Village Visits

Mitundu is only an hour from Lilongwe, but it is worlds away. To get there you drive on progressively smaller and bumpier roads, past fields of maize and cassava, past small mud brick homes and village water pumps. Because the villagers we were visiting are members of FINCOOP, they are able to save money and access credit, and although they are poor, they have enough to eat – they have food, clothing and shelter, but not a lot more. We pulled up to the village in our white MUSCCO truck, and were greeted by women singing and dancing. As Violet and I joined in, I thought to myself: “This is it”. This is it! I finally figured out what I want to do with my life, I went back to IPMP for a year to learn how to do it, and now I’m in Africa, wearing a chitenje, dancing with women in a village and talking to people about Gender and AIDS. This is what I want to do. This moment has been the highlight of Malawi thus far.

We drove out to Mitundu to talk to the Mtawa Farmer’s club about the issues and challenges of HIV/AIDS and Gender. The farmer’s club is a member of FINCOOP, one of the SACCOs that Violet and I are helping to develop policies on HIV/AIDS and Gender. We have been doing interviews with the FINCOOP Board of Directors, Management and Staff, and now we are in the process of talking to the members – the owners, if you will – to see what they feel are the challenges of HIV/AIDS and Gender and what FINCOOP can put in a policy that will help them.

I shook everyone’s hand and said “muli bwanji” to everyone and just loved the fact that I was there at that moment. We sat in chairs and benches in a rough circle in the centre of the houses, with women on one side and men on the other. Violet, Moses, Innocent and I sat at the ‘head’ of the circle and Innocent lead the discussion, while Violet and I took notes and listened, and Moses translated for me. I really like the approach we took – because FINCOOP is a Co-operative, the members are the owners and therefore we came to ask our bosses their views on HIV/AIDS and Gender. What do they feel are the issues, what are their challenges and what can we learn from them. I was wondering how we might be received, driving in in a big, white, truck – city folk who have come to teach the villagers. But it wasn’t like that at all. We were so well received, and everyone was really receptive and interested in what we wanted to talk about. There were about twice as many men as women involved in the discussion, and although we specifically encouraged the women to speak their views, they weren’t quite as vocal as the men. That being said, if a heated debate got going, they were in there just as much as anyone!

We began by asking what people already knew about HIV/AIDS and Gender. I was really impressed and people really seemed to know a lot, although there were some obvious misconceptions. Our meeting kind of turned into a bit of an education session on these topics as well, which I think was great.

An interesting point that came up and the lively debate that followed centred on the issue of chiwerewere and chigololo. Chiwerewere is having pre-martial sex with a number of different partners, and chigololo is having an extra-marital affair. Some people seemed to think that you could get HIV from chiwerewere but not from chigololo. Interesting. There are clearly some misconceptions and a lack of understanding from a biomedical science angle, but interesting nonetheless. People were however quite educated on ways that HIV was transmitted other than that. It’s good to see that this is nothing they haven’t heard before.

On the topic of Gender, people were also very knowledgeable about the fact that women can do men’s work and men can do women’s work, and that everyone is equal, but there seems to be a stalling point in the fact that men would never actually do women’s work and vice versa. People say it is an issue of culture. This is true, and it is also true that culture is dynamic and can change. We cannot change our biological roles, but we can change our cultural roles. It is a slow process, and one that has to be done on one’s own terms, but it can be done. I have a lot of thoughts going on in my head about behaviour change and culture change, but I think I’ll save that for another educational post.

We also went to visit a couple other co-operative groups as well - the Gulliver Women’s Club in Lilongwe and the Tasintha Co-operative Society out in a village called Namitete. Unfortunately the meeting with Gulliver was quite small, as we had our timing off and many of the women were at work, but the meeting with Tasintha was equally as interesting as Mitundu. A lot of the same issues came up, which indicates that some of the challenges that people are facing are not isolated to one area.

I am very motivated at the moment – motivated about the work that we are doing, motivated by how it is going and motivated about the fact that I love doing it! I feel like I’ve pasted the hump of floundering and not knowing what I was doing like I was feeling in the first weeks that I was here. There is a plan, and it feels good.


Violet, Moses and Me with Tasintha Co-operative Society