UNICEF Ambassador Ewan McGregor walking through the rain to visit a child-headed household in the slum area of Ndirande, Blantyre.
UNICEF/ 2005/Caroline Irbya

Ewan McGregor’s Malawi Field Trip Diary.

Diary entry one:

We saw three brothers and a sister who live near Blantyre in a township of sorts, a slum. It was pouring. It was a devastatingly sad visit to these boys’ home, which was a tiny mud hut no bigger than half the size of a small room. I’ve never seen a grimmer sight in my life.

It was dirty, everywhere was covered in filth, and the blankets they sleep on were thick with grime and dirt. There were flies and fleas crawling on every surface, there were pots that had never been cleaned with flies crawling all over the remnants of food in them. The second room was full of junk, the roof was open and the rain was pouring in, and it stank.

The eldest boy was 17, the next boy was 13, I think the third boy was maybe six or seven and they had a one-and-a-half-year-old sister, this tiny little baby girl, and they lived in this hole. Their mother died in October, of AIDS and they’d watched her die. The eldest boy has epilepsy. I just felt bleak and empty and horrible: I couldn’t believe that a baby girl lives here.

The wee boy goes out begging – the 17-year-old who’s in charge of the family now – to try and raise enough money to feed his three siblings. He was covered in scars and cuts and bruises and burns from having fits and falling down. It was an enormously emotionally upsetting day. It certainly told a story of what life is like in Malawi for 700,000 AIDS orphans.”