Chief Makupo’s Farewell Speech
ed. Chief Makupo delivered this presentation just as we were leaving the village last August.
8:30 - 19 August 2010
Before I say goodbye to you, our beloved visitors, I have a few remarks to make.
I am extremely happy this morning, on this send-off ceremony. On behalf of Makupo people and indeed on my own behalf, we wish you a safe journey on your way back to Canada. We know you had a very wonderful moment here in Malawi and Makupo Village in particular. In fact, people of Makupo became and are now your brothers and sisters just in this short time of which memories of such event will remain in the blood of Makupo people for generation after generation.
Makupo People appreciate the role you are playing in developing Makupo people and village as well the villages around in many areas. During your stay here you may have experienced some rude behaviours which did not go well with you; please take it from me that it is not our style of cheering visitors. We cheer visitors in a way that they live happily, live on peace and harmony. Please accept our sincere apologies.
I know most of you are saying “Sheesh!!!! This is too early to leave Makupo.” I am sure of this, but because time is against us, there is nothing we can do to save the situation, for sure some of you are saying that. All the same there is still hope that you may come again and enjoy with your brothers and sisters of Makupo.
I am also compelled to point out here that our diet was not compatible with your standards. Nevertheless, most of you found it delicious, even if the preparation was substandard.
Your visit has created a bond of friendship, love and understanding so much that Makupo People and you have become intimates. I am very pleased to say that you have left a culture to our children to love communicating in English. It is very surprising to hear from as young as Loice Bwelezani, 4 years old, saying, and I quote, “How are you? I’m fine and you?” end quote. While on the other hand you have managed to pick some Chichewa words and sentences such as and I quote, “Muli bwanji? Tili bwino, kaya inu?” end quote. You have managed to put yourself into the world of linguists. You have written dictionaries which translate English words into ChiChewa. Really you will be super-models back home. The highest marks go to Alida for almost fluent speaking – 95%.
I was very impressed seeing Canadian students carrying babies on their backs. This is a sign of joy and appreciation, which existed at Makupo expressing their happiness indeed. You have done many things which I need not mention. Life changes take time but become easy where the environment is so cordial.
Turning to our two professors, Dr. C. Stonebanks and Barbara. I have been overwhelmed for your full participation in all activities taking place at Makupo; in the way you conducted your research and in the way you maneuvered around Makupo. People of Makupo became your brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews.
Your research was so magnificent that no-one complained and I have a hope that whatever information gathered will one day materialize to fruitful benefits. I am suggesting to open up a book where records of your visits be recorded so that our children may have something to refer to, as to what made this village and its people develop to such heights. This book will guide them to the answers.
Development by handouts only is no development. It is meaningful where there is a combination of research, advise and assistance. May you please understand our full co-operation and acceptance of this exercise in our village. Please feel free to conduct more and more research as you may wish at any time.
Please extend our heartfelt thanks to the respectful people of Canada, of your universities, your respectful homes and your respectful families for unflinching support to gladly accept that you come to Malawi and sleep with Makupo people.
Lastly let me thank Mr. Miller, who is head of delegation, Professor Dr. C. Stonebanks, Prof Barbara and the entire group for the wonderful visit.
God Bless You
Chief Makupo
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The elders present their case
The elders present their case
Wednesday night was the last night in the village for the students from Bishop’s university, so we had a party. Everyone enjoyed themselves as we sang and danced and relished those last few moments together. I had passed on responsibility for the pay to the Makupo “Central Committee” of the account signatories, elders and the ones who had organised the different work teams – cleaners, cooks, security and guides. There was a lot of heated discussion about the amount of money available and how some got paid less than in past years, but on the whole everyone was in a good mood with money in the pocket. So they danced and they sang. When the CD player in the truck stopped working, then out came the women led by Esnati who really knows how to whip the older women into a really good mood with lots of hand clapping, praise singing, dancing and laughing.
Esnati had come to the village from granny’s home village in the valley below Dedza as an orphan in 1970 and lived with the old lady anaMumba almost as a servant. She and her children were very much part of the fabric of village life and even though she never really went far in school, she was the energy and enthusiasm behind dancing and singing whenever she got involved. After many years in Lilongwe trying to be a business woman, she and her husband are moving back and building their house in a nearby village about 4 kilometres away. He is going to become a Group Village Headman (GPV) which makes him chief over as many as 6 to 10 other village headmen.
Our Chief Makupo came to invite myself, and the 2 professors, Christopher and Barbara to meet him. He had something to tell us. He praised us for what we had done and how we were working to make Makupoites work together and take responsibility for their own projects. He understood how we were passing on to the people of Makupo the running of the projects so they could build a stronger economic base.
However, he wanted to remind us that there were people who contributed a great deal to making the visits successful but were not included in the payroll. They were the elders who helped behind the scenes to smooth out rough patches and contributed in a variety of ways to the enterprise.
It was a very logical appeal and very instructive about how a village works. We were paying people for functions that fit the labour force, but behind the scenes was the wisdom and judgment of the village managers, the movers and shakers. Despite their age and apparent lack of visible contribution they had maintained a constant eye on things and monitored progress and ensured that the overview was never lost in the busyness of the moment.
Mr. Chikapa is a case in point. Now 72, he retired from the civil service many years ago after a career as a local government auditor. He was married to Nellie’s oldest sister, Ruth who died in 2007. He had suffered a stroke about 5 or 6 years ago that slightly incapacitated his left hand and leg, but his senses are still really strong. Because he had married into the family there was a tendency to leave him out of the family circle when things were discussed. From my first visit, I felt that we could use his background in accounts and bookkeeping to our advantage and that it would be therapeutic for him to be involved and called on for help.
That really began during the last trip in February, but he remained peripheral until this trip, when I set up a petty cash for him to administer so the workers in the kitchen, security, construction, etc.. would go to him and he would exercise the requisite controls and develop a business sense among the people and a sense of accountability and transparency. He was very busy throughout my stay and worked very hard to bring some order to my chaos.
The chief himself, intervened at any number of instances too ensure that problems were dealt with. When one person became too overly friendly with the women visitors and approached people when he was clearly drunk, Chief Makupo had called the elders together including the culprit’s father to correct the behaviour. With the many projects and actions which required a business sense, he was the go to person. He signed the contract for the hostel on behalf of Makupo and solved the problem of the signatories and the bounced cheque. (Don’t get me started on the sins of the Standard Bank of Malawi). And there were others – Mr Kuphera (79) and Anasimango (69) who did not march at the front of the parade, but who helped the whole machine work smoothly.
