This Wednesday I was fortunate enough to get to hear about Ruth Magreta’s journey to becoming a doctoral student and her inspiration for her studies. She began with telling us about her childhood, which was very different from my own. She was expected to cook for her brothers at a young age, she had to walk for hours to get to the market, and had to watch out for flash floods that could wash her away. What struck me the most was that after telling us about each of these things that I would consider a hardship, she would add a demure “But, it was fine. That was the way things were”. It’s a real eye opener when you see that for people raised in very different circumstances, their priorities are elsewhere in what is a real problem.

For example, one of Ruth’s motivations to work hard in school and go to college was her concern for the natural environment of her village. The forests and other wildlife have suffered a lot from overuse of resources, and Ruth is seeking ways to ameliorate these problems. She hopes that by implementing better storage strategies the farmers can store surplus maize to hold them over in drought seasons, and that permitting farmers to take out loans will smooth their income and enable them to send their children to school even in bad years. I really admire her dedication to trying to fix this problem in her home country, as it seems like she has dedicated her whole life to it. Hopefully, through talk series like this and other awareness programs in Malawi, more aid can be dedicated to their cause.