ICS Malawi

Tapiwa’s thoughts

A national volunteer’s initial thoughts of the UK volunteers 

After being chosen I and my fellow volunteers had some fears and expectations. One of our fears was what our fellow UK volunteers would be like, and if they would get to like us or not. We wondered how we would interact as it would be the first time we were meeting each other.

Starting as my competitors during the recruitment exercise, Taonga Kamanga, Memory Msowoya, Richard Munthali, Kennedy Nkhata and Chiza Kumwenda have been a strong team since being told that we were successful to work as national volunteers for Progressio. After our pre-placement orientation training the team got stronger. Our common fear was how we would get along with the UK volunteers. Most of us, if not all, had fears on what type of UK volunteers we were going to have. Our negative thinking was crashed after the first meeting with them.

Arrival in Malawi

After a long and tiring journey, we volunteers from the UK spent our first five days in Malawi, in the capital Lilongwe, where we met our Malawian counterparts and had our in-country orientation. We have bonded well as a group and are looking forward to getting out in the field and starting to make a difference. After our training, we made the five-hour journey up to Mzimba and moved into our host homes.

Tuesday 8 March was International Women' Day. In honour of this event we had a learning workshop, discussing gender, inequality and issues that women face, both in the UK and Malawi. We firstly spoke of inspirational women and we had a huge range of women, from politicians to athletes and scientists. I personally chose my grandmother, Josephine Speltz. She's always been a strong influence in my life and even at 96 she continues to inspire me with her tenacity and spirit despite the challenges that almost being a century has on the body and mind.

In the UK the concept of attachment parenting (“AP”) has gained popularity in recent years, with celebrity endorsement from Angelina Jolie, Pink and many more reinforcing this trend. This way of approaching parenting in the early stages of a childs’ life looks to me like it could have been taken directly from observation of Malawian women - this “new way to do things” for Western women is normal care of a new born for Africa.

As we come to our last week of work as Team Tilitose in Rumphi, we thought it appropriate to share our lessons learnt from the past 10 weeks. 

My journey started with the struggle of whether I should apply as a volunteer for Progressio ICS, working with Youth Net and Counselling (YONECO) as a partner organisation. I was sceptical about the impact that it would have on my life considering that the post will have no monetary gains. I recalled my Head Teacher’s advice during our secondary school graduation...

Driven by excitement and with a keen interest in politics, I spent some time researching the political and economic profile of Malawi before starting my ICS adventure. The overall picture I got was of a country which had had more than its fair share of poverty and economic problems, with a recent World Bank study ranking Malawi as the poorest country in the world. On the other hand, Malawi has also enjoyed absolute peace since its independence 1964 and its nascent democracy sees little sign of faltering.

Host homes and host families can sometimes be the most intimidating part of your 10 week Progressio ICS placement.  But there is no need to worry! Your families will welcome you into their homes with open arms and for those 10 weeks you will become their son or daughter, they will introduce you to everyone as their own child. They really want you to be there, so there is no need to feel shy.

This is what to expect from your host homes:

Day to day life