Mary's Meals, a simple solution to world hunger

Tom and Mary Lynn Moser, Directors on the Board of Mary’s Meals USA, report on their recent trip to Malawi where they saw Mary’s Meals providing meals and hope to children.

Tom Moser is a retired vice chairman of a global accounting firm and Mary Lynn Moser is a retired executive of a global banking institution. They learnt about Mary’s Meals from the CNN Heroes telecast in 2010, and then visited the charity’s founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow in Scotland to find out more.

Five schools in three days! What a wonderful opportunity for us to see Mary’s Meals in action. We’ll always remember three things the most…

First, the “seas” of Mary’s Meals blue mugs. The children treasure them and many wear them on cords around their necks, or tie them to their clothing, so they don’t lose them.

Also, the enthusiastic volunteers, who arrived very early in the morning to cook and serve the porridge, some with babies bundled up on their backs. They are so committed.

And, all those great, high-energy little children, with the biggest smiles.

Malawi is called “the warm heart of Africa”. We could see why when we visited the children… they were so friendly, so outgoing – yet polite – and so very happy when their turns come to receive their mug of porridge!

We know there are impressive statistics to show higher enrolments, attendance, and school performance after Mary’s Meals adds a school to its programme. Let us add anecdotal feedback.

As we rode along the narrow, dusty “roads” of Malawi and saw children who were not in school, we didn’t see those big smiles and energy levels we saw at the schools. That’s where we were reminded of the sad overall statistics that Mary’s Meals is trying to help overcome. There are so many more children who need that daily meal and the hope it brings.

We saw also the dramatic difference in the temporary kitchen straw shelters at some schools, and the permanent kitchen shelters, made out of brick, at others.

We visited the company that processes the likuni phala meal mix which is purchased by Mary’s Meals to support the local economy.

And we met those tremendously dedicated, bright and energetic Mary’s Meals staff professionals in Malawi who were small in numbers, but large in results. A wonderful group of people!

We wish all donors and potential donors could see what we saw. We were Mary’s Meals believers already, but this took it to another level. It is all so well conceived and well operated, so impressive, so impactful.

So far, around 550,000 children in this beautiful but impoverished country have hope and opportunity from that nutritious daily mug of porridge. Amazing!

MARY’S MEALS FOUNDER MAGNUS MACFARLANE-BARROW CONTINUES TO WRITE ABOUT HIS TRIP TO THE US

The next morning Patty and I arrived in Dallas, home of cowboys, JR Ewing, oil wells and a certain young lady called Abigail Gibney who has recently galvanised her high school and many others into action for Mary’s Meals.

McKinney High gave us an incredible welcome and was branded from top to bottom with Mary’s Meals posters and welcome signs. Teachers and students wore T-shirts proclaiming ’11 dollars’ (the amount it costs to feed a child for a year) and leather bracelets inscribed with ‘A Simple Solution’ on them.

Together they have already raised enough to sponsor a school in Malawi and in the process have introduced Mary’s Meals to several other High Schools in Texas. I would like to think Abigail could run Mary’s Meals one day but I think she might be too busy being President of America or something.

Her dad is an old friend of mine from Scotland and it was a blessing to spend a night with the amazing Gibney family, before heading the next morning to Florida. Here we had an appointment at Ave Maria university. We had a wonderful time speaking to a group of students here who have recently formed a global awareness club.

It was also a privilege to meet Jim Towey the university President who was once a very close friend and helper of Mother Teresa. The next morning it was an early flight to lovely leafy, Charlotte in North Carolina, home of Tom and Mary Lynn Moser, who are board members of Mary’s Meals USA.

They hosted a lovely evening event at which I had the chance to tell lots of nice people about our work. That group is also raising money to provide Mary’s Meals to another whole school in Malawi.

Next day, back in New York, I visited Grassroots who are making an amazing film about our work. Ana Laffont (another board member of Mary’s Meals USA) Patty and I watched a couple of short sections of the film that are now nearly complete.

Our friends from Grassroots wanted to know immediately what we felt but we were unable to speak for some time afterwards. Emotional wrecks after three mins, we wondered what effect the complete 26 min film will have. ‘Don’t worry there will be some funny bits too.’ they said. I’m sure there will be, because Mary’s Meals is like that.

MARY’S MEALS FOUNDER MAGNUS MACFARLANE-BARROW WRITES ABOUT HIS TRIP TO THE US

Patty, our US co-ordinator, picked me up at the airport and we headed straight for a Jazz Club in Manhattan. On the way there she showed me a letter she had just received from an inmate in a prison in Kansas. ‘Although we are in prison we have not lost our humanity’ read the letter and he explained how he had organised a collection from fellow prisoners. A cheque for over 1,000 US dollars was enclosed.

I was really moved. Just a couple of days earlier I had been speaking to an old friend, a chaplain at a prison in England, where inmates are also collecting for Mary’s Meals. It seems we are right when we say EVERY person can choose to do something for Mary’s Meals.

It was still early when we arrived at Swing 46 and the club was empty, apart from Judith, the owner, who we had come to meet. She greeted us warmly and we chatted at the bar. She plans to do monthly events for Mary’s Meals here and raise funds for a new kitchen. She thinks it is high time Mary’s Meals became better known in New York and she aims to do something about it! I left feeling very confident she will do just that, and many people will have a good time in the process.

From there we drove over to Harrington Park in New Jersey arriving just in time for Mass at a little wooden church called Our Lady of Victories. It was Sunday, and the feast of the Divine Mercy, and the church was packed. My old friend Brother Francis was there. He recently painted a remarkable 8ft high version of the famous Divine Mercy image and this picture was displayed at the front of the church.

The priest, Father Conrad, invited me to talk for a couple of minutes at the end of Mass about Mary’s Meals and as they left the church, the people responded in a beautiful way, asking questions about how they could help and stuffing a little basket full of donations. I slept that night at the presbytery and early next morning, with the enormous picture strapped to the roof of his car, Brother Francis drove me to the airport.

The transportation of this unusual cargo reminded us of the times, 20 years ago, when together we would drive a battered small truck around Scotland collecting all kinds of donations in order to transport them to the refugees in Bosnia.

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 >>