Chain of Events

In August, when Nathaniel travels here to check things out and be introduced to local partners, he also rents a room from Daniel (Dutch agronomist) for Johannes (Stanford grad student who completes a one month Project Healthy Children internship in Malawi). One of Daniel’s other roommates, Finn, is a bluegrass fiddler from North Carolina who is here making a charity album with Peter Mkwonda (Malawian hip-hop artist).

A few days after we arrive, Daniel and Finn take us out to one of the expat hang outs (Harry’s Bar). Finn mentions that I should get involved with the International Women’s Group of Malawi (IWAM).

Fiona (Irish national working for USAID) posts to the Lilongwe chat list about a weekly quilter’s group. I show up to the quilter’s group and, lo and behold, about half of the quilters are also heavily involved with IWAM. These are diplomat and NGO executive’s wives who have manufactured quite a weekly agenda–a thrice-weekly walking group and “hugging babies” (their words, not mine) at the orphanage besides quilting and IWAM– to keep busy while not working and with multiple staff members to keep house.

Perhaps you can tell that I’m a little turned off by the lifestyle of leisure. Nonetheless, they’re nice women and I’m trying to build connections with people. I get a phone number from Lauren (Canadia wife of a South African man who works for John’s Hopkins) and a promise of a ride to the next IWAM project committee meeting.

Meanwhile, I’m in Old Town at the Axa bus terminal buying tickets for our trip to Blantyre when I run into Finn, who is hanging out with Bella (grungy, raunchy Australian traveler he met during a weekend at the Lake) who has introduced him to Duncan (heavily tattooed Peace Corps volunteer). I invite myself to lunch and ask Duncan about what type of education work Peace Corps volunteers are doing. Duncan gives me the Jason’s (head of education placements for the Peace Corps) number.

Jason agrees to meet with me, gives a lot of good context and his thoughts on the areas of greatest need. Turns out, Malawi’s education system is strained to bursting. Since making primary education free for all in 1994 without the buildings, materials or teachers to create enough space, primary schools have bloated to unmanageable proportions. They operate in shifts with student teacher ratios of 200:1 in some places! Given all of these challenges, only about 35 percent of students actually complete standard 8, and only the 10 percent of those with the highest marks are accepted into government run secondary schools. There are, of course, many more young people who are hungry to learn, so the government has allowed communities to open their own schools (Community Day Secondary Schools – CDSS) which have minimal resources. In Jason’s estimation, these CDSSs are one of the places of greatest need, and he’s placed all his Peace Corps folks in them to try to shore up the secondary system. All of his folks are in rural areas, however, so he doesn’t know which schools in the city need people.

Fast-forward to the IWAM meeting two days later. The first agenda item is sponsorship for ten students and text books at the New State House Secondary School, which happens to be a CDSS and which also happens to be very near my house in area 12. Even more serendipitously, one of the women on the committee is going out to the school that afternoon to advocate for the daughter of her housekeeper and is willing to give me a ride.

This school is also overflowing with students. We’ve arrived between the morning CDSS shift and the afternoon Open and Distance Learning shift, which attempts to serve students who couldn’t make it into either the regular government schools or the CDSS due to space constraints, and who have scraped together the money to pay ODL fees. The school is stuffed to the gills, but there is a boisterous and positive atmosphere. When I mention to Evelyn (assistant head teacher) that I am a teacher possibly interested in volunteering, she gets very excited. There are 18 teachers at the school (for, I gather, about 700 students) and their Form 1 (9^th grade) English teacher is out indefinitely. We trade phone numbers and I promise to call to follow up next week. I still need to think a bit more and talk things over with Nathaniel (he’s been in Blantyre during most of this chain of events and phone calls are expensive) but it seems like a great place for me to spend my time and energy at first glance.

Oh and did I mention that I figure out on the car ride home that the woman who has taken me to New State House is none other than Celia Swann, the woman who wrote the only existing text-based course for learning Chechewa?

All of this strikes me a somewhat incredible. It’s the flow from person to person to deliver me at this school (I’m not above believing in fate). It’s also the smallness of the expat community here; incestuous, but also much more communal. Time will tell where Nathaniel and I fit into the web.