Ripple Africa - Letter from Malawi

How would I sum up the last three months….mind blowing. It has been a unique experience living and working within an African community. The early days weren't easy but gradually you find yourself adjusting and then all of a sudden you are part of the community. As you walk down the dirt track to school everyone shouts your name and the children sing to you. The teaching has been fun, if a little crazy at times, chickens and guinea fowl in the classroom always keep it interesting! Seeing women carrying buckets of water on their head becomes normal; swimming in the lake while the children wash and the woman do their laundry is an everyday occurrence. I am going to miss this community and the simple way of life so much. I think I will get serious culture shock coming back to the extravagance of Christmas in the UK. The children over here have nothing, they are happy with a football made from a condom wrapped in plastic bags and string or an old tyre and a stick. When you ask them their dreams all they want is the chance to go to secondary school. It is very humbling.

I have a new found appreciation for so many things that I have always taken for granted. You can only eat what the farmers grow; there is no electric so you go to sleep when the sun goes down and water has to be drawn from the well and carried on your head so you conserve it. You become so aware of your environment and how precious it is.

People's lives are tough and you are constantly reminded of this when you walk around the villages. It's still easy to have an element of detachment though, until it's someone you know. Hearing that the woman next door has Malaria or can't afford medicine for her sick baby or can't afford to send her children to secondary school hits you hard. These are real people and you see the joy and sadness up close. Really helping though is much more difficult than it first appears. Putting your hand in your pocket is easy but it does more harm than good. It encourages dependency and disempowers people. Finding a way to enable people to help themselves in the long term is the key. I could cite millions of examples of big well known government organizations which have done so much damage across Africa. 40 years ago Africa and Asia were at a similar point developmentally, since then Asia's economies have grown rapidly and Africa's have gone backwards. One of the key reasons is misplaced Western Aid programmes. Even the drop the debt campaign is controversial, in exchange for cancelling the debt African countries are forced by the west to open all of their markets to competition. Of course they can't compete with cheap imports from Europe and the few local industries there are completely collapse, making the people even more dependant on handouts. Having seen the damage they have done, I am so skeptical of big aid organizations. Some of the big famines in Africa are linked to free hand outs of seeds years earlier by the West. These crops are not hardy like the traditional ones and fail if the rains are late, everyone then starves. It is so critical that assistance programmes are built on sound business principles. People truly need a hand up but NOT a hand out. I have learnt this first hand through Ripple Africa. One of the resounding success stories which is lifting people put of poverty across the world is Microloans. These are very small amounts of money loaned to women (in the main) to help them buy materials to make things which will provide an income for their families. It was set up by Muhammed Yunus in Bangladesh who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Ripple Africa wants to get involved with Microloans to launch small Beekeeping businesses.

I feel so fortunate to have worked with a charity which actually makes a difference. Everything they do aims to empower people and build infrastructure in the long term. Their programmes include the building of a secondary school (students currently walk 2.5 hours to school if they can afford to go), sponsorship of students, teacher training, vegetable gardens (a form of nutrients and income generation) and tree planting. For sure the environmental projects were the least interesting to me initially. I never realized quite how essential trees were in the fight against poverty though. An average family cuts down 120 trees per year for firewood and there are 12.2 million people. These trees are not being replaced so forests are disappearing rapidly. Scary when you consider that without trees there are less nutrients in the soil and less rain to water the crops. Less rain could lead to a failed harvest which could mean a family may starve. Given that the population here is expected to double by 2050, this is terrifying. The Sahara desert is extending at 1.5 miles a month for these exact reasons. Planting trees is absolutely critical for the future survival of Malawi. Local forests are disappearing and some have to talk 10kms for firewood each day. I never expected to be sad at the sight of a tree being chopped down but it really bothers me. (On this note there is a UK company, Alupro launching a competition in schools to make a video about 'your local environmental issues'. The winner gets to come to this community in Malawi and show it to the school children).

When I look back on this time in years there will be one experience which stands out in my memory; the minibus rides. They terrified me so much in the beginning but I have really grown to love them, the humanity, the sharing and the kindness you encounter is incredible. Sharing a space meant for 10 people with 20 along with 5 chickens, 40 fish and bags of rice and potatoes is always an adventure. There is just never enough room so everyone has to help each other. It is quite normal to have a couple of children on your lap and chickens pecking at your ankles. I am sure I will always be a little disappointed in the future when I ride on public transport and there are no chickens!

I hope I have given you all a little flavour of what it has been like out here. Thank you all for your support, it really has made a difference.

Love Sonya xx