An Appalachian in Africa

I awake each morning thinking that I am spending the summer at Grandma’s on Pine Mountain. The rooster crows at dawn to wake me. I get dressed after a quick sponging from the cold spigot and go to the kitchen for a large plate of breakfast, eggs, sausage, and fried potatoes. Today will be a long day so I pack a paper bag lunch of a peanut butter and banana sandwich, a couple of cookies and a bottle of water. The children will walk home for lunch but I’ll eat my lunch while I wait for the evening bus to come.
The bus comes to pick me up at 8:30 and I head off to my school. The bus ride is beautiful with grand mountains to admire making me feel a kinship to the people here. The dirt drive passes through two village markets and two villages. Today is market day so I don’t know how many children will be in class. If the children are needed on the farm or to tend the market they will not attend school today. The markets are full of people today. Tomatoes and fruits are stacked in artful pyramids, freshly cut meats are hanging from stands, flat baskets of dried beans of different shades of brown are lying in the sun, woven baskets, cooking pots, fabric, and livestock are also available for sell. The air smells of rubbish burning as the market place is being raked of debris. We’ll probably stop this evening. I want to barter for a laundry basket.
Getting to the schools takes us from the main road to some back roads through the villages. When the little children see us coming in the bus, they run from their houses to wave or chase the bus to the school. Villagers wave and smile from the front porches of their brick mud-daubed houses. In the yards you can see that the laundry has already been scrubbed and hung on the line or bushes to dry. Chickens and goats are running free and lounging on the porches.
When we arrive at the school, the children fill the schoolyard with their books and siblings in tow excited to see us arrive. The headmaster rings the school bell and one hundred children of different ages and sizes eagerly enter the classroom with names such as Blessing, Faith, Hope, Good News, Good Will, Happy, and biblical names such as Esther, Adam, and Micah. As I enter the classroom the children stand respectfully and we begin class with a polite greeting. “Good morning”, “Good morning and how are you today, Madame?” “Fine thank you and you?” “I am fine thank you Madame”.


After the greeting, the children sit on the cement floors with their homemade book bags of used plastic bags, strips of woven feed sack sewn together or crocheted from string. Most all of the children are dressed in their blue school uniforms but most are barefoot. The room is dusty and dark because we have no electricity. I walk to the blackboard and write the word Math and the students begin searching in their bags for something to write with and their assignment notebook. Today we are studying subtraction, weight and measurements. We use yarn to get our height, waist, head and other measurements so that the students will know how to measure to make their clothes. Most all of the children’s clothes are made from one hundred percent cotton since cotton is grown here. It is not unusual to see children wearing outfits that look the same since there is little variety in the cloth prints. I remember my mom and grandmother making my dresses. I always felt that I was less than the other children because they were rich enough to buy their clothes already made. My mother wouldn’t go to my dad’s senior prom because she had nothing but feed sack cloth dresses and could not afford to buy a dress for the prom. I have since decided that custom made outfits are high dollar and I have been buying fabric in town to have dresses made for me by the tailor in our village.
In Agriculture and Environmental Science we are studying soil and how important just something as simple as taking care of our dirt affects our lives. I asked the children to tell me three major important things that they get from dirt. The number one answer was their home.
Here their houses are made from their clay dirt and heated to form bricks. The bricks are stacked and jointed with mud between them to hold them together. The roofs are often covered with straw. They use what they can find around them to make their homes. It wasn’t that different at home with our log houses chinked with mud and horse hair.


The second purpose of soil was to provide nutrients for plants. Farming is the way of life here. Most of the farmers here grow maize. The farming is all done manually, without tractors but with hoes sometimes oxen for plowing. I remember Papaw plowing his fields to prepare them for planting with his horse Prince. The family would work together to hoe out the fields after the corn began to grow. The corn was used for cornmeal and feed for the cows and horses. Here the maize is used in almost every way imaginable: nsima, porridge, flour, even roasted and eaten like nuts.

