Today was one of songs and laughter. About two dozen children walked to Likhubula House, some coming as many as six kilometres, to attend a weekly Saturday school. The program is geared toward improving their grades—with help from teacher Often Nyamsalo—and teaching various skills such as sewing, embroidery, pottery, gardening, and working with tin. But today brought a special treat: young Canadians, armed with balloons, skipping ropes, new songs, plenty of games, and a few surprises.
“It is true / I do not know the dances of foreigners,” some of the children read during the English portion of their lesson with Mr. Nyamsalo. “I only know the dances of our people.”
“What are some dances you know?“ asked Carol Gamuti, one of the Malawian youth joining the Canadians for the first half of the trip. Several dances were mentioned, but there were also several the children did not know.
“In Canada, they dance samba,“ she suggested, quoting the dances of the foreigners mentioned in the poem. “They dance rumba. But you do not know the dance unless they themselves teach it to you.”
But within a few hours, it was the Canadians who were learning a new dance, with enthusiastic demonstrations by a handful of children. As they raised their hands and moved their feet, mimicking their Malawian teachers, the onlookers laughed and hooted.
But in some ways the day was bittersweet. All the children involved in the program are orphans. Most of their parents were lost to AIDS-related illnesses, and one girl, aged 13, is infected with HIV. Although an “orphan” in Malawi is defined as a child with one or no parents, only one child has a living mother. Most live with their grandmothers or extended family.
“Because of poverty, the grandmothers think it‘s touch to look after the orphan,” said Eneles Chaononga, who cares for the orphans. “They don’t think they can manage. But we sit down with them and we say, ‘You are in this world to help these children. You may not think you are able, but God will give you power.”
Eneles has worked with the children for seven years. After her husband died, the mother of two heard talk of an orphanage to be opened in the Mulanje district and came here seeking work. At the time, this meant caring for 30 children crowded into a building with only two rooms, each of which was sub-divided into six. But expenses outstripped the budget, and they eventually decided to shift their strategy. Instead of caring for the children at a single site, they sent them to live with their nearest guardian and now support the family. Eneles visits each child’s school once per term to check on their progress, and visits their home once each year.
“They say, ‘Because I am an orphan I can do nothing,’” she said. “But we want to remove the spirit that because you were born poor you will die poor. You can do something; you can change your situation. If you just finish your education.”
But they struggle most often with the girls, she says. When guardians want little or nothing to do with an orphan, or resent having to provide for her, their charge is often left to look after herself by making money for clothes, food and school fees. In the years Eneles has spent with the orphans, four girls have dropped out of school because they became pregnant. Some exchanged sex for money.
As the program draws toward a close, Canadians and Malawian children descend from Likhubula, some hand in hand. They follow paths and rough roadways that wind through fields and the scattered, one-room houses that make up the village. The group stopped at the homes of three children. At each, the grandmother offered fresh “ground nuts” (also known as peanuts) or cassava, sharing openly what little she had; the Canadians self consciously plucked two or three each time, while the orphans claimed handfuls.
To see more photos from Malawi visit our Flickr site.
