"Right Girl", "Wrong Village"

Chitakula Village, Malawi… It was 2002, and Malawi was suffering famine in a way this generation of young people had never seen. We stopped our work on the construction of a major hospital project, and turned to food distribution. On this particular day we went to deliver food at the height of the famine. Everywhere we went people were starving. Malawi had not seen this kind of suffering in 50 years.

Somewhere along the way we got separated from the 10-ton truck carrying the food we were going to distribute. Our small pick up truck filled with the distribution team, actually traveled down the wrong road to another location. At the time we were unaware we were on the wrong road to the wrong place. While the big truck went to the main village where the chief resided, we ended up in one of the 300 smaller villages under his jurisdiction. We had only a small portion of the ration we intended to deliver, and in short order we were out of food and heading back to the compound to find out what had happened to the big truck. In the camera were scenes from this, “wrong village.”

That night I downloaded the day’s pictures, and there was the little girl. Although that year I saw thousands of other children, this little girl and her picture stayed with me. It sank deep into my heart. Before leaving Malawi that year I commissioned a Malawi painter to capture her on canvas. He did a masterful job. Little did I know how helpful this little girl, and the image of her sitting in the dust with a near empty bowl, would be to me in subsequent years when the work would grow heavy, and discouragement would often appeal for us to give up and end our effort.

We have not given up and the little girl in the blue dress has had a lot to do with it. After all, she is so helpless, and she represents all that is good about the work we are doing. I often wonder where that little girl is today. I will never know, but one thing I know for sure. Everywhere I go she goes with me in my heart. To me she will always be “the right girl, in the wrong village.” We had gone to the wrong place, but this little girl gave me the “right picture.” She is the heart of Malawi, and its future.