School girls sleep in maize mills

Our Staff Writer JAMES CHAVULA details how a government’s top-down initiative has let down girls at Nyamadzere Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) in Nsanje.

As policymakers in Malawi no longer find public schools good for their sons and daughters, neglect and falling standards typify institutions where parents who cannot afford private schools send their children.

At Nyamadzere CDSS in Nsanje, girls bizarrely sleep in a maize mill as Capital Hill plays hide-and-seek with K110 million hostels abandoned 13 years ago.

“If decision-makers’ daughters were learning shoulder to shoulder with us, wouldn’t they have finished the hostels?” asks Form Four student Alice Kaledzera, 19.

She is among 70 girls who occupy an incomplete block comprising a kitchen, cafeteria, storerooms and a maize mill.

Each pays K25 000 per term for a spot.

Alice, from Malemia Village, has ducked daily school trips that lasted over 90 minutes.

“I often arrived in class late and too tired to learn. Well-off peers rented homes nearby, but some dropped out due to early pregnancies, marriages and sex for money in self-boarding,” she recalls.

School authorities hastily opened the unfinished hostels.

Boys have ironically taken over the least vandalised girls’ hostel, pushing the intended beneficiaries to an overcrowded, unsanitary mess without electricity and safe water.

Alice, whose parents struggled to raise boarding fees, sleeps in a soiled corridor she bills “better than sleeping in a maize mill”.

The desperation personify every girl’s appetite to learn in a safe environment until her dreams come true, but government seems unmoved to complete the hostels.

Nyamadzere CDSS enrols 708 students, including 341 girls, according to headteacher Christopher Siyanyalo.

He has supposedly lost count of the boarding students in agony.

“Only 34 girls lodge in the unfinished hostels. We accommodated about 20 boys to provide security for the girls and plundered hostels,” he says.

Nonetheless, student-led headcounts show there are over 70 girls and 45 boys.

“We pay boarding fees, but do we count? Does anyone care about us?” asked one of the 15 girls who occupy the maize mill block.

Vandals have stolen two roller mills, leaving behind pipes and other parts where students hang clothes. They also plundered doors, windows, beds, electricity wiring, toilets, bathrooms and water supply fittings.

Construction of the girls’ hostel stalled in 2013 amid revelations of Cashgate—the massive plunder of public funds by corrupt politicians, civil servants and their business cronies.

The multibillion-kwacha payments for no goods or service delivered stirred an international backlash and aid cuts, stalling several projects nationwide.

Nyamadzere CDSS girls remain trapped in dehumanising conditions that the hostels were supposed to eliminate.

They want President Peter Mutharika to show that government still cares about girls’ education.

Cabinet ministers and Ministry of Education delegations have visited the abandoned hostels.

On July 26 2019, then minister of Local Government and Rural Development Ben Phiri dramatically phoned his education counterpart Susuwele Banda to do something about it.

Phiri is back at the ministry after a five-year hiatus, but the “national embarrassment” persists due to payment issues that Susuwele’s successor, Agnes Nyalonje, blamed on “erratic funding”

Following Weekend Nation’s investigation in 2020, former Education Minister Agnes NyaLonje stated: “The stagnation of the Nyamadzere girls’ hostels should be viewed as a national embarrassment. Unfortunately, it is not a unique situation.

“There have been many similar examples under various government administrations over the years involving construction projects within the Ministry of Education and under other ministries. The fact that this has happened in relation to girls’ hostels is particularly heartbreaking, given the challenges girls face in continuing their education.”

Affected communities have teamed up with Nsanje Civil Society Network to track the money for stagnant projects with support from the Norwegian and DanChurchAid through the Malawi Human Rights Resource Centre (MHRRC).

The initiative seeks to enhance citizen voices and action in local governance and development processes.

“Government should make it a priority to complete stalled projects or we will continue wasting money on unfinished investments. In the end, Malawi will be dotted with unfinished infrastructure. Our people deserve better,” says Noel Msiska, from MHRRC.

To Nsanje residents, the “unfinished business” exemplifies the secretive but sluggish flow of government spending from Capital Hill to the southern tip.

Asks McConnell Kalikokha, leader of the community-led accountability committee: “Why did government waste millions on a project it doesn’t want to complete?

“Ministry of Education officials bypassed Nsanje District Council and local actors. Was this about the urgency to ensure girls learn in a safe environment or to divert the funds?”

‘We’ve let them down’

In March 2023, concerned citizens in local markets raised K760 000 for the committee to travel to Lilongwe and demand answers from the ministry.

“During the meeting at Capital Hill, the ministry’s officials refused to allow the district council to complete the project for our daughters’ good. They promised to finish it promptly, but we are still waiting,” Kalikokha recounts.

The committee recalls similar assurances by then director of secondary education Dr Florida Banda and engineer Arthur Chiphiko who headed the construction department.

Nyamadzere CDSS Board of Governors chairperson Mavuto Zwangeti, tells The Nation: “We’ve said a lot and knocked on every door at Capital Hill, but the raw deal persists. No one seems to care about poor girls.

“The nation has let these girls down. If I met President Mutharika, I would tell him: Prioritise girls’ future because any nation which does not care or educate its girls is doomed.”

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