The children in Mzuzu, Malawi are just incredible. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how young they really are due to the incredible amount of work/responsibility each of them do/have but it’s moments like these that make me realise we really need to do more to improve their childhood. After all, we only do get one.
I really, really hope I get to meet these guys again in 2012.
I wrote this entry up on my Tumblr account the other day and thought I might as well re-post it here.
Whilst in Malawi we kept diaries. It was a great thing to have while we were there as it was a really effective way to vent our thoughts at the end of a long day. And now that I’m home, I love that I’m able to easily re-cap my daily thoughts and activities.
I was going through my diary today and came across a page of notes I had taken after a visit to my favourite place in Mzuzu, Zolo Zolo secondary school. I had noted a few things students had written in blog entries we had gotten them to do and I remember thinking that I really wanted to be able to do something for these particular students as they really stood out to me.
Godfrey Ngoma is in his final year of secondary school at Zolo Zolo and aspires to be an engineer. He talked about how he very much looks up to an ex-Mzuzu citizen, Matthews Mtumbuka, who went on to study in Oxford university, UK.
I managed to find a contact address for Dr. Mtumbuka (I also found out that he graduated from Oxford and obtained a PhD in Engineering Science!) and wrote him a short letter which I will paste here:
Dear Mr. Mtumbuka,
My name is Lynne Swan and I am a Journalism student in Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland. I recently had the pleasure of voluneering in Mzuzu, Malawi and during my stay I helped out at a secondary school called Zolo Zolo. Myself and four other students asked the students to write a blog entry after giving them a 2-day seminar on journalism.
As you can imagine, the entries were inspirational, emotional, heart-wrenching and awe-inspiring. But, the reason I am writing to you today is that one student, Mr. Godfrey Ngoma, wrote his blog entry about you and how your determination, non-stop commitment to achieve and sheer passion for learning led you study in one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Oxford, UK. Godfrey hopes to become an engineer someday and I have been trying to think of ways to help him achieve this. I came up with the idea of writing an email to yourself in the hope that you would in turn write a letter to Godfrey. I really feel this would be a huge thing for Godfrey to receive and I would be unbelievably grateful to you if you could help me achieve this for him.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, you are an inspiration to all Malawians that nothing is is unachievable if they put their mind, heart and soul into making it a reality.
Kind regards,
Lynne Swan.
I really hope Dr. Mtumbuka is able to write to Godfrey as, as I mentioned above, I really feel it will help to inspire him greatly to keep on with his ambition to become an engineer just like Dr. Mtumbuka. I’ve attached a photo of the wonderful Zolo Zolo students below, among them, of course, is Godfrey himself.
I recently went to Malawi with a group of fellow DIT students to volunteer with a charity called Wells For Zoe. However, we were somewhat delayed on the way over (I think it ended up being near 50 hours!) and had a day stopover in the beautiful city of Paris.
Here’s a photo of myself, Tessa, Colin and Jane relaxing under the Eiffel Tower after a long day walking around the city sightseeing! We even managed to get a near two-hour nap in while we were there!
