Written by CorpsAfrica/Malawi Volunteer Ms. Assiatu Pongolani

The title above, itself, gives a person thousands and thousands of questions on how and why things happen or have been done, especially when we are talking of helping vulnerable communities so that these people also should have smiles on their faces. It has been my pleasure and memorable experience to live in the Kadewere community and be able to interact with different people and learn their language too. Although sometimes work and life was getting me depressed and frustrated, I never gave up on staying here because I feel like the work I am doing in this community is helping and will help those who are here now and those in the future. Not antagonizing those whom you are working with but being empathetic and sympathetic in some cases, this is HOW I have felt and been working and so far, and it still keeps me moving.

Living in this community and knowing who needs help most is what has kept me going to never give up. There are a lot of challenges that people are facing that one can list without end, but prioritizing things in the community for work and even in their lives is also a right way to help.  Just knowing who and what goes first can be easier.  This is why staying in this community has made me optimistic, empathetic and even, at times, feel sorry for other people because sometimes I do not know how best I can to help that person. Answering the why question sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable, but it is a question that one would like to hear an answer to.  It is important to know more about anything or something that one has been going through at work or in life being successes or challenges to learn from it. I have learnt a lot by staying in this community and it has encouraged and made me strong with my own personal life issues and this is WHY I still have all this courage to express myself.

This experience has not only brought me a new life from this community but also from the whole CorpsAfrica family. Among ourselves, we have made strong friendships with a strong bond that will continue to be there even after working with CorpsAfrica. The All-Country Conference also added new friends to the list that I had. Meeting all these people has showed me that if we all work together on all these issues, we will help our Malawi and the whole world to understand that if we help the development of the vulnerable, the world could be a better place for everyone to live.