Produced by CorpsAfrica Exchange Volunteers Mr. Mostafa Essalai and Mr. Mouhiddine Hamma

CorpsAfrica has so many supporters from all around the world. These individuals are from different countries, live in different cultures, and speak different languages. This video goes out to them! Thank you to everyone who participated to make this video possible, we appreciate your support.

Written by CorpsAfrica/Malawi Volunteer Ms. Wezi Kayira

“Literature is the gateway to the world,” so my professor said. I agree with him wholeheartedly. As I read writers like Nawal El Saadawi, Buchi Emacheta, Khalid Hosseini, Mariama Ba and many more, I appreciate how I am more sensitive to the plight of women and girls in our society.

Drawing water one day at the borehole, I witnessed a fight between a young girl and boy. What shocked me was how the women rebuked the girl for answering back to the boy. They asked the girl, “Why are you fighting with the boy?” and then, “Why not just leave him alone?” The girl fearlessly answered, “If he insults me, must I just watch in silence?” And then she proudly took her pail and went off leaving the rest of the women talking about her “rudeness.” I must say, this girl made me proud. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to talk to her, but hopefully I will meet her again at the borehole soon.

According to Louis Althusser, culture is one of the ideological state apparatuses. Being this, it plays a big role in perpetuating women subjugation. As culture shapes our norms and gives each gender its distinct role, it altogether enforces gender inequality. As El Sadawi puts it in her book, The Hidden Face of Eve, “a woman, by her very nature, is unfit to shoulder the responsibilities of men.” A clear lesson derived from the many books of culture. It is therefore not surprising when we hear older women tell young girls to respect their young male counterparts simply because he will be a bread winner someday. I call this absolute madness.

So why is it surprising when we see women and girls resolve to silence? When they accept being victims of gender-based violence and opt to live with their oppressors in peace? My heart broke when one of the women in my community told me how at the age of 15 a son of a family friend raped her. The saddest part is that the son was HIV positive. In the early 2000’s, being a young girl, living in a patriarchal society, bearing in mind that society at this time labelled anyone who was HIV positive disabled and unwanted, she never told anyone what had happened and resolved to living in silence. In 2004, her greatest fear came to life when she was told she was HIV positive. Scared of her own society, she continued to live in silence until 2007 when she became critically ill and doctors advised her guardians that she get tested.

Well it’s a good thing that now she lives in peace, she’s on medication, and she’s trying to patch her life together. I asked her some of the challenges she faced after the incident and she said, “because of the critical illness I had in 2007, I had to drop out of school. It is also hard to find a serious man who wants to marry me. Lastly the silent stigma society gives limits me to enhance my capabilities.”

Now I compare the woman’s story to how the young girl acted to her oppressor. The differences are extreme. I feel sorry for the many women who went through devastating experiences and due to discrimination at that time, opted for silence as a survival mechanism. However, I smile to the power and self-assertion our young girls have today. I am delighted by how this young girl questioned the women who believed were teaching her manners. It might take a while to change, deconstruct, and abandon the dogmatic thinking culture has instilled, but I think the future looks promising.

Written by CorpsAfrica/Malawi Volunteer Ms. Twambilire Kalolokesya
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When I came to my site, the first thing I was told was that I need to help out at the school with English. At the moment their priority problem was that the kids had poor English writing and speaking skills. Once I started interacting with the students I noticed that it was really a problem, so I started helping at the nursery school and teaching English songs and some vocabulary. The impact was good, and kids learnt how to introduce themselves in English within a short period of time. However, the problem of poor English skills was not only in kindergarten, but also in secondary school. Secondary school students were more scared to speak English than my kindergarteners, so much that even answering English exam questions was a problem. Since these kids were already learning English in class we had to think about another way for them to improve their English skills.  

To solve this issue, and to allow for students to practice their English outside of the classroom, a debate club was suggested. I thought this was a great idea, but the problem was that it was viewed as an extracurricular activity, which are not allowed at this campus. To make the debate club happen we had to have talks with the authorities about how it might benefit the kids to improve their English skills. After these talks, the authorities gave us a chance to start a debate club and see if it really helped the kids. When we started the club, a lot of students were interested and excited about the debate club. A lot of students attended on the first day, on the second meeting the numbers decreased, but now other students have also started coming to join.

At first the kids were having difficulties to discuss a debate topic freely; they were shy and they did not know what to research on a topic. Since then these kids have improved their English greatly, and so far, we have discussed three topics. The students listened to all of the feedback given after the debates and incorporated whatever they were told to do into their other assignments. And they do their best to use the little information they have access to just to make a debate interesting. They have also started showing results of improvement in their critical thinking skills.

It is very pleasing that in a very small amount of time the kids have already started improving. A small thing like a debate club has helped students who were not good at speaking English, who were having problems to research a topic, and were finding it difficult to rebut another team’s point, now do all these things. The kids were not only excited but were determined to benefit from this club and made it worthwhile. We have even chosen leaders in the club who are learning how to lead a debate club after I leave. Their excitement and determination is very encouraging. 

Written by CorpsAfrica/Malawi Volunteer Ms. Shyreen Kossam
 
My site lies in the eastern side of Dedza District. It is headed by Group Village Headman, Sunduzeni, under Traditional Authority (T/A), Kachindamoto, with a population of 901,444 people, spread across 24 villages. Four (4) kilometers from my house is a small portion of Lake Malawi which makes fishing a major business for my community members. People in my community also practice irrigation farming and harvest crops throughout the year. Rice is the major cash crop grown in my community, whereas maize is grown as a staple food. It happens that my site produces the best quality of rice, though at a small scale. The area under T/A Kachindamoto experiences very hot weather, which different from the cold weather that is usually associated with Dedza District.
 
