Malawi has one of the worst records in the world when it comes to child marriages. According to the UNPFA, almost half of women in Malawi are married before they’re 18, with an alarming number married very much earlier than that. Child marriages often have devastating consequences for the girls involved. Not only are they often subjected to sexual violence, risky pregnancies and HIV, but many drop out of school early, dooming them to a life of poverty and dependance.
That’s 3 litres of music there. And you have NO IDEA how sweet it sounds!
Over four years ago, Goodson and I were travelling home from Lilongwe (Lee-long-way) when the engine in my Isuzu pick-up packed in.
It wasn’t a good situation. We were a couple of hundred Kms from home, on a section of road which skirts along the edge of Mozambique. It’s an area notorious for armed bandits who take advantage of the open border. And there was only a hour or two of daylight remaining.
The car had overheated several times recently, so I put in a distress call to the mechanic who’d been working on it.
He disowned me.
Distress call
I’m still amazed at times that you can get internet coverage in the middle of Central Africa. Then, I was just grateful. I repeated my distress call on a local Facebook group, and within a few minutes was in touch with another mechanic in Blantyre who had a recovery truck. Or at least, he knew a guy with a recovery truck. He’d get on the road immediately. And a couple of hours later he did.
It’s a beautiful part of the country, but I wasn’t much enjoying the scenery as the evening shadows lengthened. A small crowd of interested onlookers gathered. Some were drunk. Or had been smoking dope. Or both. Some offered kuteteza – to protect us (for a fee, implied). Hmm. Friend or Foe? I don’t know.
It was very late when the recovery truck arrived. The Isuzu was winched aboard, we paid our protection money, and were on our way.
When travelling to/from Lilongwe, we used to joke, why not take the short way? I can tell you, it was a long way in a recovery truck, but I didn’t complain. And, boy was I glad when we rattled into the yard of the workshop – even if it was the wee, small hours.
Where the car remains until today.
The fateful day / night
Mechanical Woes
The story is a familiar one in Malawi. Relievable parts are hard to find. Reliable, skilled people are scarce as hens’ teeth. Trust me. I know. I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of turkeys!
My mechanic – we’ll call him Mike – has had his problems. His problems became my nightmare. Unanswered calls. Unfulfilled promises. Over and over again he assured me the car would be ready “next week”. Over and over again, it wasn’t.
So, to say I was sceptical when he told me it was running, would be an understatement. I’ve lost count of how many different things he claimed he tried. But he invited me to come for a spin – and wow – it spun! When I arrived at his place, the car was sitting out front with the engine running – music to my ears!
Mike has lost weight and is looking well.He’s off the booze, eating healthy and working out. After a “nasty separation, he’s dating a nice Christian, is slowly getting back to church,and has lots of good people in his life.” As he thanked me for my patience, and apologised for letting me down, I reminded Mike that going to church won’t take him to heaven, and that it’s the Lord he needs in his life. “Yeah, yeah” he said , “we need a good talk.”
Pray for Mike. A few of you know his real name. Better still, the Lord knows everything about him. Pray that the Lord will really work in his heart and that he will repent and trust the Saviour.
And pray too that he won’t let me down with the remaining repairs on the car. CV joints, ball joints and bushes he can find in Malawi. Some other stuff, I’ll bring from the UK. Maybe if the Lord tarries we’ll have the old girl back in service again soon. After all, she’s spent 20% of her working life in Mike’s workshop!
Cyclone Freddy’s position & predicted path on 7 March
Tropical Cyclone Freddy has already caused serious disruption and some loss of life as it passed over Madagascar and Mozambique.
After heading back to the Indian Ocean, Freddy has again begun to track towards the coast on a path which would take it to Malawi by this coming weekend.
Many families are still affected by last year’s Cyclone Ana. Please pray that the many tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people very vulnerable to serious weather-problems will be spared further hardship. Pray too that these difficulties may be used by the Lord to create increased opportunities for the Gospel.
SALT was established to lay a foundation for the development of the Lord’s work in Malawi. We are seeing that work grow, and could use some additional skills to build upon what has already been achieved, particularly in the following areas:
It’s 4:56 AM and I’m listening to the morning call to prayer. I should say another call to prayer, for this isn’t the first one of the new day. The muezzin’s cry from some other distant minaret already penetrated my dozy darkness some indeterminate time ago.
The Saidi Building project hasn’t exactly been at a stand-still so much as a go-slow over the past few months.
We’ve had an exceptionally wet wet-season, and this certainly put the brakes on the building work. Which wasn’t a bad thing, really. As we’ve reported elsewhere, the spiritual work at Saidi has been growing steadily. Since MGO 2022, more and more children have been coming to the weeking Bible club. Similarly, the mid-week adults’ Bible has been growing, and we now have a Gospel meeting on site every Sunday morning.
Brother Goodson has a lot of responsibility for all of this work, which has been taking up more and more of his time. Recently he organised a program to visit each of the families to get to know them in their own homes.
On top of all that there was the huge task of distributing our 2023 Gospel Calendar – a major effort in itself.
Nevertheless, Goodson and his building team have managed to make good progress on the perimeter wall, which is now much nearer completion.
