Katie was born on the 21st of June 2004. She has 2 brothers and 1 sister. Their father divorced her mother long time ago and so she was left alone to bring up all the children. Katie’s mum was not working but she was a small business woman in the village. However, at a certain point of her life, she tried to borrow money to boost her financial situation and provide better care to the children. Unfortunately, she had little knowledge of the business she was doing and she failed to pay back her loan. Things quickly became worse and at the end she decided to run away leaving her children behind. They moved in with her sister who was having a large number of children to look after. In total they were 13, too many for a woman with no job. She only managed to get temporary occupations, as selling Usipa (a small common fish in Lake Malawi) or carrying bricks. All this caused big tensions in the family, especially with her husband, who was not interested in taking care of children who were not his own. Eventually Katie’s aunt also left and Katie and her brothers and sister are now living together with her grandmother, an old lady who is struggling enormously with their care.
When she joined the Marajowi project, in early 2015, Katie was in Primary 3. Though being an intelligent girl, she was performing very bad at school, since she never had enough to eat, had no school material and every now and then had to help with work. In 2021 she successfully graduated from primary school as one of the best students. She is now enrolled at Kunyanja Private in Nkhata Bay where she is attending Form 4. iShe keeps telling us that the biggest present she received from Marajowi is the fact that now she can read and write. She indeed loves to write and she often sends us letters and drawings. She reads the books we send her one after each other with great interest and she is very eager to learn more. She is also very talented with sport.
