As a Corps/Africa Malawi Volunteer serving in Dowa, I have had the opportunity to immerse myself in the local culture and the way of living of my community. One of my memorable experiences as a CorpsAfrica/Malawi volunteer was going to collect sand with my host mother early in the morning.
The day started with a heavy knock and calling from my host mother, “alangizi, alangizi, tiyeni” (“advisor, advisor, let’s go”). I had planned to enjoy my first few hours of the day sleeping before the tasks of the day began. That day, I had forgotten that it was set to collect sand for the renovation of an under-5 clinic within the community, the project for which I facilitated the project identification, proposal writing, and won the grant from Friends of Malawi Association-UK (FOMA). Being a community-led project, the community members were supposed to contribute cash and in-kind; the sand was part of the in-kind contribution. The notion of community-led development was something we usually talked about during our pre-Service Training (PST), but now we were in the community, facilitating and practicing it.
I reluctantly answered my host mother with my eyes still heavy from sleep and checked the time, considering that I had slept late the previous night watching Champions League matches. To my surprise, the time was 6:14 am, which felt like I had only slept for 2 hours. Still half asleep, I quickly rolled over the blanket, made up of bed, got my sack, and followed her outside. Immediately after opening the door, I was greeted by the smell of the morning air. By the time the sun was already higher in the sky.
Along the way my host mother wouldn’t let me breath with endless stories about the community and previous development projects that the community took an active part in. We met a number of community members coming from the riverbed after collecting their sand with a majority throwing jokes at us for waking up when the sun was already high up in the sky.
After 15 minutes of walking and endless stories, we finally reached the riverbed. One of the community members farming near the riverbed showed us an area where we could sand, which was a little bit dry. I started scooping the sand into my sack, but it wasn’t as easy as I had imagined. The sand was a little bit wet and heavy. Worse still, we did not have any shovel to help with the scooping of the sand into the sack, hands were the only tools used to scoop the sand. After toiling around, I finally filled my sack while waiting for my host mother to finish filling her sack.
After collecting the sand, we walked back to the village satisfied with our work. I felt a sense of accomplishment, knowing that I had contributed to the development of my community. When passing by the borehole women screamed to my host mother “mupita bwanj ndi mwana kotuta m’chenga, mukanamusiya kuti azigona” (how can you let your child go to collect sand, you could have let him sleep). My host mother laughed and answered “ndi mwini wake mudzi uyu akutenga nawo gawo pa chikutuko” (he is part of the village, he’s taking part in the development).
My early morning sand collection with my host mother was an experience I will never forget. It taught me the importance of community strengths in carrying out development projects concerning how a community-led development approach is concerned. As a person, I am grateful for the opportunity to immerse myself in the local culture and learn from the people around me, at the same time contributing positively to the development of the community.