Welcome to Livingstonia! This mission was named after David Livingstone, a famous missionary, where I can see the beautiful Lake Malawi that Livingstone “found” during his ambitious Zambezi expedition.
My current internship involves the evaluation of a water and sanitation health education grant in 10 villages here. Since diarrhea is the primary cause of death for children under five, water and sanitation are the primary entry points for combating diarrhea and my role is to assess whether the grant’s activities are achieving improved knowledge and behavioral changes in water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Rotary Club and Water for People’s presence here are strong, as they have worked tirelessly to provide a safe water system for the mission and the surrounding villages. The 100+-year-old gravity-fed water system was failing, so Rotary Club stepped in and replaced it with a safer system. With the new system, 10 villages can now have access to over 60 water points. Despite this amazing feat, the challenges here include the battle over community’s ownership of the water system versus azungus’ “responsibility” of the water system, and the privatization of water (whether water should be free or paid for). For 100+ years, the community members had free water and failed to see the necessity of paying for their water, but the Water Development Officer is pushing the community to take ownership of their water system and not rely on the azungus to always provide and take care of the Malawians’ needs.
As for me, I love being back in Malawi. I forget how kind and hospitable the “warm heart of Africa” is. People love that I can speak Chichewa and wear a chitenje like a real Malawian would. I can’t wait to see my friends and family in the south in 5 weeks!
Although the northern and southern regions are similar in terms of cuisine and some aspects of culture, there are some stark differences. The language is slightly different and I can somewhat understand what people are saying because of subtle hints of Chichewa. The northerners are more educated, because they value education more. In fact, universities have higher rates of students from the north than other regions, which is becoming so much of a problem that they’re currently debating passing a quota on admittances of students from the north. It seems that people are also not as poor. Because of the climate and the less dense population, they struggle less with droughts and food insecurity, so malnutrition is less of a concern, unlike Chiradzulu, my old site, which had one of the highest malnutrition rates in Malawi. I guess people are not as poor in the north (relatively within Malawi), so I don’t have as many people begging me for money or demanding the clothes I wear or the things I own. People here treat me nicer too. I don’t know if it’s because I’m coming here in a different context (“I’m a poor volunteer” versus “I’m an aspiring graduate student”), but the northerners treat me with more respect and don’t bother me as much. I always felt like an outsider at my old site, but I think they get so many foreigners here (missionaries, tourists, etc.) that they’re used to people like me.
Even though I look young to them (one man said “early 20’s” hah!), they know that I’m a graduate student and that somehow leverages my status and garners their respect. One of my counterparts told his wife that “there’s a little girl staying in that house and she can’t be more than 20 years” and pondered how old I must’ve been “as a little girl” when I graduated from college. When I told him my real age, he asked if I was serious (I said “yes”) and then told me I was old. (He said I look young because I have “good hygiene” and I’m not married, because, yes, marriage will suck the life out of a woman, he admitted.)
Oh, how I’ve missed you Malawi. It’s good to be home again. J
