Kalimira

VILLAGE MZATI: Maseni Yohane

“I want my sisters to finish their education and go far. One day I know they will be helping me.”

In any other family, the competition between Maseni Yohane's younger sisters for academic supremacy in their seventh grade class might seem a bit extreme. But Maseni laughs with pride as she remembers the girls' most recent argument.

“They are always position one. They were debating yesterday at home – they even refused food – one said, I am going to be number one! And the other said, no, it's me!”

School was hardly a priority in her own childhood.

When Maseni was in high school, her mother, an HIV-positive divorcee, became very weak and sent Maseni to live with an uncle. Another daughter was sent to work in the house of a teacher at a nearby primary school. For the six years of her mother's convalescence, Maseni's sister worked during the very hours she might have been in school. Only the youngest, a toddler, stayed at home and started school.

Maseni paid her own way through tenth grade. But after a year, she was sent back to live with her mother, where there was no longer any chance to go back to school.

After Maseni had her first child, she dreamed of bringing her younger sisters to live with her and, when her mother died, she finally did.

Maseni's husband said they could stay on one condition: “He said they must go to school.”

Today, both girls, one 11 and the other 16, attend seventh grade at a primary school outside of Kalimira. They worried Kalimira Primary School wouldn't prepare them for Malawi's rigorous high school entrance exams and they decided to walk an extra 20 minutes to a different school.

Learning of CARE's plans to attract more women teachers to Kalimira's school, Maseni has hope that, by the time her own daughter is old enough for first grade, Kalimira Primary will be ready for her.

“Besides CARE, there has never been any organization that brought development – the developments you may see here, we made happen ourselves.” – Felious Mlongoti Nkhunum, senior group village headman, Kalimira.

Over a hundred years ago, the founders of Kalimira settled on these plains at the base of Chimwala Hill. They dug a chamber in the hillside and kept a lookout for raiding warriors from the southeast. Many miles from their nearest allies in the region, the people of Kalimira stood on their own.

“When we came here, we were the strongest group,” says Felious. “The chief in Santhe decided that we could stand on our own and be secure.”

And so it is today. Though Kalimira has grown into one of the largest villages in Kasungu, assistance from the government and international organizations has been scarce. True to character, rather than wait for development to come to them, the people of Kalimira have set about forging their own future.

Next to the school blocks stand five teachers' houses, all of them built by local volunteers. Four of them have iron roofs, something of a status symbol in rural Malawi and paid for out of community funds.

In the past, women were relegated to the sidelines when it came to development in Kalimira.

“Now women take part in development,” Felious says. When there is building to do the women “fetch water, provide sand for cement and carry thatch” for roofs.