My second trip with MaiMarina took us to another sight. This time we met in an unused Child Development Center. Marina says, there is no reason to build. "There are so many buildings; they are enough, and here it is so expensive to build. People come in, they want to build, because they can see it, but it is better to give food.
When we got out of the car the women sitting outside began to sing. This group was very musical. They sang many songs. One of the songs was one that I have heard before for celebrations with the sisters. Its refrain sounds like, "Ee, ie, Ee," but then the words in between are changed up for the occasion. Here, the words were, "This is a feast, the name of the organization is beautiful. Because we are together, it is a feast. To be together is something rare (literally something that is missing."
For AmaiMarina walking together is what it is all about. She forms centers for physical therapy and education. In each center, the woman have a chair, secretary, and treasurer. The women who fill these roles must be literate and that is often a challenge. For the secretaries, Tiyenda Pamodzi runs a week long training. The skills they learn empower them as leaders within their community and gives them skills that are valuable beyond their role in the Tiyenda Pamodzi Group.
Marina says that a big challenge for her work is to involve multiple family members. Often it is just the one who is the care giver. So to involve the wider family in the care if the child, Marina and her volunteers make many home visits. There is a lot of talking. A lot of emphasis that disabled children are a gift from God, that disabled children need to be cared for like any other child. The hope is for the family and community to come to see the child as "our child," because it us impossible for any one person to care for a severely disabled child. In some situations, this involvement of the wider family is critical, because the primary care giver is the grandmother, because the parents have no interest in the child. The child will need care their whole life, but the grandmother will not be around forever.
The work is impossible without the volunteers. Some of the volunteers are AIDS patients who Marina helped when she first began her work in Malawi and her focus was on AIDS. Other volunteers are parents of the disabled, concerned individuals, even a local cheif. On this trip I met Maiumbenjiri who has been volunteering with Marina since the beginning.
She is very dedicated. She volunteers at a different center than this one, but wanted to see how other centers organized themselves, so came today. While here, she gave a lesson on hygiene for the children and how to make enriched porridge with ground nuts (i.e peanuts).
Marina said that the old volunteers are much more dedicated than the young ones. The older generation has a deep understanding of sacrifice and work for community. Marina has seen a shift in attitude in her twenty years in Malawi. She says the changes here are too fast and causing havoc. Smart phones are everywhere, but not the basic needs if life. A person who cannot read or write has a smart phone and can operate it by voice command. The energy and focus of the young is all on acquiring material things. Limited resources are spent on phones, etc and not saved at all or used for education. Marina says it is very frustrating when someone comes and says they have no money to take their child to the hospital, but they have the latest smart phone.
There are also elements of culture that beautiful in themselves can cause problems. For example, a mother came to Marina with a very sick child that needed treatment. Marina was going to Blantyre that weekend and offered to give them a ride, but this weekend there is an initiation ceremony in the village. The mother said she would go, but in two weeks so that she could attend the ceremony. Two weeks and the child will be worse and potentially beyond help. Marina says that this is very common. Initiation ceremonies and funerals always take priority. For a death in ones own family, one provides food for the entire community. Many families go deep into debt to provide the customary feast. Marina frustratedly exclaimed once, "They will spend once someone is dead, but not on the living." Of themselves and in communities not clinging to the edge of survival these customs are beautiful, but should they have priority over all else?
Anyway, back to Tiyende Pamodzi and togetherness. Every meeting ends with a meal. Typically, the members of the group contribute money or produce for the meal; it is not a hand out. Marina really works to foster advanced planning and personal responsibility, alongside of giving when it is needed in ways so as not to promote systems of dependence (e.g. she gives bags of tea, sugar, rice, soya, oil, and soap to shut ins who cannot work, and while the personal buy in of the women at the PT centers having to pitch in for the meal a reasonable and attainable expectation, the bad growing season last year has put a strain on most rural Malawians, so with gifts from the US, she will be buying a 100kg bag of Maize for each center for the meal).
That is all for now, just a snap shot of the beauty and brokenness that coexist everywhere in this world, but which are so stark here.
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