Written by Limbani Kamanga, CorpsAfrica Volunteer in Malawi

Reposted from Tobiyasi in Chiradzulu

"There is no forgiveness when one who claims a superiority falls below the standard"
- Frantz Fanon

"We would be out of our minds, we would actually be traitors to ourselves, to be reluctant or fearful to identify with people with whom we have so much in common"
- El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

​Officially my last entry as a CorpsAfrica volunteer, this post is a collection of some of the major events that unfolded in front of my eyes throughout this surreal journey that took me from Msani village in Nkhata Bay to Likoswe village in Chiradzulu.


            But before I proceed, allow me to take this opportunity to pay my homage to CorpsAfrica for this eye-opening opportunity. One of the many things that my fellow pioneer volunteers and I were promised when we joined is that this journey would change us. As I prepare to conclude my one year stay in Likoswe village, I will be the first to admit that change has really occurred within me. Is it a positive change? That's not for me to answer, but what I know is that I am proud of the change that has happened. My contentment is what matters. 


            Now, here is how the CorpsAfrica journey motioned.

            On November 15, 2015, after hours of my customized meditation on the shores of the beautiful Lake Malawi in Mlowe, Nkhata-Bay, I abandoned all the hesitation and made the final decision to accept the offer to volunteer with CorpsAfrica. In spirit, this is the day that my journey began.

     On January 17, 2016, after losing my phone the previous day and standing up to exploitative minibus call boys, I joined up with the entire CorpsAfrica Malawi crew on the foothills of Chongoni mountain in Dedza for pre-service training (PST). I took the above picture midway through PST minutes before the crew hiked Chongoni mountain. Obviously, very few made it to the top.

           Part of PST involved a practical element that required volunteers to delve into nearby villages and shadow assigned individuals. Intended to give us a realistic feel of what lay ahead of us, this exercise took me to this lady's home where we shared lots of amazing stories together with her two grandchildren who she stays with.

            On February 26, 2016, I moved to Likoswe village to begin my one year voluntary service. In order to aid transition and immersion, CorpsAfrica requests villages to assign a host family to a volunteer. In my case, I was assigned Mr. Dave Masautso as my host and the picture above is the house that I shared with him. Need I say that this was a whole new experience on its own?

            Settled in Likoswe village, the first project that I got involved in was the construction of a community nursery school. Funded by Village X Org, the project involved hauling sand from Sandekwe river, bringing rocks, water, and bricks to the construction site and my other manual activities. Despite the lack of involvement from most community residents, especially men, the nursery school structure was completed and handed over to the community on May 23, 2016. Today, apart from serving as a nursery school, the structure also serves as a convenient meeting place for community meetings.

            Chole hospitality. The CorpsAfrica Malawi crew included two distinguished Moroccans volunteers who were assigned Chole village in Mulanje as their site. On May 30, 2016, I travelled to Chole village to attend a handover ceremony of infrastructure that was constructed using collaborative effort from CorpsAfrica through the two Moroccan volunteers, the community, and FOMO. Apart from serving as a handover ceremony, this event was also a goodbye ceremony as the completion of the structure marked the imminent return to their mother country for the Moroccans. In the picture above, the two Moroccans are showered with an assortment of gifts from community members. It was a grand ceremony.

          Talking of visiting my fellow volunteers' sites, I think I did terrible on this aspect. Apart from attending the ceremony in Mulanje, the other volunteer site that I visited is Makanani village in Mwanza - Lusekelo's site. One confession I have to make is that Makanani is one bunch of a hilly territory. Granted that the place has no phone service and villages are located far and between complicated my visit. But at least I got the opportunity to witness a product of Lusekelo's project - a well.

 Failed selfie. Apart from making me endure the daily shenanigans in Likoswe village, my service also took me to various places within and outside Malawi. Places like Thunga in Thyolo, Dzaleka refugee camp in Dowa, and the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Wowed by the exuberance of the CorpsAfrica Senegal crew (these guys can dance), I made it my point to wow kids when we visited the Azzaden valley communities. The picture above says it all.

            Then the Likoswe community and I said, "let there be chickens." You find more details about these chickens here.

            As you can see, my association with CorpsAfrica has been an adventure. Who wouldn't be changed by an adventure of such magnitude? Definitely, not me.

            But the most important question is, does this spell the end of Tobiyasi in Chiradzulu? My response is, yes, Tobi is about to leave Chiradzulu but this blog will remain active. But remember that after this is my final piece in my capacity as a CorpsAfrica volunteer. What lays ahead are posts written by Limbani Kamanga in his capacity as Tobiyasi Tobi. Yambone!

​My last activity as a CorpsAfrica Volunteer was to train the girls in my community in how to make reusable sanitary pads. This was well after I had first learned how to make them after assisting my colleague Sarah with one of her training sessions at her site, and of course during the International Volunteers day function last December. The training went well, all in all, but there was a bit of a problem.

