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Malawi Blog: One nil to Chief Chipsea Sunday, 24 January 2010 23:17 Written by contacts

On Tuesday morning I went out to visit the village of Chipsea which has had some support by the St. Andrews Trust based in Glasgow. The directors of that charity built a small school here which supports a couple of hundred kids.

The village of Chipsea is incredibly poor and I have to admit it is not my favourite village to visit. Some of the men in this village drink the local moonshine and there is definitely more desperation here than some of the other villages I have visited.

Some of these problems may stem from the fact that the chief is only 29 and actually looks like he is 21.

There are also more Muslim Malawians in this village and historically in Malawi the Muslims did not appreciate the need for education and therefore did not send their kids to school. As Muslim Malawians generally have more than one wife they also tend to have bigger families and hence more kids that do not go to school.

The lads at St. Andrews Trust gave me some money to take some supplies to the school. I went with a truck load of maize, rice, fresh vegetables, eggs, sweets and footballs for the boys and volleyballs for the girls. Through past experience visiting Chipsea it is important that the supplies are delivered to the school teachers and are stored in the school because if anything is delivered to the chief he keeps it or shares it amongst the villagers. Now it would be great to help everyone but the whole idea of most of the charities over here is to educate and feed the children and unfortunately it is just too much to try and support entire villages/districts.

After unloading all the goodies I chatted to the chief and the teachers and asked how things were going and what problems they had. They told me that the local water well was broken and the nearest alternative was many miles away so the locals are drinking dirty water. The water board had visited and the estimated cost of replacing parts and fixing the well was about £200. They also have a shortage of school jotters and pencils. The lads at St. Andrews Trust are good lads who do tremendous work and after informing them they will now go about fixing the problems they have at Chipsea.

The reason to tell you this part of the story is that it is ok to build schools and water wells etc. but Malawi needs ongoing support. A lot of projects fail after people have done tremendously well to raise funds and build schools etc. but the ongoing maintenance is left to the villagers. Initially that would make a bit of sense but when a community has a £200 bill to pay and over 60% are unemployed, most have no money at all and others make £20 per month. So basically if St. Andrews Trust had walked away from this village then no one would ever fix the water well. Also the school would stop being used as much as they would have no stationary so the kids would walk further to another school who could supply what they need. It really is so important to look at these projects with a long-term plan to support them.

Previously when I have visited Chipsea it has always been very difficult to give the kids sweets as they get so few visitors that there is a greed mentality and they tend not to share as much here as they usually do in Malawi. Normally if kids in Malawi had a packet of sweets then they would share them equally amongst friends. To get over this problem the last time I visited I asked some of the older children to give them out. That did not work either as folks swamped them and then there was chaos. On this occasion I was not in any mood to be swamped as it took me long enough to buy all the food at market after my usual haggling routines. This time I asked the chief to organise it and told him I would like the children in one big line and when he gave each one sweets they had to stand in another area to stop them joining the line again. As the chief is so young and I always thought lacked respect by his people I thought this would end up in the usual chaos that happened on previous visits. To my amazement and within ten minutes he had all the children lined up in perfect order ready to dish out the sweets. Twenty minutes later it was all done and the whole process was brilliant. I told the chief how impressed I was and he more or less told me well what do you expect I’m the chief. The funny thing is that in each visit to Chipsea the chief has always been there and watched me try to assemble some order. Thinking about it now he must have been pissing himself at me! I suppose that is 1-0 to Chief Chipsea.

On Tuesday night I met up with a brilliant guy called Dean who is a fitness coach for Bolton Wanderers. His story is amazing and hopefully one day I will get to share it with you. His desire to help the poor people of his country is amazing and if everyone in Malawi was like him the country would make huge strides forward. Recently he shipped over 10,000 football shirts to Malawi from the UK and that is a fantastic achievement. It was great chatting about football and Malawi with him and we both agreed that football is so big in Malawi that it is definitely a way to bring support to this country as long as it also involves education.

