JOCV 50th year anniversary

Name: Yoshihisa Otsuka
Batch: FY2006-3 (Mar 2007 - Mar 2009)
Technical Field: Community Development
Host Organization: Ministry of Agriculture Salima Branch
Hometown in Japan: Mitaka City, Tokyo

A Piece of Memory: "A New Life Born in the Village of Liganga"

"You're slow! How many days are you making us wait? Give this baby a name, quickly!" A baby girl was born in the village where I was working. These were the words that I, who became the godfather of the baby, received from her mother.

At the end of September 2008, a baby was born in a small village in Salima, where I was assigned. The father of the Panje family made their daily living by farming and charimato (bicycle cabs), while the mother raised their five children and devoted herself to housework and farm work. This is the unforgettable story of me and a girl, born in a poor rural family, without electricity or running water, which is very common in Malawi.

I started working in the village of Liganga, where this family lived, six months before the birth of their baby girl. In my second year in Malawi, with a single-minded desire to prevent hunger, I spent my days visiting villages that were suitable for rice cultivation to look for villages that would be willing to work together with us in the experimental cultivation of NERICA (New Rice for Africa), together with So Sugaya, a JOCV member working on rice cultivation in Salima District. There was a large swamp behind the village of Liganga that was suitable for rice cultivation, and when we expressed our request for trial cultivation to the village chief in Chichewa, a language we still hardly understood, he readily agreed. He not only lent us a piece of his farmland, but also said, "This is a great opportunity for you to teach new things to the women in the village. My daughter will take the lead and help in many ways," and introduced Mrs. Panje, who was pregnant.

The villagers had never had any contact with foreigners. Through daily joint work, from land reclamation to rice planting, the villagers and I mutually felt our hearts gradually becoming closer together. At first, the children in the village were afraid of foreigners and ran away from me, but before long, when the sound of my motorcycle approached, they started to run toward me in barefoot and greeted me happily, saying, "Yoshi!" "Japan!" When I finished my work and played with the children until late in the evening, the villagers would serve me a precious meal, saying, "Eat your meal before you leave." They also gave me vegetables harvested in the fields as I was about to go on my way home. The activities in this village, such as compost making, cooking classes on Japanese cuisine, and educational activities on hand washing, expanded in various ways, and this village, which I visited two to three times a week, became an irreplaceable place for me.

When I was about six months away from returning to Japan, Mrs. Panje was in the last month of her pregnancy. During a casual conversation with the couple about their newborn baby, I jokingly said, "Shall I be her godfather?" Upon hearing this, the couple giggled out loudly and said, "Well then, please."

The baby was born during the few days I was away at the JICA office in Lilongwe on business. When I returned to Salima and visited the village for the first time in several days, Mrs. Panje, holding her newborn baby in her arms, said to me those words in the introduction.

I was skeptical that it might be a joke. Still, I had thought of several possible names, just in case they were serious. In the end, after much thought, I decided on "Oscar," which was often misheard by the Malawians with my surname "Otsuka." I decided on "Oscar," which sounded good, because I did not want my name to be forgotten when I returned to Japan in six months, and also because I wanted to stay connected with her, and the baby became "Oscar Panje."

Since returning to Japan in March 2009, not a day went by that I did not think of Malawi, and finally, in December 2010, about a year and a half after my return, I could not sit still and went back to Malawi on a private trip. I visited Liganga Village for the first time after a long absence. I wondered if Oscar had been renamed to something else after my return. Such fears were turned out to be unfounded. In the village, there was a two-year-old, energetic girl named "Oscar Panje" who was loved by everyone in the village and was growing up healthily. Later, in 2017, I visited Malawi again and was able to reunite with Oscar, who had turned 9 years old.

September 2008, Oscar at age 0

December 20210, Oscar at age 2

June 2017, Oscar at age 9

Next will be a piece of memory of Kenta Sato of Batch FY2005-2, a fellow JOCV member, who is the same age as me and went on trips outside the place of our assignment together, and who has also been very active in his hometown after returning to Japan.