Le Voyage: Kasungu!

 

Le Voyage: Kasungu!



How can I ever forget Kasungu. Kasungu Introduced me to my passion. I had my first significant Job in Kasungu. Spending almost 80% of my time working in rural communities and with locals was fulfilling. I had found my true passion.

Let me take you back. When I had heard that I got that job in Kasungu I was over the moon. I was going to work to bring back school drop outs to school. I was called the Out of School Child Specialist. What’s more fulfilling than helping others? This job was gold!

I remember the day I was leaving Zomba (a small and beautiful city) for Kasungu, I believed I felt like the children of Israel leaving Egypt for Canaan. I believed in the good that was to come from working with those children. I had never been to Kasungu. Ofcourse I was told it was not easy to find a house to rent in Kasungu. Indeed, weeks before I left, I tried all I could to have friends in Kasungu find me a house but to no avail. Luckily a friend of a friend offered me to stay in their house until I got a job. I arrived at night. I was too exhausted to notice what the small town was like. I boarded a bus from Zomba. I took a taxi cab from the depot. Along the way, I had noticed the office was just 5 minutes away from the bus depot. For almost 30 minutes I was still in the cab. We had not yet gotten to the house. For a minute, I was bothered. The distance was too long. No wonder the taxi driver charged me a lot of money. I couldn’t afford to be paying that much on a daily basis. The only option for me then was a bicycle taxi. These are very common in Kasungu and on the face of it, a major means of transportation.

Almost 40 minutes later I arrived at the house. It was a village far away from town. It was some sort of a community for locals.  My hosts were warm people. Very welcoming. They had already prepared food for me the time I arrived. I had Nsima and chicken that night.  It was a nice meal which was prepared “locally”. And they prepared a warm place for me to sleep. I slept on a mattress in a room with two other members of the house. I couldn’t help but notice that the house had no electricity. My laptop and phone batteries were all out.  Anyway I looked forward to going to work the next morning.

There is this African proverb that says, where a rooster crows, there is a village. I don’t know what it means๐Ÿ˜€ but hey I was reminded in the morning that I was indeed in a village. cock-a-doodle-do! cock-a-doodle-do! cock-a-doodle-do! A rooster kept making this crowing noise outside until I irritatingly crawled out of my mattress. I think it was crowing on my window. I have no idea really, maybe I was just too tired. I went outside to take a bath. The bathroom was just a few yards from the house and was built with plastic papers all around with no rooftop. It was one very cold bath and to make it worse, it was raining. I didn’t spend a minute there. I was freezing. I had to get ready for work. I didn’t take breakfast because I was still full from the previous night. Or perhaps I was just excited for the day.

Going to work was harder than I imagined. I had to get a bicycle taxi which took almost 50 minutes. Honestly, I did not look forward to going back to the house. I immediately embarked on a house hunt mission. It was frustrating I must say. I found a house after almost 3 weeks. This was all a result of persistence and determination, otherwise, it could have taken longer. The house I found was about 10 minutes away from the office. It was huge a relief. Distance was a priority as I didn’t care of the condition of the house. It wasn’t easy getting a house that near to town and work. The house was in a compound of three houses with a shared bathroom and toilet outside. Every morning I had to deal with either a que to the bathroom or the mess kids next door left in the toilet.  It was not pleasing at all!

I hardly cooked at home. Staying alone, I had little desire to cook. I mostly ate out and came home to sleep. But whenever I cooked, one of my neighbors asked if I could share them the food. I did. At times I shared food items before she even asked. She had three kids with her husband whom she stayed with. He had no job while she worked as a cleaner at one of the private hospitals in town. The couple always fought. Almost every night. We could all hear every single word from their arguments.  Every night the woman came back from work, she had to start from scratch to prepare food for the family. She was also the first one to wake up to do the house chores and prepare food for the day (breakfast and lunch) before she left for work. She would always tell the husband that it would be nice, if he could help a little. She often told him how tired she was of him sitting around all day doing nothing while she did everything.  I felt for the woman but I didn’t want to be a nosy neighbor.


Well, another rough part of Kasungu was the journey to my working sites. How to get to these communities was quite a pain.  I worked in almost 13 communities, most of which were about an hour's drive or more. There was no other way to get there for work apart from riding motorcycles. I was forced to learn how to ride one. I remember my first week of riding alone, my supervisor rode pillion on my motorcycle. As I was riding in the middle of the jungle, I encountered a pile of sand. I lost control of the bike and we both found ourselves in the sand. Immediately we fell, I laughed out loud. A lot! And to my relief, so did my supervisor. This was the beginning of those motorcycle rides to rural communities to impact lives!

The really enjoyable moments in Kasungu were on the ground.  Working in and with local communities was a delight.  It was quite an experience working with school dropouts from various backgrounds. They were kids who dropped out of primary school for various reasons. The dropout rate of girls in Kasungu was alarming. Most girls opted to get married. The major trap was tobacco season. Once farmers sold their Tobbacco and earned some money, most girls aspired to get married for the money. It was saddening. It was even sadder, to see children dropping out of school because of poverty at home: Boys being made bread winners for the home at a very early stage and Girls being forced to drop out to help the family earn little money for food at home. There and then my passion was nurtured. I wanted to help girls and boys in rural communities. I wanted to mentor. I wanted to inspire. I wanted to find solutions to the gap in education. I wished for so many things. I had found my dream. I had found my career path. Most importantly I had found my passion! ๐Ÿ˜Š






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