Wednesday morning was an early start as I was due back at our own village Kambudzi. I had left maize for them a few days earlier and the plan today was to meet all the children as they were being taught then the children would stay behind and be fed.

I stopped at the local trading centre and bought more maize, rice and fresh vegetables to add to the trolley load of sweets, biscuits and crisps that I had bought in the cash & carry in the city. I surpassed myself this time and managed to buy the maize for cheaper than I had ever done previously and I felt quite chuffed as I was no longer being seen as someone to try and rip off but rather someone they want to do business with due to the volumes that I buy in. The worst part of buying locally is just the time that it takes but when you are saving up to 50% of what you pay in the city then it is well worth the wait as that means more food goes to the school kids.

I was slightly behind schedule (suffering from Malawi time) but as I drove into the village I could see the kids sitting under the trees having their school lessons. That all stopped when they saw me as they knew I was the sign that meant they could have some food and get their wee party started. A couple of days earlier I left a few sacks of maize plus fresh veg and sweets, biscuits etc. This was now to be dished out to the children so they were all high as kites. All this plus I brought another load with me and as they could see into my truck they got even more excited.

Before the party started I made a visit to each standard level (primary year to us) and asked the kids questions etc. The responses was great and they are all very much looking forward to having a school building to learn in rather than sitting under a tree. Once this was complete I had a meeting with the village head chief, his junior chiefs, the committee, the PTA and the school teachers to discuss the building project and plans etc. Hopefully the school will start getting built in April and will be complete three to four months later.

So now the business stuff was over it was time to get the party started. Some of the woman of the village had been using the supplies to make lunch. It was a porridge type thing and to be honest it looked awful. They had a great set-up for feeding the kids as they had built temporary sinks with flowing water and got the kids to wash the plate they had brought to school (they knew they were being fed) and then they got their big portion of porridge then sweets etc. With 420 mouths to feed it was quite the operation but it all went without any major problems. The kids loved it and everyone was singing songs and, well, behaving the way kids do.

After the grub was finished and there was absolutely nothing left it was time for the football game they had arranged for my benefit. Six months back on one of my visits to the school I had a kick about with them and they enjoyed it so much they expected me to play again but foolishly I was only wearing flip flops so could not get too involved. Anyway Kambudzi A were playing Kambudzi B and the two teams lined up with the different Rangers shirts I left them the last time I was here. It was amazing to see as the kits still looked brand new. All this way out in deepest Malawi, Africa and I am watching Rangers A v Rangers B.

To their great joy and pleasure I asked them to wait a few minutes before starting the game. I then produced the RangersMedia shirts and another load of Rangers shirts donated by JJB. So each team now had two kits and in all we had enough Rangers shirts for four teams. Amazing, there are four different full sets of Rangers shirts! It is safe to say that all 420 kids at Kambudzi primary school are Rangers fans. In addition to this Jim Hannah had given me some Rangers ties that I presented to the teachers and the chief and those guys were over the moon, so even the teachers now have a Rangers connection.

Obviously I was taking a lot of photos of all the kids and I also took quite a few of the football teams. I had got a few banners made up to say thank-you to folks who raised so much money to help these kids. During taking these photos I was telling the kids to smile and they all had terrific big grins. Whilst taking these pics I noticed one lad was intimating my laugh. I started to change my style of laugh and every time I did he copied me. Soon the other kids knew what was going on and they also joined in. Now I had two football teams worth of kids taking the piss out of me by copying my laugh. It was funny as hell and goes to show that wherever we go in the world children are simply children and do not change regardless of the circumstances.

I stayed for the full game and it was won quite comfortably by the A team. It was a great day that I enjoyed so much and every day you spend in the village and at the school convinces me more that we are doing the correct thing and have chosen the right school to support.

As I write this blog now I am thinking back to the cost of the day and the enjoyment it created. For the food and sweets etc it may have cost about £200 to £300. With 420 kids that is less than £1 a kid for them to have a wee treat and enjoy a good meal, have some sweets and enjoy themselves. Amazing!

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