A hand that giveth

Amadu Bwanali of Luchenza in Thyolo saw only doom and gloom lying ahead when his parents died. The skies only cleared up when a ‘stranger’ from the Far East came his way. He shares his story with JACK MCBRAMS.

ll Amadu Bwanali desired to do was to get a good education.

But life, and fate, seemed to have conspired against him.

“I live in Kasalika Village in Luchenza. I am the third born in a family of four. When I was young, my mother earned a living selling bananas and my father used to sell dried fish. My mother died in 1993 and later my younger brother died too, leaving my two sisters and me.

“My father was nowhere to be seen after divorcing my mother two years before she died. My grandmother took over the care of my two sisters and me, but life was not good as my grandmother was old and weak.

“My sisters and I used to cultivate other people’s gardens to get food for the family. We often washed our clothes and hid in the house until they were dry. Our relatives abandoned us, claiming that they had their own children to support.

“At the time I was in Standard One. Most times we spent the day without food. Our house was thatched with grass…sometimes we spent the night huddled in the corner to avoid getting wet since the roof was leaking,” he narrated his story.

However, this did not force Amadu to despair, but encouraged him to work harder in school.

“In 1997, my father too died. I had completed my primary school and was selected to continue my studies at Luchenza CDSS [Community Day Secondary School]. However, this posed another challenge for my future as there was nobody who could pay my school fees in secondary school.

“I spent two terms at home due to lack of school fees. This happened five years after my sisters had dropped out of school. My frail grandmother advised me to sell our only two goats to pay for school fees. By that time, I had only one pair of trousers and two shirts,” he said.

In 2003, Amadu applied for a bursary at Luchenza-based NGO Friends of Claude Ho in Thyolo (Fotcha) where his application was accepted. The bursary enabled him to complete secondary school.

He then enrolled at the Catholic University in Chiradzulu where he graduated with a Bachelor of Social Science degree.

“It is my ambition to help others through Fochta or outside Fochta,” said 29-year-old Amadu, who is Fochta executive director.

Although Amadu’s story reads like a rare case, there are many others in and around Thyolo where thousands of students have dropped out of school because they could not pay school fees.

His tale takes us to retired Australia-based Japanese photographer Claude Ho.

While on a Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) tour of duty in Thyolo in 2000, Ho was touched by the poverty he witnessed and vowed to make a difference.

He told his story.

“Before my retirement as a photographer, I used to do many assignments for MSF covering over 15 countries in Africa and Asia. My last assignment was when they sent me in 2000 to Malawi to report by way of photo essays the plight of orphans in Thyolo.

“During that trip, I could see with my own eyes the poverty and misery of orphans, many of whom were largely a result of the HIV and Aids pandemic. As fate had it, I was at that time aged 60, and was about to retire.

“I, therefore, decided to help found Fochta with two people in Malawi—Dr Leopold Buhendwa and Steven Labana—both of whom at the time worked for MSF and whom I could trust unreservedly. Without these two well-meaning people, it was not possible to set up this organisation.

“Starting from day one, we felt the best way to help orphans would be to promote education for orphans and other vulnerable children. Ten years on, Fochta has provided bursaries to over 1 850 orphans, enabling them to study in secondary schools.

“Moreover, we have also supported many in tertiary education. So far, three have graduated, and 16 are currently at universities, and many others in teacher training colleges, nursing colleges and a business college,” said Ho.

And as part of the drive to promote literacy, Fochta has also established four rural libraries.

“Looking to the future, our desire has been to establish a vocational training centre on a piece of land we have bought just outside Luchenza Township. This will enable students who cannot get into tertiary education to learn a trade, thus allowing them to have a meaningful livelihood.

“After waiting for over seven years overcoming government red tape and related problems, construction of this VTC finally commenced in July this year. Completion is estimated to be in early 2014,” he said.

According to Ho, Fochta’s work has been made possible by the support of friends in many countries.

“People in Belgium, Switzerland and Australia have been very active in helping us to fundraise,” he said.

In 2006, Fochta Australia began planning and fundraising for the construction of a new building, the Fochta Youth Training Centre.

The new premises will include a more spacious office, counseling and meeting rooms, storage space for sporting equipment and programme supplies, a community granary and an expanded Youth and Community Library.

Most importantly, the new building will feature workshops and classrooms for Fochta’s planned vocational skills training courses.

The expected cost of the project is about K40 million (US$100 000).