What has impressed me in those 9 months are the changes I’ve seen. The businesses and organizations that have started, grown, collapsed, left. The changing produce available for sale… From boiled groundnuts… to roasted groundnuts… to roasted and salted groundnuts (my favourite!). I’ve seen a new bank come into town. There are a few more shops, and some shops have started selling spices, pasta and apples… rarities here in Dedza. The Peoples and Metro (big convenience stores) have merged, and Metro has started baking their own bread, fresh and at a lower price.

So things are changing, slowly… or so I thought! Then I talked to Brenda (and collaborated this with colleagues and my favourite restaurant owners).

5 years ago, Dedza was little more than a village.

There was no bus depot. There was no town hall or big football/netball stadium. There was no girls netball team. There was no bank… then there was 1… now there are 6, one of which just opened! There was no micro-finance institution. There were no big international NGOs, let alone 5 of them. There were no government offices, or computers. There was no People’s or Metro or internet café.

All of this has been built in 5 years. Dedza has not been changing slowly… it’s been changing fast!! But because I’ve only been here 9 months, because I wasn’t here 5 years ago to see where it started, because my reference point is skewed, I didn’t see this change.

In our desire for swift and transformative change, how much of it is masked by the small view we have into a foreign context? How much of it is coloured by a lack of patience and failure to recognize success and growth when it right before us?

Yesterday, after too many failed attempts to get back and after far too long, I went back. Hoping on a motorbike and navigating the bumps, boulders and twisty red dirt roads I made my slow way there.

Honestly, it was strange to be back. Everything was at once the same and yet different. I kept catching myself saying “Liti ndinabwera…” (When I came before…) followed some observation or remark on what was new or what was not.

When I was there in December, it was planting season; the fields were being hoed, maize and beans were planted, tomatoes were coming into season. Everything was shades of red-brown, green and blue. I made friends with a young lady named Yana, and promised myself I would learn Chichewa so that when I went back, we could communicate beyond the smiles, as nice as they were. I saw the children inch closer and closer and looked forward to seeing them grow a bit taller on my return. I saw the almost completed irrigation canal and freshly dug fish-pond; I heard about their plans for both.

Now, things look at bit different. The growing season has come full circle with the end of harvest near. The bright colours are gone, replaced by grey skies of looming clouds and fields of pale green and gold. Yana has gotten married and moved away to Lilongwe to start her life there. It was this change that hit home hardest of all. It strikes me as strange how we become so attached to a person or an idea. At once, I am sad that she felt she had to leave her home to build a life of better opportunity, and I am glad that she took the steps to do it. Silently, I wish her well and much success.

The irrigation canal is completed and the fishpond is full of water and baby fish. But the fields are still being ridged and nothing has been planted; farmers are not convinced it will work. They are not convinced that anything can grow in a dry and cold season. It is a reminder that you can put in all the physical materials and do all the trainings you want, but we are talking about behaviour change. And change is hard, even for people with far less to loose and far less to risk than many of these farmers.

But some things have not changed; while I have seen the children in my community in Dedza grow up, marvelling at how quickly the children who were babies on my arrival are now running, the children in the village were not noticeably changed. I brought some pictures; I could compare. Takondwa, a girl the same age as Akuzike, has grown no taller in the same time it has taken Akuzike to shoot up. Akuzike moved from breast feeding to porridge to bread in 6 months, Takondwa is still at her mother’s back and breast. And although the other children seemed happy enough to see me, similar trends were apparent. Distended bellies, a sign of malnutrition that I had conveniently overlooked and which rarely presents itself in Dedza, drew my attention.

“It is the difference between living on 1-dollar-a-day and 50-cents-a-day” Tears tells me later that night. Even being here, it’s easy to forget.

I am searching my heart for signs of pity. It is not pity I feel, but a twinge of guilt. Guilt that I learned so much and forgot so quickly. Recognition of the amazing opportunities I have been granted by virtue of having been born in a time and place that recognises women and provides education and health-care. Grateful for my parents and family that raised me healthy, happy, wanting for nothing; who taught me to be curious, to care about people, to search out opportunities.

I didn’t take pictures. I didn’t have the heart.