Story from Desmond

Mayamiko CBO, in Dedza district in Malawi, with the support from NOVOC, conducted a Journey of Life Community Workshop in March 2009. The 3-day Community Awareness Workshop was attended by 70 people in total. Community members brought packed lunch and shared it with the facilitators and those that did not have anything to eat.

Nine children corners have been established following the workshop, the issue of child rights has been taken seriously and those that are seen to be abusing children i.e. by sending them to fetch firewood, heading cattle and guarding homes instead of going to school, have been approached.

Community members gave examples of how they are disseminating Child Rights messaged i.e. door-to-door campaign and using friends of people that are known to be abusing children. A particular case was provided were a lady who was abusing her child. They discussed the issue of child abuse with her best friend and the “difficult” lady acknowledged that she was at fault and now her children are much happier.

One lady gave a personal example, explaining that she did not allow her physically challenged child to go to school. Now after the training the child is in school.

The community has realized that it is every one’s responsibility to take care of children, regardless of their status and also to support those that are HIV positive or are suffering from AIDS.

Interview with Mabvuto Namanya

How do you live?
I stay with my younger brothers and it’s only us in the house. The life we live is very hard, sometimes we do try, but most of the time we face problems.

What are some of the difficulties you face?
We have no food most of the time and at my age, we are supposed to have parents to take care of us.

So now I am the parent taking care of the younger ones, so we have lots of problems.

When we go to our father to get help, we get nothing because I’m scared of the new wife, so we do piece work to help each other.

How did your parents die?
My mother died on the 19th of Feb, she got sick in 2002, she was just complaining of a stomach ache.

She visited most of the witch doctors, but it never helped, till the whole year ended and then she went to another witchdoctor and spent about three months there. Then
she was taken to the hospital.

She returned on the 25th Dec and on the 1st Jan, I went to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and she was told at the hospital that there was no cure for her disease. So when she returned home, she told us to stay strong.

She stayed at home the whole of February, till the 19th of March, when things got worse, in the morning.

Her breathing got worse, she was breathing abnormally and the elders knew that she was dying.

At that time I wasn’t staying at my mother’s house, I was at my grandmother’s.

We had to swap our houses with grandmother because she was taking care of my mother.

Our father came and he told us that our mother had passed away.

My mother died at the age of 44. I was only 16 then. Now I’m 22.

What do you miss most about your mother?
If my mother was still alive, we wouldn’t have left school, because when we came home from school my mother would be there with food.

After our mother died, I would get home and start cooking for the younger brothers, and sometimes there would be no food in the house, so I had to go and look for food.

Every time I think about my mother and the love she used to give us, I cry.

How have you benefited from the workshop?
I’ve learnt a lot of things from the workshop, like it’s not good to get married at a young age and I’m impressed.