It has been very dry here with little rain for more than twelve years. Now farmers are trying to find new ways of growing crops. There is a farm in this region that is trying to teach farmers how to irrigate from the river and rainwater. His father started this farm called Freedom Gardens in 1972 and after his death his sons are carrying on his work. The farm is basically self-sufficient. An ingenious irrigation system running water from the river and holding ponds waters the entire farm using an intricate pattern of ditches. No pumps or electricity or fancy rotating sprinkling systems, just ditches. The garden is absolutely beautiful.
The third purpose of the soil was to grow plants for the animals. Animals are used for milk, meat, leather, warmth and beasts of burden. An agricultural society cannot exist without animals. Since it has been so dry here, I normally see goats and chickens more than any other farm animals because they don’t demand as much grass to survive. One morning as I was walking to school, I saw a small herd of goats feeding on the school yard grass. I didn’t immediately see the young goatherds watching the flock from some small shade trees. They missed school that day.
In English we are reading The Five Chinese Brothers. The students listened intently as I read them the story and we discussed how important each brother’s talent was to the other members of his family. Each brother’s life depended on the help of another brother. I then asked each student to think about and write about a special talent that they had. As we read the responses aloud, the students told me that they could cut wood, cook nsima, wash clothes, hoe the fields, sweep the house, carry wood, and carry water. They seemed proud of their abilities and how they were helping their families and village by using their talents. As simple as these talents may sound, they are necessary for survival. Life is simple here, the kind of simple that makes you feel at peace with yourself and appreciate the little things that make life so very special. The smiles, laughter, and songs from my students make me wish that we could all be so appreciative of every day of life.
Another day we read Harold and the Purple Crayon. After reading the story and drawing out the story in sequence together, I asked the students to draw a picture of an adventure of their own. The drawing was to include where they were going and how they were going to get there. To my surprise, most of my students drew pictures of themselves coming to school. I don’t think I realized how special coming to school was for them. Here school is not compulsory. If you are not needed on the farm and can possibly walk here from your village, you can come to school if your family wishes for you to come. In most pictures, the children were walking to school, some were riding a bike, one boy flew to school by plane and one drove a truck. Automobiles are not a common means of travel here. Bicycles are used as an alternative to walking but most don’t own a bicycle. I think I have seen bicycles used in more ways here than anywhere else in the world. Folks here use bicycles to haul firewood, haul sacks of maize and rice, haul cages of fowl, haul produce to the market, but my favorite is the padded seat on the back that serves as a taxi seat.
Physical Education class is held outside in the field. Soccer is very popular here and the first thing I noticed on the field was the field goals made from reed poles. Today we played a tag game of sharks and minnows. The children are very fast runners and tremendously athletic. If they fall while playing, there is no crying. The fallen ones jump up and continue to participate. Faith has a deformed leg but she runs as well as the others. Adam has a deep cut on his shin that has been bandaged for three weeks, it should have had several stitches, but he is still quite quick. Maxwell stands about a foot taller than the others. I don’t know if he is older than the others. I know that his parents died when he was young and he is being raised by a member of the village. He is by far the best at this tagging game.
Anything can be used for playing here, vines for jump ropes, wads of plastic bags for a soccer ball, bottle caps for musical instruments, corn kernels for a checker type game called bou, or each other for acrobatics. It makes me think of my childhood games of jump rope, kick the can, hop scotch and jacks. After we finish our outdoor activity, we sing and clap our hands all the way back to the classroom.
As class work begins to conclude for the day, the room is packed up in the little bags they brought from home. Some brought dried grasses with them to school to make brooms for sweeping, so the sweeping begins. The girls go to well to get buckets of water to wash the floor and clean the blackboard. As soon as they are satisfied with their chores, they begin their walk back home. Some will not get back home until it is nearly dark. Others will get there in time to eat an early dinner or a late lunch. Two meals a day is usually all they will eat. The sun goes behind the mountain early here, between five and six o’clock and the woods could be a dangerous place for a young child after dark.
On Saturdays, I walked downtown Zomba to buy water and anything I might need for teaching school Monday. The streets are busy with selling and trading going on not only in the shops and market but also all along the main street. I don’t bargain well. It is impolite where I grew up to talk people down on their prices especially if the items were made by hand. Here bargaining is an art, almost a game of wits. It is not necessary to purchase everything with money, bartering is not only acceptable but also encouraged. Let’s just say that I left Zomba before returning home without shoes.
I checked at what the townspeople called the China store to see how cheaply I could buy blankets. I had been concerned about the children in Malemia village that were so cold in the mornings that they didn’t want to play. I thought if I could cut blankets and make ponchos, the children could use the blankets at night as blankets and in the mornings as coats. I found out that the China man did not like to bargain. He indicated that his prices were firm since his items were already priced at a discount. After maybe Divine intervention, the blanket price was reduced by a few cents and I purchased enough blankets to make three hundred ponchos.
After the ponchos were cut out and the tailor in Malemia village stitched the raw edges for a bargained price, the ponchos were taken to Malemia Primary School. I wanted the ponchos to be given the two youngest classes of children so that is where they were taken. The students were thrilled and to thank me they sang for me. Just like in Appalachia, if someone does something for you, it is necessary to do something for them. These children had nothing to give me in return but their music. I don’t think I will ever again hear such strong joyous music come from such tiny young people. I had to choke back the tears.

