When asked about her age, Funny Mpinda only responds by telling her year of birth, which is 1980.
The blind single mother, from Group Village Head Khogolo in Traditional Authority (T/A) Ngolongoliwa, Thyolo District, has for years been a beneficiary of the Social Cash Transfer Programme (SCTP).
The social protection programme, which provides cash to labour-constrained and ultra-poor households, has immensely assisted Mpinda throughout the years.
She was listed as a beneficiary because of her social status, a widow living in abject poverty, a situation that has somehow partly changed due to the cash transfers.
“I have been able to improve my life throughout the years, especially that I am blind, and as such, I cannot be employed for piece-works,” she says.
But Mpinda was not born blind. In 2010, she suffered an illness that brought the blindness.
This was a bitter pill to swallow because it meant she had to be fully-dependent on others for her daily life.
It also meant she had to adapt to a whole new life she never imagined.
“Few months after becoming blind, my husband, who was the family’s breadwinner, abandoned me with three children,” she says.
This hurt Mpinda to the core. She had no idea how she would move on with her life because her now estranged husband had been her source of hope in the midst of her loss of sight.
As such, she sent her children to live with some of her relatives while she lived with one of her relatives, who committed to staying with her.
She says: “My relatives, though struggling to make ends meet on their part, started helping me with some basic necessities.”
But that was until she was listed as a beneficiary of the SCTP, when her life started to turn around gradually.
She started a fritters business and joined a village loans savings (VSL) group and from her earnings, she started to build a proper house.
With the passage of time, she was no longer financially-dependent on her relatives, and she recalled her children. Her life got better.
From proceeds of her business, her cash transfer payouts and loans she would get, she would ably pay for her children’s school fees plus other necessities.
“My eldest son is in secondary school while the second one is in form two whereas the last-born is in standard eight. The first two are at a private secondary school,” she says.
Besides, Mpinda has also been able to buy goats that have multiplied throughout the years. She contemplates setting up another business to widen her source of income.
She does not want to ever, again, burden her relatives with the care of her children.
Says Mpinda: “Seeing my children in school gives me hope and brings me joy and happiness. They motivate me to keep on going despite blindness.”
Mpinda acknowledges that had it not been for the cash transfers, she would have been living in abject poverty.
“I was in abject poverty, but not anymore,” she boasts.
Much as she regrets sending her children to live with some of her relatives, she admits there was nothing better she could have done considering the circumstances she was in.
Over a decade since becoming blind, Mpinda says she does not want to remarry considering the betrayal she suffered from her ex-husband, who she no longer has contacts with.
According to Mpinda, there have been men that have approached her, seeking her hand in marriage but she has never had any interest in them.
At times, she feels the men simply want to come and ‘eat’ what she has built over the years using SCTP payouts.
The programme targets homes headed by poor women, widows, children raising fellow children, the elderly and persons with disabilities.
The cash transfers, however, range from household to household, owing to factors such as the number of children in the home and poverty levels.
Lisnet Pajiwa from T/A Boyidi in the same district says in the absence of the SCTP, her life would have been miserable.
She recalls how, most recently, she received her payout and used part of it to buy a bag of fertiliser.
Says Pajiwa: “I had saved a little and I was anxious where I would source the remaining amount that was needed.”
Pajiwa describes SCTP as a huge relief since it has lessened the burden she used to experience in caring for her disabled mother.
She says, with the payouts, she is able buy medicines for her mother and, also, provide her children basic necessities.
Just like Mpinda, Pajiwa joined a VSL which has enabled her to start rearing pigs.
The pigs have multiplied throughout the years and when she is desperate for money, for any emergency, she sells one or two.
“I feel like my life has been simplified because of the payouts. I have been able to support my life,” says the widowed mother of two.
“Challenges are inevitable but utmost I can support myself, especially that I am the family’s breadwinner,” she says.
Jacqueline Magombo, who sat for the previous Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) examinations, says she benefitted a lot from the social cash transfers programme.
The fourth-born in a family of six, says cash transfer payouts have simplified her education.
Magombo has been benefiting from the programme through her widowed mother.
“My parents did not find it difficult to pay for my school fees and provide for basic necessities because of the social cash transfers,” says the 17-year-old from T/A Khwethemule in Thyolo District.
Magombo anticipates that the programme will also enable her mother to pay her university tuition fees if she gets a place.
She says: “It is my prayer that I go to university and I trust the social cash transfer programme will help me achieve this dream.”
Magombo also hopes that someday, others in her village who are not on the beneficiary list will be enlisted so that they may also be able to have it a bit easier in life.
Growing up seeing her mother suffer and subsequently enlisted in the SCTP has been a source of motivation for Magombo, who wants to become a journalist.
She hopes she will make her mother proud someday.
“It has been a difficult life with the burden lessened by the social cash transfer payouts. They have been really helpful and all I can say is thank you to the government,” she says.
Thyolo District has 16 974 SCTP beneficiaries, but the target is 19 556 beneficiaries.
Thyolo District social welfare officer responsible for the SCTP Madalitso Noah expresses excitement that a majority of beneficiaries are making good use of their payouts.
He says: “When we follow up with them, we discover that they [beneficiaries] are investing in small-scale businesses which assist them in their day-to-day lives.
“The VSL’s are also an integral part of these beneficiaries as they are able to multiply their money through savings.”
Noah says the beneficiaries’ personal initiatives of saving and investing their payouts is an encouragement to the council because it shows how poverty is being alleviated in the district.
Thyolo District commissioner Hudson Kuphanga says social cash transfers are impacting lives of vulnerable people in the district.
He says: “Vulnerable families are being cushioned, and as a council, we are happy that we are able to alleviate their poverty through the SCTP.”
The SCTP was pioneered in 2006 in Mchinji and Balaka districts. It gradually expanded to other districts over the years.
The programme is being implemented in all the 28 districts of Malawi and is supported by different donors, including the Malawi Government in selected districts.
