All the roads in the “centre” of town are paved,
and although crumbling at the sides where the pedestrians walk, there is not
much drama walking around. The road outside my guesthouse which leads me to one
of these wonderfully, albeit crumbling paved roads, is no such vision of
convenience. The road outside my guesthouse is a soil track that every day is
worked upon to try and turn it into a concrete one. Every day I win/attempt to
win small battles with this road. Being soil, it gets everywhere so, there is
not much point in hoping I’ll arrive either at work or at home without also
carrying one, maybe two coats of terracotta dust with me. My challenges lie in whatever task to build the road the day brings; giant heaps of soil piled so high, and so wide it’s like walking around roundabouts; large, deep holes the width of the road so I’ve got to use my spidey fingers to cling onto a wall for fear of falling in; but worst of all, is when they work with water. It averages every other day, usually when I’m on my way home, and sees the road swimming. Water plus soil turns the surface into clay which I get the privilege of walking through. Squelch, squelch, squelch, all the way home.
Needless to say,
I’ll be throwing my trainers away after my time here. Two weeks in, nine to go. I got straight to
work which I am really enjoying. I'm not getting any complaints and I’ve even
been asked by the finance manager to help him with a private project; setting
up a school for very poor children in the area. The job of creating and
implementing the procedures for lendwithcare have not taken as long as
everyone anticipated which I am happy about, as it means most of my time will be
spent monitoring, and training the officer we hire to takeover from me.
Week one I visited some of our clients in Chipata. On the Tuesday morning I was given a motorbike helmet. I stood with a deadpan expression and everyone laughed as I asked them to tell my family and friends that I love them were anything to happen to me. On the back of the bike I went and once we had turned our second corner, driven over our second “speed bump” I relaxed, thighs fully clenched, into the ride. I was expecting a 20 minute journey so 60 minutes later, as we arrived at the client meeting, I clambered down from the bike and stumbled over to meet the Safwa group…my thighs were a little shaky.
What a welcome to their life! First thing I did was
use their toilet - a drop hole similar to ones I used as a child in the
mountains in Cyprus - and watched as if in slow motion my sunglasses unhooked
themselves from my t-shirt and fell down the hole...oops! Everyone thought this
was quite funny and a wonderful way to introduce myself. They were all so happy
and excited to meet me, and I too with them. They laughed as I repeated their
greeting to them: mulibwanji. At first I thought they were
laughing at the mzungu trying to speak their language – apparently not! I
was not meant to repeat, but instead reply nilibwinomulibwanj. How was I
supposed to know!
 |
| House construction |
After a prayer, the loan officer I had travelled
with started the meeting; a repayment and an ‘importance of savings’
meeting. At the end he translated some questions I had for
the women; what impact the loans had made, for them and their family; what the
consensus was among the community about women becoming the
breadwinners. All very positive answers. These loans had clearly changed
their lives and they wanted to be sure that I felt their gratitude. They even
sang a song about me to which we all clapped and danced to. I felt so honoured
by their welcome and kept reiterating that MicroLoan, and already some lendwithcare lenders, may have given them their loans, but they were the ones
working each day to see their businesses succeed.
My favourite, if it’s ok to say I had a favourite,
was the group’s treasurer; it seemed as though her eyes could tell a thousand
stories but still looked young, and hopeful. Throughout my time with them she
was smiling at me. She initiated the song they sang and kept engaging with me.
She was generating enough profit from her business to allow her to start
building a second house for her family; for her son when he grows up. Clearly
the proud mother, she took me to see the work in progress and in only a short
period of time the foundations had been laid, and the outer walls were being
built.
My second visit was not as successful as my first
and although I did not meet any clients, I did learn quite a lot. The women had
not turned up for the meeting – a common problem as many of them are busy
working. My driver/rider this time round was much more talkative – something I
was a bit worried about; whenever he spoke to me on the bike we would end up
swerving left and right. We passed “briefcase businessmen” traveling the quiet
roads to Malawi with sacks and sacks of mealie meal to which he gave me a
detailed lesson on the mealie meal market. Mealie meal is white maize
flour that is eaten religiously as nshima. Nshima can be eaten like
porridge for breakfast or as the highlight at dinner time. When made up it
looks a bit like mashed potato but is the consistency of putty. It is eaten
with almost every meal, with hands, torn off like bread and dipped into sauces.
I’ve made some myself and it is yummy! Mealie meal costs twice as much in
Malawi, as it does in Zambia. Being so close to the border, it is quite common
to see these trucks, laden with their sacks of mealie meal, travelling the
quieter roads to get to Malawi’s markets.
I was also taught how they make bricks. It is a
predominantly male job and sees soil wetted, and moulded into a rectangular
brick shape and then then lain out to dry (covered with leaves if it get too
hot to prevent cracking). Once they are dry, they are arranged into a large
pile (so that it looks almost like a small room), covered with mud and a fire
is lit inside. This turns the mound into an oven. This sets the bricks and
their colour changes…to a lighter terracotta. And voila! Bricks to build your
house. It is very common to see these mud covered piles in every small congregation
of houses/ mud huts with thatched roofing. They stand next to houses, and are
only distinguishable by their dark, mud coating. Otherwise they are the same
size as the houses.
So now that you are all experts on the local
cuisine and the construction industry I will say bye bye as I'm worried I may
have lost some of you to this essay, and I need to go back to cleaning the mud
from my shoes!!!
This article was originally posted on the Microloan Foundation blog.
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