One of the major cash crops produced in Malawi is tobacco. Farmers grow this crop during the wet season and dry it in small tobacco-drying huts outdoors. The tobacco is then packaged and sold off in public auctions. Often, income brought in from a year’s worth of tobacco farming is not enough to sustain a family for more than a few months.

In Malawi, very little government money is spent on education and educational resources. The conditions of the schools we worked in were extremely poor, and teaching tools for teachers were limited—at times nonexistent. Despite the lack of physical resources and poor infrastructure, teachers in Malawi make use of all sorts of items, rocks, food packaging, twigs and bricks, to help them teach a number of subjects. This strategy for teaching is called “Talular”.