(An account of a short-term missionary’s adventures installing wells in Africa. Seven of eight parts.)
What was it like in those villages, far from cities? Several things stood out. The sexes were firmly segregated in all circumstances. At well dedications the men sat distinctly apart from the women, who gathered together with the small children. Adolescent boys stood in their own sullen cliques, as they inevitably do. The great majority of village gatherings contained a nursing mother or two, completely uninhibited in doing what nursing mothers do, unslinging nourishment at their offsprings’ first whimper.
I quizzed Edwin, my Malawian handler, relentlessly on social issues, such as whether many of these children were the product of unwed unions. He seemed surprised by the inquiry, as though such a thing was not discussed in polite society. He admitted that ‘those things happen’ and the fathers were required by strong village mores to support their offspring and by the courts if that pressure was insufficient. He asked if that sort of thing occurred in America and, if so, who supported the child. I sighed and explained our government’s determination to extinguish the nuclear family through its cornucopia of welfare programs from the cradle to the grave. In Malawi, at least, the family structure was intact and strong, and the elderly esteemed.
The villagers were people of faith, too. The opening prayer at each well dedication was met with heartfelt amens, and hymns were lifted regularly during long walks to the well-sites. The many churches throughout the countryside emitted the sounds of choir practice during our evening drives home.
Women did the work of the home. At well dedications, where the wells were activated after a brief tutorial, the women paid rapt attention to the instructions – how to pump, how to care for the well, what to do if something went wrong. The men? Men, not so much. Getting water was women’s work, they uniformly conveyed. Oh, they realized that clean water was a good thing, and when momma ain’t happy, no one was happy, but for the most part how the water got from point A to point B was a task for the fairer sex.
Men did the work of the field. Edwin informed me that “There are no jobs or money in Malawi. Most families get by as subsistence farmers.” Surrounding each village was vast hand-tilled acreage, carefully tended by men and boys who methodically turned the soil using simple sharpened tools. Neat rows of green beans and tomatoes framed the villages, all ripened during three growing seasons in fertile soil. Some families made a living by burning fallen trees, then sacked and carried the resulting coal to the market in town.
Kids were kids. Though dirt poor and without the gewgaws and electronics which American children seem to have glued to them at birth, they made do with the scantest of home-made toys. The boys kicked soccer balls made out of leaves and old string. The girls made dolls out of palm fronds and bits of discarded fabric. All the kids sang and shouted, social in a way American kids seem to be drifting away from. Education is a precious thing in Malawi. Each village contained schools throbbing with activity. The kids – though most of the young ones were without shoes and wore ragged clothing – were happily engaged in classrooms where rote memorization was the key method of learning. Schools weren’t free; a year in a public-school costs $200, serious money in a land where per capita income is $500 a year.
This may seem odd, but the color red was everywhere – the soil was rich in iron and when oxidized glowed scarlet. In the dry season, which has very little greenery, the land was a vivid backdrop for the simple brick and mud homes which dotted the landscape. Poverty, of course, was everywhere, but different. Due to termites, there were no wooden structures to decay and collapse like they do in rural Mississippi. Very little trash blew about since there were no convenience stores around to sell packaged snacks, and certainly no ‘Wal-Mart bags’ cluttering the fields since there were…no Wal-Marts.
I asked Edwin where the homeless in Malawi lived? He didn’t know what ‘homeless’ meant, so I explained it. He said to look carefully in each village – no one was homeless. Everyone, even the poorest of the poor, was known and taken in by his neighbors, many of whom were close relatives.
Up next week: Entangled in language
Jeff Weill is a senior status judge living in Jackson.
