The Toronto Star has a great story today about a Malawi expat who returned home. Ali Sikelo was forced to leave Malawi becuase he opposed the country’s dic­ta­tor. He earned an edu­ca­tion in Moscow, and went on to a com­fort­able life in Toronto. But Sikelo was haunted by leav­ing behind a fam­ily that was scat­tered and tor­tured by the dictator.

From the Toronto Star, comes Sikelo’s story.

While the video pro­vides the back­ground, we turn to the printed story to see how Sikelo is doing now. As you can tell from our snip­pet, it is not a per­fect ending.

Sikelo was elected in 1999 as a mem­ber of par­lia­ment, rep­re­sent­ing Man­gochi North East.

The evi­dence of his polit­i­cal work is not far from his front door: the paving of the wind­ing stretch of road from his vil­lage to the Mozam­bique bor­der was his initiative.

So were dozens of drilled wells. The Chin­damba Pri­mary School in Malindi went from two grades to eight.

But his proud­est accom­plish­ment has been a sys­tem of home-based care and local edu­ca­tion for chil­dren who have lost their par­ents to AIDS. It means they no longer have to leave their neigh­bours, their friends, their rel­a­tives and their vil­lages the way Sikelo did, albeit for dif­fer­ent reasons.

The orphans of Chin­damba, Sikelo’s small vil­lage, take up most of his time. The 150 chil­dren live with extended fam­ily or fos­ter fam­i­lies. The orphans and other school­child­ren get taught in a clear­ing in the vil­lage, which has a class­room under the trees. The thatch roof keeps blow­ing off in the strong winds off Lake Malawi.

Dur­ing the Star’s visit in mid-November, the 3– to 5-year-old chil­dren sought refuge from the 32C heat, gath­er­ing in the shade of the tow­er­ing aca­cia trees. Each one stood to recite, in Eng­lish, the ABCs, num­bers, months of the year, or sing two verses of “Rain, rain, go away.”

“I take care of the orphans because I live in this vil­lage,” Sikelo says. “I was born here and I thought it was my respon­si­bil­ity to assist the chil­dren. It was not easy for me to sit here and watch the kids not be able to get some­thing to eat or pre­pare them­selves for the future. Like me, I was helped by the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to get to where I have and I wanted the same for the children.”

Sikelo’s life is not perfect.

He lost elec­tions both in 2004 – his oppo­nent blamed him for food fraud, which Sikelo denies – and in 2009. He suf­fers from malaria. It and the drugs he takes to treat it have left him gaunt and tired. In 12 years, he has lost 15 pounds from his now slen­der frame.

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