The meeting

11 July 2010

The issues were hard. They were coated with history, painted with disadvantage
and dripping with personality. We were 10 or 12 people, mostly the elders of the
village coming together to figure out how we are going to use the next 9 days to
prepare for the arrival of 13 Canadian visitors.

Nothing had been done to prepare for this group except that there had been 2
previous, successful experiences. Vanier College had already sent 2 groups of
students to stay in the village in the 2 previous years and both the hosts and the
visitors had marvelled at the richness of the experience.

Makupo is a small rural village right beside the main M1 highway that runs
from north to south in Malawi. Like most of rural Malawi, there is a lot of
unemployment, and a constant struggle to make ends meet in a subsistence
economy tacked on to the big business of estate farming. More than ¾ of the
population lives in these rural areas and many are much more remote and
underdeveloped than Makupo which has already begun to shine in the district as
a bit of a model village.

The elders who had come together for the meeting were preparing to host
another educational study stay by students, this time from Bishop’s University.
There was a great deal of excitement on both sides to emulate the previous two
experiences but things were a bit different this time. There was supposed to have
been a guest house built by the time this large group arrived. Previously, the
visitors had stayed in 2 houses that well-to-do émigré relatives had renovated for
the special guests to stay in. Most village people were too shy to have foreigners
stay in their modest houses so these ‘big’ houses were an effective way to
accommodate the needs of both the hosts and the hosted. The new guest house
had not been built for a variety of reasons, so now all sorts of arrangements had
to be made to accommodate the largest group to date.

With the obvious talent in the room and the willingness to work together, and
with the success of the previous 2 visits, the villagers were determined to show
that they were competent to run their own affairs and to repeat success of the 2
previous visits.

Peter was there and contributing; and even better, he became my indispensable
translator. In the past he avoided the planning meetings and this allowed him to
come after and complain that he had been left out or was being discriminated
against. He is so talented in English and the translations so instantaneous,
fluent and accurate that I felt like the late dictator, Kamuzu Banda, who always
addressed “his people” in English with the aid of one of his ministers who
translated into ChiChewa for his people to understand.

This is still an enterprise in its infancy and up until now I have been the motor
driving it. But this meeting was different. I laid everything on the table, the
budget, the problems, the issues and in the interest of accountability and
transparency explained how I couldn’t be the person responsible for the running
of the show and the handling of the money.

They responded magnificently. Duties were defined and the different people
assigned with lots of discussion about sharing the work and the revenue
equitably among the houses and between young and old. Thorny issues
were debated and resolved. Account keeping was arranged and the Makupo
Investments Limited which had been set up to serve the young farmers now
became an enterprise of the village. They were going to benefit collectively and
do it in one of the most cooperative spirits I had seen.

With their hands on the budget and knowing that the more they spent the less
they saved and earned, they got to work. By the next morning builders were
being selected to erect a kitchen, renovate a house and build beds, tables and
chairs. Bricks were bought, sand delivered and the 9 day countdown well under
control.

Most people would love to flee the hard work and poverty of village life. However,
the village folk are not there because they are lazy and incompetent. They
have many reasons for having chosen not to flee to the city. The decision to
remain in the rural areas nonetheless comes with a price and that is facing the
eternal cycle of subsistence living in an extremely unfavourable environment.
The Makupo people know that they have an opportunity to make some money
not available to many other communities like theirs and they knew what they had
to do to make it work. This meeting was on my 64th birthday and they gave me
the greatest present I could ever want.