Every so often you find a person whose story is so incredible it mandates telling. Chitin Dila is just that. He is a hunchback 99 year old Malawian man living in the Mountains of Mafinga Hills in a village called Chisenga.
This man is incredible by the cheer force of his will.
He is defying Malawian age standards and stubbornly continuing to live, probably due to the mass amounts of physical labor he put upon his body in his younger years.
In those days, this man was active in both local development and church. Once a month, or even every week, he would get up and head down the mountains to Karonga, which is located on the lake shore about 130 km away, down several sets of mountains, just to attend meetings. When the meeting was concluded he would turn around and walk the 130 km up the mountains home. When his church was being but, he would haul the colossal roofing timbers from Intalire, about 60 km down the mountain, up to Chisenga to the church site. They say that is how he hunched his back.
Now he is a blind and mostly deaf elder with a barely audible rasping wheeze of a voice. Yet he is still healthy at 99 years old. You can still see him shuffling around Chisenga Trading center going about is business with the aid of one of his grandchildren.
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