Now here was the chief reminding us that in all the calculations, these essential contributors had not been considered, nor rewarded. It was an important lesson in how a village works. This is true in any organisation let alone a village. The managers may not be visible on the ground, but they are the ones who create the conditions for everything else to work effectively. His message was articulate and clearly put. He was educating us in how a village works as much as he was making a plea for the elders to be included in the rewards assigned for the visits.
Wednesday night was the last night in the village for the students from Bishop’s university, so we had a party. Everyone enjoyed themselves as we sang and danced and relished those last few moments together. I had passed on responsibility for the pay to the Makupo “Central Committee” of the account signatories, elders and the ones who had organised the different work teams – cleaners, cooks, security and guides. There was a lot of heated discussion about the amount of money available and how some got paid less than in past years, but on the whole everyone was in a good mood with money in the pocket. So they danced and they sang. When the CD player in the truck stopped working, then out came the women led by Esnati who really knows how to whip the older women into a really good mood with lots of hand clapping, praise singing, dancing and laughing.
Esnati had come to the village from granny’s home village in the valley below Dedza as an orphan in 1970 and lived with the old lady anaMumba almost as a servant. She and her children were very much part of the fabric of village life and even though she never really went far in school, she was the energy and enthusiasm behind dancing and singing whenever she got involved. After many years in Lilongwe trying to be a business woman, she and her husband are moving back and building their house in a nearby village about 4 kilometres away. He is going to become a Group Village Headman (GPV) which makes him chief over as many as 6 to 10 other village headmen.
Our Chief Makupo came to invite myself, and the 2 professors, Christopher and Barbara to meet him. He had something to tell us. He praised us for what we had done and how we were working to make Makupoites work together and take responsibility for their own projects. He understood how we were passing on to the people of Makupo the running of the projects so they could build a stronger economic base.
However, he wanted to remind us that there were people who contributed a great deal to making the visits successful but were not included in the payroll. They were the elders who helped behind the scenes to smooth out rough patches and contributed in a variety of ways to the enterprise.
It was a very logical appeal and very instructive about how a village works. We were paying people for functions that fit the labour force, but behind the scenes was the wisdom and judgment of the village managers, the movers and shakers. Despite their age and apparent lack of visible contribution they had maintained a constant eye on things and monitored progress and ensured that the overview was never lost in the busyness of the moment.
Mr. Chikapa is a case in point. Now 72, he retired from the civil service many years ago after a career as a local government auditor. He was married to Nellie’s oldest sister, Ruth who died in 2007. He had suffered a stroke about 5 or 6 years ago that slightly incapacitated his left hand and leg, but his senses are still really strong. Because he had married into the family there was a tendency to leave him out of the family circle when things were discussed. From my first visit, I felt that we could use his background in accounts and bookkeeping to our advantage and that it would be therapeutic for him to be involved and called on for help.
That really began during the last trip in February, but he remained peripheral until this trip, when I set up a petty cash for him to administer so the workers in the kitchen, security, construction, etc.. would go to him and he would exercise the requisite controls and develop a business sense among the people and a sense of accountability and transparency. He was very busy throughout my stay and worked very hard to bring some order to my chaos.
The chief himself, intervened at any number of instances too ensure that problems were dealt with. When one person became too overly friendly with the women visitors and approached people when he was clearly drunk, Chief Makupo had called the elders together including the culprit’s father to correct the behaviour. With the many projects and actions which required a business sense, he was the go to person. He signed the contract for the hostel on behalf of Makupo and solved the problem of the signatories and the bounced cheque. (Don’t get me started on the sins of the Standard Bank of Malawi). And there were others – Mr Kuphera (79) and Anasimango (69) who did not march at the front of the parade, but who helped the whole machine work smoothly.
Now here was the chief reminding us that in all the calculations, these essential contributors had not been considered, nor rewarded. It was an important lesson in how a village works. This is true in any organisation let alone a village. The managers may not be visible on the ground, but they are the ones who create the conditions for everything else to work effectively. His message was articulate and clearly put. He was educating us in how a village works as much as he was making a plea for the elders to be included in the rewards assigned for the visits.
An Amazing Trip – Continued
An Amazing Trip – Continued
Doug’s note
Posting this exactly 2 months from when it was written, I realise theris so much more I could add. I have presented a banner to the the presidents of the student council and the Social Justice Committee in front of an assembly of all students of Royal West Academy to thank them for their dedicated support. The banner was hand-stitched by the women of Makupo and says, “Zikomo. Bwanali / Mlangali. Madzi ndi moyo” which translates as “Thank you from the villagers of Bwanali and Mlangali. Water is life.” On October 19 we will deliver the same message of thanks to OPSEU – the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, who have been consistent and principled supporters of our efforts to help the people of Makupo and the neighbouring region become self-sufficient.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Therese Foundation
Friday 6 August 2010
It had already been a very exciting day with our visit in the morning to the Therese Foundation also being very charged. Melissa Banda, the coordinator, is a very impressive lady who has done a wonderful job of village based care. It started with agogos (grannies) and orphans and is dealing with an important outstanding need. Roger Roome when he was in Lilongwe had made the connection with Mnjale Village on behalf of his adoptive aunt, Therese Bourque-Lambert, the octogenarian dynamo who heads the Stephen Lewis grannies chapter in NDG, Montreal.
From the modest money she has been sending, the villagers through self-help work have assisted more than a hundred grandmothers in as many as 30 villages. From the beginnings in Mnjale village, the work has expanded to so many communities that when they applied for NGO status they decided to change the name to reflect the greater scope and that is when they decided to honour Therese by calling themselves the Therese Foundation. Many of the grandmothers or agogo had gathered and were waiting for our arrival. Sister Gisele from the MIC order of sisters acted as our guide and when our two vehicles pulled up the women all began singing and dancing towards us in greeting. It was quite overwhelming.
The main focus of their work arose out of the situation of destitute seniors in the area. There are many older women and some men with no-one to support them. For whatever reason their children are not there to look after them. They can be old and lonely and as some get senile they get in trouble because no-one is around to care for them. Others are rejected or discriminated against, especially if they are labeled as witches. Sometimes if there have been unexpected or unexplained deaths in the village, people will accuse them of bewitching the bereaved family and they are ostracized. Others are charged with looking after their grandchildren when their own children have died, The group has used the money Therese has sent for food, clothes and blankets to share with these elders who have no means of support and end up in extreme poverty. Bicycles allow village based health care workers to travel around to see how the different elders are doing. They have also begun to help the orphans and already have a couple of girls going to secondary school who would have dropped out for lack of school fees. They are also building a community centre for their meetings and office.
