Using Culture to Fight High Population Growth

There is one thing that would definitely stun you if you go to Chalera village in the area of Traditional Authority Chiseka in Lilongwe. You see numerous children aged below ten wondering about the village. Usually they are dirty and wear torn clothes. If they are not playing football, then are fighting one another or making noise for something you cannot figure out. This is regardless of whether it is during school time or during the holidays – children are everyone, and they cram around your car if you drove to the village. It would take you several minutes with the help of a few adults to convince them that they need to stay away so that you can drive off, lest you will trample on one. This is the picture that made Dr Davis Mkwambisi, the director of Kumudzi Trust, to come to the conclusion that something was wrong in this village. “How can you have so many children roaming around a small village? This was the question that came to mind every time I came here”, he recalls, “ It was clear that the people had no access to family planning messages, or that if they had the messages were not being delivered in the right way. We also observed that there were high levels of poverty here in the rapid appraisal we did.” The situation at Chalera village justifies fears by the National Statistical Office that Malawi’s population estimated at 13 million in 2008 is likely to grow to around 20 million by 2040 if no stern control measures are put in place. Malawi is already suffering from various effects of rapid population growth including shortage of farm land and scramble for natural resources and social amenities, according to population experts. This is not exceptional to Chalera. “The main problem we face here is shortage of water. Of course, we’ve enough food to feed ourselves; but because the population is increasing, farm land is becoming scarce, and we might face a big problem in the future”, laments group village headman Chalera.

While the government and independent organizations are largely using public gatherings with official technical speeches on the need to control population growth, one NGO – Kumudzi Trust – is using a different approach. It has employed traditional dances and acoustic music to disseminate messages about the negative effects of rapid population growth in this village. “We run a programme called Kumudzi Eco Learning Centre. The aim is to teach the people environmental management as well as make them aware about the affects of rapid population growth on the environment,” says Dr Mkwambisi, who is also a lecturer at Bunda College. He says Chalera village was chosen as the programme site because of its proximity to Bunda College and because most students from the college conduct their research studies there. Kumudzi Trust organizes what it calls cultural days where traditional dances and acoustic music fused with messages on family planning are performed. Usually hired are the upcoming acoustic band Galang’ombe Boys and Tilitonse Cultural Troupe. After the performances, the villagers engage in a roundtable discussion spearheaded by the village development committee. This is a forum where women, men and children talk openly about the effects of population growth. Thokozani Julius, Health Surveillance Assistant for Mazinga Catchment Area, explains the source of overpopulation in Chalera village. “We do give messages, but the problem is that men shun the village meetings organized to talk about family planning. So the messages only go to a single part of the population.” He adds that most men also feel they are being degraded to be taught how to run their families in the presence of their spouses hence they shun public meetings on family planning. According to Mr Julius, women also have a greater advantage because they get health education from antenatal clinics when they are pregnant or when they are taking care of under-five children. He says most of the households estimated at two thousand in the catchment area have a minimum of six children with an age difference of less than two years. One of the villagers, Hudson Solomon, from Sinosi village has an interesting response as to why people still have more children despite knowing the advantages of family planning. “Some people think that they need to have more children so that when one or two die, the rest would support them in future. However, they do not know the irony is that most child deaths are caused by lack of care. “The more children you have, the more problems you have to feed them, so they end up being sick and die. But when you have a few children it is easy for you to feed them and send them to school and they grow up well,” he observes. Speaking to this reporter under a deafening sound of traditional music, village headman Chalera says the approach has significantly helped to improve the understanding of the implications of high population growth among his subjects. He says government and several organizations have been to his area to disseminate messages about birth control, ‘but some people can’t just take the message,’ adding that some people still believe in the traditional belief that the more children one has, the wealthier they are. “They still want to live in the old days where people had not less than five or six children. If you tell them that things have changed, they don’t understand. They insist on having more children as a sign of wealth. “Only a few people here have taken up modern family planning methods because the hospital is very far away,” he observes. Village headman Chalera says the initiative by Kumudzi Trust has helped to bring change because more people now are lured to attend public gatherings where messages about birth control are disseminated. “The people are attracted to the traditional dances and music. So when they come they end up getting the message as well,” he observed on the sidelines of one of the cultural days I attended recently. Health worker Julius agrees with the chief: “This is very helpful because people in the villages like to associate themselves with things which are part of their life like the traditional dances and the songs. In this case, as the people listen to the traditional music and watch the dances they get the message at the same time.” On the side effects of modern family planning methods, he says not many complaints have come to his attention although some women do take contraceptives after being advised at the outlying Mitundu Health Centre. Dr Mkwambisi says the cultural days have helped to bring change. “Bringing together men, women and children means we are having a holistic approach to family planning at the same time creating a debate on the topic. You can see even children are talking about family planning and they will grow with it their mind.” He says Kumudzi Trust is implementing the programme under an action plan in which a village strategic plan will be developed to see people of Chalera significantly reducing the number of child births from December this year. He says this would be a departure from common thought that strategic plans are only meant for big companies and organizations, saying the village plan will incorporate issues of ecotourism, income generating activities, improvement of sanitation and enhancement of population control messages. Dr Mkwambisi observes that most people in rural areas have limited access to family planning methods such as condoms and contraceptive pills because government has no capacity to reach out to the remotest areas. As rightly observed by Dr Mkwambisi, a holistic approach is needed to ensure that Malawi’s population growth is proportionate to the country’s size and resources because the reproduction rate of 2.6 percent per annum is just too much for a land locked country that is barely 118,484 square kilometers. Certainly this cultural approach cannot be overemphasized.