The Women of Nkhata Bay — Mary

The more I meet people and hear stories, the more astonished I am at the sheer will power and strength of the women in this country.

Not one woman I have met or heard of so far has displayed any laziness or grudge at having to work their butt off every single day of their lives. Girls are brought up from a really young age doing all sorts of jobs which the men just won’t do — fetching water from the borehole, collecting firewood for cooking, washing up and doing the laundry, cleaning and maintaining the house, caring for younger siblings and children, working in the fields, cooking for the whole family and so on.

Everywhere you look, you will see beautiful faces concentrated in the effort of balancing 20 litres of water on their heads, their muscles flexing to pull the bucket up from their head and tilt it in the big water drum; powerful arms stirring enormous quantities of nsima with a long cooking stick, sifting cassava flour in and folding the dough over and over again; hands of steel picking up searing hot pans from the fire without flinching, the same hands that tenderly tie children behind their backs with a piece of chitenje.

Yet I haven’t heard a single word of complaint from any of them, and most especially Mary, who does everything with a smile on her lips or humming a song from church.