Vulnerable Children

In the US, much thought, effort, and money goes into nurturing, protecting, and caring for children. In affluent families, children have the latest in toys, shoes and clothing, and as they get older, the latest electronic gadgets. They are well clothed, fed, and entertained. When they speak, children are listened to, and it is common for parents to earnestly converse with their children and to treat them as equal participants in adult conversations.

Because parents fear the abduction of their children, they are closely guarded in all public places, and a parent who leaves a child unattended at home or in a parked vehicle risks arrest for child endangerment or neglect.  As prescribed by law, young children cannot wait at a school bus stop without parental supervision.

In rural areas of Malawi, the demands of life are sobering, and activities focused on survival, such as collecting firewood and water, working in their fields, and collecting and preparing food require many hours of labor each day.

Young girls are considered part of the labor force of the home, and as soon as they are able to bear the load, they are given responsibility for helping to collect water and wood and for caring for younger siblings. It is common to see girls as young as 6 carrying infants or toddlers on their backs to free their mothers for other tasks. When they are not playing with other children, I have seen children quietly congregate at a distance around the periphery of adult conversations, listening and observing. They are seen and not heard.  

Women have the major responsibility for raising children and making sure they are clothed and fed, but among the poorest, there doesn’t seem to be much left for nurturing their children with the exception of infants. When strapped to their mother’s backs, infants are usually content, and almost without exception their need to nurse is promptly attended to. Men are certainly not seen as nurturers, and it is exceptional to see a man carrying or holding a child. 

Children in the US are constantly under the watchful care of a responsible adult, but that is not the case in rural Malawi.   As we drive into villages we frequently see young children, 2, 3 or 4 years old, playing in fields or along roadsides some distance from home with no adults in sight.

Here it is completely acceptable to give a young child five or six years old responsibility for walking some distance from home along a busy road to a community store to buy perhaps a little bag of oil or a bit of sugar for her family, and it is common for primary age children to walk many km along busy highways traveling to and from school.   Could this kind of parenting foster  a quiet resolve, independence, and resourcefulness in children that may be necessary for their survival as adults, or does it make children vulnerable?

I have shown you a glimpse of a child’s position in the home and parent –child relationships.  Now I would like to show you a child’s position in the broader culture.

Families typically have 5-7 children. The reasons are disease, death, and poverty.  If that doesn’t make sense, I will do my best to explain. The average lifespan in Malawi is only 47 years old, largely because infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, diarrhea disease, tuberculosis, and malaria take many lives. The majority of deaths from malaria and diarrhea disease are children under age 5.  

A contributor to susceptibility to HIV/AIDS and malaria and other diseases is malnutrition.  Individuals with HIV/Aids are more susceptible to malaria, and those with malaria are more susceptible to HIV/AIDS. And people who have poor nutrition are more susceptible to both. Lower respiratory disease takes more lives than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, and half of those deaths are children under age 5.  Also, because of inadequate medical care and unsanitary practices at birth, many children die soon after birth from cord infection. 

Parents know that some of their children will die before they are grown, so having a large family is somewhat like having a retirement plan.  It assures parents that they will be cared for when they can no longer care for themselves.

 It is a vicious and downward cycle: the poverty and disease dictates having a large family, and having a large family perpetuates the poverty.  The poverty predisposes one to succumbing to disease and rampant disease robs families of resources and contributes to deeper poverty.

There are two main cultural groups here in Malawi, the Chewa and the Yao, and about half of the population of central Malawi is Yao. Now, I will describe an initiation of children practiced by the Yao.   During the month of July, Yao children, as young as 10 years old (some say 6 years old), undergo an initiation that lasts about a month.  To prepare for the rituals, a group of village elders build huts away from the village along a river bank.   When they return to the village, parents release their children to these elders who take the children back to the huts along the river bank. They will spend about a month there teaching the children about sex. Any child who refuses to go or tries to run away will be abducted and brought back to the site and held there against their will. Any child who wanders near the camp will be brought into the camp as well.

Parents here in Malawi are uncomfortable discussing with their children the changes their bodies will go through and other sexual matters, so traditionally this is the responsibility of their village leaders.  Even city dwellers who no longer live in their ancestral village will take their children back there to participate in this initiation.  Much of the instruction is through crude  language and vulgar songs. The purpose is said to be to prepare the young people for adulthood, but the actual consequence is that innocent children lose their innocence. The boys are encouraged to experiment with sexual behavior, and the girls are told to not be afraid of a man’s touch, that it is all pleasurable, and that they should do whatever a man asks them to do.  After days and weeks of this, of course, the children lose their inhibitions against engaging in sexual behavior.

Then the boys are circumcised. I have learned that several boys will be circumcised with the same unwashed instrument with no concern for the spread of germs or communicable diseases.  With no medical assistance, the children go naked for days and are kept in the camp until their wounds heal.    

So, at the end of this initiation, the children return to their families without natural inhibitions, and they begin to act on what they have learned.  It takes no imagination to realize that this initiation promotes promiscuity, early sex, early marriage, and early pregnancy and makes the children very vulnerable to STDs such as HIV/AIDS.  Early marriage and early pregnancy increases the odds that a girl will never be able to complete her education, and the obvious consequence of that is a lack of economic opportunity and a life of deep poverty for her and her children. Then when her children are old enough, the cycle begins again. 

Now I will describe a practice that is common in northern Malawi. There, as in other parts of Malawi, families are large. Typically, a young man marries a wife, and as soon as possible she is expected to produce children, and a woman who cannot produce children will be rejected.  As the family grows over the years, of course, the wife’s responsibilities increase.  She performs the duties of a good wife, working in the maize field, washing clothes, tending to sick children, cooking and cleaning and caring for her family.  

She stays very busy collecting water and firewood. Now that there are five, six, or seven children in the family and the wife is away from the house for hours of the day doing her chores, the husband begins to feel lonely and wants someone to talk to. Then he will seek out a young woman for companionship who will be his second wife. She is young, energetic, and can attend to his every need.

My focus here is that the girl who becomes the second wife is young. Many girls drop out of school and are married young to older men. The young girls begin to produce children when their bodies are not fully formed, putting themselves and their babies at risk.   When a girl’s body is not mature enough to deliver a baby, it can result in fistula, a permanent perforation or tear of the lining of her vaginal walls, urinary tract and or bowels. A girl who suffers from fistula is unable to control her flow of urine and or her bowels, making her unattractive. Because of the constant stench, a girl who suffers from fistula is rejected by people around her, including her husband.  What kind of future does that leave her?

Although this has not been a pleasant story to tell, I felt compelled to tell it.  I hope each one who reads it will be filled with compassion for the children of Malawi and will pray for them and for our success in ministering to them.   The children in the two villages where we work are always very excited when George comes to play games with them and to tell hero stories from the Bible, but can God use us to have a broader influence for the good of the children of Malawi? 

Of all the vulnerable children of Malawi, the girls are without question the most vulnerable.  Starting at a young age, a girl’s responsibility for helping with household chores often takes her away from getting an education. Then when cultural influences encourage her to leave school, engage in promiscuous behavior, marry young, and start having children,  both she and her children are relegated to a life of deep poverty.  

We know that a good future for these girls starts with their knowing that they are made by God and that their lives have purpose. It is knowing they can make choices with their lives that can positively change their futures. It is also determining to stay morally pure and finishing school.  May God enable us to be an advocate for the children.