Northern Malawi

The week of June 28 I traveled to Northern Malawi to review projects that have sent in applications for the Ambassador’s Self Help fund. This fund supports community initiatives that are aimed at increasing social or economic welfare. I am traveling with an FSN (foreign service national) named Victoria who is the project manager for the Self Help program.

I woke up Sunday morning at my house in Lilongwe and went jogging through the neighborhood and down this lovely dirt path that has a great view of the surrounding mountains. Victoria and Kenan (the driver) arrived to pick me up. We drove for almost an hour when I remembered that I forgot my wallet with all my money and my bank card. So we turned around, picked up my wallet, and set out again. We drove for about 4.5 hours and reached Mzuzu. There we had a quick pit stop and I bought the largest avocado I have ever seen. Another couple hours later we reached Karonga where we will be staying for two nights.

The next morning we drove from over two hours (mostly on a thin and pot-holed dirt road) to reach the first site. The road was gorgeous and twisted past Lake Malawi and up florescent green mountains. We saw a small twister on the lake that shot down from a heavy dark cloud. The car jostled from rut to rut. We saw groups of baboons clustered on the side of the road.

The site was a primary school on the very top of one of the mountains. The vista was beautiful and displayed the lake on one side and rolling mountains covered in crops wrapped around to form the rest of the view. The community had built the school because the next school was so far away that many children weren’t attending school. There were two dilapidated, dirt floor, thatched-roofed, brick structures that the students were currently learning in. There were only a couple makeshift wood benches enough for a few students to sit on. The community wanted Self Help funds to erect better school blocks that could keep the kids dry during rainy season and create a better environment for them to learn.

We visited many projects throughout the week. Several more for school blocks. One of the communities that proposed a school block project had 8 children hit by cars in the last couple years. A closer primary school would prevent them from having to walk so far on the busy road. Another project for school blocks was at a school for deaf children. It was a really interesting school that took kids from all over the country, taught them language skills, and worked to ready them for secondary school. Before we left they preformed a dance for us. We also visited project proposals for a family planning and maternal health clinic, HIV/AIDS meeting house, library, and water system. On Thursday I took the bus home from Mzuzu because I needed to be in Lilongwe for the embassy’s July 4th celebrations. Victoria and Kennan stayed because there were still more sites to visit.