Start of School

The day before I started teaching I thought it would be a good idea to cut my hair. About half way through the battery of my haircutting machine died, that’s when I realized that I didn’t bring my charger. Luckily Henry was able to help out with a machine. In Malawi, because of the many power cuts, people often have to go home with half a haircut from the barber. Now I experienced this as well for a couple hours…

The next day school started for me. First we had a meeting with Levi, he explained some general things about the school, the school system in Malawi, and some more information we should know, for instance about the Gule Wamkulu (later more on this). As I mentioned in an earlier post, the teacher to student ration in Malawi is 1:80. One of the reasons for this shortage of teachers is, that universities in all of Malawi only provide study places for about 3000 students per year. This includes all kinds of studies (including secondary teachers). In many private schools, there are teachers teaching who actually don’t have the right qualifications to teach. Most students therefore try to get into public secondary schools, which are subsidized by the government (only the food has to be paid by the students). However, only the best 10-20 % of the students get selected for public schools. Many of the others cannot afford to go to secondary school. Hence, William Kamkwamba’s story happens often in Malawi, that kids just get books from the library and study material on their own. Here is a short summary of William’s story, so that you get an idea of the story that I am always talking about:

In a local newspaper (“Nation on Sunday”), they came up with a “basic needs basket” of rural primary school teachers. The cost for food (for a six person family; remember that the average of kids per woman in Malawi is 6) adds up to 65,000 Kwacha, if you add other very basic materials it comes to about 84,000 Kwacha. On average, the take home pay of a primary school teacher is about 47,000 Kwacha… Better not tell anybody how much I make during the time that I teach here. It’s absurd.

Levi also tells us a bit about politics, and the problems with politics in Malawi. One of the major issues is, that politicians, once in power just want to secure their power. What gets them a lot of votes in the short term, is to subsidize fertilizer for the farmers (remember that about 80 % of the population are farmers). Education shows its fruits only many years after investments have been made. That’s why education programs often get stuck. From what I can tell so far I have to say that Malawi has not exactly been blessed with great political leader. Not Kamuzu Banda, not Muluzi, not Bingu, and not Joyce Banda. We will have to see about Mutharika. At least the freedom of speech is a reality here. The politically highly critical play of Thoko Kapiri (“Story of the Tiger”) is a success, and newspapers also freely point to the corruption and bad or even disastrous leadership of political leaders. This is something that was not the case under Muluzi or Kamuzu Banda, for instance. There, people were beaten or imprisoned just for having a different opinion.

In the Afternoon I join one of Gift’s classes (Gift is one of the two teachers who teaches English), which I will take over on Wednesday. In total I will have ten English lessons, apart from the sport program. I am excited to start teaching myself.