Some had spent the weekend in beautiful houses behind high walls and well watched gates, with attentive maids and personal drivers. The homestay experience had been a glimpse into the world of Blantyre’s upper class. But today it jarred with another part of the same world.
Violet Alumando, age 4, lives in a tiny, poorly lit house in the Thandizi area, near Blantyre. Her 78-year-old grandmother, Calista Kasiya, supports her by selling soil from the river to those who can afford it for their gardens.
This morning Violet was one of over 50 children between the age of 3 and 5 who sat on brightly coloured chairs arranged in neat rows, and looked up at their strange visitors with wide eyes. Tithandiane, which means “let’s help one another” in Chichewa, is a weekly program for orphans and vulnerable children run by the Blantyre Synod and Development Commission. This group meets in the hall of Thundu Presbyterian Church in Bangwe, but there are 17 other centres in the Blantyre region. Here the children gather for the morning. They are fed a porridge made of likuru phala, a flour packed with nutritional value, and are led in songs, games, and educational activities.
In the afternoon, a similar program called a “children’s corner” is run for orphans over the age of 5. Although they attend school during the day, the program provides additional support for orphans, and helps to nurture feelings of self-worth and deal with emotional problems that can often follow children thrust into difficult circumstances.
The development commission also provides support for a number of orphans to attend secondary school. One of them is 16-year-old Commander Lewis. As a handful of youth and leaders arrived at his home, he welcomed them self-consciously, shooing several children into the house‘s other room. His parents, whose photo hangs on the wall of the bare chamber, died two years ago, leaving him to care for his four siblings. When asked what struggles he faces, he replies hesitantly in Chichewa, admitting he doesn’t want to complain because the synod provides money for his education. But he struggles to get food and clothes.
Other stories told that day were still more tragic. Rose Kadongo, 35, wore a chitanje or skirt emblazoned with a map of Malawi and told a story familiar to many women in a nation so beset with HIV. She became infected–probably by her husband–before she became pregnant with her fifth child, and passed the infection on to her baby through mother-to-child transmission. She avoided infecting her sixth child, now three years old, by taking preventative measures during pregnancy. But the child became an orphan early in life; her husband died about a year after he was born.
Still more difficult yet, Zione Usufu, 28, lay beneath a blanket near the door of her home. She was skin and bones, her body ravaged by AIDS and malnutrition, and she struggled to keep her eyes open for long. Her sister, 38-year-old Janet Makamjioa, sat propped against a wall, herself pale and weak with illness, but trying to speak with the visitors who ringed them. The sisters both have five children and live with their mother–13 people in the tiny house. All the men in the family are dead. She began to weep, saying there wasn’t enough food. They had no relish to go with nsima, Malawi’s staple food, which is nothing more than water and corn flour. The visitors prayed together before they left the tiny home, walking back into the street in silence, past the ramshackle market that dominated the opposite side, ignoring the shouts of its vendors and the excited cries of “azungu!” (“foreigners!”) from its children.
Zione was one of about 15 patients currently assisted by a home-based care program. There was help, but also great need which pressed heavily on the minds and hearts of the Canadians.
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