Goodson’s house and the container bay – with partially completed workshopView of msasa from south – with block wall to the right (needs raised)View of site from north with office & print room (r) & block-making shed
Distraction from spiritual work
This continuous work has been an additional burden on Goodson, our de facto building project manager – one which he has shouldered gladly. However, we are all agreed that we must not allow the building project to distract us from our mission. The infrastructure is intended to support the mission. It is not the mission.
Going forward, we will have to find the balance between the cost savings we can achieve by doing the in-house, and the effect that inevitably has on our ability to press on with the spiritual work. Please pray.
Planning the way forward
In the meantime, we have been working behind the scenes. Our local architect, Jackson, is well on with the development proposal for the entire building project. This should be ready for publication shortly – watch this space. Jackson is putting us in touch with a Quantity Surveyor who will help us cost some of the major parts of the project. This will help us have a better idea of an overall budget for the project. We know it’s likely to be significant.
The prolific rains also prevented a drone survey of the site we had commissioned several months ago. Carl was finally able to do it last week when the Lord graciously granted a break in the weather. The results are incredible and will be of enormous help to the planning team. I have included some of the drone images in this article, and hope to share some of the more complex 3D modelling at a later stage.
Area designated for Gospel Hall (top-r)Entrance to the site – notice the deep gulleys caused by heavy rain
Next steps in the building project
Some months ago we started work on a maintenance workshop and store. It still needs to be roofed and finished internally. We aim to do that over the next couple of months, with a view to using it temporarily as a dormitory when we hold our Bible teaching conference in May (DV). We also need to refit our block workshop for the same purpose.
The building project team will also continue work on the perimeter wall. We want to section off the area where we intend to build a Gospel Hall, in such a way that it will be outside the main perimeter. And the section which runs along the eastern side of the site, next to the main road, needs to be raised with a steel railing on top of the existing block wall.
Apart from that, when we complete the maize harvest, we want to build some simple staff quarters. If we can finish that on time, they will also double as dormitory accommodation for the conference.
SW perimeter wall (looking north)SE perimeter wall – the staff quarters will probably be constructed somewhere in this area
To be brutally honest, I never expected a course on safeguarding children and young people to be so profitable – and so enjoyable.
I don’t think it was just the entertainment value of the numerous cars and trucks playing “stick in the mud” on the road passing the site. Or the valiant, if entirely futile efforts of the many muck-defying entrepreneurs offering to dig them out for a fee. There is, as you may have heard, “money in muck”.
But I digress.
On the contrary, our three guest trainers, Martin, Susan and Robbie from Tehila Zambia, did a truly fantastic job of engaging and informing us all. Their professionalism and passion for safeguarding children and young people was plain to see. And as usual, Brother Harold excelled in translation on those occasions when the visitors ChiNjanya was just too different to the local Chichewa to be understood.
Why is safeguarding important?
A very good question. Children make up over 50% of the malawi population. Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the entire world. According to Unicef, a staggering 42% of girls in Malawi are married before they are 18 years. As many as 9% are married before they are 15. This makes a huge impact on education and literacy levels, as most of these girls drop out of education. These hard statistics bear out what we know intuitively after almost 21 years experience here.
Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the entire world.
Sadly, child abuse is a world-wide problem. However, as our course continued, I began to to gain a deeper appreciation of just how big the problem is.
Some cultural practices encourage children to be sexually active at a very young age. Many children in their early teens still attend initiation camps where they learn, and often practise, the secrets of adulthood. Incredibly, some people believe that having sex with a young child will bring them success in their business or career. These, and other beliefs, put children at great risk.
Edit: In the 24 hours since I wrote this piece I have had a further disturbing conversation with a sister in the Lord who works with orphaned children in the Central Region of Malawi. She told me that 90% of the girls she works with have been sexually abused, some from as early as 3 years. One young girl has been left deeply traumatised as a result of being repeatedly raped from 5 years old. Most of the abuse is by family members.
Almost all of us agree on the need to safeguard children against sexual abuse. However, I was equally struck by the many other risks facing children in Malawi. Honestly, I hadn’t thought enough about the issue of children “footing it” when going to school, or our programs at Saidi. You can see from the photos of the “stick-in-the-muds” above that heavy rains can make travelling treacherous. Children walking on village paths often have to negotiate swollen streams and broken bridges. In so doing, they put themselves at great risk.
some people believe that having sex with a young child will bring them success in their business or career
Not to mention, the very real threat of abduction!
You may think it incredible, but stories abound of kidnappers abducting adults and children to traffic them, or to harvest their body parts for ufiti – witchcraft!
Working together to safeguard children
The dangers are real – and plentiful.
Which is why we were so happy to welcome several local community leaders (village chiefs) and representatives of the local police unit to our week of training. Although it’s important to have a Child Protection Policy, together, we were able to explore ways to really protect children. We are less interested in just satisfying our legal obligations than we are in genuinely safeguarding children and young people in Malawi.
As I anticipated, there has been real interest in MGO 2023. Although we are not fully subscribed, there are limited places remaining.
If you think you may be interested in joining MGO 2023, we strongly recommend that you fill out the application form soon. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you are committed to going – there is still a month or two before we require deposits to be paid.