The real reason for the visit was Alice Abracer. Therese has trouble traveling at the tender age of 88 so Alice was visiting Mnjale as her grandmother’s eyes and legs. They had been alerted to her presence and were extremely excited to show her everything, explain their progress and outline the problems they still face. Their new community centre is going to be very special and the foundation was already laid. Bricks were being prepared for burning as we met and even the oldest grannies had given some time to molding them and would help carrying them over to the construction site.
By the time we left Mnjale we had been emotionally drained but the day wasn’t over.
Well report
As I was posting the last item about an amazing trip, the drill rig from the Ministry of Water had arrived and in less than 2 days had completed drilling the 2 wells at Bwanali and at Mlangali. On Friday, Alice. Alida, Barbara, Katie and I were just arriving back from Lilongwe and Mnjale when Themba had called to tell us that they had begun the drilling at Bwanali Village.
We drove straight into Bwanali before arriving at Makupo and found them packing everything up. However, they weren’t finished. The last step, to the joy of the villagers was to drop an air hose to the bottom of the bright new tube they had installed and using the giant compressor that travels on the back of one truck they blow the tube clear of waste matter and debris. The site is quite spectacular as water shoots 5 metres or more into the air. Many villagers gathered including woman with assorted pails and buckets on their way to the older well. They quickly placed their containers on the ground around the hole to catch the water that was coming up.
Their joy and excitement was evident as they began to sing. One man arrived with a drum and they really got into it. We were all teary eyed by the time the crew finished the job. After 10 to 15 minutes they drove off to Mlangali to begin the 2nd well. In that way we got to see them at both ends of the operation - drilling and cleaning up.
We saw them begin the drilling at Mlangali and came to recognize why these wells are so expensive. Three huge trucks bring in the equipment. One has the huge compressor that pumps air under great pressure to force out the material being drilled. The other has the drilling rig which looks like the ones we see in the movies for oil wells. The third is laden with pipes, length of drill shafts and the other materials and tools needed for the work. They are big, muscular 4 wheel drive trucks capable of traveling over extremely rough terrain.
The drilling is a carefully coordinated, almost military operation. The foreman stands on platform right beside the drill and directs everyone else. All the team members have a role and shafts are put in place, lining pipes are readied and tools are available at exactly the moment they are needed. The compressor and the motor of the drill truck make a lot of noise and the dust of the drill by product blows up straight out of the hole. They record where the first water is reached and continue down to 45 metres. A metal sleeve keeps the hole from collapsing and it is inserted at lengths as the hole deepens. Once the depth is reached they remove the drill and drop a white plastic pipe down inside the metal sleeve. The pipe is full of tiny slits that allow the clean water in. The sandy refuse that the drill has pulled up is dropped down the space between the sleeve and the white tube to act as yet another layer of filter and keep the slits from clogging with finer clay like materials. The sleeve is slowly removed and a short bit of the white pipe is all you see above the ground waiting for the next crew to come and construct the cement footings, drains and wash stand. After the cement has duly hardened then the pump is placed on and the well is operational.
When I gain the skills I will get our website up and running and post the videos I made of the operation.
Doug’s note
Posting this exactly 2 months from when it was written, I realise theris so much more I could add. I have presented a banner to the the presidents of the student council and the Social Justice Committee in front of an assembly of all students of Royal West Academy to thank them for their dedicated support. The banner was hand-stitched by the women of Makupo and says, “Zikomo. Bwanali / Mlangali. Madzi ndi moyo” which translates as “Thank you from the villagers of Bwanali and Mlangali. Water is life.” On October 19 we will deliver the same message of thanks to OPSEU – the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, who have been consistent and principled supporters of our efforts to help the people of Makupo and the neighbouring region become self-sufficient.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Therese Foundation
Friday 6 August 2010
It had already been a very exciting day with our visit in the morning to the Therese Foundation also being very charged. Melissa Banda, the coordinator, is a very impressive lady who has done a wonderful job of village based care. It started with agogos (grannies) and orphans and is dealing with an important outstanding need. Roger Roome when he was in Lilongwe had made the connection with Mnjale Village on behalf of his adoptive aunt, Therese Bourque-Lambert, the octogenarian dynamo who heads the Stephen Lewis grannies chapter in NDG, Montreal.
From the modest money she has been sending, the villagers through self-help work have assisted more than a hundred grandmothers in as many as 30 villages. From the beginnings in Mnjale village, the work has expanded to so many communities that when they applied for NGO status they decided to change the name to reflect the greater scope and that is when they decided to honour Therese by calling themselves the Therese Foundation. Many of the grandmothers or agogo had gathered and were waiting for our arrival. Sister Gisele from the MIC order of sisters acted as our guide and when our two vehicles pulled up the women all began singing and dancing towards us in greeting. It was quite overwhelming.
The main focus of their work arose out of the situation of destitute seniors in the area. There are many older women and some men with no-one to support them. For whatever reason their children are not there to look after them. They can be old and lonely and as some get senile they get in trouble because no-one is around to care for them. Others are rejected or discriminated against, especially if they are labeled as witches. Sometimes if there have been unexpected or unexplained deaths in the village, people will accuse them of bewitching the bereaved family and they are ostracized. Others are charged with looking after their grandchildren when their own children have died, The group has used the money Therese has sent for food, clothes and blankets to share with these elders who have no means of support and end up in extreme poverty. Bicycles allow village based health care workers to travel around to see how the different elders are doing. They have also begun to help the orphans and already have a couple of girls going to secondary school who would have dropped out for lack of school fees. They are also building a community centre for their meetings and office.
The real reason for the visit was Alice Abracer. Therese has trouble traveling at the tender age of 88 so Alice was visiting Mnjale as her grandmother’s eyes and legs. They had been alerted to her presence and were extremely excited to show her everything, explain their progress and outline the problems they still face. Their new community centre is going to be very special and the foundation was already laid. Bricks were being prepared for burning as we met and even the oldest grannies had given some time to molding them and would help carrying them over to the construction site.
By the time we left Mnjale we had been emotionally drained but the day wasn’t over.
Well report
As I was posting the last item about an amazing trip, the drill rig from the Ministry of Water had arrived and in less than 2 days had completed drilling the 2 wells at Bwanali and at Mlangali. On Friday, Alice. Alida, Barbara, Katie and I were just arriving back from Lilongwe and Mnjale when Themba had called to tell us that they had begun the drilling at Bwanali Village.
We drove straight into Bwanali before arriving at Makupo and found them packing everything up. However, they weren’t finished. The last step, to the joy of the villagers was to drop an air hose to the bottom of the bright new tube they had installed and using the giant compressor that travels on the back of one truck they blow the tube clear of waste matter and debris. The site is quite spectacular as water shoots 5 metres or more into the air. Many villagers gathered including woman with assorted pails and buckets on their way to the older well. They quickly placed their containers on the ground around the hole to catch the water that was coming up.
