Leħen Mwietna: How Malta Is Finally Listening to Its Silent Majority

Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: How Malta’s Quiet Ones Are Finally Being Heard

By Luke Briffa

On a Wednesday evening in Birkirkara, the parish hall is bathed in golden light and the aroma of imqaret. Folding chairs scrape against the tiles as a hush falls over the room. Carmela, 72, steps up to the microphone. Her hands tremble, but her voice is steady: “I was ten when the nuns told me I was ‘slow.’ I didn’t speak again in class until I was 55.” A collective murmur ripples through the crowd—half recognition, half relief. Carmela is the first storyteller of Leħen Mwietna (“Our Mute Voices”), a grassroots initiative that is helping Malta’s most overlooked residents reclaim their narratives.

The project began last winter when social worker Maria Micallef posted a single line on Facebook: “Tixtieq titkellem? Aħna qegħdin nisimħuk.” (“Do you want to speak? We are here to listen.”) Within 48 hours, 300 people—former Dockyard workers, domestic-violence survivors, retired Lascari cleaners, even a 93-year-old wartime refugee—had messaged her. “I realised we had become experts at nodding politely while people swallowed their pain,” Maria tells me over coffee at Café du Brazil, her laptop buzzing with new voice notes. “Malta’s smallness can be suffocating; everyone knows your business, yet no one really hears you.”

The format is deceptively simple: once a month, in a different town, six storytellers get ten minutes each, uninterrupted. No press, no politicians, no solutions offered—just listening. The rules are printed on recycled paper and taped to the door: “Don’t fix. Don’t film. Don’t judge.” The effect is electric. In Rabat, a transgender teenager who had dropped out of MCAST described the terror of changing uniforms at Paceville clubs to fund transition hormones; in Gozo, a 68-year-old widow recalled how she fed her family on leftover ħobż biż-żejt from wedding caterers after her husband’s fishing boat was repossessed.

What makes Leħen Mwietna uniquely Maltese is the way it braids oral tradition with modern urgency. The evenings open with a għannejja singing two stanzas of traditional verse—an invocation once used by boatmen to greet the horizon—then cede the floor to the unscripted confessions of today. “Our folk songs were the Twitter threads of their day,” says ethnomusicologist Dr. Karl Camilleri, who curates the musical interludes. “They carried news, grievances, jokes. We’re updating that pipeline.”

The cultural significance runs deeper than nostalgia. In a country where 92 % of residents identify as Catholic, the ritual of public testimony—once the exclusive domain of the pulpit—is being secularised and democratised. After each session, audience members light votive candles not for saints but for “stories still trapped in throats.” The wax stubs now form a growing installation at Valletta’s Splendid, the former cinema turned creative hub. Visitors walk between columns of coloured wax, reading anonymous labels: “Lorry driver, Ħamrun, 1984 ferry strike.” “Cleaner, St Julian’s, 2010 deportation threat.” It is Malta’s newest un-cathedral, built from hardened silence.

Community impact is measurable. The Domestic Violence Commission reports a 38 % spike in helpline calls on the mornings after events—women who, after hearing a peer, finally dial 179. The Education Ministry has piloted “Listening Circles” in four secondary schools; students spend one PSCD lesson per term simply hearing each other without rebuttal. Even corporate Malta is tuning in: a fintech firm in SmartCity now sets aside a “quiet hour” every Friday where employees may share non-work stories in a soundproof pod, no managers present.

Yet Maria is careful not to brand the movement. “We are not a charity, not a startup, not a TED talk,” she laughs. “We’re just the Megaphone of Not-Knowing.” The only funding comes from a hat passed around at the end of each evening; last month it collected €412.85, enough to buy cordless mics so storytellers with soft voices can still fill the stone churches where events often spill over.

The final word belongs to Carmela. Back in Birkirkara, after her story, she hugs Maria and whispers, “Jien ma kontx qed nitkellem qabel, imma issa qiegħda nisimgħek ukoll.” (“I wasn’t talking before, but now I’m listening too.”) Somewhere outside, fireworks crackle over the feast of St Joseph. Inside, another candle is lit. The wax drips, the silence breaks, and Malta grows by one more voice that refuses to stay mute.