I have been back in the UK for a few days now.  I remember the feeling at the airport as the plane taxied along the crisp painted runway to the hi-tech terminal.  The winter sunshine fighting the bleak mist in the biting early morning.  The smell of new carpet in the airport, the shiny signs directing me to passport control and baggage reclaim.  The system directing weary passengers to long queues around black cordon tapes, being processed like dolls through quality control on an assembly line.  Newness glinting off shops, buildings and airplanes and the familiar pull of consumer desire as I walk through duty free.

My trip to Malawi showed me just how far removed western society has become from basic needs.  Life is simple in remote Malawi, but it’s hard.  Each day can be a struggle to find enough food to eat, safe water to drink, somewhere to go to the toilet, somewhere dry and safe to sleep, how to make money to buy basic essentials like soap or food, how to get to a doctor or how to get to school.  Life is also short.  If you manage to escape the many preventable childhood diseases (one child in eight dies before the age of 5*), you will be lucky to see the age of 60.  The coffin workshops on the side of the road act as a constant reminder of the fragility of life.

We all need food, water, basic hygiene, a roof over our heads, healthcare, transport and an income.  These aren’t complex needs and they’re something most of us take for granted.  In fact, these are things most of us even have a choice of.  We take a long time choosing our car, the right brand of shampoo, selecting the right school or doctor or job, with the knowledge that there will be roads to drive on, clean water on tap, and teachers or doctors or work.

With the current UK horsemeat epidemic, there is no better way to demonstrate how far removed we have become from our food chain.  As I stood in the supermarket choosing between free range, British, value or corn fed chicken, I remembered the man on the side of the road holding out a live chicken for sale to passing travellers.  The multiple brands of tinned sweetcorn on the supermarket shelf offering no resemblance whatsoever to the toasted cob I ate in Lilongwe.  Or implying the time and effort required to grow such a crop.

There were so many stories to tell, some of them from people in dire need.  I remember talking to a group of women at the cash distribution in Ntcheu.   I was humbled as they looked me in the eye and explained how they had been unable to grow food and would have died of hunger without this support.  Yet they enjoyed talking and laughing at this ‘Mzungu’ (white skinned foreigner), asking questions and requesting photos. Visiting the communities, I remember the singing and dancing.  Harmonies and rounds with ululating and laughter, learned at a young age and repeated for each visitor or celebration in the village.

Every person I met had the desire to learn and take control of their lives in the face of adversity.  The people who really inspired me were the older members of the community, who had seen the history of illness or hunger in the community and were looking to gain skills to help them cope.  Whether it was Alabi Tabo adapting to changes in the climate and training local farmers to do the same, or Frank Nanjiwa who was so proud of his self-built toilet and helping his village reduce outbreaks of cholera.  Much of this is simply down to basic education.  How to plant to conserve water, how to build a toilet using local materials, how to live positively with HIV, how to feed your family a nutritious diet, how to read and write or how to grow different plants.

In this age of Google, it is so easy for us to learn new things but in remote villages in Malawi the opportunity for knowledge is limited.  This is where Concern Universal’s strengths lie, involving the whole community in the development process, educating on the why’s, what’s, how’s and when’s.  This inspires trust and commitment.  We need communities to look after the work we do long after a project has finished and this can only be done if they invest in it too- whether it’s maintaining a water pump, managing a beehive, using a toilet or producing fuel efficient stoves.

I have been amazed at the breadth of Concern Universal’s work, the complexity and also the simplicity, which aims to help the most people in the most important way.  We don’t just do water points, we don’t just do mosquito nets and we don’t just do school dinners.  We do life.

*Save the Children’s 2012 State of the World’s Mothers report