Their joy and excitement was evident as they began to sing. One man arrived with a drum and they really got into it. We were all teary eyed by the time the crew finished the job. After 10 to 15 minutes they drove off to Mlangali to begin the 2nd well. In that way we got to see them at both ends of the operation - drilling and cleaning up.
We saw them begin the drilling at Mlangali and came to recognize why these wells are so expensive. Three huge trucks bring in the equipment. One has the huge compressor that pumps air under great pressure to force out the material being drilled. The other has the drilling rig which looks like the ones we see in the movies for oil wells. The third is laden with pipes, length of drill shafts and the other materials and tools needed for the work. They are big, muscular 4 wheel drive trucks capable of traveling over extremely rough terrain.
The drilling is a carefully coordinated, almost military operation. The foreman stands on platform right beside the drill and directs everyone else. All the team members have a role and shafts are put in place, lining pipes are readied and tools are available at exactly the moment they are needed. The compressor and the motor of the drill truck make a lot of noise and the dust of the drill by product blows up straight out of the hole. They record where the first water is reached and continue down to 45 metres. A metal sleeve keeps the hole from collapsing and it is inserted at lengths as the hole deepens. Once the depth is reached they remove the drill and drop a white plastic pipe down inside the metal sleeve. The pipe is full of tiny slits that allow the clean water in. The sandy refuse that the drill has pulled up is dropped down the space between the sleeve and the white tube to act as yet another layer of filter and keep the slits from clogging with finer clay like materials. The sleeve is slowly removed and a short bit of the white pipe is all you see above the ground waiting for the next crew to come and construct the cement footings, drains and wash stand. After the cement has duly hardened then the pump is placed on and the well is operational.
When I gain the skills I will get our website up and running and post the videos I made of the operation.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Addis Ababa in transit
Blog: Sitting in transit in the Addis Ababa airport
It’s a cool 14 degrees outside and the scene outside is green with tall blue gums all over the place. I do not want to got through to the departure lounge and lose this view of Addis Ababa. In all my travels in Africa this is the closest I have ever come to the fabled city with the melodic name. The place is central to much of African history and even the destinations on the departure board range from Douala, Ougadougou to Zimbabwe, Lilongwe and Lumbumbashi. The plane I am taking is en route to Lumbumbashi and the waiting passengers in the terminal reflect the multitude of different cultures and societies. I have always wanted to visit and absorb everything about the country.
The airport reminds me of the defunct Mirabel north of Montreal. It’s a huge long marbled floored and glass walled space, very different than the small narrow corridors of Nairobi. There are the usual duty free shops, lounges and internet café. The people waiting in-transit reflect the names or the destinations for their diversity. The Chinese guy is using sign language to bum a light from a white robed African. This is the first public building I have been in anywhere in a long time where smoking is permitted. It is such a large place that it is easy to avoid, but I note that where I once smoked and then worked for several years in a small office with chain smokers without really minding, I now find that even a trace of cigarette smoke in the air disturbs me.
The glass wall I am facing looks out on Addis. I have no idea what I am seeing but it is very exciting for me. I can see an elevated highway which looks like the highway near my house in Montreal. Near it is a very busy bus station. It is probably rush hour, accounting for the apparent hustle bustle. There does not seem to be any grand city plan like so many new capitals like Lilongwe
Addis is home to many international organisations like the African Unity as well as UN regional agencies. Many Malawians spent the years of Kamuzu’s repressive regime in exile their working for these organisations. It was convenient for the regime to have them out of the country when they were released from the political prisons and safer for them.
I must spend some time here and learn more about the rich history, and the people with their Nilotic features which make me think of the Queen of Sheeba. I have known many Ethiopians over the years and have become familiar with some of their history and the way they speak English. But they are isolated individuals in Montreal and now I am looking out on a country containing millions of people who look and talk like the friends I have known.
It’s recent history has played a large role in shaping the course of events around the horn of Africa and down the East coast. The poet Rimbaud exiled himself to one of the country’s remote and exotic city states for 7 years before his untimely death. The imperial kingdom of Ras Tafar and the tragic ending of Haile Selassie provided the material for a rich mythology and the root of the Rastafarian movement in Jamaica. The socialist revolution of the army colonels led to the brutal years of Mengistu, the destructive wars of secession and the infamous man-made famines. Since the separation of Eritrea and the installation of the new president with the blessings of the United States things have not gotten better. Secessionist movements continue to eat away at the country’s unity; democracy has been thwarted and the opposition oppressed; wasteful and destructive war lingers on with Eritrea; a failed invasion of Somalia has cost the country dearly; famine still looms and yet Ethiopia remains a presence and an influential force at so many levels.
I will be back and will take the time to stop and see and learn.
++++++++++++
A small footnote:
I was standing in line for the toilet on the plane as the northern part of Lake Malawi came into view. There below me was the north western shore that I had paddled with Guy and Monica. I could see the point of land where we camped at Usisya on the abandoned lodge. The line of houses along the peninsula leading out to the point are clearly visible. North of that is the bulls horns of the bay where Ruarwe is located and the hidden Zulunkhuni Lodge. It was in beautiful relief and far more graphic than the maps indicate.
It’s a cool 14 degrees outside and the scene outside is green with tall blue gums all over the place. I do not want to got through to the departure lounge and lose this view of Addis Ababa. In all my travels in Africa this is the closest I have ever come to the fabled city with the melodic name. The place is central to much of African history and even the destinations on the departure board range from Douala, Ougadougou to Zimbabwe, Lilongwe and Lumbumbashi. The plane I am taking is en route to Lumbumbashi and the waiting passengers in the terminal reflect the multitude of different cultures and societies. I have always wanted to visit and absorb everything about the country.
The airport reminds me of the defunct Mirabel north of Montreal. It’s a huge long marbled floored and glass walled space, very different than the small narrow corridors of Nairobi. There are the usual duty free shops, lounges and internet café. The people waiting in-transit reflect the names or the destinations for their diversity. The Chinese guy is using sign language to bum a light from a white robed African. This is the first public building I have been in anywhere in a long time where smoking is permitted. It is such a large place that it is easy to avoid, but I note that where I once smoked and then worked for several years in a small office with chain smokers without really minding, I now find that even a trace of cigarette smoke in the air disturbs me.
