As a Volunteer for Five Months in Malawi

An experience report about a hands-on volunteer assignment in the village of Kalanga, the day-to-day work on a construction site in a rural region of Malawi, and encounters that resonate far beyond the time spent on site – carried by shared responsibility.

By Marco Aberle

Bonn, January 22nd, 2026 – Born in the late 1990s in a small village in Germany’s Black Forest, and raised in a Catholic, hands-on, and craft-oriented rural environment, my youth and early twenties were shaped by voluntary work in local associations and a typical village lifestyle. And I have to say: I still love it today.

Yet, despite—or perhaps because of—this happy youth in the Gutach valley, at some point the desire arose to give something back. I wanted to use the skills I had acquired over the years through training, work, and various personal projects in a way that would benefit other people—people who were truly in need. After volunteer deployments in the Ahr Valley following the floods, the wish grew to take part in a hands-on assignment with a humanitarian organization.

So the Black Forest “roots guy” Marco, who had hardly ventured far from home before, began researching aid organizations specifically looking for construction professionals and skilled tradespeople, including those working in Africa. After some research, I happened to come across Grünhelme. Quite contrary to the Black Forest principle of first “taking a long, careful think,” I applied right away via the website (which you can do as well—the application form can be found under the “Get Involved” section on the Grünhelme website). From there, things moved quickly. I was invited to an applicant meeting in Gütersloh, and after that weekend I was certain that Grünhelme was exactly the organization I had been looking for.

And so it came to pass that at the beginning of June last year, I set off on my assignment to Malawi in eastern Africa. For a village kid, a huge step.

Together with my future companion Severin, I flew from Frankfurt via Addis Ababa to Blantyre in southern Malawi. Landing in Blantyre felt like stepping into a completely different world. With the airports of Frankfurt and Addis Ababa still fresh in my mind, we arrived at Chileka Airport, about 13 kilometers northwest of Blantyre—a place consisting essentially of a single large building and two runways.

The journey to the project site was exciting as well. Together with project leader Lennart, who picked us up at the airport, we set off—first westward along the highway to the town of Mwanza, and from there southward along the border with Mozambique to the village of Kalanga, where a secondary school is currently being built. The education situation in Malawi, especially in rural regions, is extremely precarious. Near Kalanga, in Thambani, there is already a secondary school, but with a capacity of only 90 new students per year, it comes nowhere close to meeting demand. In the Thambani/Kalanga region alone, around 300 students pass the necessary entrance exams each year to attend secondary school.

But back to the journey. We arrived at the construction site in Kalanga in the early evening, where we were already being welcomed by our future colleagues and by Jakob, a volunteer from the previous construction team.

Grünhelme volunteers always live together with the people they work with, meaning that the village community usually provides accommodation. Our house was located among the homes of an extended family and measured between 25 and 30 square meters. This small house was to be our home for at least three months.

The next morning marked our first working day in Kalanga. We immediately began with assembling the timber trusses for the roof of what would later become the school’s administrative building. This was very helpful for Severin and me, as it allowed us to start on familiar ground. After a few days, project leader Lennart returned home, reducing our team to three people—and after Jakob’s departure, we were left working as a duo.

I found my first days in Malawi deeply formative. The incredible poverty people live in, and the glaring injustice of how unequally wealth is distributed across the world, weighed heavily on my mind—and still does today. I know what you might be thinking: wasn’t I aware of this beforehand? Yes, I was. You are prepared for such an assignment; you prepare yourself; and there are countless images through film, television, and social media. And yet, seeing poverty with my own eyes affected me far more deeply than I had anticipated.

In contrast, the very simple living conditions hardly troubled me at all. I believe this was largely because we were fully involved in site organization and construction management from the very beginning, mentally occupied almost around the clock. In other words, I don’t think I even had the time to reflect much on my own living conditions.

In Malawi, we were responsible for organizing a construction site with around 30 workers. Anyone who has ever coordinated even a small construction team in Germany knows how demanding that can be—and there is usually no language barrier involved.

Once daily life on the site became routine after a few weeks, tasks such as fetching water, eating the same meals every day, washing at a bucket behind the house, using a pit latrine, and nocturnal visits from spiders, scorpions, and cockroaches became part of everyday life as well.

From the outset, it was important to us to connect with people from Kalanga beyond the construction site. We occasionally visited local bars, went on hikes with our construction crew, climbed trees with a local beekeeper, and harvested honey.

As I had already hinted earlier, I am Catholic and practice my faith. At some point, I looked into whether it would be possible to attend a church service. Through attending services, I got to know Samuel and Tadala, two young men my age with whom I spent a lot of time and share many fond memories. With Samuel, I went motorcycling—sometimes he rode, sometimes I did. With Tadala, who speaks very good English, I spent hours talking and drinking tea on Sundays. With Kelvin, a police officer, we once went hiking, got hopelessly lost, and eventually found ourselves in a large field of buffalo beans at the foot of a hill. For those unfamiliar with East African flora: buffalo beans look similar to nandolo, a type of bean commonly grown in Malawi—but unlike nandolo, they are covered in fine hairs that itch like the devil. You can imagine what followed: intense itching all over our bodies. Anyone who has ever jumped into a pile of fiberglass insulation as a child knows how unpleasant that can be—this was far worse. Sweat and water only made it more intense. In short: we must have been a rather amusing sight as we ran home, scratching ourselves from head to toe.