A day before the scheduled day of training, I was told by the schools’ headmistress that another organization was coming to distribute uniforms, pens, notebooks and sanitary pads to a few girls that were benefiting from their project.  As much as I think what they are doing is absolutely amazing and thoughtful, it drained me. The part where they were going to dish out sanitary pads to a selected number of girls is what drained me.  Where is the aspect of sustainability?

To be clear, I already knew of the organization's activities and I have always wanted to ask them if they thought of the sustainability aspect of this particular activity and all these other evaluation related questions that I wish not to delve into. Sadly, I never got the chance.

The reason why I wanted to ask these questions is because these girls only receive the sanitary pads up until their final year of secondary school, and maybe twice a year. My question is, what do they expect the girls to use after they complete their secondary education and are no longer beneficiaries of their project? Wouldn’t it be more effective to join the on-going global activity of teaching these girls how to make reusable sanitary pads? It is great to show them other options like the disposable pads so they know what else is out there, but to simply give them the disposables and not teach them something to fall back on after, something just as comfortable and clean as that is quite unfair and unprogressive.

All I’m saying is, it is better to give these girls the skills to make reusable pads (considering the fact that disposable pads are not really sold in rural areas and they are quite expensive for them) than to give them for some time and just leave them to go back to the unhygienic and uncomfortable ways of managing their monthly periods. 

In this case, fishing rods are far cheaper than the fish itself in these rural communities. The reusable pad making materials are readily available in the rural communities, the girls and women already have sewing skills, they just need to be trained.

As drained as I was, I decided to just do as I had planned because I knew for sure that the skills the girls and women acquired will go beyond the community I served in to the surrounding communities. It will help more than the 27 girls and women that I trained.

Cabrousse, Sénégal
2016- 2017
Good things take time.
Great things take a lot of time.
The best things take the longest time.
 
It took one month to train in Thies
It took one week to learn "I miss you" in Diola
Three weeks to meet my new family
It took one month to eat something exotic
One month, two weeks to master the communal bowl.
It took two months to learn how to dance in Diola.
Two months, two weeks to be taught
Two months, three weeks to see a cobra
Three months to have a best a best friend
Three months, one week to learn cleaning my clothes
Three months, two weeks to plant a tree
It took four long months to find where I truly belonged and one more month to fall in love with it
It took six months to raise a tree nursery
Six months, two weeks to find a crocodile
It took seven months to explain in Diola
It took seven months to follow a dream …… and Fail………Gracefully
Eight months it took to come to term with saying Good bye

(Guided by a personal insight of the world around, and fueled by a deep sense of purpose and possibility, CorpsAfrica is uniquely prepared to navigate our future and affect vital lasting changes in the face of 21 century challenges.)

Hameth Ndoye
CorpsAfrica/Senegal Volunteer.

 Written by Sarah Kazira, CorpsAfrica Volunteer Malawi
Reposted from SarahAyanda

I particulary liked the trainer because she was someone the girls could identify with. She was someone who had grown up in a similar situation like them but her life has changed for the better since she started working on solar installation and repairs. So this background helped the participants easily see themselves doing this kind of thing. And her method of teaching was very encompassing. We had practicals from the first day of training and she would repeat the topic until she was sure everybody had gotten it. ​

​It has been my awesome pleasure and great times living in Kadewere community and working with community members. It seemed like I was going on a very long journey when I just got here in March, 2016 but as I am writing now I am counting down just days of leaving this site which is going to be sad after all the time and moments and friends I made in this community.  I can imagine the sadness from now but on the other hand, it will be great for me to head towards the future and see how it's going to be after all the experiences I have had here.

In this community, I have always made friends when I was moving around and at work; people of all ages have been my friends. Apart from that I was so close to my host family and their relatives who I salute them for being nice to me.  I also grew very close to some few people in the community, one of them was my fellow female teacher at Friends of Mulanje Orphan Centre. We are friends and we were both visiting each other at home and she could always visit me when I was sick. I will never forget you Mrs. Fasileni Mackton and am proud of your friendship. The second one is Mama Oscar (Oscar Mother). She is a business woman and she sells local food called Dinda that is  made from cassava flour and cooked in oil. She has been always excited to see me and even greet me at a far distance.  I really loved that and I very much like that she is strong and I am very proud of her.  I will also never forget you Mama Oscar with your son Oscar.

Thabwa trading center has been my nearest small market while here. On market days I was able to buy some daily needs and when standing on the trading center, I can see Mulanje mountain, as shown below on the picture, and it always looks like its near and always the mountain helps to bring different whether conditions in Mulanje. It can be cold, hot and even rain all in 30 minutes and it is a good whether condition for all different people from all over the world.

​I know you all have been following my blogs and the work and experience that I have had in this community and as this is my final writing here, I would like to say thank you so very much and my work has been so courageous with you all around and am so proud of you all and continue doing the same to other people.

