I am Michelle. For several years I worked in the UK as a primary school teacher. In August 2006, I attended a camp run by my church. During that camp God gave me a vision – to help those who were living in poverty, especially women and children.
During the weeks that followed, I couldn’t get the words ‘Turn the Tide’ out of my head. I researched what this phrase meant and was blown away by the definition I found:
Turn the Tide: To cause a complete reversal of the circumstances, especially from one extreme to another.
This description resonated loudly in my heart. This was my vision – to help cause a complete change in the lives of people living in extreme poverty.
Baby Steps
Just two years later, I found myself profoundly dissatisfied. I was teaching but not fulfilled. So I embarked on a journey which would change the course of my life. Recognising my passion was to work in development, I pushed on a number of doors. After a process of elimination and despite feelings of inadequacy, I began a Masters in Social Development and Sustainable Livelihoods.
At which point my eyes are opened
In 2009, I was half way through my Masters. Through a contact, I spent five weeks in Blantyre, Malawi researching the vulnerabilities and coping strategies of street children. My eyes were opened and my heart broken as I interviewed, hugged and loved these beautiful children who are seen by their fellow countrymen as the lowest of society.
These children, I was to discover, were not all from the city. Many of them were orphans from rural parts of Malawi. When their parents had died, they had left desperate living conditions in their villages and come to the cities in hope of a better life.
This is not what they found. Street life is harsh. Far from opportunity, these children found themselves in situations far worse than any they left in their villages. But with no money to return, they become vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse, drug use, sickness and hostility. Their city of dreams becomes a waking nightmare.
I wanted to visit a rural Malawi to see where these children came from. I went with a Pastor to his home village, 3 hours south of Blantyre towards Nsanje.
It was an experience seared in my heart. I spent the night in the rural village of Sorgen, sleeping in a hut with the bats and cockroaches for company. The ‘toilet’ was a hole in the ground. Over the course of two days I was introduced to several families. Not families like you and I know. These were families of young children.
The very idea of ‘Child Headed Families’ shocked me. I witnessed children as young as eight years old attempting to care for, provide for and be the parent for their baby brothers and sisters. This was the place those street children started out. I could see why it would happen. These kids were already desperate. The city offered them a chance. The heartbreak is, it's a false chance.
Jesus is real
I fought back my tears constantly. But then I came to one family and my heart couldn't withstand the pressure. A family of three children – Christopher, who at the time was just 12 years old, Limbonazo, 9 and Milka, 6.
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| Christopher |
They had been caring for themselves for 2 years. Their parents had died of AIDS. Christopher, only 10, had nursed his parents until their death. Since then, he had been both mother and father to his brother and sister. He had ambitions of one day becoming a doctor but the chances of that were slim. His days were spent fetching wood and water and searching for food. As we spoke, he was cooking maize – a common, cheap source of carbohydrate grown in many parts of Africa. They had found the maize in the market on the floor at the end of the day. They had swept it up, sifted out the dirt, and this was the only meal they would have today.
The effort of sourcing food meant they did not attend school. And even if they had wanted to, it was next to impossible for them to come up with the money to get school uniform, and pay school fees, however small those fees might be.
I think you would have done the same thing: I held Christopher's hands and told him that from that day forward I was making a promise to him that I would provide his family with food.
I told him I would by pay for their school fees, uniforms and equipment.
What Christopher said next started Turn The Tide in earnest. Shaking his head and with tears in his eyes he said "But this only happens in my dream. Now I know that Jesus is real”.
The translator turned to me and said, “Today these children’s lives have turned around”.
I was slow to get the connection, but the words ‘turned around’ played over in my head.
Finally I got it - turned around! Turn the Tide! This was it!
I left that place knowing that somehow, some way, I would be back and when I did, it would not be just to say Hi to this one family but to give a hope and a future to other Child Headed Families as well.
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| Limbonazo and Milka |
It took 3 years, but in July 2011, I returned to Malawi. The school where I had been teaching in the UK had run a fundraising week generating almost £1500. I had done a lot of personal fundraising. I didn't really have a plan for the long term; but I had a real conviction that once I started, the rest of what we needed would come. I cannot put into words the feeling of seeing a dream become a reality.
That trip, working with a small church in the village who would administer the funds, we selected the first seven families Turn The Tide would support. Twenty one children living in the most vulnerable of circumstances were identified. They sang as they were given the assurance of being able to attend school. Their frowns turned to smiles as the understanding of what was being provided for them sunk in. My heart overflowed.
On that first day, this was my parting image: As the sun was setting children with arms laden with school equipment, toiletries, fish and beans and huge bags of maize on their heads walked back to their homes. However, it was their faces that carried the most beautiful load of all - huge smiles. As I watched them, my heart also felt full; full of purpose and deep love for these 21 children.
Two years on: orphans AND widows
Two years later, in May 2013, I returned to visit. I was thrilled to see how healthy "my" children looked and to discover how well they were doing at school. The local church has done a beautiful job at making sure all the funds we send have reach the children on a daily basis.
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| The children who started it all - Libonazi, Christopher and Milka. |
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| Celebrating Libonazi's birthday on 2nd May - the first one he has ever celebrated. |
To date Turn the Tide supports 39 children and 11 elderly widows in the village of Sorgen, Malawi.
If there is one thing I am convinced of, it is that this is not the end.
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