Visit to Mr. Kasiya’s Home

One of the biggest problems in education in Malawi is the lack of teachers working in schools. There are many reasons why Community Day Secondary Schools like mine are severely understaffed. For one, a lot of the more educated teachers do not want to work in rural areas where there is no electricity or running water. Another reason is that there are very few houses for teachers and their families to live in at the schools. This is a big problem at my school in particular as two of our teachers must ride their bikes for over an hour back and forth each day to come to school. A few weeks ago, I decided to make a visit to one of these teachers, Mr. Kasiyamaliro in order to meet his family and get a sense of how far he travels each day.

Mr. Kasyia drew me a map and on a Sunday morning I hopped on bike and set out for a visit. It was a pretty well-drawn map, but seeing as how I’m not the best with directions I found myself a bit lost on the way. Lucky for me, being the only white women in my area makes me stand out a bit and pretty much wherever I end up someone is around to recognize me as a teacher from Gwangwa. I stopped a few times along the way to say hello to people and make sure that I was on the right track.

When I got to his home, I was greeted by his wife Mrs. Kasiyamaliro and their nine children. Each child introduced themselves and shook my hand, except for Princess, the youngest girl who was a bit afraid of me and ran behind her mother instead. We then proceeded to go to church which was a really great experience. I sang songs and danced with the members of their church and then listened to Mr. Kasiya deliver a sermon which began with an introduction of me. A small excerpt: “She has hair, we have hair. She walks. We walk. She eats. We eat.” Which lead to more discussion about how “We are all created by one God, in his image and he did not specify. We are all the same, here to live and pray together.” It was really nice and I’m fairly certain if my Mom was there she would have had tears in her eyes.

After church, we went back to their home, had lunch and spent the rest of the day talking about the kids and their progress at primary school. It was really a nice visit and I’m sure I’ll be going again soon. I’ve added a few pictures from church and of the Kasiyamaliro family for you to see.