Day's Diary

March 15 , 2007 ~ Illiteracy& Poverty

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Illiteracy and poverty are part of the fabric of life here in Malawi. This is among the 10 poorest nations in the world. All I have to do is walk to the market place to see it or listen to the stories of the vendors who come to my door to understand it. Sometimes, though, the reality of it comes crashing in, not waiting to be seen or understood. That was the case Wednesday.

Medson, my fruit vendor, is responsible for raising his younger sister and brother. He is 23. They are 4 and 7, respectively. He goes off everyday to sell fruit to anyone who will buy it, to earn enough money to house and feed them and to send his brother to school. He has an elementary level education himself but left school to help support the family when their mother died. Their father had died the year before. He has a friend who stays with his sister while he is off selling. This friend is ill and is illiterate.  Monday, his sister drank something she found in the kitchen. It was poison, but the man staying with her didn’t know that because he couldn’t read the labeling on the bottle. Medson stopped in at lunch time and found his sister very ill. When he saw what she had drunk, he rushed her to the local hospital. They did what they could for her, but since he had little money to pay, they said there was little they could do. They pumped her stomach and then gave her an IV, as he tells the story. They kept her for observation, but they needed K2,000 (about $15) for her treatment and stay. He came to me. I couldn’t turn him away. He has been keeping me posted on her progress. Tuesday, his older brother came down from Mangochi, their village, with money to take her to a hospital in Blantyre. I gave Medson money for transportation. He was hopeful that they could help her. He called me about 1 p.m. Wednesday to say that she had died. This was not what he was expecting. He was in tears, explaining that they had spent all of their money on the hospital and now they had to bury her. He is so shaken and filled with guilt, because he was responsible for her and he wasn’t there to protect her. When I met him at he minibus stop, we talked and I prayed with him, but he is struggling, obviously. I gave him the K4,500 (about $35) to bury his sister. I will hardly miss the money, but it will make a world of difference to him and to his family.

This is very sad, but the even sadder element of this is that this is not an isolated case. There are deaths like this every day, all over Malawi. No, maybe not from drinking poison, but from the poison of poverty: from polluted water, from lack of medicine, from lack of food, the list of causes goes on. They are all related to illiteracy and poverty. And it is a cycle — one feeds the other. Because of the inability to read, one can’t get much of a job. Without a job, there is no money for food or for schooling to learn to read. And so it goes around and around. And people are caught in the cycle and they die, like Medson’s little sister. That is the part of Malawi that is hard to look at. And it is everywhere.

There is a sense in which we feel we are isolated from it in the college, or at least we do not see it as readily, until it knocks at our door. Everyone here can read; students are paid a stipend to study and prepare for the ministry. Staff at all levels enjoy employment and can buy the basic needs of life. They are among the less than 30% of the population that have full-time employment. While salaries are not high, at least there is a salary. We get caught up in studying theology and church history and all the things that make for educated pastors. We read without thought. We tend to take this for granted, until something happens to someone we know, like Medson and his little sister. Then we remember the conditions in which we are living. We are reminded that Malawi is a hard place to live. There is illiteracy and poverty and there is death all around us.