tanya 2

1^st June 2009

We began our first day at the crisis nursery today. Volunteering we gathered will involve anything from helping with keeping records up to date to cleaning and holding and feeding babies. So we set off pretty early from the World Camp and walked across the old town area to catch a mini-van. It is rather like hailing a rickshaw or a matatu (city hoppas RULE!) but to my American friends I must describe this. As the name suggests ths vans seat about 14 people and have little ‘conductors’ most often young men aged anywhere between 15 to 25. Anyway they scream out the area they are traveling to and if that is where you are going you just hail one and hop aboard. People are most likely to stop and stare because our American attire and shoes and bags stick out like sore thumbs (as does our skin colour. Most azungus (whites) and brown people are just NOT seen in mini vans) This was pretty eventful and stops at the main road in Area 47 Chigoneke Road. From there it’s a long 15-20 minute walk to the crisis nursery. Another thing, it is winter for Malawians and they all have light sweaters and caps and then theres us 4 American students in our vile Clark t-shirts.hahah. I think it is funny.

Anyway the crisis nursery was quick to welcome us with the screams, the gurgles and other various sounds. The nursery is impeccably managed in terms of caregivers and baby food and medicine schedules, follow-ups with the babies families etc. Mawi, a quiet and efficient is the stronghold of the nursery administration. It really is a task and a job that requires much dedication. The head nurse Alica was explaining to us that she had just retired from the Ministry of Health but could have continued to work in the city or one of the hospitals if she chose to. Instead many of these women come from over an hour away often walking to be at the Crisis Nursery located in an in-road to care for these children.

A look inside the nursery will present a happy calmness that hides the tragic stories of a lot of these pretty little children. They are clean and fresh, dressed in their donated American clothes that say things like ‘Daddy’s little girl’ and play with American soft toys and dolls. Many of these children mothers died during childbirths. In some cases, the grieving fathers and families have merely been unable to emotionally and financially provide a substitute for breast milk and hence the kids are brought to the nursery until someone can commit to care for them or until they are able to subsist on the porridge their families can afford.

Today was long and caring for the babies consumed most of our time. The nursery receives a lot of its aid from American churches and the financial crisis has had effects on the donations. As a result the nursery has had to cut down the number of children it admits.

2^nd June 2009

Our day started today with an interview with NOVAC (Network of Orphaned and Vulnerable Children) It was proposed by the Ministry of Gender and Childrens Welfare. As such the organization functions all over the country co-coordinating with international organizations, non-governmental organizations and community based organizations. It .operates around 4 to 5 thematic areas; Networking, Capacity Building, Advocacy and Resource Mobilisation, HIV/AIDS focus with emphasis on food security. It now supports district networks in order to ensure the basic needs of these children are met and they do not take to the streets and prostitution etc in areas like Chtipa, Salima,Mchinji etc.

Networking: NOVAK helps with financial management and infrastructure which results in capacity building. Many small startup NGO’s have very limited resources or even basic ideas about how to maintain financial records etc and make themselves more attractive to donors for ex: Some of them do not even have basic knowledge to write grants and NOVAK helps with this.

Advocacy: They advocate in order to influence government policies on the ground to ensure good practices are being adopted. So it basically targets policy makers and legislators.

For example: They are currently pressuring the government to allocate money for education of orphans and forcing them to put part of an annual budget regarding this.

Also, they influence government to waive user fees. Basically, although Malawian private education is essentially free the school often does not even have the basic resources or money to build infrastructure so it asks students for ‘user’ fees which basically means the student pays for the watchman, a new building, notebooks and hence ends up paying more than even a subsidized school fee would be!

They also advocate more for bursary fees in order to pay for orphans high school fees.

I asked about AID dependency and Cuthbert admitted that it was a problem that plagues the Malawian system .So part of what NOVAK does is making NGO’s reliant on a) themselves and b) local resources so that if the International organizations and churches decide to leave they can still operate (at least on a managerial level) by themselves.

International Sponsors’ help is advocated for issues like Prostitution and Jobs before 16.

NOVOC signed a memorandum of Understanding with the Mutharikas governement which stipulated the actions and roles of each party in their interdependent search for an end to these problems. This troubled me slightly because if it was merely another arm of the government who is to say that it could act independently and counter to governmental interests.