Returning to the construction routine: a day in Kalanga, like much of rural Malawi, is shaped entirely by daylight due to the lack of a stable electricity supply. This means the day begins shortly before six in the morning and ends shortly after six in the evening.

Work on the site started at seven o’clock. We worked until 5 p.m., with a half-hour breakfast break at nine and a lunch break from noon to one. Breakfast consisted of sweet tea, and a woman from the village came by to sell small bread rolls to the team. Lunch for the workers was provided by us Grünhelme.

We employed two cooks who prepared meals for us every day. The Malawian staple food is nsima, a maize-meal porridge cooked to a fairly firm consistency. On our site, it was usually served with nandolo—bush beans resembling peas or red beans—sometimes enriched with soy flour and, on weekends, with onions.

The importance of nsima in Malawi is reflected in a common saying: “If you haven’t eaten nsima, you haven’t eaten.” The consistency of nsima is also a frequent topic of discussion. Most complaints during our evening feedback rounds concerned nsima being too soft. In terms of taste, nsima itself is quite neutral; it mainly takes on the flavor of whatever it is served with.

Thanks to the size of our team, we were able to work in parallel on several parts of the site and continued producing large numbers of soil-stabilized blocks (SSBs) every day. These blocks are made by mixing clay soil with sand and cement, stabilizing the mixture, and pressing it by hand into rectangular blocks using a manual press.

The buildings rest on strip foundations made of natural stone. Once we were above ground level, construction continued with the SSBs. All buildings are single-story, and once the walls are complete, a reinforced concrete ring beam is cast before the roof structure is erected.

After three months, we had completed the roof of the administrative building, finished the interior work of four large classroom and administrative buildings, and built three teachers’ houses up to ring-beam height.

While Severin returned home after three months due to professional obligations, I extended my stay by two more months, remaining until early November. As no additional volunteers joined the project in September, project leader Lennart traveled to Malawi for one month.

Lennart and I are the same age and share many similarities, so we got along very well. As a result, September flew by. While water supply posed major challenges in August, we managed to resolve this issue in September with the help of Traditional Authority Govati, the local traditional authority responsible for our region. By the time Lennart left toward the end of September, the water supply was secure again.

For me, September and October were the months that offered the deepest and most formative insights into village life in Kalanga. Toward the end of my stay, I felt almost fully accepted as part of the community. At the beginning, villagers often addressed us as “Boss” or “Sir,” which always made me uncomfortable. By the end, people naturally called me by my first name, Marco. Some of the young men I was close to called me “Brother.” One moment that particularly stayed with me was when I was sitting outside our house one morning and a neighbor came by, placed her small child in my arms, and walked away. I sat there with the child on my lap until the mother returned half an hour later, said “Zikomo” (thank you), and took her child back.

Because the houses are very small, much of daily life takes place outside, and for the neighborhood children we were a real attraction. In the evenings, we often put our speaker outside the house and danced with the kids. These moments helped make up for some of the frustrating days that inevitably occurred. In a construction team of around 30 people—as in Germany—you have highly motivated workers and less motivated ones. Some days were frustrating because certain tasks were not carried out with sufficient care or were deliberately slowed down to avoid strenuous work.

Since the workers on the site were paid from donated funds, it was our responsibility to ensure that work progressed efficiently so that as much as possible could be built with the available resources. We always tried to strike a balance between good progress and fair working conditions.

In the end, it is always about people. It was important to us not only to build a school, but also to pass on knowledge to the workers, so that the impact of our time in Kalanga would extend beyond the finished buildings.

Some of the younger workers—Kalypsa and Mikana, for example—were well on their way to becoming specialists in masonry and concrete work by the time I left. Frank and Daniel showed a strong interest in all kinds of carpentry work.

I grew especially fond of these four young men, and when the time came to say goodbye in early November, I felt deeply wistful. This small village and its warm-hearted residents had become something of a second home. Knowing that we would likely never meet again made the farewell all the more difficult, despite my anticipation of returning home.

Before my final working day, I bought a goat, which we slaughtered on site on my last day, adding some variety to the otherwise monotonous diet. With this gesture, I wanted to express my appreciation to the team and hope that it was received as such.

What remains are memories of an unforgettable time and of many wonderful people I was fortunate to meet. What has also changed is my view of our own society and of how we deal with prosperity. My time in Malawi once again showed me that giving is better than taking, and that it is deeply fulfilling to stand up for others—especially for those who did not grow up with freedom, peace, and prosperity.

There is still much work to be done—let’s get to it! With courage, confidence, and a little faith.

Further projects in Malawi