Katie's home village

Katie has been living with me since March 2015. As soon as she arrived at my house we started looking for her family. However that was not an easy task. We only had a phone number of her father’s family because they mistreated Katie for many years. They were refusing to give any contact of her mother’s family. Finally after five months and a lot of phone calls they gave me a phone number of an uncle of Katie. The uncle travelled to the village of the grandmother. After four long years Katie finally could speak to her grandmother again. The grandmother who raised her, loved her and cared for her before the family of her father took her away.
Katie’s grandmother is getting very old and every time Katie spoke to her she asked when she was coming to visit.

Last week it was mid-term break at school so I decided to bring her to her home village to visit her family. After a six hour drive we arrived in Mulanje, a city in the southern part of Malawi. Katie remembered the way to the village so it was not difficult to find.
As soon as we arrived in the village Katie’s aunties and friends came running towards her. They couldn’t believe she was finally back and looking great. Her grandmother was in church so we had to wait to see her.

We stayed in the village for four days and lived a real village life. Mulanje is very warm this time of the year so we slept outside on a thin grass mat. We woke up when the sun came up, went to the borehole to get water, made fires for preparing food, and went to sleep soon after the sun went down. We enjoyed the local food and many mangoes.
In the afternoon the grandmother arrived in the village and she didn’t leave Katie anymore for the next four days. She was so happy finally to see her granddaughter again.

Now Katie is a bit older she had the chance to ask some questions to her grandmother about her mother. Her mother died in the village after a very short illness and Katie was only three years old. In the morning she became sick and in the afternoon she died. The birthday of the mother of Katie was the day we arrived in her village, October 15^th.  Katie’s mother had done very well in school and finished secondary school. Only a small percentage of the Malawians manage to finish secondary school so Katie was very proud after discovering this. After school she worked four years as a clerk and managed to build a nice house in her village with the money she earned.

When Katie was younger she always liked to go to the river to swim with her friends so we went back to that same river and enjoyed a nice swim. We had many long talks with friends and family under the big mango trees in the village. Some of Katie’s friends already were married and had children, she was shocked about that and understands even more now how important school is.
Due to the floods last year in the southern part of Malawi there was no harvest. Katie’s family is struggling to find food and most children in the family are not going to school. Katie enjoyed seeing her family however it was difficult for her to see how much her family is struggling. Her twelve year old friends already have children and no future in front of them.
On the drive back home she told me she knows God loves her a lot. She went through a lot of abuse and difficult times but now she has a new mother and the chance to go to school.

 

Love,

 

Nicole



Katie and her aunts




Mount Mulange

Tea Plantations