Many times I have dreamed of running away, running away to a dream land. When I watched movies I saw people living easy lives, owning things that most people in Malawi dream of having, for instance expensive and recent cars, beautiful apartments, good nutrition, and interesting towns with attractive buildings. When I look at the problems at home I sometimes feel like there is no life, like God abandoned us. Why am I not in America or Europe? There is just so much to do here, everything is difficult to get, and I can’t get any of my dream things easily. I work everyday but something always comes in its way to sabotage it.
Everyday I see a problem in my face at any place. At home there is not enough money to buy all necessary groceries and pay bills, at work the progress is going at snail’s pace, sometimes spending the whole week without doing anything. Even though I stay in a town 4 hours away from my family, family politics still find me at my hideout; prices of commodities are growing higher every day. And there are the people I see everyday suffering from deadly diseases which could be prevented. I see them die everyday and I cannot do much to save them. Every effort I put forward meets a strong downward force that proves it futile. I see the government and NGOs planning projects that are designed to fail, and they proceed to implement them. Sometimes I sit in board rooms with program designers who are getting rich designing programs meant to keep NGOs longer among the poor with impossible goals.
There are a lot of problems that take away my sleep. For a decade I dreamed of running away, hoping to save myself from this heartache. Lately I have started thinking critically about why I was chosen to take a path that gives me this heartache. Why am I among all these problems? Out of all these places and nationalities why am I a Malawian? There must be a reason I can’t find a chance to run away. I have searched and dreamed for a getaway to a place that can help me forget all these problems. But the truth is there isn’t any. I am in the right place at the right time.
I have realized that it is a good sign to have a heartache about all the problems around me. There is no way I can have the energy and motivation to fulfill my purpose (which is still not clear to me) if I didn’t feel uncomfortable about this situation. Doctors are trained to press until it hurts in order to know where the problem is. The problems have pressed and I feel the pinch now; it is my turn to start pressing too, to apply small changes, advocate, and think about seriously saving the world. The only place I can be productive now is the environment I was born into and have grown up in. The problems I am seeing now didn’t start yesterday but many years before. I can say I was getting prepared to face them.
I strongly doubt that I could make enough impact to save more people in the USA than in Malawi, a lot has already been done there. I live in a country with a population of 15 million, 80% subsistence farmers and more than 50% of people illiterate. The poverty stricken communities usually experience the highest rate of malaria, maternal and neonatal deaths compared to the few rich people. I see they are deprived of power to take care of themselves, they don’t receive appropriate or enough information to uplift their households and communities. Most of the people serving them have no passion to help them but only desire to enrich their own families.
When I look at the problem I am not sure where I can start and how I am going to do it, but I feel it is necessary to help my country develop. The problem goes as far as corrupt and insecure minds among program designers, implementers, beneficiaries and donors. We need to transform the thinking of all people starting from donors to beneficiaries. Others have started; it is our duty to support development.
