Blame it on Their Youth

Blame it on Their Youth

July, 2013; Malawi

I waited patiently for the mission to arrive with the guest of honor, the Special Rapporteur. But there’s laughter coming from around me and I hear the whispers of little kids in Chichewa. They creep towards me and I smile at them. They smile shyly back and then run for cover on the dusty stoop of the brick house where they huddle together and look at me. I approach them cautiously, lest one of them is scared of the strange muzunguin their small community. They break into increasingly hysterical giggling the closer I get. I take my camera out and they squirm excitedly. I ask one of the case workers with me to ask if it would be alright for me to take their picture. It is. I take a shot and then turn the camera around for them to see. They all quickly surround me and start laughing and pointing at themselves on my small screen. I smile back. They position themselves for another picture and wait. I oblige, take a picture and again show them. The laughter this time is even louder, the pointing even more enthusiastic. We repeat this ritual a few times before I put my camera away and approach them.

I’m here to write a human interest piece for UNICEF about the Social Cash Transfer Program that UNICEF supports. Hoping to begin writing already, I approach the oldest in the group. A girl who looks about my age sits in the corner with a young child who appears to be around one year old in her lap. She looks away as I begin to speak and the case worker translates for me. I ask her first how old she is and she turns her attention away from the child and towards my direction. “Twenty-four,” she responds in English. I tell her I’m twenty-two and she beams at me. The child in her lap is her child she continues in Chichewa. I smile down at the baby who looks up at me suspiciously. The little boy is the youngest of her four children. She was fourteen when she got married and gave birth to the first. She asks me where my children are and I manage one last smile before the car arrives with our guests and the official visit begins.

As we drive away from the village and towards our next visit, I take in my surroundings. This trip has been my first excursion out of Lilongwe since I arrived in Malawi (save for a quick visit to a hotel by Lake Malawi the weekend prior). Along the roads that connect villages and small towns, you see people walking to their destinations or sometimes on rusty old bikes. They stop and move off the road as we speed by on paved road. Kids wave and chase after the car on dust roads where we have to slow down because of the potholes. Some people walk carrying large heavy loads of maize or fire wood. Others are empty handed. Their journeys on foot will be slow and arduous but they have to make it before it gets dark outside, which is around 5:30, because otherwise the road becomes dangerous as the cars can’t see the pedestrians. So they walk with a purpose towards their destination. Women have their skirts wrapped around their waists and tattered shirts on their torsos. Girlswear faded dresses covered in a thin layer of dust. Boys sport worn out shorts and ripped up tops. The older men and most younger men wear ragged long sleeves or donated t-shirts and trousers. Some are in their one suit. The men, by and large, wear shoes. Plastic, cheap and worn out, they are still better off than the women and children who are, with a few exceptions, barefoot.

In the towns, women sit in the shade and look up wearily at us as we pass through. They are hard at work on their household tasks or farming their small vegetable gardens. The young children are playing games with improvised toys, soccer balls made of paper and jump ropes constructed from pieces of small string tied together. They drop their games and wave at me as we pass, grinning. I wave back. The older children and men seem to be missing from the village scene.

In city centers, the roads are lined with merchants often accompanied by their small children, who are selling pots and pans, plastic bags, used shoes, maize, soya or other foods, and second hand or cheap imported clothes. They lay it out on the ground and sit and wait for someone to stop by their area and examine their wares. The cars that slow down are quickly surrounded by ambitious sellers carrying trays with tomatoes, oranges, strawberries, potatoes, apples, donuts or some kind of strange black fried food that I would like to believe originated from an animal. They display their goods to the passengers, hoping that someone bites and they can earn some money for the day. These merchants seem largely consist of the older children missing from the village. The tomatoes look good and the donuts smell amazing but we have to keep driving onwards.

Each scene has one striking similarity: the plethora of young children and teenagers. And in a country where about half the population is under the age of 18, this is no surprise. It is a young country in that sense. At each and every meeting we attend, sitting somewhere nearby is inevitably a group of children glancing at us and giggling. Schools are out so those who belong in primary school are home during the day now and play in the sun with their friends. Some of the older kids, many of whom can’t attend secondary school as it isn’t free, form a perimeter around the adults. Those with families already, join the adults in the group, though they rarely speak unless specifically asked to.

Such a young population offers a country a number of positives and negatives. On one hand, it is a large energetic group either on the precipice of entering the work force or already part of it. On the other, it’s a huge burden on the state and on the community to have so many dependents. What makes the scene considerably less optimistic, though, is the condition of this generation of kids. With stunting at nearly 50% among children, you have a group in which half will suffer from physical and cognitive underdevelopment. With the education system struggling to handle the massive student body, you are faced with a generation likely be systematically undereducated.

And you’ll have a generation of girls, like my friend in the beginning of the story, who will find themselves marrying and having children at an alarming young age. What is a young girl to do if she finds herself in this inimical context? She finds a husband and gets married. And with the poor sexual education available in Malawi, she will also likely very quickly find herself, still a child, a mother to her own child.

I’m trying, and likely failing, to address two huge issues on the national agenda: a young population and early marriage and childbirth. I chose to tackle them together because, to me, they are mutually reinforcing. A young uneducated and underdeveloped population has few opportunities and few alternatives. This problem is exacerbated for a young girl. She weds and gives birth to a child at a young age. This child will grow up in an environment that is not salubrious to healthy and complete development. If this child is a girl, she will one day grow up and face the same situation her mother was in and, if there isn’t an intervention in the cycle, will repeat her mother’s actions. As the number of young children being born to adolescents swells, the ability of the state and development partners to provide even ancillary services weakens and the problem is perpetuated.

I don’t want to sound as though I’m averring that a young parent cannot be a good parent. However, a parent who lacks a basic education, a stable job, proper rights, food security and other fundamentals is unlikely to be able to raise a child properly. Old or young, this remains the case. However the chances of this dismal situation being reality is more likely if the parents are young and have not established themselves before they have another mouth to feed, much less four mouths to feed.

I asked her if she was receiving aid from the government such as a cash transfer. No, she says, because her husband can work. But can he work to fill six mouths and provide an education for five? It seems an impossible and almost hopeless task but it is reality here.

For more information on Malawi's young population and what is being done to mitigate the bad and promote the good, check out UNICEF Malawi online or on Facebook.

For more information about the Right to Food, check out the Special Rapporteur's website. For information on his work in Malawi, check out his recent press release and look for his entire report, coming out in May, 2014.

For any other information related to this piece, feel free to leave a comment or to contact me via email, via twitter or any other imaginative way you can think of!