The glass wall I am facing looks out on Addis. I have no idea what I am seeing but it is very exciting for me. I can see an elevated highway which looks like the highway near my house in Montreal. Near it is a very busy bus station. It is probably rush hour, accounting for the apparent hustle bustle. There does not seem to be any grand city plan like so many new capitals like Lilongwe
Addis is home to many international organisations like the African Unity as well as UN regional agencies. Many Malawians spent the years of Kamuzu’s repressive regime in exile their working for these organisations. It was convenient for the regime to have them out of the country when they were released from the political prisons and safer for them.
I must spend some time here and learn more about the rich history, and the people with their Nilotic features which make me think of the Queen of Sheeba. I have known many Ethiopians over the years and have become familiar with some of their history and the way they speak English. But they are isolated individuals in Montreal and now I am looking out on a country containing millions of people who look and talk like the friends I have known.
It’s recent history has played a large role in shaping the course of events around the horn of Africa and down the East coast. The poet Rimbaud exiled himself to one of the country’s remote and exotic city states for 7 years before his untimely death. The imperial kingdom of Ras Tafar and the tragic ending of Haile Selassie provided the material for a rich mythology and the root of the Rastafarian movement in Jamaica. The socialist revolution of the army colonels led to the brutal years of Mengistu, the destructive wars of secession and the infamous man-made famines. Since the separation of Eritrea and the installation of the new president with the blessings of the United States things have not gotten better. Secessionist movements continue to eat away at the country’s unity; democracy has been thwarted and the opposition oppressed; wasteful and destructive war lingers on with Eritrea; a failed invasion of Somalia has cost the country dearly; famine still looms and yet Ethiopia remains a presence and an influential force at so many levels.
I will be back and will take the time to stop and see and learn.
++++++++++++
A small footnote:
I was standing in line for the toilet on the plane as the northern part of Lake Malawi came into view. There below me was the north western shore that I had paddled with Guy and Monica. I could see the point of land where we camped at Usisya on the abandoned lodge. The line of houses along the peninsula leading out to the point are clearly visible. North of that is the bulls horns of the bay where Ruarwe is located and the hidden Zulunkhuni Lodge. It was in beautiful relief and far more graphic than the maps indicate.
The elders present their case
The elders present their case
Wednesday night was the last night in the village for the students from Bishop’s university, so we had a party. Everyone enjoyed themselves as we sang and danced and relished those last few moments together. I had passed on responsibility for the pay to the Makupo “Central Committee” of the account signatories, elders and the ones who had organised the different work teams – cleaners, cooks, security and guides. There was a lot of heated discussion about the amount of money available and how some got paid less than in past years, but on the whole everyone was in a good mood with money in the pocket. So they danced and they sang. When the CD player in the truck stopped working, then out came the women led by Esnati who really knows how to whip the older women into a dancing mood with lots of hand clapping, praise singing, dancing and laughing.
Esnati had come to the village from grannies home village in the valley below Dedza as an orphan in 1970 and lived with the old lady anaMumba almost as a servant. She and her children were very much part of the fabric of village life and even though she never really went far in school, she was the energy and enthusiasm behind dancing and singing whenever she got involved. After many years in Lilongwe trying to be a business woman, she and her husband are moving back and building their house in a nearby village about 4 kilometres away. He is going to become a Group Village Headman (GPV) which makes him chief over as many as 6 to 10 other village headmen.
Our Chief Makupo came to invite myself, and the 2 professors, Christopher and Barbara to meet him. He had something to tell us. He praised us for what we had done and how we were working to make Makupoites work together and take responsibility for their own projects. He understood how we were passing on to the people of Makupo the running of the projects so they could build a stronger economic base.
However, he wanted to remind us that there were people who contributed a great deal to making the visits successful but were not included in the payroll. They were the elders who helped behind the scenes to smooth out rough patches and contributed in a variety of ways to the enterprise.
It was a very logical appeal and very instructive about how a village works. We were paying people for functions that fit the labour force, but behind the scenes was the wisdom and judgment of the village managers, the movers and shakers. Despite their age and apparent lack of visible contribution they had maintained a constant eye on things and monitored progress and ensured that the overview was never lost in the busyness of the moment.
Mr. Chikapa is a case in point. Now 72, he retired from the civil service many years ago after a career as a local government auditor. He was married to Nellie’s oldest sister, Ruth who died in 2007. He had suffered a stroke about 5 or 6 years ago that slightly incapacitated his left hand and leg, but his senses are still really strong. Because he had married into the family there was a tendency to leave him out of the family circle when things were discussed. From my first visit, I felt that we could use his background in accounts and bookkeeping to our advantage and that it would be therapeutic for him to be involved and called on for help.
That really began during the last trip in February, but he remained peripheral until this trip, when I set up a petty cash for him to administer so the workers in the kitchen, security, construction, etc.. would go to him and he would exercise the requisite controls and develop a business sense among the people and a sense of accountability and transparency. He was very busy throughout my stay and worked very hard to bring some order to my chaos.
The chief himself, intervened at any number of instances too ensure that problems were dealt with. When one person became to overly friendly with the women visitors and approached people when he was clearly drunk, Chief Makupo had called the elders together including the culprit’s father to correct the behaviour. With the many projects and actions which required a business sense, he was the go to person. He signed the contract for the hostel on behalf of Makupo and solved the problem of the signatories and the bounced cheque. (Don’t get me started on the sins of the Standard Bank of Malawi). And there were others – Mr Kuphera (79) and Anasimango (69) who did not march at the front of the parade, but who helped the whole machine work smoothly.
Now here was the chief reminding us that in all the calculations, these essential contributors had not been considered, nor rewarded. It was an important lesson in how an organisation works. This is as true in any multinational as it is for a village. The managers may not be visible on the ground, but they are the ones who create the conditions for everything else to work effectively. His message was articulate and clearly put. He was educating us in how a village works as much as he was making a plea for the elders to be included in the rewards assigned for the visits.
Wednesday night was the last night in the village for the students from Bishop’s university, so we had a party. Everyone enjoyed themselves as we sang and danced and relished those last few moments together. I had passed on responsibility for the pay to the Makupo “Central Committee” of the account signatories, elders and the ones who had organised the different work teams – cleaners, cooks, security and guides. There was a lot of heated discussion about the amount of money available and how some got paid less than in past years, but on the whole everyone was in a good mood with money in the pocket. So they danced and they sang. When the CD player in the truck stopped working, then out came the women led by Esnati who really knows how to whip the older women into a dancing mood with lots of hand clapping, praise singing, dancing and laughing.