My site is an area of the Ngoni Tribe, which means people believe in keeping a large number of livestock as a source of wealth and prestige. Most people in my community depend on livestock for their economic upkeep. They also enjoy most roasted meat along together with beer. Most people believe in extended families and practice polygamy. The community is also blessed with a variety of fruits, which include baobab, mangoes, cucumbers, manoni, and masawu (small berry-like fruits).
 
People in my community are very open to development, with the Hunger Project working in their area, as my partner organization. The Hunger Project Epicenter consists of the clinic, the hall, the nursery school, the loan department, the food bank, the library, as well as the moringa processing unit. Apart from other activities like teaching, mentoring the girls, working with the youth, and playing with the nursery school children, this is where I spend most of my time. 
 
There are a lot of things that I enjoy at my site; eating fresh fish almost every day which is sold at a cheap price, is one of the best. I'm so blessed to have such an amazing community to serve as a CorpsAfrica Volunteer and I really enjoy working with these people. 

Written by CorpsAfrica/Malawi Volunteer Ms. Ruth Chamangwana

My house attracts a lot of visitors, but there are some that never leave making them permanent residents. Actually, some of them move around my house like they own it. Maybe they do. I am probably the annoying visitor that doesn't want to go back home. Anyway, since I try to be a good person, I decided to embrace my visitors and before I knew it, they were my housemates!

First on the list, the lizards. I was scared of them at first, but I‘ve realized that they can't bite me, so we are now good friends. As long as all my pots are closed - in case they decide to taste my food - then I am good. There are just too many of them, so I haven’t been able to name them all individually, but Thom can do for now. They will all be called Thom. 

The rat! She only comes during the night, kicking my pots and causing all sorts of noise as she searches for food that she only sometimes finds. I never knew that rats could eat uncooked Irish potatoes. Georgina does that, she eats my Irish potatoes and leaves her tiny teeth marks everywhere. 

Phil and Patty are the two bats that reside by my veranda. As per nature, they only greet me in the evenings as I am enjoying my cool breeze. At least they are polite enough to say hello. In a synchronized fashion, they fly above my head twice - could it be a ritual? - then off they go to search for food. 

Since my house is filled with fantastic creatures, we need protection. We need a guard! So let me introduce Billy, my neighbor's dog. He comes to my place during lunch and dinner, gets himself a share of nsima and bones, and off he goes, back to my neighbor's house. The audacity Billy! At least he makes his appearance, and someone out there probably thinks I own a dog. 
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I guess everybody wants to be housemates with a CorpsAfrica Volunteer. Here in Chipoka, we are living happily ever after!

Written by CorpsAfrica/Malawi Volunteer Ms. Ireen Kanjala
 
When a Volunteer is placed in a new environment, with new faces, it is not shocking to feel alone in places full of unfamiliar people. As days go by, the connections that we build with community members and other organizations working in our placement communities help us integrate easier into our communities. I was lucky to be placed in a community that had already established a relationship, with not only one, but two partner organizations; Child Legacy International and Centre for Concerned Youth in Development.

Child Legacy International (CLI) is an organization sited in my community with a mission to build sustainable communities to end poverty. The organization has over 200 employees from the surrounding area who bring back the methods learnt from CLI to develop their own communities. The organization’s hospital provides free healthcare on routine vaccinations, child labour and delivery, as well as surgical procedures. It also aims at increasing accessibility to safe water by repairing broken boreholes for communities in need. I have worked with CLI on community projects like afforestation, Grassroot Soccer interventions, and school health and nutrition. 

Written by CorpsAfrica/Malawi Exchange Volunteer Mr. Alpha Ba
 
Although they are refugees or asylum seekers, the men, women and youth of Dzaleka Refugee Camp have come together through Community Based Organizations (CBOs) to provide solutions to the problems they face day and night. Currently, there are more than 50 CBOs in the camp and operating in several areas such as health, education, the economy, and the environment.

Having joined this community, I am working with many of them as part of their activities. Hope Youth Work is one of them that involves sewing. They also have environment activities that they periodically organize in partnership with other local organizations. By collaborating with them in this field, I’ve transferred my knowledge, especially my experiences with my first service in Senegal where the project of my community was about waste management. We must promote in this community the words from this famous quote: "A healthy body in a healthy environment."

It must be said that even if one is in a refugee camp, one needs to live in good health and the basic infrastructures must be implanted there. Although local organizations and the government have built a health center, this is still not enough for medical coverage for more than 39,000 refugees, asylum seekers, and surrounding villages that come to heal. So, some individuals have had the foresight to open pharmacies to come in support. This is the case of the CBO Home-Based Care, which is a very dynamic organization, which started working for almost 3 years within the community by providing medical products such as drugs through their pharmacy. They also organize trainings on sexual and gender-based violence, HIV/AIDS, and peer education.

My favorite CBO at Dzaleka is called Dzaleka Adzimayi Union (DAU), which means the Women's Union of Dzaleka. In fact, it was born out of a group that felt the effects of sexual violence, HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, and all kind of reproductive health problems. Meeting these women was really emotional, especially when two program recipients exposed the problems they experienced. Although they are young, single, widowed, mothers, they come together as an organization to find solutions. Their activities revolve around capacity-building and mobilization, where seminars and workshops on various issues of gender, women's empowerment, and a special focus on disability are conducted. They also have an advocacy program and the social action program. 

The last CBO comes to facilitate the start of the life of women. Also they provide material, technical and psychosocial support to individuals and families.

The socio-economic activities are key elements at Dzaleka refugee camp that allow refugees and asylum seekers to find occupations and meet their individual or collective needs. These CBOs are clear examples of this, and creating them shows that they are also able to participate in the development and changes of their environment no matter where they are.