I hope this meets you...

Written by Colleen Friesen

“…I’m the girl you met at Kande post office and I beg you to give me your address, kindly you agreed to my request and now I have decided to write you one…I lost my daddie last year…Hope that this letter meets you…I will be happy if you can visit me next time.”

The letter is on pale paper cut from a child-sized notebook. I smile at her reference to “next time”. She obviously has no idea how far away Malawi is from Canada. Later I would wonder how she knew there would be a next time.

In July 2001, my husband Kevin and I were on a five-week camping expedition through South Eastern Africa. We’d stopped at a campsite near the village of Kande on the seemingly endless shore of Lake Malawi. With our guide, Fraidom Savimba, our group walked a dirt trail to Kande Village. He showed us the hospital where the only doctor performed caesareans by kerosene lantern.

Our sandals scuffed the hard dirt floor in the one-room school with the not-so-black blackboard and no desks. The school was empty that day. Everyone was at the latest funeral. The poverty felt insurmountable. At the tiny post office, a young girl approached Kevin and asked him for his address.

That fall, her letter arrived. I reply to eleven-year old Kondwani Chirwa, sending coloured pencils, pens, paper and a photo of Kevin and myself.

May 2002
“It is like a dream having one from you. How happy I am to receive a letter from you …funny you wrote last year in November and got me today…my mommy is 34 years of age and is very happy for our friendship. I love to be writing to you.”

I send her a disposable camera with enough money for its return to Canada. Later, I send her the photos I’ve developed, keeping duplicates for our album. One picture shows her washing clothes in a blue bucket. I tuck them next to the photos of heaping restaurant dishes and well-dressed friends at my 42nd birthday party.

I start to notice stories about Malawi. There is a drought. Maize, the food staple, is becoming more expensive. People are dying. I learn that life expectancy is 37years. I am struck with the fact that I would likely be dead by now if I'd been born there.


January 2003
“…I am not losing hope. God is great,” writes Kondwani. She tells me she has passed her exams and wants to go to Secondary School, but “Mom said that she can’t afford to pay me (sic) school fees compared to her salary.”

I do some research. Malawi’s situation will get better if girls are educated. The birth rate will fall, infant deaths and disease diminish, economies and hygiene improve, and equality will gain ground. Although Malawi offers children free nursery and primary school, secondary school must be paid for.

Boarding schools are key. If girls stay at home and attend daytime school, they invariably end up helping with the endless duties of running a home, or becoming mothers as well. The median age for a Malawian woman’s first birth is 18 years old. On average she will have six children. But at boarding school, girls can focus on their education.

We write to offer help with school. Her mother, Hilda, finds a good boarding school about 1-½ hours north of their home. Sending money is complicated when banks insist on street addresses in a country with dirt roads and unnumbered houses. But eventually, each term, the approximate $200.00 USD gets to her school.

July 2004
I receive my first email from Kondwani’s mom. She has occasional access to the Internet at her church workplace where she makes about $50.00/month. Part of her message reads, “You give her future.” Her words sits full and heavy somewhere deep in my chest.

February 2006
Hilda ends her e-mail, “How is Kelvin (sic) and your family? This year we are facing famine, due to shortage of rainfall. People are dying with hunger.” I trace a finger around Kondwani’s photo on my fridge. Have I ever truly been hungry? I try not to feel helpless at the enormity of the crisis. I comfort myself with the knowledge that at least Kondwani will be fed at school.

August 2007

With Kondwani’s imminent graduation, Kevin and I decide that I should travel to Malawi to see her. My girlfriend Karen Judd kjudd@dccnet.com comes with me. I want to finally meet this young woman and her mother

We arrive amidst the latest scandal. The Form Four exams, which Kondwani is to write, have been leaked. Exams may be declared void, leaving graduates unable to apply for jobs or colleges until the government decides whether rewrites are required.

Malawi cannot afford this extra time. The country desperately needs teachers. There are already too many teaching positions filled with uneducated volunteers. According to the government’s figures of sixty students per classroom, the country has a shortage of 15,000 teachers. I later discover most classes actually average over one hundred students.

Driving from the capital city of Lillongwe to Kondwani’s school, the road shimmers in the heat. It is full. Not with cars, like the one being driven by our 26-year-old driver Jonathon Ng’oma, but with people. Endless streams of people.

