Journey to Malawi at the invitation of Self Help
Author:
Brian Hyland
You meet precious little traffic as you travel from Lilongwe to Blantyre, a five hours journey on a two-lane highway which snakes from the capital city southwards on a route parallel to the huge expanse of water that is Lake Malawi.
The absence of traffic gives a sense of languid peacefulness - an impression underscored by the steady procession of pedestrians and cyclists who weave their way along the shoulder of the road, their bikes laden with sacks of flour, small livestock, and containers of water. But impressions can be deceptive, and for the vast majority of Malawians each day is a relentless struggle just to have enough food to put on the table for the family, that night.
It was against such a backdrop that I travelled recently to Malawi, on the invitation of Irish Third World charity Self Help Development International.
Retained by Self Help to evaluate proposed expansion and re-structuring plans for the organisation in Malawi, I travelled with Self Help's CEO Hilary McDonagh and the organisation's African Director Dr. Awole Mela from Ethiopia, at the end of the country's annual rainy season on what was a remarkable journey which will live long in my memory.
Malawi is still a young democracy, having secured it's independence from the British in the early 1960's. It subsequently endured the 31 year reign of the autocratic and austere self-styled 'president for life' Hastings Banda, who was finally deposed in 1994 - the year that Self Help first started working in the country.
Located in South-East Africa and with a population of under 10 million people, it is a narrow strip of country that runs north/south for a distance of more than 550 miles along the western shoreline of Lake Malawi (formerly Lake Nyasa), yet for parts of that stretch is little more than 20 miles wide.
Described in tourism literature as 'The Warm Heart of Africa', the country is a friendly and welcoming place - but one where the sights, smells and sounds are distinctly African - and a world apart from those I was familiar with.
The differences are everywhere, and they assail you almost as soon as you leave the airport in the country's capital Lilongwe - the absence of street lighting, the lack of footpaths, and the presence of thousands of people walking and cycling, just some of the immediate pronounced indicators to the economic circumstances of the country and its people.
We travelled southwards from the capital towards it's second city Blantyre - named in honour of the Scottish birthplace of that intrepid British explorer Dr. David Livingstone, visiting first Self Help's area based project at Linthipe, and later travelling to Zomba, a pre-independence capital from where Self Help's administrative offices for its Nsondole district project is based. All told these two ventures are currently seeking to bring food security, education and improved social conditions to more than 170,000 people within a five year period.
When this timeframe has elapsed, Self Help's indigenous local staff (the organisation does not work with non-nationals in the field) will decamp to some other location, and seek to implement and promote the same effective food production and sustainable development approaches and techniques which have been so successful for it before.
During my visit I met individual farmers, farmers groups and other village bodies who have been working with Self Help over the past few years on a range of food production and conservation activities designed to enable people to escape the endless cycle of famine and food aid dependence. And time and again I heard from families who told us that they did not want to rely on hand-outs, but were desperate to improve both living conditions and circumstances for themselves and for their families.
Hardworking and committed, these farmers and producers are utilising a range of appropriate technologies and growing techniques to produce yields which are far greater than those they had ever enjoyed before, and the relative prosperity this brought to them was in evidence in the healthy bright eyed smiles of children, and in the prevailing sense that things were improving.
The fact that these communities and individuals are doing the work themselves - and in many cases are receiving little more than advice, instruction and guidance from Self Help's staff, is having a profound effect.
As I visited these small homesteads and looked at the crops, the gardens, and the handful of poultry which the more fortunate had, I could not help but think of the parallels which exist between the position of rural Malawians today and the conditions of life for our own forebears, a century or more ago.
I saw how over-reliance on one crop (maize) made households more vulnerable to famine and hunger if that crop failed - just as the Irish endured during the potato famine of the 1840's; saw parallels between Self Help's efforts to establish growers co-operatives to market and sell produce and the emergence of the Irish co-operative movement, under the leadership of Horace Plunkett a century ago; and witnessed too the simple remedies - such as methods to harvest rainwater from roofs, to develop backyard vegetable gardens, and to develop homestead woodlots to provide cooking fuel, to the lives and experiences of Irish people in years gone by. But there was one stark difference between the situation in Malawi and that of by-gone Ireland, and that was in evidence in the large number of HIV/AIDS orphans which were to be found in village after village that we visited.
Although the village of Bimbi has only a few hundred residents, at the latest count it has close to 40-50 youngsters, from aged three upwards, who are orphans as a result of the AIDS crisis.
These youngsters are sometimes being cared for by grandparents or other family relatives, but in some cases they have been left completely without family - and live in a shelter which the village has built to cater for them.
Evidence of the impact of AIDS is to be seen too in the terrible absence of young and middle aged men and women. When I asked why we only saw children, teenagers, the elderly, but very few people of early to middle age I was told that it was a result of AIDS. The productive heart of the community had been torn out.
Self Help Development International has its own programme to tackle HIV/AIDS - and argues that while the pandemic may not be widely seen as a development issue, the profound impact which the disease has had on every single aspect of rural development makes it a subject which must be addressed.
When you see families struggling to survive while caring for ailing victims of the disease, visit schools who have teaching staff lost to the disease, and meet health care workers whose ranks have been depleted by the spread of AIDS, it is hard to argue with the Self Help view.
After a week long tour of Self Help's projects and a series of meetings with key personnel we came up with a plan to address the needs of the organisation as it seeks to expand it's activities in Malawi.
Happily I can report that the recommendations of this plan are now taking effect, that Self Help has appointed it's first ever country director for Malawi, and that the organisation has expanded its workforce in the country by more than 20 people since my visit.
Self Help undoubtedly has it's work cut out if it is to make a real and lasting change to large numbers of Malawian people in the years ahead. But to date it has helped more than one-third of a million people to a life of food self sufficiency, and with it's approaches and objectives, I have no doubt that it will help many more in the years to come.
To find out more about Self Help, visit www.selfhelp.ie , or contact (059) 6471175.