I always wanted to go to Africa, where my father was born at the beginning of the last century. I never had the chance to do so when, unexpectedly, a United Nations agency offered me the opportunity to be part of a mission to evaluate the health situation of Mozambican refugees in Malawi, a country that until then I had some difficulty placing on the map.

Perhaps my longing for Africa had to do with my grandparents’ life decisions. To improve their economic situation, my Lebanese grandparents had gone to Transvaal, in South Africa, where they managed a store to provide food to the miners in that region. Historical Transvaal is now part of Mpumalanga, Limpopo, and Gauteng provinces in South Africa, rich in mineral deposits of gold, uranium, platinum, chromite, and diamonds.

My grandparents’ economic situation didn’t improve greatly in South Africa, so they returned to Lebanon. After a few years living there, they emigrated to Argentina, where I was born and lived until I emigrated with my wife and daughter to the U.S., where I have lived since 1971.

Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa. It occupies a thin strip of land between Zambia and Mozambique, and in the north and northeast, it shares a border with Tanzania.

Malawi is potentially a rich country because of its natural resources. Yet, it is one of the poorest countries in Africa, to a large degree because of corruption at higher levels of government and mismanagement. Despite its economic situation, Malawi has been a haven for refugees from other African countries, particularly from Mozambique and Rwanda. This has placed a considerable strain on the Malawian economy and social and health services.

My arrival in Malawi hadn’t been promising. On arriving in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city, I learned that my only piece of luggage had been lost in transit. Since I like to travel light, I only had with me a satchel with some toiletries, a book, and the clothes I had on when I boarded the plane. To say that I was annoyed is an understatement, since I couldn’t see how I would manage the four-week mission in these conditions. Contrary to my expectations, I managed well.

I washed my underwear every night at the hotel, bought another pair of pants, and was relieved not to have to carry my heavy luggage every time we visited the interior of the country. My colleagues looked at me with envy every time we had to travel. Never before had I been so happy to have so few things.

The mission I was involved in was planned to determine the health situation and needs of Mozambican refugees who had to escape the civil war in their country and had come to Malawi in search of help and stability in their lives. It was sad to see the faces of undernourished children and pregnant women suffering, most probably from mental health trauma as a result of the atrocities they had witnessed in their country.

On one of the trips to the interior, we passed through beautiful tea plantations that had as a backdrop a wonderful view of Mount Mulanje, which has Malawi’s highest peak and which is Africa’s third-tallest mountain. Our hosts wanted us to visit a vocational school, mainly for adult Malawians. I was very interested in the visit, because my wife had been involved in adult education for several years.

At the school, we went through several rooms where we saw people—mostly women—learning different practical skills. We saw a group of young women learning to weave on looms, another group learning how to make wooden furniture, and a third group working on basic reading and writing in English. In this last group, I became fascinated by how adults of different ages went through the rudiments of language, despite the obvious difficulties that the tasks represented.

While I was entertained looking at the students in this group, my companions had gone to see another class. A short time afterward, I followed them, but since I had come late, I was unable to get close to the students and remained outside the room. Still, I realized this was a music class and that the adults inside were singing to the visitors.

The song was a wonderful melody of how beautiful their country was, how powerful its rivers, how green its mountains, and how plentiful their tea plantations—all in a vivid, visual language that was extraordinarily appealing. It was a song full of longing and appreciation for the beauties of their country. Their voices were so well attuned, and they carried the melody so well that it seemed obvious to me that they had been practicing that song for a long time.

When the song ended, and as my companions were leaving the entrance to the room, I was finally able to see the singers. Only then did I realize that I had been listening to a choir of blind men.

Although it happened decades ago, the impact of all these men singing with unique passion stays with me. It makes true an old Malawian proverb, “What the eyes see, the heart never forgets.”