Community Integration - How to Win Friends and Influence People in Malawi

Three of my neighbor’s children, Enita, Amosi and Richardi (ages 12, 10 & 6, approximately), came over to my house the other day to give me a school book to study Chichewa. They’d determined that my Chichewa wasn’t good enough for a Form 4 book (fourth grade), so they brought me a Form 1 book (first grade). They were right. I eagerly looked through the book that labeled pictures of everyday household items and animals, and had sentences like, “Galu amadya nyama,” or, “The dog eats meat.” We sat on my front porch as I admired the book and thanked them for bringing it, but after a few minutes, it became apparent they had no intention of leaving. What was I supposed to do with these three children just sitting on my porch? I asked them a few questions, like “what grade will you be starting in school in September,” and “did you play soccer today?” But soon, my Chichewa was exhausted and the kids just sat there chatting with each other and folding a piece of paper into various shapes. Finally, I decided that I had work to do, and I’d go ahead and do it whether they were there or not, so I went to the kitchen and got a big bowl full of peas that needed to be shelled and sat down next to them to shell the peas. To my delight, they immediately grabbed handfuls of peas and started helping me like it was their duty. I played some Malawian music on my iPod and speakers, and we all sat there working together and moving to the beat. After a while, the Malawian album finished, and I put on a Will Smith album, knowing that would have a good beat. The kids loved it, and little Richardi even got up and danced for us as we laughed and the kids joked. Once the peas were finished, the kids said they were going and left to start chores at their house. It was so much fun spending time with them, and it was nice to feel that they were accepting me as part of their community – someone they could just hang out with.


In the last few weeks, I’ve started meeting with individual villages to learn about what problems these small communities face and how they think I may be able to help them. There are 24 villages in the area I’m serving, so it’s a bit tedious to visit each one individually, but I think it’s important to get to know the villages better, and for them to know me and feel comfortable with me. I keep hearing the same needs over and over – start-up money for businesses or IGAs (Income Generating Activities), fertilizer for better crop production, and livestock to provide money and nutrition. I’m going to try to address all of these in my time here. For the businesses, I first want to do some trainings in basic business skills. I have an idea of doing a community lecture series, covering a different business topic each week. Anyone could come to the lectures, and at the end of the series, anyone who has attended most or all of the lectures, and who submits an appropriate business plan, would get a small grant or loan for start-up money. Of course, I’ll have to get funding for those grants, but they would be small amounts, so I think it’s possible. For the fertilizer, I don’t want to encourage synthetic fertilizers because they’re very expensive here, and simply providing them wouldn’t be sustainable. I think I’ll address that need by providing training in using compost and manure, and by teaching farmers to incorporate crop waste back into the soil. Right now, many farmers simply burn leftover corn stalks or bean vines after the crop is harvested. Perhaps they don’t realize that they’re burning up nutrients the soil could use. If they could turn that crop waste back under the soil, I think they’d dramatically improve their crop yields, without expensive synthetic fertilizers. But, that would require additional labor, and it’s hard to get people to change the way they’ve been doing things all their lives, so even though it seems like common sense to us, getting people to adopt this technique may take some work. For livestock, we’re going to address that need with the big projects I mentioned in my previous post, and maybe we’ll try some other smaller side projects in livestock as well. The local HIV/AIDS support group has decided it wants to do a dairy goat project, which makes me very happy. My not-so-secret personal desire is to get someone to do a dairy cow project, but so far that’s not on the agenda.

There are a few other needs that have been expressed, including extending a water tap to a couple villages so they won’t have to draw drinking water from the river, a new wheelchair for a disabled boy, and glasses for an older man who is very nearsighted. All of these are small projects and do-able – I just have to figure out the best way to address these needs. A lot of my job is simply finding resources that are available, and bringing them to the rural community.

One additional reason for holding the village meetings is to make sure everyone in the community knows my name and calls me by it. There’s a tendency here for children to see me walking by and start shouting, “Azungu! Azungu!” This is a generic term for a white person, and they shout it because they’re excited to see me, but my counterpart and I think it’s important that the children, and everyone else for that matter, know that I’m not just any azungu – I’m a member of their community, so they should call me by my name. Of course, now when I walk down the road, the children yell, “Say-la! Say-la!” They call me Say-la, because they have a really hard time pronouncing Sara as we would. I feel a bit like a celebrity here – everyone knows who I am and they’re really excited when I come around. It’s fun, but also means that I have to constantly be “on” when I leave the house. There’s no such thing as anonymity here in the villages.

Stay tuned – I’m hoping to have a video post for you next time! Fingers crossed that I can upload video on Malawi’s very slow Internet.  Please leave any comments, questions, or suggestions for me, whether about the blog, my work, or anything else.