Esnati had come to the village from grannies home village in the valley below Dedza as an orphan in 1970 and lived with the old lady anaMumba almost as a servant. She and her children were very much part of the fabric of village life and even though she never really went far in school, she was the energy and enthusiasm behind dancing and singing whenever she got involved. After many years in Lilongwe trying to be a business woman, she and her husband are moving back and building their house in a nearby village about 4 kilometres away. He is going to become a Group Village Headman (GPV) which makes him chief over as many as 6 to 10 other village headmen.
Our Chief Makupo came to invite myself, and the 2 professors, Christopher and Barbara to meet him. He had something to tell us. He praised us for what we had done and how we were working to make Makupoites work together and take responsibility for their own projects. He understood how we were passing on to the people of Makupo the running of the projects so they could build a stronger economic base.
However, he wanted to remind us that there were people who contributed a great deal to making the visits successful but were not included in the payroll. They were the elders who helped behind the scenes to smooth out rough patches and contributed in a variety of ways to the enterprise.
It was a very logical appeal and very instructive about how a village works. We were paying people for functions that fit the labour force, but behind the scenes was the wisdom and judgment of the village managers, the movers and shakers. Despite their age and apparent lack of visible contribution they had maintained a constant eye on things and monitored progress and ensured that the overview was never lost in the busyness of the moment.
Mr. Chikapa is a case in point. Now 72, he retired from the civil service many years ago after a career as a local government auditor. He was married to Nellie’s oldest sister, Ruth who died in 2007. He had suffered a stroke about 5 or 6 years ago that slightly incapacitated his left hand and leg, but his senses are still really strong. Because he had married into the family there was a tendency to leave him out of the family circle when things were discussed. From my first visit, I felt that we could use his background in accounts and bookkeeping to our advantage and that it would be therapeutic for him to be involved and called on for help.
That really began during the last trip in February, but he remained peripheral until this trip, when I set up a petty cash for him to administer so the workers in the kitchen, security, construction, etc.. would go to him and he would exercise the requisite controls and develop a business sense among the people and a sense of accountability and transparency. He was very busy throughout my stay and worked very hard to bring some order to my chaos.
The chief himself, intervened at any number of instances too ensure that problems were dealt with. When one person became to overly friendly with the women visitors and approached people when he was clearly drunk, Chief Makupo had called the elders together including the culprit’s father to correct the behaviour. With the many projects and actions which required a business sense, he was the go to person. He signed the contract for the hostel on behalf of Makupo and solved the problem of the signatories and the bounced cheque. (Don’t get me started on the sins of the Standard Bank of Malawi). And there were others – Mr Kuphera (79) and Anasimango (69) who did not march at the front of the parade, but who helped the whole machine work smoothly.
Now here was the chief reminding us that in all the calculations, these essential contributors had not been considered, nor rewarded. It was an important lesson in how an organisation works. This is as true in any multinational as it is for a village. The managers may not be visible on the ground, but they are the ones who create the conditions for everything else to work effectively. His message was articulate and clearly put. He was educating us in how a village works as much as he was making a plea for the elders to be included in the rewards assigned for the visits.
Missionary zeal
Missionary Zeal
Over the years, this old atheist has had a lot of contact with the missionary project. Even in CUSO and the Peace Corps there was always a nucleus of evangelical types who saw soul saving as central to their work in Africa. One of my first contacts was with an evangelical southern Baptist named Billy Joe Wheeler, whose rich Texan drawl when applied to the Chewa language was the cause of great hilarity among us Canadians. Down the road from my school near Mitundu was Mlale mission with a hospital and school run by an order of Quebec nuns and a church run by an old Quebecois priest whose name has long slipped from my memory. All the Catholics spoke excellent Chichewa and saw their schools and hospital as a service to the population, but in the end were trying to save the souls of the Africans.
I enjoyed the nuns, because for a couple of years, once a week I pedaled out after school to teach English to their African novitiates and the old ladies fed me a good meal of meat and potatoes. Then I would drop over at the old boy’s place and exploit his supply of rye whiskey and his news of hockey scores from Canada. They were very nice people and their hearts were full of compassion and the desire to help the people they had dedicated their lives to serving.
For years I grappled with my disdain for the church and the arrogance of the missionary project and the fact that the left just wasn’t there on the ground in poor countries. It was easy to join in solidarity with South African workers who had an economic system with an organised workforce and a militant communist movement that I had an affinity to with its anti-church, secular humanism. By comparison in poor countries like Malawi, trade unions were few and far between and the peasantry was extremely hard to arouse to any form of resistance to their exploitation. In the place of the left and in the absence of government services, the churches have become a dominant force. In rural Malawi, churches far outnumber economic enterprises or public services like schools and hospitals.
The churches provide something around 50% of health services in the country and run large numbers of schools. Under colonialism they provided way more services than the colonial government. In the meantime, where was the left? The struggles of Latin America and South Africa were easy for them, but they were largely absent in the poorer peasant based agrarian countries. They did not prosletyse, their message was absent and they provided no services like the religious groups did to attract their converts.
My problem is with the evangelical mission and its enormous arrogance. It is still very imperial in goal. The Zimbabweans used to say during the struggle for independence that when the white man came to their country, they owned the land and the whites had the bible. The whites taught them to close their eyes in prayer and when they opened them they had the bible and the whites had the land. Not much has changed.
The pre-Christian religions of Malawi have been completely denigrated and the most conservative forms of religious observance have been imposed and are referred to as Malawi’s traditions. The residual Victorian mentality dates back to the period of Livingstone and colonialism when the religious project involved the 3 C’s – Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation. Anything less than white as England was part of the ‘white man’s burden’ to correct. Now all the African elites wear suits and pray before meetings and what little is left of the pre-contact religions end up as traditional dances like the famous gule wamkulo with its masked dancers who are trotted out for public performance as quaint relics of another time.
I sat on the plane from Lilongwe to Addis Ababa with a very nice man from Arkansas, a Baptist who had been on a 2 week mission to evangelise and baptize as many people as possible. They spoke to over 15,000 people through the Salima district and brought them the word of the lord so they could be saved. I am sure that the good people of Salima would have preferred, economic progress, jobs, schools and hospitals, but these Christian believed that their way was so superior that they had to come and convince these poor people to convert to their belief. I was polite and friendly at the level of conversation, but led him away several times from the opening he was trying to make to talk about their mission. I have no time for the missionary zeal.
Finally, he asked if he could show me pictures of their work and I very politely declined. He asked if I believed and I told him that I did not. He asked about the state of the faith in my homeland and I explained the demise of the traditional churches in Quebec. I explained to him that I had been around for a long time and that I really did not want to see what he had been doing. I was as polite as I could be and he was very gracious about stepping back at my request, but it is not always such a graceful outcome.
