Time and Gender – a UKV’s perspective

‘Malawi-time’ is the fond name used by locals to excuse the delayed start time of any activity. The conflation of this sometimes ‘timeless’ community, in which a wall clock is a rare sight, vs. the deadline-driven, hypermodern conceptualisation of time in the UK required acclimatisation for the UKVs. However, having become accustomed to this relaxed pace of life in Siya Siya, it came as a shock to realise that we were four weeks into to a ten week programme, and that the midterm review was looming.

Working with CYECE felt slow at first, everyone was adjusting to a new team and environment. Gradually, however, the project gained traction and the past two week have felt busy and productive. Highlights include starting the identification of marginalised children in T/A Makanjira and Mwanza and monitoring the progress of beneficiaries in Mlesi and Msambafuma schools. Identification involves going to houses in a community and recording the names of children who have dropped out or never attended school. To monitor beneficiaries our team goes into a school and uses the available resources – registers and exam records – to ensure that those children who had been previously assisted by CYECE were attending and progressing in class. We have continued conducting Life Skills and Child Rights’ lessons and developed a process of sharing lesson plans and building on them between each visit. A lesson that has stood out in particular for me was a lesson taught in Matenje Primary School on Sexual & Reproductive Health Rights. We used role plays, discussion based activities and a plenary exercise which asked the learners to consider their own goals in life.

A learner completing an activity during our Sexual & Reproductive Health Rights lesson at Matenje Primary School. Photo taken by Amy.

On the 4^th March, which many reading this will recognise as International Women’s Day, we met with the traditional authority of Mwanza. Communicating our work and intentions with the community is an essential part of the project, and a key factor in making development sustainable. It would be arrogant and foolish to waltz into a community and begin to make changes without the advice or, more importantly, the permission of the community elders. Our meeting with T/A Mwanza was reassuring and inspiring on both a personal and project level. Having planned nothing to commemorate IWD 2018, I was delighted that T/A Mwanza was female.

Here come the girls! The women on our team on International Women's Day 2018, just before meeting T/A Mwanza. Right to left: Fyaupi, Fenna, Hope, Vanessa, Victoria and Amy. Photo taken by Amy.

The meeting itself was a cultural first for the UKVs. There were men seated around 3 sides of the room, facing the TA, who was sitting regally on a bigger chair on the 4^th wall. After the other male elders had introduced themselves, it was time for T/A Mwanza to speak. Preceding her speech, everyone in the room began a rhythmic clapping as a form of respect, it also acted as a way of building tension before she stood up. Although her welcoming speech was in Chichewa, looking around I saw the UKVs watching her intensely, captivated by her aura. It seemed wonderful to me that in this patriarchal society in which all the authoritative figures I had met up to that point had been male; here was a woman commanding the audience and respect of a room full of men. She made her audience laugh with ease and subtlety. The work that she had done reducing child labour and marriages in her community was the main subject of her talk, while appreciating the difficulties in doing so with limited resources. She had even visited Ethiopia to represent her T/A at a pan-African summit

This meeting reminded me of a lovely moment we had while introducing ourselves at Matenje Primary School. The teacher with whom we were liaising was explaining to us what the previous cohort did at the school and in what way our presence could be made useful. Lucius asked her, “Would you find it helpful for members of our team to speak about their lives as a way of being a role model for these children?” To which Madam Desire replied with a warm but ever so slightly indignant tone, “I am the role model!”

It may seem that we have been nothing but encouraged by the empowered women we have met in the previous anecdotes. Unfortunately, however, these are isolated incidents and the majority of women we have come across in rural villages have given me much to think about. Hope and I were in Ndolo village identifying marginalised children, and found ourselves sitting down on an ‘Mpasa’ (outdoor mat made of palm leaves) surrounded by mothers and their children, hoping to be helped. Methodically, we wrote down the names and basic information – such as earnings and assets – of these potential beneficiaries.

A nutrition clinic for infants and mothers at the Khombedza Health Centre. Photo taken by Amy. 

It was one family in particular that stuck in both mine and Hope’s memory; a mother with five children all under the age of 18. Her husband had left her for another woman, and decided not to divorce this woman formally. He was sending her one bucket of maize per month, but this is meagre and in no way constitutes appropriate ‘child support’. As well as being restricted to her earning potential by her duty of care, she was unable to remarry and be supported by another man (an unfortunate necessity for a woman in her situation). After meeting this mother and hearing my concerns confirmed by Hope, I began to notice how few men there were in T/A Makanjira. This observation was confirmed when we revisited the village and found even more women in these situations.

I would like to briefly add a couple of other aspects of Malawian culture that further convey the cultural perception of the role of a woman. The first I found out in my first week in Siya Siya; a mother will, in lieu of her birth name, be known by her peers as the name of her first born child with ‘Ma’ in front of this. So, my host mother’s name is ‘MaEmma’. While I appreciate that calling a mother in accordance with cultural norms is a sign of respect, there is an unsavoury twist. Often, even if a daughter is technically the first born, the mother will take on the name of   any younger sons. The issue I have with this, admittedly stemming from my own Western definition of liberation and gender equality, is that a women seems to renounce her entire identity to both her husband through her surname and her children through her first. I wonder what impact this has on her sense of self. Moreover, while identifying children who had dropped out of school with Daniel, we met a girl who Daniel told me was an orphan. I was then confused when Daniel also informed me that we were speaking with her mother. I had to ask, once we had filled out the form, how people in Malawi define an orphan. It is any child whose father has passed away: the child’s mother may still be alive.

The CYECE Salima project focuses on empowering an entire generation of children, regardless of gender. It is widely accepted, however, that poverty and gender inequality are inextricably linked. Providing quality education to this youthful generation should set the necessary steps in motion to enable the social mobility of both genders. As a consequence, I hope that young women will feel that they have the potential to contribute to their community in an intellectual as well as domestic capacity. The women I have met so far working for International Service have inspired me and instilled a faith in me that with the appropriate support, they will be able to change their own lives and by consequence the lives of future generations.

- Vanessa Hall