It is said that education is a key to success but achieving that is another thing. Whilst other pupils and students are attending school from a shorter distance, the situation is not the same for some students learning at Liwonde Community Day Secondary School.
Many a times, they have to walk about 15 kilometres to the campus. Such is a sad story of students from Village Headmen Chipamba, Magadi and Chindungwa. This is just one way, by the time they finish a day’s learning, hungry and tired, another 15 km is waiting to accompany them back to their homes.
With the rainy season the situation gets even worse. The security and safety of the girl child is also under threat as some people desire to have sexual relationships with them in exchange for some gifts even transport fares in some instances.
Walking such long distance to school negatively affects performance in class, since they arrive at school late and and tired. Consequently, often times than not, they are punished while their fellows are learning.
For some parents, they organise a self boarding for their wards, especially girls to at least be within the vicinity of the school. However, such efforts are also proving to be futile as most if the self-boarders are frequenting seen with men and boys in Rest houses around the Liwonde Trading Centre. This also puts them in danger of contacting the HIV and other STIs not to mention of unplanned early pregnancies. Already, Machinga is one of the highly populated districts in Malawi, one may wonder how, this is part of the answer. For students walking this distance, their relief still remains hope for a secondary school to be built in their area. The community from the three GVHs mentioned above molded bricks towards erecting school blocks for secondary level but 6 years down the line, no structure has been put in place. For now, such us the fate of students from the area.
