McAdamson Nkhoma has an infectious laugh. With twinkling eyes and a big smile, you can count on him to inject a healthy dose of humor into a dull meeting. But McAdamson is also a deeply serious man who brings wisdom and experience to his job as Outreach International’s country program coordinator in Malawi.
In addition to coordinating the work of the other human development facilitators in Malawi, he also visits and consults with the communities from which Outreach International has phased out. He keeps in contact with them, helping with particularly difficult problems and maintaining friendships he has made working in Malawi’s poor rural communities.
McAdamson’s work is informed by his own experience of poverty as a child. McAdamson’s father had two wives; his mother was the second. His father tragically died when McAdamson was only 10 years old, putting him in a “very tough position.” His father’s first wife treated his mother, him and his siblings very poorly, even taking away most of their money and clothes.
“I grew up in a very difficult situation,” he said.
However, after a few years of school, McAdamson managed to escape poverty, through luck and hard work. He got a job as a field supervisor for a European farmer. He was progressively promoted up the chain, eventually becoming the estate manager, responsible for running the whole farm.
“If you grow up in a bad position, God can lift you up to a position you don’t expect,” said McAdamson.
McAdamson began working with Outreach International in 1999. Facilitating community groups at the grassroots level, he helped poor villagers organize solutions to problems like lack of clean water, poor collective decisionmaking and lack of skills in agriculture.
But it is not only rural communities that have changed as a result of Outreach International’s intervention. It has also made a difference in McAdamson’s own life.
“Working for Outreach International doesn’t only change the poor people, it starts changing you,” said McAdamson. “In your family and where you stay.”
“I’ve improved skills in farming,” he said. Previously he had only farmed a small area. But now his farm has grown so big he employs some 10 people to manage it, providing jobs to other people. With his salary from Outreach International he is able to afford to send all his seven children to good schools.
McAdamson’s story is thus one of sustainable change. Change in his own life, as has he pulled himself out of poverty and into meaningful work. And change in poor rural communities that, struggling against the burdens of scarcity, division and disease, have taken change of their own development.
Click on the web video above to hear McAdamson tell his story.
-Matthew Bolton
Comments