At around 11 am, the place is usually quiet and looks empty. Only two women (seated on a bare ground) are busy doing ‘something’ in a metal basin.
They are preparing fish! It is fresh Utaka (small type of tilapia fish); very small tomatoes are peeping from the black thin plastic bag near them. Fish is worth K3,000 which 27 children and five care givers are supposed to have with Nsima for lunch and dinner.
“Where are the vegetables?” asked one member of the team that went to Good News orphanage in Chikwawa including Times Group crew.
“Someone has gone to buy from the market,” responded Dolipher Yona, one of the volunteers working at the centre.
Her response was with hesitation, she talked as if to block any further questions. Perhaps she thought our team had lost their way and would probably spend less time at the place.
As time passed, Yona and her colleague could no longer keep things to themselves.
A heap of Nsima, very little relish-practically three small fish with lots of soup is the main characteristic of their meals.
Later on, Yona admitted that the centre usually has food shortage and the children are supposed to share whatever is available so long as they do not sleep on an empty stomach.
The children basically have three meals a day; in the morning they have porridge, Nsima (Served with vegetables, fish, beans, meat and eggs among others) for lunch and dinner. Those that are in primary school are privileged to have soya meal porridge mid-way into their lessons.
The orphans came from villages surrounding the orphanage. According to Financial Controller of the centre, Joseph Zulu the orphans came to the centre because their relations could not afford to feed and send them to school.
Zulu recalls that the orphanage was established by Pastor Steve Zulu of Covenant Life Church in 1999 after observing that the area had many children whose parents died of AIDS.
“He initially used to provide food to the children at his house which is near this place until he couldn’t do that anymore. The number extremely increased. This centre started with grass thatched structures where children could just come to eat,” he explains.
The Pastor does not have any donors or other sources of funding to help the children other than the money which is raised from a maize mill situated five kilometres away from the institution, which was donated by Masaf in August 2008.
Zulu says on average K10, 000 is raised from the maize mill and the orphanage pays K90, 000 to K100, 000 electricity bills monthly.
“At one point some pastors from United Kingdom visited the centre and donated the building which is now housing boys. They also donated beddings. Other than that it’s the maize mill which is running this institution. Mind you, at times it can break down and we become stranded,” Zulu says.
The centre is a home of 43 orphans (17 girls and 26 boys). Of these, only 27 reside at the centre, some are in secondary boarding schools and six are at university (Polytechnic and Kamuzu College of Nursing), according to Zulu.
The Children said that they are provided with basic needs such as food, clothes, school uniforms, notebooks and toiletries.
Each week, there are five women volunteer-members of the Covenant Life Church. They cook and look after the children. The children wash their clothes and beddings themselves. They also clean their rooms, bathrooms and toilets.
“I am better off here. There is a lot of poverty at home and I don’t think anybody would send me to school and provide for my basic needs,” says an 18 year old Blessings Mlenga who has been at the centre since year 2000.
“My mother passed away but my father abandoned me and re married. Nobody cared…” adds the form one student at Hope Christian private school in Chikwawa whose school fees is also paid for by the same institution.
Of course these children are better off here than home but this environment is not that conducive for their well-being either.
The institution is along the road but does not have electricity and a fence. The children use torches or candles for lighting at night. It is not safe for the girls to go out to answer the call of nature at night as the toilets are behind their hostel building. Their bathrooms and toilets do not have doors for privacy.
Child Protection Officer for Chikwawa District Social Welfare Office, Joseph Sululu says the institution is not meeting all the standards to house children.
“The centre is not meeting all the required standards. Even though they claim to have security guards, the centre isn’t secure to have no fence. We already made some recommendations to this institution on several issues such as, fence, the conditions of their toilets and bathrooms which are also not in good shape,” he says.
Sululu also reveals that government is encouraging children to be taken care of by relatives back home other than at such centres, for them to grow up with origin values, culture and still connect with their relations.
“A child that grows up at an orphanage like this is likely to lose contact with relations and miss some milestones in their development.”
“Many orphanages don’t follow the right procedure of caring for these kids. Those that are 18 years old and above aren’t supposed to stay at an orphanage. One isn’t supposed to stay at this place forever,” he says.
Clinical Psychologist at College of Medicine, Chiwoza Bandawe says development of children brought up at such institutions is highly affected as they lack bonding with their parents and they become broken people as they grow up.
“They lack bonding between themselves and parents, they miss out on stable emotional feedback. As a result they struggle with schooling and relationships. They mostly have unstable relationships as they are unsure of themselves and usually live a life of fear and uncertainty of who they are,” he explains.
Executive Director for Centre for Children’s Affairs, Moses Busher says there is lack of order when it comes to establishment of such centres, adding that there is a lot of abuse in the centres which go unreported.
“People are just deciding to open these centres taking advantage of the fact that government doesn’t have such structures and no other options to take care of orphans. This is compromising the welfare of the children,” he observes.
Busher notices that most of such institutions are a haven for child abuse wearing the face of helping orphans.
“We seem to trust these orphanage owners so much yet they are abusing our children. Most of these abuses go unreported because these children are so vulnerable and are afraid to report such issues,” he says.
Busher adds: “There is little supervision of such places by government and it is as if they only want government to check on them and not Civil Society Organisations. If you go there they say it is only ministry of Gender that comes here for supervision and they highly question the CSO’s presence there.”
Busher cited the issue of a US national Gerald Campbell who sexually abused orphans at Victory Christian Children’s Home in Thyolo, saying “I believe there are many children within such centres who are going through this.”
He wonders how this man almost got away with this since it happened right in front of every body’s nose and went unnoticed.
Busher disclosed that his organisation has visited such institutions on several occasions but were not allowed to interact with the children, “Which shows that these children may be living in fear”
Malawi is a home of an estimated one million orphans. According to UNAIDS, 530,000 of orphans aged 0 to 17 years old have been orphaned due to AIDS.
Recently Malawi Human Rights Commission disclosed that over 10,000 children are living dangerously in over 150 orphanages across the country.
The report highlights that there are many unregistered centres which are exposing children to sexual abuse, poor living conditions and being conduits of illegal adoptions.
According to MHRC there is slow progress on registration child rights institutions are waiting for government to take up a public notice calling for all Child Care Institutions to register in accordance to the Child Care Protection and Justice Act. “Previous monitoring indicated continual establishment of these illegal institutions like the incident at Comfort Children’s Home in Nsundwe in July 2015 whereby four children died after the institution caught fire. MHRC still calls for government action,” says MHRC principal child rights officer Jeremia Mpaso.
Principal secretary of the ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare, Mary Shawa says the inspection which the ministry did in 2014 recommended the closure of Good News orphanage. It did not meet the minimum standards.
“We are actually in the process of encouraging whoever wants to help these children to do so whilst they are living with relatives in respective homes. We are aware that some of these children are subjected to abuse at these centres so we want to protect them,” she says.
Shawa discloses that last year the ministry inspected 106 orphanages and noted that most of them were not meeting the required minimum standards.
“We wrote ministry of justice and constitutional affairs to advise on how we should go about closing down substandard orphanages. They approved this but we are still working on the number of those to be closed,” she said.
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