On a beautiful August afternoon during my Friendship Trip in Malawi, I traveled to a village for a goat deworming and goat pass-on ceremony. After this life-changing afternoon, I came home with a determination to tell my story and share my experiences. At my school, I am the head of the Hearts for Africa Club and my club is holding a Goat Drive this month. Instead of a Winter Coat Drive, we are holding a Winter Goat Drive which raises money to buy goats for the people in the villages. Since eighth grade, I worked with various organizations on the issues of poverty and food insecurity on a domestic and international level. Villages in Partnership is dedicated to helping Malawians who struggle with poverty, and a goat is one way for a family or individual to break from their cycle of poverty. A goat can provide economic stability and nutrition, which are both essential in order to become self-sufficient. Thus, I decided to hold a Goat Drive and all of the proceeds will go towards buying goats for vulnerable families in Malawi.
I became involved with Villages in Partnership two years ago, when Tory Huchro and her family spoke to me about her involvement. I soon became involved, and this past summer I had the opportunity to go to Malawi. While in Malawi, I was able to participate in a goat deworming and goat pass-on ceremony where I saw the value of a goat first-hand. The deworming medication is offered for less than 40 cents, which can ensure that the goat will remain healthy and continue to provide for the family. The children and their families came to the goat deworming site to make sure their goat can continue to support their family and economic needs.
VIP’s Malawian staff members gathered everyone around as me and the other team members filled up syringes with the appropriate amount of medicine. Then, with the help of VIP’s staff, the goat owners, and the local committee members, each goat was given the medicine orally. Similarly, I was able to participate in a goat pass-on ceremony. This is when a vulnerable family cares for that goat and when it has its first kid, they pass the kid on to another vulnerable family. After, the family is free to make money selling the subsequent offspring to markets and other villagers. The families that receive the “passed-on” goats from their neighbors follow the same course, and slowly but surely the gift of one goat from one donor multiplies and spreads throughout an entire village.
All in all, a goat means so much to a family in Malawi and I saw first-hand the short term and long term benefits. They are one of the primary sources of animal protein for the villagers and the sale of goats is a significant source of supplementary income for many of the farmers as well. The cost of a goat is $50, but in reality, it is worth so much more. A goat gives us the opportunity to transform the lives of many families and provide hope for a brighter future. Click here to give the gift of a goat!
Walking into the Malawian airport, I didn’t know what to expect, what smells or what sights I’d be experiencing. I did not expect drawn on licenses plates or the forever lingering smell of fire wood. I would not expect the rocky roads that lead up to Namin’gazi Farm or the local food that would be made just for us. Not knowing a single thing about this country was intimidating and know where near comforting. Learning more about the team during debriefing after clinic began a strong connection that would help us during the three long and blurry days of clinic. Being a part of “support” staff added a feeling of incompetence within myself. However, during the three days, I have allowed myself to enter a different realm. Previously fainting from the sight of blood back home, I had been put to the limit while I ended clinic with cleaning wounds and dressing them. Though clinic was a blur, it has taught me the love of medicine and the memory has and forever will be connected with me. It has brought me self-confidence and has given me pure joy. The people of Malawi are driven to be faith driven and create a potential life changing feeling within each individual. They are brave, fierce, but have developed a sense of loyalty and devotion to God. They create raw emotion and unfiltered love; pure love. They can change your mind on life in less than an hour and create tears of uncertainty and joy. Being drawn to the people of Malawi is not a choice, but a must. Being in Malawi has not only brought me closer to God, but has developed a pure love for the Malawians and each profession in the medical trip.
Coming on the heels of the commercially driven Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday (this year falling on November 28th, 2017) is the international day for giving. Last year VIP’s Giving Tuesday campaign was a huge success, as we raised tens of thousands of dollars which we used to build a life changing large-scale solar irrigation project in our impact area. This year VIP’s focus for Giving Tuesday is our education program, which impacts the lives of learners from pre-school through university.
A lot is made, rightfully so, of VIP’s large-scale infrastructure and development projects. The building of schools, bridges, maize mills, and solar irrigation projects has a huge impact on the people of rural Malawi and these projects are concrete examples of the progress that we are making in combating poverty in the villages of Sakata. But one of our most successful development initiatives is not a new construction project, it is not something that can be seen and touched, it is not about bricks and mortar and concrete, but rather it is about organization and training and the dissemination of knowledge.
Eventually they save enough to make small loans to members of the group. With the loans, budding entrepreneurs have the capital to start a business, provide services to the community and begin making money! Each member is responsible for re-paying the loan, with interest. At the end of the year, each member then receives back the amount they contributed, plus their share of the interest earned, which they can then choose to reinvest in the VSL the following year.
Chifundo joined one of VIP’s earliest VSLs and accumulated enough capital to start a business selling small bags of popcorn in the markets and along the roadside. It was slow going at first, but Chifundo was smart. She had chosen a relatively cheap product to make, that was in high demand and relatively low supply throughout the villages. With the money earned from her popcorn business, she was able to purchase a sow, which is a nice investment in the villages, as she can keep the sow and her female piglets and sell the male piglets to market or to her neighbors. The profits from the pigs and popcorn allowed her to build a beautiful new house, with glass windows and iron sheet roofing. When we asked her where she lived before she joined the VSL, Chifundo pointed to the small, thatched house, with a dirt floor and no windows or doors, where she keeps the pigs safe at night and said “in there.”
In a recent government assessment of all 35 primary schools in the Zomba district, the Chimpeni School came out as the number one ranked school! Building on the incredible success of the Chimpeni School we have now undertaken the rebuilding of the crumbling Sakata Primary School. The school was in such a bad state of disrepair that powerful storms at the end of last year ripped the roofs off of one of the school blocks, forcing the students to attend class outside under a tree. With two brand new school blocks at Sakata built by VIP last year, and three more under construction this year, Sakata School will soon be as beautiful as Chimpeni School.
She wasn’t certain how old she was, but one of her middle-aged daughters, who lived nearby, told us that she thought that her mom was 89. We sat together on the ground talking about her life and everything that she had seen over the years. She told us that while she had endured drought and famine in her youth, she had no doubt that droughts were becoming more and more common in later years, a trend which both she and almost all scientists attribute to the effects of global warming. After talking for a few more minutes about the weather and how her harvest had been the last few years (2016 had been bad because of the drought, while 2017 had been better, though she was still anticipating running out of food before the next harvest) the talk moved to the children who had gathered around us.
VIP has given out LuminAIDs, which can be recharged each day and which will last for over 5 years, to top students for the past several years now. The LuminAID would allow him to read, study and see late into the night, something that we hoped would both reward, and allow for the continuation of, his academic success. As we handed it to him and showed him how to use it, he beamed with pride and happiness, thanking us for the gift and showing it off proudly to his grandmother, brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts.
She asked one of her daughters to mind the fire for her and came over to shake our hands and gestured for us to join her on a mat that she laid out for us, on the ground next to her home. As we talked, two kids sat down in mine and Tory’s laps. The boy who sat on Tory’s lap had been adopted by the young woman after his parents had died, but no one was sure where the little girl that sat on my lap had come from. I asked the woman if maybe she wanted to adopt her too, to which everyone politely chuckled. After talking for a few more minutes, and just when I had started to wonder if the little girl was potty-trained, I began to feel, with increasing horror, a wet spot growing on my pants leg. “I think she is peeing on my leg,” I whispered urgently to Tory, who immediately began to laugh. As I moved the little girl to the side and stood up I found that she had indeed peed on my leg, and soon everyone was howling with laughter. “It looks like you will be adopting her” Frank said to me as he patted me on my back and grinned.
