I have the tendency to chat with random people and I guess that somehow helps with my being a qualitative researcher. So today the random chat happened with a young chap who works as a guard at the College of Medicine. I’m curious at how people earning less could survive in a place like this because I don’t seem to find anything cheap.
This young chap earns only MK6000 (or £24) per month. He speaks quite good English so I complimented on that. He very shyly said that he’d studied up to secondary school. And he felt very proud to be the highest (academically) qualified person among the family members. Other siblings didn’t go to school because they family couldn’t afford tuition fee. And the other reason was that they aren’t interested in that. One term cost MK2000 (at the same time I was comparing in my mind MK300,000 per term paid by my landlady for her son’s private schooling) so 3 terms cost MK6000 so they certainly can’t afford that. I asked whether he’s the sole bread winner in the family he said yeah.. the other family members live in the ‘village’ (guess that means rural areas) and they do farming. The food they grow is only enough for their own consumption and no extra for selling. The land they own is too limited to grow surplus. So basically the whole family is dependent on his £24/month salary.
And the way to survive is to just do what is just enough to survive. For example, there’s very little protein intake because chicken, fish and other meat products are very expensive. So they only have dried fish (it’s a very common item here in Malawi, it’s actually anchovies or something we call ‘ikan bilish’ in Malaysia) once in a while. Most meals consist of vegetables and nsima (the most common source of carbohydrate here in Malawi, made from maize flour). Instead of eating bread which is expensive, they have potatoes.
Hearing this, I think I have no further questions. What we see as ‘necessities’ aren’t the same ones in their eyes. I found myself so uncomfortable in this country because I come from the middle class. And middle class isn’t existent in this society. There is either upper class or working class. There’s nothing in between. There’s either very expensive place to shop or very cheap place. I haven’t been exposed to the cheap place yet and even if I do I doubt if I could get anything cheap. Simply because my look tells them that I do not belong there. At the same time I do not belong to the upper class as well because I do not have the buying power. The income gap is too wide. Money circulates only among the upper class. To get anything apart from food to fill the stomach and the most basic items to maintain living is sheer luxury for the poor. There’s no way to break the poverty spell for the poor. They’re too poor to do anything else. They’re too poor to even get basic education which is the most possible mechanism to escape poverty. If I were to be born into such extreme destitution certainly I would be angry (toward rich people), would most possibly turn to crime (like stealing and robbing) and most probably not to live very long.
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