He was not alone. On the same plane were a large gang of German Servants of Love mission, and some Brits with t shirts proclaiming that they believed in the right to life and that “I am glad that you were born” with a little foetus curled up in a womb. They had clearly been in Malawi to ensure that the abortion laws were maintained. Two elderly nuns tottered off beside me. It has often occurred on these trips that one of the participants in my tours will end up seated beside someone full of the zeal who will pray for them and try to get them to see the light.
Meanwhile the primary school teachers still teach about how Livingstone brought civilization to Africa, but know nothing of their pre-contact religious roots, and enthusiastically emulate anything western as superior to anything they possess. Illegal abortions wreak a horrible havoc on young woman, because their churches forbid legal safe abortions as a reproductive choice. The poor peasants are taught to pray and love a god that clearly doesn’t love them and the rich elites use religion as one more tool to cement their power over the poor.
Missionary zeal – bah humbug.
Over the years, this old atheist has had a lot of contact with the missionary project. Even in CUSO and the Peace Corps there was always a nucleus of evangelical types who saw soul saving as central to their work in Africa. One of my first contacts was with an evangelical southern Baptist named Billy Joe Wheeler, whose rich Texan drawl when applied to the Chewa language was the cause of great hilarity among us Canadians. Down the road from my school near Mitundu was Mlale mission with a hospital and school run by an order of Quebec nuns and a church run by an old Quebecois priest whose name has long slipped from my memory. All the Catholics spoke excellent Chichewa and saw their schools and hospital as a service to the population, but in the end were trying to save the souls of the Africans.
I enjoyed the nuns, because for a couple of years, once a week I pedaled out after school to teach English to their African novitiates and the old ladies fed me a good meal of meat and potatoes. Then I would drop over at the old boy’s place and exploit his supply of rye whiskey and his news of hockey scores from Canada. They were very nice people and their hearts were full of compassion and the desire to help the people they had dedicated their lives to serving.
For years I grappled with my disdain for the church and the arrogance of the missionary project and the fact that the left just wasn’t there on the ground in poor countries. It was easy to join in solidarity with South African workers who had an economic system with an organised workforce and a militant communist movement that I had an affinity to with its anti-church, secular humanism. By comparison in poor countries like Malawi, trade unions were few and far between and the peasantry was extremely hard to arouse to any form of resistance to their exploitation. In the place of the left and in the absence of government services, the churches have become a dominant force. In rural Malawi, churches far outnumber economic enterprises or public services like schools and hospitals.
The churches provide something around 50% of health services in the country and run large numbers of schools. Under colonialism they provided way more services than the colonial government. In the meantime, where was the left? The struggles of Latin America and South Africa were easy for them, but they were largely absent in the poorer peasant based agrarian countries. They did not prosletyse, their message was absent and they provided no services like the religious groups did to attract their converts.
My problem is with the evangelical mission and its enormous arrogance. It is still very imperial in goal. The Zimbabweans used to say during the struggle for independence that when the white man came to their country, they owned the land and the whites had the bible. The whites taught them to close their eyes in prayer and when they opened them they had the bible and the whites had the land. Not much has changed.
The pre-Christian religions of Malawi have been completely denigrated and the most conservative forms of religious observance have been imposed and are referred to as Malawi’s traditions. The residual Victorian mentality dates back to the period of Livingstone and colonialism when the religious project involved the 3 C’s – Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation. Anything less than white as England was part of the ‘white man’s burden’ to correct. Now all the African elites wear suits and pray before meetings and what little is left of the pre-contact religions end up as traditional dances like the famous gule wamkulo with its masked dancers who are trotted out for public performance as quaint relics of another time.
I sat on the plane from Lilongwe to Addis Ababa with a very nice man from Arkansas, a Baptist who had been on a 2 week mission to evangelise and baptize as many people as possible. They spoke to over 15,000 people through the Salima district and brought them the word of the lord so they could be saved. I am sure that the good people of Salima would have preferred, economic progress, jobs, schools and hospitals, but these Christian believed that their way was so superior that they had to come and convince these poor people to convert to their belief. I was polite and friendly at the level of conversation, but led him away several times from the opening he was trying to make to talk about their mission. I have no time for the missionary zeal.
Finally, he asked if he could show me pictures of their work and I very politely declined. He asked if I believed and I told him that I did not. He asked about the state of the faith in my homeland and I explained the demise of the traditional churches in Quebec. I explained to him that I had been around for a long time and that I really did not want to see what he had been doing. I was as polite as I could be and he was very gracious about stepping back at my request, but it is not always such a graceful outcome.
He was not alone. On the same plane were a large gang of German Servants of Love mission, and some Brits with t shirts proclaiming that they believed in the right to life and that “I am glad that you were born” with a little foetus curled up in a womb. They had clearly been in Malawi to ensure that the abortion laws were maintained. Two elderly nuns tottered off beside me. It has often occurred on these trips that one of the participants in my tours will end up seated beside someone full of the zeal who will pray for them and try to get them to see the light.
Meanwhile the primary school teachers still teach about how Livingstone brought civilization to Africa, but know nothing of their pre-contact religious roots, and enthusiastically emulate anything western as superior to anything they possess. Illegal abortions wreak a horrible havoc on young woman, because their churches forbid legal safe abortions as a reproductive choice. The poor peasants are taught to pray and love a god that clearly doesn’t love them and the rich elites use religion as one more tool to cement their power over the poor.
Missionary zeal – bah humbug.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
An amazing trip - Project report
It has been an amazing trip. I am very excited about what has been accomplished and what is just on the horizon.
Bishop’s village visit
The Bishops students have fallen into two categories. The teachers are working one on one with their professor, Christopher Stonebanks and are so autonomous that I hardly see them. In fact, I will have to take a few moments today to pass by all the schools and see how everyone is doing. Francois-Xavier is laying the foundations for a great computer lab and working individually and in groups to get the teachers familiar with the machines and capable of trouble shooting. We are making contacts in Kasungu with IT people to see if one of them can come in once a month to help with technical glitches and to continue the learning. Danielle and Maureen are preparing three large wall murals at the primary school. One is of the universe, another a map of Africa and finally a map of Malawi. They are also preparing several large canvases almost 5 feet by 3 feet for students to paint which will be brought back to Canada to sell to raise funds for the primary school. Dave is looking at music in the schools and in the village, etc…
The education group hit a snag because the Ministry has changed the school year from the calendar year back to the old colonial system to begin in September and end in July in parallel with the northern hemisphere’s school calendar. This meant we arrived in the last 2 weeks of the semester. What with exams for 3 grades disrupting school life and the regular disruption of end of semester activities, they have not been able to get the same contact time that the Vanier students had with the Malawi students last year. Despite that they have found ways to become involved and enrich their learning experience.
