Day 2 - The Heaviness of Hunger
Dancing with the HIV/AIDS support group mentioned in this story
I wake to my 6.30am alarm and have a quick, cold bucket shower using the citronella soap I nabbed at the chemist. I’m in a high risk malaria country and even though I’m taking daily medication, apparently you can still contract the disease, so it’s best to avoid getting bitten. I pack my bag, giddy with first day excitement, munch my peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast and catch a lift with the non-profit director, Anderson, who is also my homestay father.
Driving to the office is a surreal experience. As we zoom down the main street we pass numerous mamas with baskets on their heads and babies on their back as well as men on bicycles and carts pulled by donkeys. The backdrop is a reddish, sandy dust bowl, sparsely laid trees and small, dilapidated structures passing as food stalls, shops or restaurants. I honestly can’t believe I’m here. This is pretty much exactly what I envisioned, though I can barely remember what movies gave me this picture. Most other places I’ve travelled, I didn’t exactly dream of going there, I just kind of ended up there. But Africa - this dry dustbowl - is something I’ve thought about for as long as I can remember. And here I am.
What felt more surreal, however, was sitting comfortably inside a very fancy car as we whizzed past everyone. Anderson explains that he has a used car business with his brother in Germany, this being the first of two imports so far. It feels odd to look out at the world around me while sitting pretty in this protective bubble wrap of wealth. I’m right here and yet there are still worlds between me and the people I’m gawping at, the metal doors marking a separation much greater than the eye can see. I guess it’s a metaphor for my life as a wealthy, white person. Always on the inside looking out, or on top looking down. I pondered the irony of the non-profit worker being one of the richest guys in town, though I guess it made perfect sense. Anyone in direct contact with foreigners would reap the benefits of foreign currency (NB. Anderson doesn’t take a salary from the non-profit, I’m referring to the money he makes from the homestays).
First stop was a quick visit to a preschool. About eight children sat in a line outside the classroom, while 3 teachers lay waiting for us on the dusty ground. Anderson did a quick tour around the property, which wasn’t more than a few newly built but still semi dilapidated structures, and pointed out the damage inflicted from last year’s floods during devastating Cyclone Freddy. We then did our introductions and it was explained that many children hadn’t come to school today because they hadn’t eaten the day before. No food meant no energy for school. It was pretty confronting. I looked at the kids who had turned up today, and they were young, anywhere from about 2 to 5 years old. How could there not be enough food to feed these tiny mouths?
Next stop was the office. A relatively large, faded pink building with tiled floors and shattered glass doors with pieces missing. Anderson excitedly showed me the recording studio for their dream project, DIN FM, a radio station they’ve been envisioning for 8 years. All the walls were padded and covered in cheap velvet, set up ready for sound proof interviews. Despite continuous work on this project, it’s still not complete due to lack of funding. The idea was that they would be able to generate income for the non-profit through radio advertising and sponsorship rather than being solely reliant on donations. The idea that the non-profit could be self-sufficient really piqued my interest.
I meet the rest of the team, about 6 interns who had finished college and were working as nutrition, environment or communication officers for DIN. They timidly introduce themselves and I receive a brief orientation. Later, someone shows me around the building. It’s amazing how quickly one can adjust to the poor conditions that plague every building but seeing it for the first time is always a bit of a shock. Nothing is new, smooth, shiny, clean, clear or pristine. Everything is old, crumbly, stained, faded, damaged and dirty. No matter where I look I see cracks, mould, leaks and peeling. But as I said, after seeing it once, I barely notice it again.
I have a great meeting with Anderson where we hash over my intentions with the organisation and make a plan for the next few days so that I know what I’ll be busy with. He is very organised, me being one of over 300 volunteers, and I am glad to have chosen an organisation that is put together enough that I might actually be able to make a difference in my short time here.
Later, I head off with two of the girls, Faith and Evelyn, to visit one of the HIV/AIDS support groups. Our mode of transport is a bicycle taxi. I hop on the extra seat at the back of the bike and we ride about 15 minutes, blessed with absolutely stunning views of mountains and rivers and green crops of bananas and maize. Thoughts like, “I can’t believe I’m really here”, begin to surface again. We arrive and I shout the girls their ride, which totals less than $1.50AUD.
I look around at the dusty landscape and spot a group escaping the sun, huddled under the collective shadow of a tree and small building. They greet me with great song and dance. I can’t believe it, it’s so flippin exciting. I can’t believe that people actually do this, that people still live this way, still have these customs.
My joy and wonderment is short lived as, once we are seated, I am told of the hunger. Malawi often faces powerful floods which decimate crops, followed by long droughts. Due to Cyclone Freddy last year, many farmers suffered crop failure which means there is little food available to eat this year and the prices are hiked. Conditions are made worse due to climate change and, for the second time that day, the group in front of me were not getting enough to eat. This is particularly difficult for those with HIV/AIDS who need to take strong medication each day to survive, which can’t be done on an empty stomach.
I’m thrown into the depths of despair once again. I think about how I’ve literally just gained weight on a recent trip because of the insanely huge plates of food we were served each day. I begin to recall all the snacks I’ve scoffed over the past few weeks, digging into my stash the moment I feel a pang of, not hunger, but boredom. I lament over the virtue it is to even engage in ‘emotional eating’, a privilege afforded to relatively few across the globe. I imagine my cupboards back home, always full to the brim of rice, pasta, noodles, cans of beans, tuna and tomatoes, spices, biscuits and all sorts. There’s food enough in that cupboard alone to feed a family for a week. Once again I ponder, how can there not be enough money for food? Surely there is always enough for a bag of maize to make Malawi’s traditional dish, nsima.
Then another flurry of thoughts streamed in: Even if people are eating, what is the nutritional value? Even if they can scrape together enough for a bag of maize, that doesn’t cover the nutrients required for a healthy, balanced diet. Even if stomachs do manage to be filled, surely people are so depleted of vitamins and minerals that they are exhausted all the time? How do they function each day?
My thoughts sank even deeper. Deep into my new-found knowledge of soil. What is the condition of the soil? If they use pesticides to grow their crops then the vegetables probably don’t even have enough nutrients, right? How many harvests left until the soil is so depleted that there’s nothing left at all? But shit, this is not just a problem here in Malawi. Isn’t almost everyone, everywhere eating nutrient deficient foods? Including me?
I am free falling, tumbling deep into a pit of despair. What the fuck have we done? And this time I don’t just mean what has the white man done to Africa[1], but what has man done to itself? How did we create a world where the basic function of eating become a gatekept activity, afforded only to those who hold little pieces of paper with an imaginary value? How were we so foolish as to cheat ourselves of something so fundamental for our function when we swapped nutrients for convenience? And how, just how, have we become so disconnected that we don’t realise how senseless this all is? Food literally grows on trees! How has any human ever let a single child go without a single meal? Seriously…how did we get here?
I returned home feeling depleted, defeated and downright depressed. All of my profound thoughts continued to reverberate around my skull, the overarching theme continuing to be, “what the bloody fuck have we done?”
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[1] A common thought I’ve had while in Malawi, you can read my reflections on the clutch of Christianity here
This piece is part of an ongoing series, ‘Musings in Malawi’, where I reflect on the effects of poverty, colonisation, climate change and more in one of Africa’s poorest regions, Chikwawa. I am here volunteering for an incredible non-profit, DIN Malawi, and raising funds to help empower HIV/AIDS effected groups. Please consider donating to provide food security and income generation for some of Malawi’s most stigmatised.