Charles McCarthy

TOMORROW is Malawian Independence Day. Like an increasing number of Scots, I have been to the country known as the warm heart of Africa, made friends and left a little bit of my heart there. I am the founder of a small education charity called Maura’s Mission after my then four-year-old daughter’s plea beyond her years: “Daddy it’s not fair, I’m getting to go to school but children in Africa don’t.”

I KNEW poverty as a child long before I would ever want a child to know they were poor. I knew what it was like to be ridiculed for my poverty and for all my classmates to know that my precious bike that Santa had gifted me was actually the old, busted bike of a friend and classmate of mine, a bike that my father had brought welding rods home from his job on the Clyde to repair before Santa left it for me in the morning of Christmas when I was in primary four.