Development

I’m sitting in a beautiful new office at my secondary school donated by the people of Japan typing yet another blog on my computer all while looking at the internet on my iPhone while I discuss, or I should really say listen, to the plight of one of the smartest teachers at my school. He speaks with frustration and despair over the poor situation Malawi and many other parts of Africa still find themselves in. It has been fifty years since independence and yet Malawi and it’s people, especially the rural population, are still very poor. And as I sit here discussing development theory with an iphone and laptop in front of me, I realize just how inadequate all my book knowledge is when it comes to really understanding poverty and development. I am able to carry on an intelligent conversation due to my degree in international policy but ultimately what do I know? What do I know of a society where cycles of poverty repeat over and over again to the point where even the best and brightest are almost too discouraged to keep trying. Where we found out last week that the past president had millions of Malawi kwacha in various bank accounts reinforcing the African Big Man Rule stereotype where political power is nothing more than a way to get rich quick. How does a continent and a country heal from years of hurt? From years of exploitation? From slavery to colonialism to neocolonialism to corruption from its own people? I know the Peace Corps answer is for the people to be empowered to change themselves. But how can we do this? How can Malawi do this? Is it truly empowerment that's needed? My teachers fight against students who have no motivation because their older brothers and sisters studied hard in school only to find no new prospects, jobs, or opportunities after they graduated. Never accumulating any large capital, never having a car, never having electricity, just getting by one month at a time. My schooling taught me every theory and reason behind poverty and yet I’m still left now with the same question- how do we move forward? Is the answer always more money when Malawi is classified as what is called a donor economy?

So then what is the way forward? Motivation is a start but what is there here to motivate people to try harder and learn more when perhaps they’ve seen it does not really benefit them much of anything. How many false hopes do I give my students encouraging them to study hard and remain in school when I know an ever larger uphill battle awaits them after? Me, with all my privilege and education and access to resources, who am I to tell these students of the promise of more or of better? I know nothing of their lives but I am trying to learn. To give them a chance to be inspired, to dream where sometimes dreams are dead. To give them hope that maybe one day if even not for themselves but for their children, things can and will change. It starts with them not giving up on this land, on these people, on their future. 

I think more sentences than not in this blog are questions but they are all I seem to have at this point in time. Questions on how to move forward and how to give inspiration and hope in a place where sometimes it has long been dashed. And dashed many times by those in countries like where I am from. My co-worker tells me he believes in the theory that Africa is not poor, just mismanaged. And I think I would agree. Mismanaged by the world; mismanaged by its own leaders. There is a way forward but the healing will be slow and it doesn’t mean we should not try. Malawi, do not give up Malawi. I heard a preacher on the radio in a minibus last week talking about how Africans must reclaim their identity as beings created and made in the image of God. How true! It is time for this place to realize it is not the heart of darkness but loved and desired and created in the image of something beautiful and perfect. I am currently reading the now outdated yet still highly controversial book, The Shack. And as most know, God is portrayed in the novel as a large African American woman. And part of the story is seeing just how shocked and confused the character is in seeing God this way as all his notions and ideas of God were white and American and grandfather-ish. And yet that is part of the point of the book! That God is not a white man and was never meant to just be a white man’s God. God has always been in Malawi. He was here long before any missionary showed up because he created this country and its people in His image and has loved them for eternity. It is time that the continent of Africa remembers and knows that they have value, worth, and a beauty all their own. Perhaps then the pride, confidence, motivation, integrity, and dreams needed for development will return.

^^Photo: My dear neighbors who always want me to come over for a chat and to cook nsima.