What I didn’t understand was that there was a pecking order to which children should receive things in the village. After I left the school, the older children began taking the ponchos from the younger ones. The little ones were crying, some ponchos were torn, and some fighting began. I was relieved the next morning when I passed through the village and saw the young ones wearing their ponchos and ponchos hanging to dry on lines in the village.
On Sundays, I walk to the nearby church in the town. The church is brick with arched glass windows. An area surrounds the church that you could park in but since very few have car it is used for fellowshipping instead. The church has two services one at 6 am and one at 8 am. Since I don’t understand Chichewa, I go to the English speaking service at eight. It surprised me how similar this church was to the church I attended in Pine Mountain as a child. There are two doors that open into the church. One door is for the men to enter and sit on their side of the church and the other door is for the women and children. The pews are made of a dark wood and each pew has book holders for the hymnal and the Good News Bible. It is obvious that the members of the congregation have walked here on this beautiful Sunday morning smiling and dressed in their best clothes to show God their gratitude and be of the mind of worship. I feel a oneness with this congregation, just one of the many beautiful children of God.
The entire service, including the sermon was centered on the goodness of God and how we must share our blessings with the people around us. How simple an idea but yet so often ignored. As the church members are asked to come forward with their offerings, I am unspeakably humbled. The members who can place money in the offering basket do so; others carry in sacks of maize, sacks of dried beans, or cassava. One man brought flowering plants every Sunday. These offerings were given with glad hearts from people who often could not even afford to buy their own shoes.
After church, I walked back up the hillside to relax. Most everything is closed here on Sunday in observance of the Sabbath. I eat a sandwich and afterwards I read and nap all afternoon. In the early evening I went for a walk on a path that led through a gathering place in a grove of flowering trees. A beautiful clear brook flows through the park and down by the resting benches. A group is gathered in the park to sing spirituals and dance. The music is so joyous it is almost enchanting. I continued walking along the path still listening to the music reverberating throughout the forest. The path stops at a gorgeous waterfall that is as enchanting as the music. The totality of it all was heavenly.
I purposely left out many details about the location I was describing. If you were to read this article you may have initially thought I was in a remote rural area of Southwestern Virginia or maybe out in remote area in the Western region of the United States. One might also think I was on a Native American reservation somewhere. I learned that Africa is very similar to those regions of America.
I traveled half-way around the world to find I was still at home. The people were not family but were warm and kind. They adopted me just like they adopted so many other children that had no families. Malawi was so similar to the Appalachia I grew up in that I felt that I wasn’t so far away. The Malawian way of life and values resonated with the Appalachian values that I hold so dear to my heart. If I could travel back in time one hundred years in Appalachia, the differences between Appalachia and Malawi, Africa would be very small. It makes me wonder why we (people of the world) insist on concentrating on the differences we have instead of coming to the realization that we are all basically the same. To quote Anne Frank, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart”.