Emily is my adopted daughter, my stepdaughter if you will. Or that’s the way I’m supposed to think of her. She’s moved in with me, I prepare her meals and make sure she has all the notebooks, pens, and pencils she possibly needs. Mr. Makwakwa, my counter part and her neighbor, introduced me to her family. We’d been discussing the possibility of helping her for the past couple months now. Before then I knew her only as one of nearly 80 students in my Form 1 class, the freshmen at Mhalaunda Community Secondary School. But Mr. Makwakwa introduced us. She’s a bright young girl. Her favorite subjects are mathematics and agriculture. I adopted her on one account because her family does not have the money available to pay her school fees. She was chased out of the school at the start of second term because she’d failed to pay. Secondly, I adopted her because of the extreme distance she travels just to make it to school. It’s an hour and a half walk straight, with few stops, roughly 7km. She makes this journey on a daily basis from her home to Mhalaunda. During rainy season this walk is more than a mere inconvenience; in some areas the road is nearly washed out and just below one bridge a large pack of feral dogs prowl. She braves these to make her way to school. She’s moving in with me to avoid some of these larger problems and to be a safe distance, roughly 200m, to the school now.
Mr. Makwakwa and I went to visit the family and present the plan for my assisting with school fees in early January. We walked the 7km to her house just to feel the extreme distance of the walk rather than abate it with a bicycle, which she does not have. We arrived mid-afternoon and were greeted in customary Malawian fashion. We were invited inside to sit down, then greeted by the mother, the grandparents, and her sisters. They entered the small sitting room (reed mats on a well brushed dirt floor), kneel before you, shake your hand, then they begin with the formalities and introduction. The formal greetings: “Monile bamama.” “Yewo.” “Muli uli?” “Nili makola, kwali imwe.”
And there we sat, after all the greetings, the hosts and others just leave you in their sitting area while they prepare a meal. In came the food, roughly 45 minutes later, tea, boiled cassava pieces, bread, and stock (margarine). The custon is to present the food, wash your hands (a cup of water poured over a basin), and pour your tea. After serving us the hostess excuses herself and leaves us to eat in peace.
After we finished and the food cleared away, the hostess and the grandparents once again entered. I noticed that the mother sat a distance from her father, sitting in the doorway to the room. A traditional Malawian custom to show respect to male elders, as Mr. Makwakwa explained. I started by conveying to the best of my abilities in Chitimbuka that I wanted to sponsor their daughter through school. Where I failed to communicate Mr. Makwakwa interjected. I stated the arrangement: school fees in exchange for a dishwasher. They seemed grateful for the assistance.
They discussed amongst themselves and then agreed to the terms. The next day I walked over to the school, sat down with Mr. Ngwenya, the headmaster, and explained. Fees paid in full.
And now enters my step-daughter.
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