TAHLEQUAH — It isn’t easy to become a teacher in one of the world’s poorest countries.

But Dr. Darry Carlstone of Tahlequah discovered students in Malawi are just as enthusiastic as their American counterparts when he recently spent a brief period teaching at Livingstonia University in that country. He discussed his experiences with Tahlequah Friends of the Library Thursday.

Carlstone, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Central Oklahoma, spent much of his youth in this area and is a Tahlequah High School graduate. He moved back upon retirement a couple of years ago. He also has written several novels.

He went to Malawi, along with a biology professor from Rogers State University and his daughter, as part of a project of the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery. There, they joined five students from the University of Tulsa.

“One of the goals of the relationship is to support Livingstonia University, and one of its goals is to produce accredited science teachers,” Carlstone said.

Malawi, a former British territory, is a mountainous country with few natural resources. Besides agriculture, the main industries are lumbering and coal mining. English is the common language, although there are numerous tribal tongues.

“According to one tabulation, it is the 12th-poorest country in the world,” Carlstone said. “I don’t think it’s worth arguing over whichever is the poorest, it’s still poor.”

The small town of Livingstonia and its university overlook a large lake. Carlstone saw no recreational traffic on the lake, only a small amount of fishing, which produced small fish. The university, a series of plain brown brick buildings, housed students who had graduated from Malawi’s secondary schools.

Carlstone explained that there is universal, free primary schooling in Malawi. There is a national secondary school, which is a free boarding school. Students must pass an entrance exam for admission, and it is a coveted position. There also are local and district secondary schools, which charge tuition and do not have the same quality curriculum as the national school.

“There are so many who don’t even get to go to secondary school,” Carlstone said. “We met a man named Kennedy who asked if we had any books we could give him.”

Kennedy explained his parents couldn’t afford to send him to secondary school, but he had a friend who attended, and he went over to the friend’s house to read. The Americans told him they had no surplus books – they were too heavy and expensive to ship to Africa.

“Don’t you just wish you could do something to help them?” he asked the library group.

In this country, many people are able to study online if they don’t have ready access to a classroom. In Malawi, that isn’t an option. Carlstone showed a photo of the university’s administrative building, which housed the only access to e-mail on campus.

“If the secretary wasn’t using it, you could ask for permission to use it, but it would take a half hour to get through,” he said, adding that he only tried e-mailing this country once.

Phone contact also was difficult. However, they did have access to satellite TV, as evidenced by the dishes on some of the houses in Carlstone’s photos.

“We were very isolated,” he said.

He had six students in his second-semester physics class, while his counterpart from RSU had nine biology students. At least two of Carlstone’s students told him they hope to attain a master’s degree and teach physics. The master’s level, in particular, would be a difficult goal for them to attain, he said.

“I just wish we had some way of getting them over to this country,” he said.

Only three of the 30 overhead fluorescent lights in Carlstone’s lab were working.  

“They just don’t have much of a maintenance budget. Everything is done on a shoestring, but they had a great deal of pride in what they were doing and what they are trying to do,” he said.

The level of achievement among students is comparable to that of American university students, the veteran professor noted.

The town of Livingstonia has a hospital supported by the European community and its staff seems to be doing a good job to taking care of people in the region, Carlstone said. The hospital conducts clinics in rural areas so people don’t have to travel to town for treatment.

Conditions are still pretty primitive in the area, he said. He showed photos of the water system, of a small church and the people who attend it, the men dressed in Western-style jackets and ties.

The steep, one-lane road into Livingstonia is accessible only by small vehicles. Carlstone and his American colleagues didn’t enjoy traversing the muddy street from their home to the university after several heavy rains.

However, Carlstone found the local grocery store well-equipped, compared with one he encountered in Russia a couple of decades ago. Local growers bring plenty of fresh produce to the open-air market, including beans, rice, bananas, cassava, and other products, including picture-perfect red tomatoes.

One of the prime local foods is nsema, a grits-type concoction made from white maize. Carlstone sampled it once and didn’t much care for it, describing it as rather gelatinous.

“There were chickens everywhere and that surprised me. They were just allowed to run free, and I would have thought there would have been some small predators around,” he said.

But the chickens seemed to thrive, and constituted a major part of the diet.   

Carlstone said he enjoyed his trip to Malawi, and would like to see the people there receive more assistance so they can become better educated and more prosperous.

“Malawi may be the warm heart of Africa,” he said. “Everybody seems to be friendly and happy.”