Building hope from scratch

Rainer Mueller, German Ambassador to Malawi, is an honest man; one who acknowledges past mischief to link up to his present success.
“I used to run away from school, or skip some lessons, when I was doing Primary School back home,” reveals a man who now talks, and Malawi listens.
When he earlier last month shared his impressions of Malawi’s economic performance, and described it as hot-blooded, Capital Hill surely jumped with excitement at the positive voice of a man who rarely appraises government’s performance in public.
Mueller was lucky, though, because he later realized the importance of consistency in one’s school attendance and performance. Once he did that, he never looked back, while some of his peers fell into that childhood trap of coming to hasty conclusions and taking things for granted.
Conventional wisdom has it that we must think before we speak, and read before we think. That way, we will be able to think about something we don’t make up ourselves- a wise move at any age, but most especially before the Teens, when we are at the constant danger of coming to annoying conclusions.
Under-12s rarely get this, and end up skipping some lessons, or running away from school altogether. Quiet strange that Mueller, whose name never gets mentioned without the preceding, or accompanying, His Excellency title now, caught the drift of this wisdom at quiet a tender age, and new that school was the real future.
Fast-forward to 2009. The German Ambassador had a call of duty on Tuesday, October 27, and the place was Nangungu Primary School in the area of Senior Chief Makanjira, Mangochi. To reach his destination, he had to leave Lilongwe, the hub of diplomatic missions in Malawi, a bit earlier.
He saw a myriad of school pupils along the way, as he took the occasional glimpse through the window, to appreciate the greens around the countryside. It takes 1-and-a-half hour to travel 110 kilometres from Mangochi Boma to Makanjira. The road is half way tarred half way dust.
It was not the green he saw along the way that fascinated him; it was the children he saw walking to various schools, probably long-distance schools, that touched him. Because they reminded him of the past, when he could manage to skip some lessons without much ado.
He saw resolve in these Malawian children; the will to succeed. Back home, in Germany, they have the resources; it’s just that some children take those facilities for granted. They sit in the classroom and think about watching Television at home, or playing with home computers. They are in (state-of-the-art class rooms), yes, but their thoughts are elsewhere, outside.
In Malawi, the pupils have no resources. They have the will, for sure, and want to remain inside (the class room). Poverty and learning materials’ inadequacies force them out.
“In Africa, education means the future. That is what I have observed so far during my stay in Malawi. Education means the whole future to many people in this part of the world. In Europe the situation is different: we have the resources and everything, but people are increasingly thinking that education is nothing, a waste of time. I am touched by the spirit here,” Mueller told community members who gathered at Nangungu that Tuesday.
The community members, including traditional leaders and Member of Parliament for the area (Mangochi North constituency) Ibrahim Matola, were here to witness the handover ceremony of a school block by the German NGO, Reisende Werkschule Scholen. The organization’s Founder and Co-Chairman, Michael Von Studnitz, found bush where now stands Nangungu Primary School some six years ago.
Pupils were going to Mpilipili Primary School, some three kilometres from Nangungu. Through his organization, which started working in Malawi in 2001, pupils can now go to school within their vicinity. Not only that, the United Nations Children’s Fund saw that school blocks now stood where once lay pastureland, and drilled a borehole. Development begot more development, portable water for people.
The work of Reisende Werkschule Scholen is a puzzle, too, because the German children who do the construction work are themselves school drop outs back home. Drop outs who are helping in improving infrastructure development for Malawian pupils, while they found school useless and tiresome back home. Some life’s little puzzles are too ironic to behold.
“We are happy to contribute towards the development of Malawi through infrastructure development. Many things matter in education, top of which is the learning environment, availability of learning materials as well as distance from home to school. Without these, it will be an uphill task to meet the Millennium Development Goals and the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy,” said Studnitz.
Studnitz observed that Mangochi has for a long time topped the list of districts with high illiteracy rates, and said government could not manage to do all by itself.
Nangungu Primary School, like a little dream, is a junior primary school with classes from Standard 1-4. Studnitz and German children want it to grow, like a dream that comes to fruition, and become a full primary school.
They also want to promote cultural exchange. Studnitz felt that Malawi had a great culture. But so, too, is Germany. He said from the unrelenting Malawian spirit, one that prospers in inadequacy, the world could learn to use the little it has and change lives for the better.
Matola, like the community members who did traditional dances, was thrilled. He acknowledged that government could not do all the donkey work without external assistance. Education, like all other sectors dependent on government spending, is under- funded. This goes contrary to the ever-growing population of pupils and students, further stretching scanty resources.
This has made the day shorter for most pupils and students, as schools start running two or three shifts of classes to accommodate them.
“This is a time bomb,” said Matola.