Mother, mum, ama, masten…..

She is that kind of person whom you cannot stay mad at. I remember one person once said, “You leave the house convincing yourself you are not coming back. A few days later you realise you are missing her and you pack you stuff and head back to her.” She drives people crazy with both anger and laughter. That’s the woman I call my mum.

Hers is not a story of ‘from riches to ashes’ nor is it a ‘from ashes to riches’ kind of story, no. Hers is a ‘from riches to ashes to riches’ kind of story. She was probably married by 24 if my calculations are correct. By 1994, she and her husband were living in Sunny side with a three year old daughter and awaiting a baby boy. Little did she know that two years later she would find herself as a single mum of two kids, and siblings to take care of. She was earning her dime as a primary school teacher back then. It was a struggle, especially with two little kids, the other one only a year old. Nor did she know that by then she would have moved out of that beautiful self-contained sunny side house to live in a shuttered house with a pit latrine in Manase.  

She is a woman who knows what she wants. Within the year at Manase she managed to get a bed sitter in Nkolokosa. Part of the sitting room was turned into a bedroom and life went on. In 1999, she got into Domasi College of Education. She almost did not go because of her kids but after my dear aunts convinced her that we would be ok, she went.

 We moved out of Nkolokosa after a bus hit one of the walls of our house and cracked it. We went to Kanjeza but we did not stay that long. A few months down the line, we were living in Zingwangwa Township. Whilst on holiday she managed to get a job as a teacher at Jupiter Private School. I remember once there were heavy rains. It rained so heavily I was sure the house would fall. She must have thought so too cause she started praying. I watched as tears run down her face whilst conversing with God. I didn’t understand a thing she said but by the time she was done, the rain had stopped.

She still wanted to be a tenant of the Malawi Housing Cooperation (MHC) and not live in a house owned by a person. In April 2001 she was told houses were available in Ndirande Malabada and so we moved to Malabada. The same 2001, she got a Diploma in Education and started teaching at Chichiri Secondary School. A few months later she got a call to attend an interview at the then Commercial Bank of Malawi. She got the job.  

19 years as a single mom, she has managed to raise a Political Scientist and a soon to be IT graduate. Whilst at it, she turned from an MSCE holder primary school teacher to a secondary school teacher, to a banker and soon she will be a Bachelor of Business Communication Degree Holder. She is what I call a success story and she always says these few words: “God loves me” and “The Lord answers my prayers.”  

Something Trivial On the Youth

Over the years, programs and projects have been put in place to ensure Youth Development. Although many projects have been implemented, one will note that the youth are still underemployed, unemployed, undeveloped, underdeveloped and still dependent. This article looks at what underlying factors are causing this lack of progress with focus on youths who have access to education.

Definition of the term “youth’.

The first problem that one notices is the definition of the term youth itself. The term is utterly relaxed. Currently, a youth is anyone of the age range 14-35 and this is the range Government programs focus on. The problem comes in because, most youth from the age 28-35 are usually at the stage where they have started realising their goals, those between 20-27 are in senior levels of college studies, or are recent college graduates hunting for jobs whilst between age 14-19, the youth are usually in secondary schools or junior levels of College. Thus the needs for these groups of youths are different. General projects aimed at youth development may be of benefit to one group but not to another.

The Industry.

If one reads the vacancies in the newspapers, one will note that the youths, especially recent college graduates stand little or no chance of finding employment. The work experience requirements vary from 3 to 10 years of experience with five years being the prevailing requirement. Surely, for partners that argue that they are interested in promoting youth development, their actions are proving otherwise. One would argue that the college graduates should work as interns in organisations before they graduate and indeed they should. However, most colleges, including public universities, do not have such agreements with companies and organisations.  Where are the youths expected to get the experience employers are seeking when such channels are rarely available?

Blame it on Government

One would expect the government to be on the forefront in providing internships for the youths, but even the government want people with five years experience above. This leaves the college graduates with little choices and so they take jobs that are not in line with their qualifications. Eventually, their academic knowledge vanishes. This is so because with time, they get accustomed their current jobs to the point that they can no longer perform at the level that their academic backgrounds require them to.

