Dan's Adventure

The village of Mbamba is home to over 2000 people on the western side of Lake Malawi. Stepping outside the campsite to meet our guide we are surrounded by locals that plan to join us on our village visit. Most want to practice their English and also want to give you their sales pitch for their arts and crafts. Gift introduced himself to me and accompanied me on the twenty minute walk from the campsite to the village he has grown up in.

Gift explained to me the process of building their houses. They are responsible for the entire construction, from making the bricks to weaving the grass for the roof, they do everything. Before construction can commence, they must first request a plot of land from the chief of the village, who gives the land to the villagers for no charge. Families build homes in circles next to each other, each son has their own house in the circle which they build when they marry, but the daughters move away to live in their husband’s family circle. Even the chief’s house, which is huge in comparison, has the homes of his family surrounding him. They also appear to be the only family in the village with electricity.

The village for the most part is self sufficient. They grow vegetables, keep animals and fish in the Lake to sustain themselves. The staple diet is a white potato, similar to sweet potato, which is mashed with water and left out in the sun to dry before being cooked and served with fish. Donations are welcomed by the village, and in the past have provided bore holes to give the village safe drinking water, a hospital staffed with a single medical assistant, and class room materials for the local primary school.

In Malawi primary education is provided for free by the government, but due to large family sizes, the class sizes are very big compared to western standards and they have very limited teaching materials. At the primary school in Mbamba, class sizes of 100 to 200 are the norm. The head teacher told us that they find it very hard to manage the classes, even when using a group methodology to teach them. High school costs each pupil $150 per term, for four terms each year. Gift attends a boarding school a few hours away from Mbamba and is currently trying to earn enough money to pay for his next term. He came across as being very intelligent and ambitious, he has hopes of becoming a teacher in the future so is very keen to practice his English at every opportunity. I felt embarrased when he asked me if I spoke any other languages and I replied “a little French” as he started trying to converse with me in French and I had no idea what he was saying.

Although I enjoy learning about how different people live and seeing how they feel they can be helped by visitors, I don’t like the way in which children are used to guilt visitors into donating. Some may say I am being cynical and that the children are genuinely happy to see visitors and come on mass to play with them, but I can’t help but think they have been taught to pounce whenever the opportunity to make money arises. When they spotted us coming they appeared wanting to hold hands and started trying to grab at water bottles, cameras and anything else they saw. At an earlier Masai village visit in Tanzania I felt exactly the same about the children, it just made me feel very uncomfortable.