Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers – I hope you are as well as possible. My stint in Malawi is soon ending, and I am happy to be going home to my family, especially for hugs and cuddles with my husband and children. In truth, the time here has been really difficult and akin in my opinion to the story told in Hotel Rwanda. Hotel Rwanda was an international hotel that housed people during the Rwandan Genocide. It was a story told of people kept safely with dwindling sources of food, and increasing over-capacity when serious danger lurked just outside the walls. Whilst Malawi is not facing the same kind of trouble, it’s people are in danger none-the-less.
The level of poverty in Malawi is astounding and I don’t know how each family with their children gets by. Basic groceries (mostly not meeting children’s nutritional requirements), even maize flour, are frightfully expensive let alone important things like safe water, access to protein and cooking fuel. Many take to begging with no other form of employment, or ride motorbikes under the pretense of being taxi drivers without the requisite skills, training or licensing resulting in one of the world’s largest levels of road fatalities and death. If I could help everyone I would, but I know that’s way beyond my capacity.
I suppose my question to the world is how and when we will stop closing our eyes to the starvation genocide that is taking out beautiful countries and people like these in Malawi. I want to believe that if we all came together and sent what we could (through the right mechanisms) we would be able to help the challenged people who are simply trying to live and get by. I want to believe that we who have so much more would understand and give to those who have so much less. I have tried to give what I could and worked hard whilst here but please let us not forget those that continue to be trapped in Hotel Malawi. Stay blessed and for those who celebrate, Happy Easter.
4 M's Bipolar Mom 