The Warm Heart Of Africa:
Journey Of A Women's Writing Retreat

By Mary Tuchscherer

My passion is teaching people, mostly women, to write and tell their personal stories and legacies. Until now, the population I work with has been mostly white, American, middle-class, educated women. In the fall of 2007, I received an invitation from my friend and fellow JFK University faculty member, Masankho Banda, to visit Malawi. I immediately sensed that the land and people of Malawi called me, but little did I know that this small, far-away country would provide me the inspiration for the next phase of my work.

Malawi, known as the "warm heart of Africa," is a small landlocked country, formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique and beautiful Lake Malawi, Africa's third largest body of water. It is a peaceful nation of 13 million people, with an estimated 14% being HIV-positive. The life expectancy of 36 years continues to decline due to the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. There are more than a million orphans in the country; over two-thirds of these children became orphans when their parents died of AIDS. The average income is $170.00 per year, per family.

As anyone who has traveled to a far-away, unknown place knows, the days before departure are filled not only with excitement, but anxiety concerning whether one will be able to feel comfortable and relaxed in a foreign land. The same was true for me, yet when I arrived in Malawi in December, the warm greeting by friendly, luminous brown faces and the lush African landscape melted all my fears. There are some places on earth where I have immediately felt at home; this was one of them.

In my travels through Malawi, I saw that while there lies a huge gap between the educated, literate women from the cities and the illiterate, uneducated women of the village, they all shared one struggle in common – namely, the struggle to be seen and to have their voices heard and acknowledged. 

One such woman is Maria. Maria lives in Tukombo Village in the Nkhata Bay District of Northern Malawi. I was introduced to Maria by Emily Chintu, the executive director of KUDO (Kunyanja Development Organization), a non-profit organization founded by Masankho's father, Hon. Aleke Banda. The goal is to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of the rural population in Nkhata Bay.

Maria is the mother of two grown children and is now raising her six grandchildren. What she most wants for her family is to provide good health care, protect them from HIV/AIDS, and give them an education – all of which she feels are nearly impossible under her current circumstances of poverty. Maria becomes very serious as she describes the dangerous circumstances the women and girls of the village encounter when they are forced to go to the cassava wells away from the village. The women stand in dirty, smelly, leech-filled water to tend to the vegetable root that provides them with their staple food. Cleanliness is of extreme importance to the women, yet often they have no soap with which to clean themselves. They are vulnerable to rape, disease, and crocodiles. Although the women have very little economic power here, they are the backbone of the culture, doing the work that keeps life going in this small village. They carry water and haul firewood on their heads; tend the gardens; clean, dry, and pound the cassava roots into flour; and birth and raise children.

Without documentation, the rich and poignant stories of Malawian women, such as Maria and countless others that I met in the villages and cities, will be lost. Many of these women will not live to see their children grow beyond the toddler years, so their children will have no record of their mothers' goodness and dedication or know of their hopes and dreams.

And so there in Malawi, my vision unfolded – to help make the women's lives and stories visible, to ensure that they are remembered and shared on paper for future generations and the world.

Since my return home, I have further developed the project with the goal to go back to Malawi in August 2009. This project, Voice Flame Writers – Malawi, will involve women from the United States accompanying me to volunteer with KUDO projects and participate in Legacy writing workshops with the women from Malawi. While there, I will also train a group of Malawian women to facilitate Legacy writing groups who, in turn, will offer opportunities for other women to tell their stories.

This project will give voice to the voiceless, visibility to the unseen, and create ongoing connections between women of the United States and Malawi. This process of witnessing and being witnessed will give value to the lives of those silenced and invisible for so long. As Maya Angelou has said, "There is no agony like bearing the untold story inside you." No longer will the women of Malawi bear their stories alone.

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