Malawi: a music therapist's travelogue

Dr. Trish Winter

Dr. Trish Winter presents her work in Malawi to the World Music Therapy Congress in Austria. All photos are courtesy of Dr. Winter.

The following is a travelogue by Trish Winter, assistant music professor of music therapy. It chronicles her time in Malawi and then Austria, where she presented at the World Music Therapy Congress. Both a McGlothlin faculty travel award and a CVPA Faculty Research Grant funded the latter. This is her second summer working in Malawi, continuing work that was begun by Dr. Brooke Blanks in 2012. Winter also wishes to acknowledge the RU School of Teacher Education and Leadership for awarding a graduate research fellowship for this project to Samantha Hilton.

Mabuya

Mabuya

Travel log: Malawi, Africa May 2014

Days 1-2: Three of us traveled this year, Dr. Brooke Blanks, from the School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Samantha Hilton the 2013-2014 RU Graduate Research Fellow, and myself from CVPA. The journey to Malawi took approximately 24 hours with a brief layover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Day 2: We arrived in Lilongwe, Malawi, the capital city. Our lodging was a backpacker’s hostel in suburban Lilongwe with pleasant accommodations. We slept in an A-framed building with a thatched roof for the three-week trip. We were glad to see some Mabuya (a genus of long-tailed skinks) who were skittering around the inside of our A-frame, as they helped to manage the mosquitoes.

Rural school block building M’bangombe Primary School.

Rural school block building M’bangombe Primary School.

Day 3: We joined our colleagues at African Vision Malawi, an Nongovernment organization (NGO) that partners with the rural schools and villages outside of Lilongwe. We traveled together out of the city into the rural countryside where we met with teachers and school administrators in the M’bangombe Primary School. Primary education in Malawi is free for all students and secondary education is fee based. We began our classroom observations, which provided us with an opportunity to identify the strengths of the teaching practices and to determine any needs that we were able to address from our interprofessional perspectives of special education and music therapy.

Standard 8 children writing practice exams

Standard 8 children writing practice exams

Days 4-6: Classroom observations continued and we were delighted to see outstanding teaching practices in the classroom and hear many traditional songs that were being taught to the learners. Children played circle games and engaged in culturally relevant dances that also served to embed academic concepts. Classroom sizes ranged from 45-100+ students per teacher. This number was slightly smaller than some of the other classrooms that we observed in other rural schools. Each school had approximately 14 teachers to serve the needs of 1,000 students. At this time standard 8 (standard levels correlate with grade levels in the U.S.) students were preparing for their examinations, which will determine whether each student will qualify to attend secondary school. Due to exemplary leadership and passionate teachers and students the pass rate for this examination is quite high for both male and female students at the M’bangombe Primary School.

A raft of Mvuu (Hippopotamus) featuring cattle egrets

A raft of Mvuu (Hippopotamus) featuring cattle egrets

Days 7-9: A very essential part of our work in Malawi is gaining cultural and environmental awareness in order to more fully understand the day-to-day lives of children and adults with whom we collaborate. Our weekend days were spent traveling, in country, to gain greater access to what life is like for Malawians. This first of our two weekends was spent exploring the environmental practices of sustainable ecology, animal husbandry, farming, fishing, traditional cultural practices through music and dance, and the economic realities of living and working in Malawi. We traveled to central Malawi and visited a game preserve, which provides essential links between the people and the extensive wildlife that call this place home. This research was and continues to be an invaluable link to our collaborative project with educators and children.

Usipa (dried fish) from Lake Malawi a great source of protein and calcium in the Malawian diet

Usipa (dried fish) from Lake Malawi a great source of protein and calcium in the Malawian diet

Day 9: We returned to the rural school to continue classroom observations. Each day provided us with time to observe the different standard levels so that by the end of our visit we observed each of the standards. This year (our second trip) was quite different as it was a national election year for Malawi and the elections took place Tuesday of this week. Malawi gained independence in 1964 and was ruled under a one-party system until 1994. At that time Malawi truly became a democracy with a tripartite system that included the Democratic Progressive Party, Malawi Congress Party, and the People’s Party. On Monday we began to receive information from the U.S. State Department that it may be unsafe for us to be in places with large gatherings of people and that we should remain where we are lodging. Malawi is a very peaceful country and we observed no unrest during our time there.

Days 10-12: We spent these days keeping a close eye on the elections and planning for the professional development we will co-construct with the educators at the M’bangombe Primary School. On day 11 we met a delightful Malawian woman who showed us how to cook a traditional meal of nsima; a cornmeal product (like grits) which is a staple food of Malawians; chicken with tomatoes and mustard greens. The food in Malawi is delicious, very plain, and serves to keep one full for a long time. Malawian’s typically only eat two meals a day and both meals consist of similar foods with the addition of dried fish, eggs, goat, pork and rice.

Sunset on Lake Malawi

Sunset on Lake Malawi

Day 13: At this time there were no election results. Malawi is a very rural country and rural polling places include the use of the village schools for the local communities, with teachers and administrators manning the polling places. Due to the lack of access to transportation it takes a considerable amount of time to collect the ballots and transport them back to a central location. The right to vote is taken very seriously by the people and voter turnout rates are very high at 90 percent. Election results were slow to be released, taking a total of eight days from the close of the polls until the new president was announced.

Day 14-16:  This weekend we headed to one of Malawi’s most important environmental resources, Lake Malawi, the ninth largest lake in the world and home to more than 1000 species of cichlids, a type of fish. During this trip I was able to hike through a traditional fishing village and get a sense of what daily life is like for those who live along the waters of lake Malawi and generate income from this resource. This village hike gave me an opportunity to hear the sounds of the village including a lot of Western music such as Chris Brown and Jay Z, as well as Malawian and African artists such as Peter Mawanga and Babib Koite. The music was played loudly over large amplifier speakers powered by car batteries. There is no electricity in the rural villages, however villagers make use of creative resources to have access to radios and cell phones.

Rift valley ringed by the Mangochi escarpment

Rift valley ringed by the Mangochi escarpment

Day 17: This was our last day at the M’bangombe Primary School. We met with the Primary Education Advisor (PEA) and the assistant director of the school to discuss the findings of our observations. This meeting gave us an opportunity to express our gratitude for the opportunity to observe the teachers and make a plan for future professional development.

Day 18-20:  During these final few days our NGO partners provided us with an opportunity to visit three teacher training colleges (TTCs); Emmanuel TTC, Lilongwe TTC, and DAPP Dowa TTC. We met with faculty and administration and acquired a deeper understanding of the teacher training curriculum and the attitudes associated with providing education to students with disabilities. We also had an opportunity to learn more about the use of music in the classrooms and the amount of musical training teachers receive during their time at the TTCs.

Day 21: On this final day we returned to the airport for a 35-hour trip home. Our time in Malawi was productive, educational and extremely exciting. We will look forward to working with the educators and administrators on including more music into classroom experiences and incorporating special education techniques and strategies to meet the needs of all learners.

 

Follow up: Malawi travel log

July 10, 2014:  Workshop presentation, about our work in Malawi, at the 2014 World Music Therapy Congress in Krems, Austria.  This forum provided an opportunity to discuss the current project with the international music therapy community.

Jul 25, 2014
CVPA
540-831-6237
cvpa411@radford.edu