Women walk with five-gallon pails of water balanced on their heads and babies snugged onto their backs in colourful cottons. Men pedal bicycles stacked with ridiculous loads of firewood. One man has cleverly strapped a yolk-yellow child’s chair onto his back rack. Its four shiny plastic legs straddle the rear tire.

The river of people never stops. Leaving houses constructed of homemade bricks with roofs of golden grass, villagers wend along worn paths that resemble game trails. Dusty stands made of found boards display tiny piles of potatoes or tomatoes for sale. The sharp smell of smoke is everywhere as farmers burn their fields in preparation for the next crop.

We enter through a guarded gate. The shards of glass embedded on top of the compound walls send spikes of light onto the soldiers’ guns. Form Four exams are going ahead while the government decides what to do.

A young teen approaches me, holding herself tightly. Her large dark eyes slide sideways and down to her feet.

I can barely hear her question, “Are you Colleen?”

I grin. “Kondwani?” I try to reconcile this young teen with the photos in my album.

Together we visit the headmaster, Mr. Zondiwe Nkhata. His desk and every available surface overflow with papers. He gestures at Kondwani, “I haven’t had time to talk to this young girl about her future. She is bright. She will likely pass but she must be assisted in the proper direction.”

The curtains blow into the room, scattering papers. He smoothes down the thin fabric and turns, “Kondwani. Take some chairs outside. Listen to what these people tell you to do with your future.”

Our driver Jonathan, Karen and I sit with seventeen-year-old Kondwani under a jacaranda’s lavender flowers. Her knuckles jammed in her mouth, she mumbles answers, eyes darting like a cornered cat.

“We visited your family yesterday. Your mom told us you want to be a nurse?” I lean in to hear her answer.

“No,” Kondwani shakes her head. “I want to be a lawyer.”

Jonathan speaks. “Dreams are fine, but your mom is the only wage earner in a household of nine. It is your obligation to help your family. In two years you can be a nurse or teacher. You must pick one. You must not get pregnant like your sister. There are to be no blunders.” I am amazed at this young man’s bluntness with a girl he has just met.

I’m also very grateful. His willingness to speak to the heart of things is a godsend. With everyone we’ve encountered, our white privilege, and the resulting power that is conferred upon us, comes in the door long before we do, effectively silencing the room. Like our visit with her mother and family the night before, conversations feel like we’re conducting an interrogation. But having spent days driving with this independent young man, we have managed to become friends. He has appointed himself as our go-between.

He tries again, “I wanted to be a doctor. I could not afford that dream. Instead I drive tourists and help pay for my sister to go to nursing school. It’s what we must do.” Earlier, Jonathan had told Karen and I that his government is fast tracking nurse and teacher training to help fill the extreme shortages. Education for lawyers and doctors takes much longer; resulting in a double cost of extra tuition funds and a longer time without work.

Kondwani hangs onto the arms of her chair. I smell her sharp sweat.

Desperate to relieve the tension, I lean towards Kondwani, “Can Karen and I see where you sleep?”

Kondwani leads us past brick buildings housing 800 students. Fifteen sets of bunk beds fill her small dorm. It smells of flesh, heat and earth. Clothes hang from the rafters. I look for bureaus or closets, and then realize. They aren’t necessary.

Kondwani is smiling now as her friends shout and tease her about her mzungu visitors. She jumps up to her bunk, and, at their urging, poses for my photo - just a teenage girl having fun with her friends.

She stands tall. Her compact body looks strong; a gorgeous girl with beautiful eyes, big dreams and so little chance of any of them being realized.

I want to push back the mortality rate with one hand and pull her forward with the other. I want her to speak to me, really speak to me, instead of fearing me. I want her to fight to become a confident and strong young woman. I want to be a real friend, not a white woman whose hotel rooms for two nights cost more than her mother makes in almost eight months. I don’t want her secondary education to grant her only the possibility of a job so she can be just another paycheque.

I want her to realize her dreams.

But it doesn’t matter what I want. These things are not within my power. What I can do is to be a witness to her life and to continue to support her financially when she decides what she wants, or more correctly, what she can afford to want.

I take her picture. Dreams, if you’re growing up in Malawi, are for later.

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