This small world – our friends in Mtunthama
That we live in a ‘small world’ is now accepted as a truism. However, today as I sit writing in my London home, 5000 miles away from the Malawian village of Mtunthama where I spent the last three weeks, the last thing the world feels is small. My memories, my warm welcome, and my new friends all feel half a world away – which is exactly what they are.
Mtunthama is a sprawling village of mud tracks, mud huts interspersed with a few brick buildings, friendly curious faces and maize fields. It is the home of the endlessly energetic Reverend Frank Dzantenge – pastor of All Saints’ Church and Archdeacon to 34 outstations stretching as far as 60km – and his charming wife, Eunice. It is also the location of the St Andrew’s Clinic, established four years ago through the hard work of Mac and Dot Forsyth to serve the desperate health needs of the community.
I went to Mtunthama to remind myself how half the world lives. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world – a good wage is £2 a day, with most living on far less than this, surviving by subsistence farming. And yet the parishioners of All Saints welcomed me with such generosity. They cooked me meals, introduced me to their families and gave me gifts. I will long remember the Baptist pastor who presented me with a biro as I left his house – a gift of great value to him. My joy at his gift mingled with my embarrassment at the relative riches of my country.
In this place of need, the work you are funding is a beacon of hope. The maize mill provides employment and income, while the clinic is constantly busy with nurses working amazing hours and some patients walking 30km for assistance.
Abiding memories? Getting up with the sunrise every day and finding everyone already up. People’s shocked faces when I told them I had only one sibling, didn’t know any of my neighbours in London and had been to only three funerals in my life. And, of course, constantly discovering from Frank on the way to church services, school assemblies or general gatherings that the main speaker was none other than me! “Is that OK?”, Frank would ask with his disarming smile.
Above all, my chance to teach in the church school will stick with me. What the people of Mtunthama need most is the chance to help themselves. To this end, the greatest gift we can give is education. It is heartbreaking to see so many gifted Malawian children never attending secondary school because their families cannot afford the annual fees. The cost? £20 a year! Before I left the village, I met the 25 children who are being sponsored through St Andrew’s. Your money is giving them hope. In your generosity I found the gospel being proclaimed – a gospel for our ‘small world’, where people in Plymouth can change the lives of children 5000 miles away. Now that is a gospel worth crossing half the world to see.
Jonathan Yates