Where Hunger Walks With Him: Brian’s Fight for an Education

At the morning crow of a rooster, Brian, 13, wakes up to clean the surroundings. At this same time, his granny, 65-year-old Malita Kadule heads for the farm.

Brian, a Registered Child (RC) under World Vision’s sponsorship programme, then prepares himself for school. He is in grade four. But as soon as he finishes cleaning himself, he realises there is no food in the house. As such, he has to trek to school on an empty stomach.

“We struggle with food as we hardly harvest enough food to feed us the whole year. As such, my granny has to do farm piece works to bring food on the table,” says Brian.

For Kadule, she has to navigate between working on her farm and immediately later rush to a nearest farm to do piece works, there she hopes she might chance earning some money with which to buy maize flour to prepare food when she gets home before Brian comes back from school.

“At our household, it is only Brian and myself. So when Brian leaves for school, I rush to the farm to work. After a few hours working on our farm, I have to look for farm piece works so that I can have food for the day for my grandchild Brian,” she says.

“Brian lost his father a few years back, and I have been looking after him since then. When his mother and father divorced, the father took responsibility soon after, but we lost him three years ago,” she adds.

Despite having a two-acre piece of land, Kadule only carts home not more than five bags of maize during the harvest season. 

The struggle for food is immediately rife at Mbuyedziko village, Traditional Authority Kalumo in Ntchisi to most households that cannot afford chemical fertilizers which now fetch around Mk170, 000($85) a bag (at commercial bank exchange rate). 

“Because I cannot afford the chemical fertilizers from the shop, I harvest little yield that barely takes us beyond October. Currently I have to supplement food through farm piece works,” she says.

Despite the challenges, Brian still soldiers on to fulfil his dream to become a teacher. He says sometimes he feels so weak to concentrate in class.

“Because of hunger, sometimes I feel so weak to concentrate in class, as such, I miss some lessons despite being physically present,” says Brian, the aspiring teacher.