Red, dirt road. The communities under the auspices of St. Gabriel’s Hospital here in Namitete, Malawi, are connected by red, dirt roads, which are probably more like paths with tough bumps that necessitate the use of the hospital’s Toyota Land Cruiser, the 4X4 that is renowned for its versatility and durability on tough terrain all over the world. Having grown up in the urban sprawl of Los Angeles with Land Cruisers that have probably never been driven off-road, driving on unpredictable grounds has always been appealing to me, the same way that attacking dirt trails in the mountains on a mountain bike appeals to me. It seems exciting but challenging at the same time. You don’t go quite fast, but it’s exhilarating having to anticipate the unpredictabilities of the road.

Tiffany (my internship partner) and I spent all of Tuesday on these red, dirt roads traveling to three different HIV support groups to conduct field research for our microenterprise program. Last week, we had visited three other groups, and we felt that it would be useful to visit three more groups. We really wanted to try to fully understand the challenges that these HIV support groups face in their everyday lives, as this is also the target audience of our microenterprise program, which we designed last semester to teach sustainable, financial skills as a means of uplifting these groups from poverty.

Here’s a quick summary of the three groups we visited. I don’t remember the names of these groups, so I will be giving them my own names.

1. Traditional medicine group. We arrived at 9:30 AM, yet we didn’t leave until almost 2 hours later, which really reminded me of African time. This group runs an orphanage for children affected by HIV/AIDS. They also make little, wearable HIV-ribbon bead crafts for their fellow peers in their HIV community, as well as the variety of traditional Malawian medicinal herbs for a variety of ailments. I wonder if anyone has scientifically studied these plants for any potential medicinal compounds that would also prove useful in Western medicine? At the end, the group wanted to show us a play, but since we didn’t have much time, they ended up just singing us a 10-minute song which was quite nice.
2. Pig failure group. This group’s entire collection of pigs died from disease, and compared to the previous group, this group was in very low spirits. Angela told us that the porcine disease was probably spread through poor maintenance of the pigsty. Also, this group has been suffering from low participation among support group members as a result of perceived inequality with the distribution of these pigs. I think that this group is in dire need of renewed leadership.
3. Middle-of-nowhere, field irrigation group. We traveled to a field that was seriously in the middle-of-nowhere, and also unreachable by red, dirt road. It seemed like we were on a path that was probably only used twice, and I seriously would have LOVED to have driven on this road. Well, fine, maybe I would have been a bit nervous, and I wouldn’t have been able to drive manual anyways (yeah, embarrassing right?). This group was in the process of adding an irrigation system (I think subsidized by the government) that was powered by a gasoline engine. I’m frankly a bit worried about the long-term financial sustainability of depending on this gasoline power source. They recently suffered a bad harvest due to poor selection of maize seedlings. They also have a honey business too.

After leaving St. Gabriel’s at 9 AM, we got back around 4:30 PM, and I was exhausted. Nevertheless, I think we really got a better understanding of the challenges facing these support groups to better allow us to improve and plan such microenterprise training programs for these groups:

• The HIV-support group members are seriously living their financial lives day to day. It seems like the profit that is made from any harvest goes immediately towards necessities such as food and clothing for families often consisting of 5 children (on average). There is often not enough money, so many of these individuals also do work on other people’s crop fields.
• Savings towards emergency funds is non-existant. This is especially detrimental to these groups, as a single bad harvest could possibly lead to food instability for these groups.
• Leadership of some of these groups could berevitalized, especially with the pig-failure group.
• These HIV-support groups have become dependent on outside financial help (specifically from St. Gabriel’s Hospital), almost at an emotional level.