Mary's Meals, a simple solution to world hunger

Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow writes from Malawi, where New York-based Grassroots Films are currently shooting footage for a forthcoming film about our work.

Even if you wanted to, it would be hard to escape the sound of children laughing in Malawi. This is a nation with a very young population and you hear this – and see it – wherever you go.

On the highest part of the Lilongwe-to-Blantyre road, near the point from where, on a clear day, you can just see the lake in the distance and the faint blue mountains of Mozambique beyond, we stopped in a remote spot to film.

Whenever there was a gap in passing traffic, and the noise of engines labouring up the hill ceased, the sound of children laughing bubbled up from somewhere below us.

I realised that, at the bottom of a steep drop on the other side of the road, there was a little thatched-roofed village. I couldn’t see them but they were laughing and laughing and laughing. Lots of them. It reminded me of Mother Teresa’s words, when she said: “How can you say there are too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.”

Later, we found a beautiful spot to film the sunset, at a school on the road towards Mulanje. A football match had just finished and, when we asked the kids for a kick-about, their coach said they had been playing for a long time and now he was giving them a team talk.

Then someone said we were from Mary’s Meals and they all stood up, burst into big smiles and started shaking our hands and inviting us to play with them!

After a quick game – and with the sun dropping towards the horizon and the sky turning orange – Chuck, Jeff and Cliff (the guys from Grassroots Films) worked with three different cameras and tripods to capture the scene.

I sat on a nearby rock and drank in the beauty and the near silence. Of course, we could still hear some children laughing nearby. On the Mary’s Meals kitchen beside us the sign said: “Morag Pender – In Memory of Her Mother”. I thought about her act of kindness and how there would be less laughter here without it.

View Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow’s other recent blogposts:

• Realising our dream for a Mary’s Meals film >>

• She can choose to be whatever she wants to be >>

• Lette’s school run >>

Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow writes from Malawi, where New York-based Grassroots Films are currently shooting footage for a forthcoming film about our work.

Early yesterday, just as the sun began to rise above the curiously pointed hills near Blantyre, we walked for 20 minutes down steep paths, through a jumble of tin-roofed little homes, across makeshift bridges, and over rubbish-filled streams to meet Lette.

When we arrived she and a younger brother were hunched over a little fire, cooking a meagre pan of morning porridge. Soon their youngest brother Andersen appeared rubbing his eyes, which were clearly still adjusting to the light of day.

He surprises us by shaking our hands solemnly without shyness. Nelia, who runs the Mary’s Meals centres here for children below school age and has come along with us, helps him tie up his trousers.

At 12 years old Lette is the head of this household, while Andersen is just 4 years old. They have rented out their own little hut, and while they live in a one room annex, the money from the tenant helps them to survive.

Lette cries as she speaks to us about the loss of her mother two years ago, her father having passed away some years before. She tells us that sometimes the hunger gives her stomach pains and makes her feel like vomiting.

Lette says that when she feels this way, she always thinks back to how, when her mother was alive, she never went hungry. “But it isn’t hard to look after my brothers,” she says, trying to smile.

After breakfast, Lette gives her little brother his morning bath, stripping off his clothes and pouring a basin of water – just warmed on the fire – over him. She scrubs him with soap, seeming to take delight in the lather she works up in his hair, before meticulously checking his ears and eyes and washing a last bit of ‘sleep’ from them.

Then, after dressing him gently, she hoists him on to her back and walks the mile or so over bridges and up steep paths, and drops him off at the Mary’s Meals centre for children under six years old.

There we watch him play with the other kids. There are over a hundred children, many of them orphans, at this centre run by local volunteers.

Later, they queue up for their morning porridge. The Mary’s Meals volunteers tell us Andersen was very malnourished when his big sister first began taking him here six months ago, but now he is healthy.

Lette meanwhile has already headed home to get ready for her own day at school. She has an exam today and after that she will eat Mary’s Meals herself.

View Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow’s other recent blogposts:

• Realising our dream for a Mary’s Meals film >>

• She can choose to be whatever she wants to be >>

Mary’s Meals founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow writes from Malawi, where New York-based Grassroots Films are currently shooting footage for a forthcoming film about our work.

It’s currently only 11am here in Malawi, but a bright and early 5am start this morning has allowed us to get off to a wonderful start with filming.

We got to Matindi School sometime before the school day had begun, but sometime after the local volunteers had arrived, and they were already working hard to prepare the firewood and cooking pots.

We filmed the children arriving on foot from all around, some having walked 3km. One of the older boys rang the school ‘bell’ by hitting the metal inner rim of a car wheel, suspended from a tree in the playground.

The old hammer in his hand produced loud and effective clanging. The kids queued for their 7am morning assembly in the dusty playground, at which they sang songs and did some stretching exercises before disappearing into their classrooms.

Most are barefoot and only a few have uniforms. A short while later, the older kids re-emerge from their classrooms and sit in groups under trees, reading to each other from their jotters and discussing questions.

They have important exams soon and so have been asked to study in this way. Meanwhile the volunteers – who have lit their fires and are stirring the likuni phala (nutritious porridge) – break into a loud song as they work.

One of their babies sits contentedly in the dust outside and plays with a stone. Later, the children queue for their porridge – which is for many their first meal of the day – and sit with their friends in the shade of walls and trees to eat.

We talk to some of the children at the school. One of them is 8-year-old Bernadette, an orphan who lives with her granny. She answers our usual questions with sincere answers, but ones we have heard often before.

She says: “Yes I love school”, “Yes, often at home there is nothing to eat”, “Mary’s Meals helps me to concentrate and to learn”, “I work sometimes collecting water, to earn money for food” and then, a surprise! She tells us: “When I grow up I want to be a nun.”

After school we walk home with her and meet her frail grandmother who is looking after other grandchildren as well. Bernadette draws water from a nearby pump and shows us how she can carry a heavy load on her head.

Outside they have a meagre pile of maize hobs, and some ground maize powder drying in the sun. I tell her granny that I was surprised when Bernadette told me she wanted to be nun. Her granny, looking a little shocked, tells me that Bernadette had never mentioned it to her before.

“But that is fine,” she says, “when Bernadette grows up she will have an education and so she can choose to be whatever she wants to be.”

View Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow’s other recent blogposts:

• Realising our dream for a Mary’s Meals film >>