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The Gogo Project: How American grandmothers are ministering to their counterparts in Malawi
By Charlotte Day
Charlotte Day and her husband, Dick, have lived in Malawi for 17 years. Charlotte previously chaired the home economics department at the University of Malawi, where she emphasized family, community, and early childhood development. Now she and her husband work full-time with SAFE – Sub-Saharan Africa Family Enrichment – an NGO they created.
The Gogo Project has been an answer to prayer for hundreds of grandmothers both here in Malawi and in America! It began when I saw a need in the villages where I was helping communities set up an outreach to children.
The grandmothers – or gogo, as they are called in Malawi’s Chichewa language – in those villages have an incredible burden to bear. They expected that, in their old age, their grown children would care for them. Instead, with the AIDS pandemic devastating the traditional family structure, their children are dying and these elderly women find themselves with a whole generation to raise.
With 80 percent of Malawians living in rural areas, most families subsist on what they can grow in their gardens. As a result, the gogo struggle to feed and clothe their grandchildren.
When I saw these grandmothers in need, the Lord led me initially to assess households in seven villages. The village preschool teachers, the village chiefs, and I visited homes to learn about the number of grandmothers caring for orphaned grandchildren, the number of orphans, and the orphans’ ages and school status. Then we gathered the grannies together to sing, pray, and dance. It became such a happening and bright spot in their existence that we have continued and spread to other villages.
A group of urban "Gogo Grandmothers" formed in Zomba, a town in southern Malawi; these city-dwelling grandmothers go with me and encourage, help, and pray with their rural counterparts. It has proved to be a blessing to all of us. It is an outreach to the well-educated urban gogo – who include ambassadors’ wives, the vice chancellor of the university's wife, and retired professional women – who in turn reach out to the poor.
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| Dick and Charlotte Day | Just recently a group of us met with 55 village poor women, many of whom came barefoot, leaning on sticks to walk. They came to sing, pray, and hear the Word of God. Some of them danced out to meet us as we arrived from the city, and they danced as they sang and praised the Lord.
We also distributed 120 pounds of fertilizer for them to realize a good harvest of maize, the staple food. What a sight to see the orphans helping their grannies with the huge sacks! This distribution was the first; the rains have just begun, and the women – who are the farmers in this culture – are hoeing, by hand, their acres of land, readying them for planting.
It costs about $25 per granny to buy the fertilizer. The Lord has provided the funds through Gogo Grandmother groups from churches in the United States. They learned about the grandmothers when I shared in several southern California churches a year ago, and these American grandmothers (and some grandfathers too) wanted to give to help the Malawian grandmothers have a good harvest. So far we have helped 109 grannies with fertilizer for their gardens; if the rains come and the harvest is good, they will be able to feed their orphaned grandchildren.
This has proven to be a ministry for the American grandmothers – both to pray for the Malawian gogo and to give to pay school fees for the orphaned children and provide clothing, blankets, and food parcels. The U.S. groups meet usually once a month, and it becomes a gathering for them.
Some groups have raised money by making products to sell. One California grandmother painted watercolors of the children and caregivers. The paintings have been reproduced into note cards that the Gogo Grandmothers in the States sell. Also, a group of California grandmothers knitted scarves and sold them before Christmas. Another group recently gathered to make bookmarks out of small carvings and beads I brought from Africa. A church bookstore is going to sell both the packages of note cards and the bookmarks, with all proceeds going to the needs of the African gogo.
A team from several American churches has visited us in Malawi and seen the grandmother outreach. Since they’ve returned home, they’ve been casting a vision to others.
Some of the California Gogo Grandmothers are especially interested in helping the Malawian grandmothers know Christ and know how to pray for their grandchildren. At present, they are putting together 30 very simple lessons for the Malawian gogo on conversational prayer, how to know Christ, nutritional and feeding ideas, HIV/AIDS prevention and care, and tips on child rearing and hygiene. These are being translated into Chichewa and will be recorded on a solar-powered recorder/transmitter that has been successfully used in many countries where there is high illiteracy. Moms In Touch, Intl. has given us permission to adapt and translate their conversational prayer lessons. American grandmothers and grandfathers so far have raised funds for 30 recorders; groups of village women will gather around these recorders to listen and pray and learn of our dear Lord.
Can you just imagine what an outreach this could be all over Africa and what a ministry in the lives of retired Christian women in the States?
If your church is interested in starting a Gogo Grandmother group, or if you’re interested in supporting the Gogo Project, e-mail Leslie Lewis: leslie@smartfamilies.com.
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