings and the other is for Idah, her older sister, and some goats. The compound also includes an outdoor kitchen and place to store corncobs (the main fuel for the fire between three stones where the family cooks all meals), a small storage building, an outdoor bafa (a stall for bathing usually made of brick or grass) and chimbudzi (pit latrine). There’s a pen for a dairy cow and calf, which are very rare in Malawi. Idah’s mother inherited the cow from her father. They milk it daily and sell the milk to the Malawi Dairy Board for a little bit of extra cash around the house.

Idah’s village, Misomali, is about 20 minutes from the nearest tarmac road, but it may as well be hours. It’s a three hour walk to the nearest clinic and about a 45 minute walk to the nearest school. Idah doesn’t have a lot of friends here. Most girls her age are married and have 2-3 children. We visited her primary school. As she and Marco kept busy taking pictures, I took the opportunity to speak with a few young women who were peering in one of the windows. They were 16-18 years old, married, and had between two and four children. I asked Idah if she knew any of them. She said, “Yeah, we learned together here.” She looked out the window across a distance that seemed infinitely greater than the ten feet or so that separated them. Despite both the geographic and social isolation, Idah seems incredibly content here, falling into the rhythms through which she has always measured her life—the number of steps to the well, the number of family gardens left to harvest, the number of weeks until school starts up again.

I was lucky to meet two women who guided Idah through her childhood to the place she’s at now—one of Idah’s mentors who supported her during primary school through the Ambassador’s Girls’ Scholarship Program and Mrs. Savala, Idah’s mother. I’ve rarely met a woman in the village as willing as Idah’s mentor to open up so genuinely to someone new, especially to someone new who happens to be 6’7” and a white male. All she wanted to talk about is how incredible Idah is and what a great role model she’s been for current primary school students, showing that with a lot of hard work it’s possible for girls from Misomali to go to a national school like Providence. This is a lesson Idah never learned until she did it herself.

Idah’s mother is a quieter woman who carries herself with a really interesting combination of dignity and humility. She nudges Idah to behave properly, but does so with obvious love. Idah adores her mother. There’s no other word for it. If you ask Idah how it is that she’s learning at a national secondary school while so many of her friends married young and have children, Idah will almost always credit her mother’s support for education first. She even giggles a little when she remembers times that her mother had to force her out of the house into downpours during the rainy season so that Idah would be on time for school.

Idah’s primary school, Litchenza Free Primary School, is well built, comprising a half dozen or so solid blocks. Various organizations have pitched in to build school blocks and latrines, but class sizes still top 100 students per class. Idah showed us around. We stopped in one room to take pictures and soon had a large audience of children who burst into cheers each time Marco’s flash went off. Idah laughed and when we asked her what she thought of it all, she just said, “Ah, its how they behave.”

Beyond the primary school is the Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) where Idah’s older sister learned for four years. There are two blocks with students who are continuing classes through break to study for government examinations in September and October. Idah guides us around the school grounds, greeting a few people she knew from primary school. As we walk off, I excuse myself as Marco and Idah entertain a group of children with their cameras. I stare at a hand-written list naming 11 students who passed their MSCE exams from the C.D.S.S. and quickly added up their scores. None of the scores are near good enough to allow the students to proceed to a college or university. By comparison, from the class of 2007, 28 students from Providence were admitted to colleges and universities and maybe another 20 plus scored higher than the scores on that list. I stood and stared for a moment, just grateful that no matter what else was going right or wrong, I’m able to be a thread in a fabric that supports a girl as gifted as Idah as she seeks to realize her potential.

After we got back from our tour of the schools, Idah and I prepared lunch while Marco photographed everything. It’d been a while since I cooked anything in a Malawian kitchen and this time wasn’t any more pleasant. The smoke was extremely heavy and burned the eyes, especially on a fire of maize cobs. I chopped some tomatoes and cooked eggs. They came out nicely except that in the midst of wiping the tears out of my eyes from the smoke, I’d forgotten to add salt! Everybody laughed it off as sort of, ‘well that’s what happens when you let a man, especially a white man, in the kitchen.’ Idah’s family was incredibly gracious, and before Marco and I left, her mother made sure Idah thanked us for bringing and cooking the eggs that day.

Leaving villages after a visit is never easy. I always feel a little sad that I have to go. Marco and I hopped on the bike taxis, took a last look around, and started our trip back to Providence. Soon we would visit Christina’s Michael’s village.

Tsalani bwino (Stay well),
Benja (Ben, AGE Program Director on-site in Malawi)