Blame it on culture

This is a country in which after a girl child finishes school, gets a job, they are expected to still live with their parents, unless they get a job away from the parents’ homes. If you decide to go live alone, questions are raised, you are seen as loose. Sometimes you are even told point blank, no man will marry you if you are staying alone. This culture has contributed to the dependency syndrome that the youth in the country are infected with. This is so because whilst living with parents, most youths cannot sustain themselves the way they would if they were living alone/independently.

Blame it on the youth themselves

In terms of men, it is the young men themselves. You find a young man who has been working for over three years still living with his parents and expecting them to sustain him whilst he spends his salary on girls and booze. The young men of Malawi need to develop a sense of independence and act on it.

Just like the youth writing this paper, the youth in Malawi are very good at speaking than doing. The age of social networks has made the situation much worse. You find people complaining on Facebook groups about how they are suffering as youths but n action is taken. There is need for the youth to start taking action, real action. It is time to stop complaining and start performing.

What Now

First things first, the National Youth Policy.  I was reading the South African Youth Policy this other day. It was 47 pages long. The Malawian Youth Policy is 10 pages. I was amazed by it because even the name of the policy itself “National Youth Policy 2009-2014” shows that it was developed by a nation interested in youth development. It has detailed information on proposed interventions for specific youth groups. It is a policy that recognises that we live in a changing world in which today’s issues are different from tomorrow’s issues. I believe if the Malawian Youth Policy were to learn from the South African policy, we would notice some progress.

MY LOST YEAR: ACADEMIC FREEDOM FROM A STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

It was the month of February in the year 2011. I had just started my third year as a political Science Student at the University of Malawi-Chancellor College. That was my third public policy Class. The first class had been an introduction, we had learnt about how public policy was the action or inaction of government. 

“This must be the easiest definition in all of my college life” I had thought to myself. 

That first class was not fully spent on the lecture. Most first classes are not. In those first classes we would discuss the timetable. Figure out which classes were colliding, and changing the timetable to match everybody’s timetable. Most people have different timetables in college, if you miss the first lecturer, you might find yourself with clashes. 

The second class had been about what public policy was all about and how it is formulated. It was the books that said a policy can be made through revolutions. My lecturer, being a teacher and knowing that students require further explaining, decided to offer an example. Little did he know that this would become a police matter in a few days. So, in that third class we were all so excited. I do not remember what made us that way. We were very talkative too in that particular class. There is a saying in my country “Mbuzi ikakondwa, amalonda ali pafupi” (when a goat is happy, it means it is about to be bought, and probably slaughtered). Basically it tries to say that if you are too happy, something bad is about to happen to you. On this day, the buyers were indeed very close by. Dr. Chinsinga told us he had been summoned to appear before the inspector general of police.

“What have you said this time sir?” one of us asked jokingly. 

We were also not aware we were to have the experience that would derail all our plans. He did not respond, he just laughed and told us it was probably just some social call.

The next day we woke up as usual, went to class, waited the recommended 15 minutes for our lecturer, a different one, but he never showed. We were later told he had a cough and would not be able to teach. The other lecturers from our department did not give reasons, they merely never showed up for classes. A few days later we learnt that Law lecturers were no longer giving lecturers, then it was the Philosophy department, the economics Department, the sociology department and so on and so forth.

“They say a certain lecturer was summoned by the inspector general who accused him of telling students to rise against the current regime just like in Egypt and Tunisia.” One student told us.

It did not register at that moment that she was talking about our own Dr Chinsinga. We laughed at the statement.

“That’s absurd, the police think a lecturer can tell us to demonstrate? They must think we are very shallow” one of us said.

“Indeed, they think if we wanted to demonstrate, we would need a lecturer to tell us first” a fellow student conquered. And just like that a conversation developed of how this was a disaster and so on.

Rumours continued to spread, some said he had been arrested, others said he had been threatened. It was amidst the rumours that we learnt it was in fact our lecturer who had been summoned.

To be Continued……..

A lot has been said about the academic freedom saga, but no one has paid much attention to how it affected us, the students. It is always, the right to lecture freely that is covered, what about our right to education, how was it affected? What about our goals and plans?
I had it all planned out, by the year 2012,  I would have been out of Chancellor College and would be on to new adventures in life. I'm most of you did too.

This is a call to anyone who would like to share their side of this unfortunate phase in their lives.