[Continued from HERE.]

Generally, no matter how strong one must be to survive, how hard life seems to be in Malawi, most people just get on with the art of living ... with plenty of joy and laughter thrown in for good measure. I have seen women with one or two children strapped to their backs, bent over tilling their fields with short handled hoes suddenly stand up, stretch a bit and start singing, dancing a few steps as they do. The other women around them have always joined in or stopped hoeing long enough to laugh. Then they all put their heads down and get back to work. The majority of very economically poor people I have met live with a minimum of self-pity and with unstated determination, nothing grim about it.

I have only rarely, and then usually in the shocked aftermath of crisis, found the gloom and misery which we in developed nations most often associate with the world’s impoverished populations. The perception of the sad, defeated African stems from, yep, you’ve guessed it, the media. I have stood in refugee camps when major international news teams come around, looking for a child that is crying rather than filming the impromptu soccer match that is right in front of them using a home-made ball of plastic bags rolled up and tied with string. Happy children don’t attract viewers, apparently. Of whom is that a sad indictment; the media or the viewers?

The thing about “surviving” with such a small margin for error is that for many, it doesn’t end up happening. As of this year, Malawi has the fifteenth highest infant mortality rate in the world, according to the CIA’s World Factbook. 175 of every 1000 children will die before the age of five, according to UNICEF statistics (2004-latest figure.) There are over one million orphans*, mainly due to AIDS. The life expectancy rate, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is 40 years old and again, because of AIDS, even in a peaceful country like Malawi the death rate is shockingly high.

Survival does happen, though ... survival and then some.

* Orphan is defined as a child with at least one parent deceased. Many AIDS orphans, however, have both parents deceased.

[NEXT BLOG: The role of children in Malawi]