I always wondered what charities do in Africa

14-year-old Murray from Glasgow visited World Vision's work in Malawi and kindly offered to share his experience with us. Here's a very personal account from Murray:

In November 2011, when I was only 12, my parents first suggested going to Africa to see what charities do to help people there. That was before we knew World Vision, and I was really concerned about what we would see when we got there. For various reasons, it was July 2013 before we actually made it. Before we went, I had seen TV programmes like Comic Relief and I was worried that what we would see in Africa would really hit me hard. I had no idea what poverty in rural Malawi would look like and I was not at all sure that I would be able to cope with seeing very sad or sick children.

When we got to the community, our first view of folks’ houses – built of mud bricks with grass roofs – did nothing to reassure me. However, once we got out of the van and saw what life was really like, my opinions changed. I realised that it wasn’t anything like as bad as I had thought it might be. The children we met all seemed to be really happy and full of life, they were enthusiastic about school and all seemed to be really healthy. 

I enjoy my iPod and my Dad brought our iPad with him on our visit. He took pictures and videos of the children and showed them, the children’s reaction to these was great – I don’t think they had ever seen anything like it before.

I visited Malawi with my parents and older brother, Bruce. While we were visiting the folks in Malawi, this meant that I could compare my family and my life with those we were visiting. Things like the size of their house, the fact some of the families didn’t even have a bike – we have two cars, their kitchen area and toilets were outside the main house and the fact they didn’t have any pets, all struck me. We have a huge variety of food, but when we were in the village, we had lunch with Austin’s family and they only had rice or nsima (a kind of carbohydrate) with chicken. You could tell that the chicken had probably been running around outside the house in the last couple of days – there was no processed food at all. The family were very generous though, for a very special treat, we had bottles of Coke and Fanta.

I have been in the Scouts for 8 years and cooking on an open fire at camp is a real hassle, I can only imagine how hard it is to cook on an open fire all the time. This is the cooking area in the house of one of the families we visited. All the cooking is done outside the house and the place is spotlessly clean.

I am just about to start 4th year (year 11) at school, and I don’t have that many responsibilities at home. Many of the 14-year-olds we met had finished with school and were expected to behave like adults. Some of the girls even had babies already.

Relatively few of the children get to go to secondary school because of the cost and for those that do, often the cost is spread between their parents, aunts and uncles. We saw quite a lot of kids about the same age as me who were working full time on the family farms or learning a trade.

We met a boy who is 12 and he sells little bags of popcorn at a village football match. The bags cost about 5p each. This helps to get the money together for his school fees. I think that the fact that World Vision work so hard to keep kids in school till they have completed secondary school is great.

Before we visited one of the World Vision communities in Malawi, I thought that most of the work charities do in Africa was giving out food and other help to people and that the folks they were helping would become dependent on that aid. I was really pleased to learn how World Vision work with the local community.

It’s inevitable that in developing areas things will go wrong occasionally – this community had a terrible flood in December 2012, and it’s good to know that charities like World Vision are there to give people a bit of help to get over these times.

I really enjoyed my visit to the World Vision project in Malawi. Even though it was very hard emotionally, I am glad that I went and I am confident I now have a much better idea of how aid can help people in developing countries.

Thanks to Murray for sharing his thoughts from their family visit to Malawi. Visit our Facebook page to join the discussion and leave your thoughts. Look out for next week’s blog where Murray’s mum, Christine will share more about their visit.