Written by Adnane Sounni, CorpsAfrica Volunteer in Senegal

​Nowadays many philanthropists and the people interested in the development discuss how raising chicken can be a solution for people who live on less than $ 2 a day. One of them is the richest person on the planet, Bill Gates. He donated 100,000 chicken to sub-Saharan African countries because he believes in what chickens can bring to fight poverty. Gates says that chickens are a good source of income because they don’t need a lot of time to raise and can be sold with a good price. Moreover, eating chickens and their eggs can solve the problem of mal-nutrition in underdeveloped countries as they are rich n proteins and other nutrients. Also, it’s a way to autotomize women because it may be an easy way for them to get money.
​
In Senegal, poultry farming is a high-yielding and consumer-oriented activity, multiplied by 10 times in less than 10 years. 10% of production is exported and the sector has a growth rate of 8% per year with and 10,000 jobs. In addition, the poultry sector benefits from assets that make projects promising; the relative ease of implementation, the ratio of output to production, income, and to employment, and the nutritional quality of products are the strong arguments that explain the willingness and motivation of communities to engage in this sector.

​Also in my community- the village of Keur-Simbara- the activity of breeding chicken  is fairly developed. In that village and surrounding villages as well, there are many chicken coups, and their capacity is between 200 and 1,500 chicken. A couple of year ago, a project of raising chickens was implemented in my community and the beneficiaries were the young people. With a capacity of 200 chicks, the project was run by the village’s youth association and funded by a US program called MY WORLD through Tostan. This project is an important revenue generating for the youth association of Keur-Simbara.

​In fact, this project of chicken coop has been  implemented in the village before two years. But, it encountered difficulties in management and profitability remained unmet. The problem was that the old committee was not active and did not do their job. It was the manager who did everything, he did not respect the instructions of management and certain expenses were not justified. So after doing the evaluation for this project, which allowed me to notice these difficulties, I started working with the youth association to find solutions. For the management we decided to relocate a management committee with very clear responsibilities. Subsequently, we thought that if we solve the management problem, the revenues will be as desired. But after we made another production band, we managed to have profits but it was not as desired.
There was another difficulty that prevents this project from being cost-effective. First, it was the state of the building. During the rainy season, the water gets into the chicken coop which can cause many problems. Lately, during the last production band, we lost nearly 50 chickens which died as the rain got into the building, and that affected the production negatively and made it hard to gain profit.

The second aspect that we should take into consideration is the capacity of the building which doesn’t exceed 200 chickens. With a profit of around $70 after selling each production, we can barely pay one person without giving any reimbursement to the other people who are involved in the management process. As a result, they lose interest in managing a project without getting payed. And it was one of the causes of the bad management of that project.
What’s been proposed to solve the problem?
The best solution we have found to strengthen the management of this project and also increase the profits is by increasing the production of chicken to 400 chickens. To achieve that, it is necessary to enlarge the building surface from 20m2 to 40m2. In addition to that, it is necessary to build a small store to keep chickens’ nutrition and materials, and also to buy the operating equipment that still needed.
This expansion is very important to strengthen this project. This will allow us to integrate many more young people (at least three) in the management of this chicken coop in each production instead of a single young person who manages and does everything. Then, we will ensure that the management will be effective, and also the youths of Keur-Simbara who have no work will have the opportunity to have an income generating activity. On top of that, with the profit margin, we can reward managers without difficulty. Through this strategy the project will be more profitable and the revenues of association of the young people will be increased.
Back with more details after the implementation soon; stay tuned!

Written by Vanessa Chimutu, CorpsAfrica Volunteer in Malawi 

Now that I have about a month to finish my service as a volunteer with CorpsAfrica, I sat down and started to reflect on everything that has happened during my stay in lambulilra village. The most exciting part about being here was the introduction of the kids at the nursery school to me. It was such an amazing moment to see their beautiful smiles and faces light up being. And after a lot of research and community meetings, it turned out I would be also working a lot with these wonderful souls in a nursery finishing project. 

The reason why the community and I decided to work on finishing the nursery school, was because there was a major dropout rate at the school due to the condition of the school, lack of a cement made children sit on a dusty floor, where they were vulnerable to a lot of illness such as coughs and colds. With so many reasons in play, we decided to finish construction of the nursery school. Thus far the first phase of the project was success.

My service has had its milestones, from the girls’ chats at nsala community day secondary school, to the HCD Training with the Village development committee and also teaching at the school. Bu the most exciting thing that l look forward to is to see the final construction touches of the nursery school project done. Despite the hiccups such as the rains coming sooner than expected and continuing the project at a later stage, I definitely believe this school will be finished and will attract more children to come learn at the school, as the goal and main aim is to enhance early childhood education since it gives a strong basis for primary school level.