One day, the cook at the centre where I was volunteering invited me to lunch at her home. Along the way, she told me with pride that that year she had managed to send her daughter to school, and that the following year her twin would go too, thanks to the sale of one of the piglets soon to be born. In Balaka, and in the nearby Phalula, Utale 1, and Utale 2, in southern Malawi, it is normal to send one child to school before another, even when they are the same age. It is normal here for parents to have to decide whether they can afford a meal or the school fees.
Compared with average per capita income, sending a child to school is expensive. And even in cases where the institution does not formally require an enrolment fee, it is customary for parents to gather ndalama, money, to give to the school to make up for the lack of resources and materials for running lessons. When we arrived home, we found that the sow had just given birth. One of the piglets, however, had been born dead.
Next year, her son will not be able to go to school.
The difficulties are not only economic
Schools are often located far from people’s homes, so children are forced to walk between ten and fifteen kilometres every day, barefoot or in flip-flops, with the older ones carrying younger brothers or sisters on their backs, wrapped in colourful chitenje. They set off before dawn, carrying jerry cans of water and food for the whole day. During the rainy season the red earth roads turn into one long stretch of mud, while in the dry season the ground burns underfoot, as temperatures climb above 40°C. Many pupils manage to attend only the first cycle of schooling. Secondary schools are even further from the villages, since they are built near the larger towns.
In some cases, the burden of caring for younger children makes it impossible to attend lessons. Many children are asked to stay home to look after their younger siblings while their parents are at work. This, together with early marriage and early pregnancy, feeds an already very high school dropout rate.
Class Under the Great Baobab
When I step out into the schoolyard, I see them all there, under the great baobab. Today is the day of the end of year report cards, and there are hundreds of pupils waiting for this moment. Gathering outside rather than in an enclosed room is normal here, because the facilities are small relative to the number of students, around 200 pupils per class. So lessons, too, are often held outdoors, in the shade of the large trees that dot the grounds. And while at first glance this might seem like a bucolic scene, the reality is very different, since this precariousness only adds to the difficulties of concentration, attention, comprehension, and active participation during lessons.
One of the workers tells me that this year, too, there have been many failures, and that because of this they will lose several sponsors. Those who sponsor a child from a distance want to see, at the end of the year, a good report card, good grades, results and progress. In Malawi, however, attendance and academic success or failure do not depend solely on an individual’s goodwill or effort. They are also the result of the structural conditions of the schools, of the roads, of the high number of students crammed into very small classes, of the long distances that make schools hard to reach, of the climate, of the scarcity of resources, of caregiving burdens, of hard choices between meeting basic needs and the desire to study. And a report card simply cannot hold all of this, just as it cannot hold the desire and the will to study that these children and their families carry.
