In October, I joined a team of 15 volunteers in Malawi to build a primary school in the Chipoza community that would welcome 200 new students. Malawi is one of Africa’s poorest countries, its economy based mostly on agriculture within a vast rural population.
Words are not strong enough to describe the extraordinary experience of traveling there to help build a school in a rural community. Here is a photo report describing a typical day volunteering in the Chipoza community.
5:00 am. The rooster makes sure the whole house wakes up for sunrise. After going through unexpected wild encounters, we go to the volunteer headquarters to eat breakfast and start the day.
Wild encounter with a spider on a brick wall in the bedroom right next to my pillow
In the morning we worked on the school construction alongside the community members. We rotated between multiple tasks. There is no electricity and all the work needs to be done manually. Carrying bricks to the school site is a procession of people with plastic buckets.
Digging trenches for the school substructure, or the latrines
Drawing water from the well, carrying it and pouring it on the worksite trenches to soften the ground
Pouring concrete and placing the bricks
While all of this was happening, some children were studying under the trees, watching the workers building their next school block; they seemed grateful to have a roof for the approaching rainy season
12:00 pm. After a long morning of hard work came our lunch break. Here is nsima in the making, a dish made from maize flour (white cornmeal) and water which is a staple food in Malawi.
1:00 pm. In the afternoon, we tested our data collection prototype, interviewing local BuildOn staff, the school principal, and teachers.
We also visited an Adult Literacy Program class. Yes, not only kids benefit from buildOn’s new schools! In 2 years, adults will go from being illiterate to be able to read, write, count, and run a small business to help finance the school costs over the years
4:00 pm. Free time! Malawi is known as the “warm heart of Africa” and indeed, we were able to spend a great time with the joyful and friendly Chipoza community, who introduced us to their habits and traditions. That includes lots of dances and songs:
Playful and curious children
5:00 pm. After a long and tiring day, we went home and spent some quality time with our host family while trying to overcome the challenges of speaking different languages! It didn’t prevent us from building strong relationships with them. Here’s a picture of my host family
Thanks to all these hard workers,
the school construction has made huge progress in just a week!! I can’t wait to see it completed.
Zikomo kwambiri (thank you very much) Chipoza community, it was a life-changing human experience to discover Malawi and contribute to the school construction for all these joyful children who deserve free and qualitative access to education.