The other group is what we called in French ‘divers’ or varia in English, but as a joke we now use the English pronunciation as if we are snorkelling divers. Alida is in sociology and political science, Katie is political science and economics, Barbara is the sociology and gender studies professor and Alice is a college student who wanted to come to help her grandmother with the support she has been providing the small village of Mnjale.
Alida and Katie are considered interns and since their interests were similar and dealt with the aid relationship, we agreed that they would help me in my work as a case study for their internship credit. It has proven to be an invaluable support. They have scoured Kasungu for possible internships for next year’s group or groups, looking at everything from PAL, Press Agricultural Limited, the country’s biggest enterprise to a small dynamic local NGO known as Council for Sustainable Community Development CSCD. They are building the inventory of internship possibilities, they are sitting in on meetings between me and partners and in return I am helping them prepare to write their school assignments about this attachment, all of which should enrich the work we are trying to do.
More than anything I appreciate the moments with them when I can talk out the issues of the moment and get their feedback. It has sharpened my decision making and kept me focused on the priorities and recognize the need to involve others in the work.
Christopher is into research and has mobilized Thomas to work with Kristy, one of his students, as research assistants and it is wonderful to see the guy rise to the challenge. Christopher has taken a particular interest in him and is still willing to help him become a teacher despite a couple of major mistakes he made last year. Kristy is researching the learning the students are going through and how culture shock affects that learning. He is also organizing a 2 day seminar of exchange between the Bishop’s profs and students and the Kasungu TTC profs and students. A lot of learning is going on.
The Beria Tembo-Saka Guest House
OPSEU has helped fund three projects leading to self-sufficiency. The first is a guest house named in honour of Nellie’s late mother who was always hosting people in her house so it seemed appropriate to name a house that hosts visitors in her name.
A local contractor has agreed to build the basic structure for the money we have available and will be the first to be called to complete the project when more funding comes available. She is a woman well known in the Kasungu area. She is on the site early in the morning and stays until late in addition to running a number of other projects. Her work caught my eye when we pass the Chinkhoma turnoff to Mchinji some 20 kilometres south of Makupo on the M1 highway. I had admired the thatch roofed bar many times in passing by and decided to stop last January. She is the owner and builder and was present when I visited so we struck up a friendship as we shared our preference for thatch roofing and other construction ideas. She owns the By the Road Bar as well as another one in Kasungu called the Groove 2000 Bar. In addition as a contractor she owns a large truck and a fleet of smaller ones.
I sought her out for and estimate and she introduced me to her husband who took the rough sketch of the idea Nellie and I had proposed and turned out 4 pages of beautifully drafted design and another 2 pages costing the project down to the Kwacha at something close to twice what we had available to spend. Our original design would have cost $25,000 and we were working with $10,000 so after some serious negotiations we came up with a compromise that would get the basic structure of foundation, walls and roof installed before the end of November and they would be prepared to come back and complete the project if and when the balance of the funds become available. We needed to get it up and covered before the rains started to protect the walls. That will give us the time to fundraise to complete the rest of the work before the next group comes in May of 2011. In the meantime we can continue to host small groups as we are now doing using three houses scattered around the village. WUSC Malawi would like to schedule an orientation for their recently arrived Canadian volunteers and Vanier College is hoping to bring some nursing students in May and a focus group on water in the month of June. Bishops seems to be a sure thing for another visit in July or August. We will be ready for next year which should be the last time I have to be away for any extended period.
One Well Becomes Three
Katharine Cukier and the Social Justice Club at Royal West Academy spearheaded a fund rising campaign based on the request by Chief Bwanali a lady who was once a student of mine when I first taught in Malawi in 1968. The villages she covers were all served by one very overworked well ever since the old decrepit well built in colonial times had given up the ghost. She estimated that almost 2000 people depended on one well. The children did so well that it appeared that we might be able to put a well in Chiwayu as well. Based on our calculations from the previous experience in 2007, we feared we would be a bit short for the second well, so we applied for help from our good friends at OPSEU and they gave us what we thought we needed for the two.
As soon as I got to Malawi I visited Jacob Mpemba at WUSC who is an agricultural graduate from Bunda College and sought his advise on a number of matters. He pointed out that we do not have to deal with the private companies since the Ministry of Irrigation and Water can give quotations which cut out the double dealing of the companies. Sure enough their quote was 25% below what the best company had given us and the savings allowed us to put in a third well. Our goal was to work in an ever expanding radius out from around Makupo to provide the villagers with the shortest walk possible to lighten the daily burden of water carrying by bringing water closer to them. The next well then was to be in Mlangali the home of the Group Village Headman that Makupo falls under. Needless to say the chief was very pleased.
The money was paid to Miinstry accounts office on a Thursday. On the following Monday, this week we are ending, the hydrologist arrived with his equipment and spent the better part of 2 days siting the wells. In 2 cases the placement of the villages was right above rock bearing no water so the wells ended up a little farther from the centre of the villages than the villagers wanted. In fact it was interesting watching the interaction of the chief who wanted the well just outside his door and the women who were the actual carriers of the water. They couldn’t argue with their chief but it was clear they were happy the well was moving closer to where they were going to be convenienced. He left on Wednesday and the drilling rig arrived on Thursday, a week to the day from when the money had been paid to the Ministry. They expect to do all three wells in just a couple of days. Needless to say there is much anticipation with all this progress coming about so quickly.
Royal West raised enough money from the energy of their enthusiastic and commited students to put in 2 wells at Bwanali and Mlangali and OPSEU gave us the ability to put in the third at Chiwayu. Rest assured the people appreciate your support.
More to come soon. As I send this to the blog the drill rig has just completed the first two holes at Mlangali and Chiwayu.
Bishop’s village visit
The Bishops students have fallen into two categories. The teachers are working one on one with their professor, Christopher Stonebanks and are so autonomous that I hardly see them. In fact, I will have to take a few moments today to pass by all the schools and see how everyone is doing. Francois-Xavier is laying the foundations for a great computer lab and working individually and in groups to get the teachers familiar with the machines and capable of trouble shooting. We are making contacts in Kasungu with IT people to see if one of them can come in once a month to help with technical glitches and to continue the learning. Danielle and Maureen are preparing three large wall murals at the primary school. One is of the universe, another a map of Africa and finally a map of Malawi. They are also preparing several large canvases almost 5 feet by 3 feet for students to paint which will be brought back to Canada to sell to raise funds for the primary school. Dave is looking at music in the schools and in the village, etc…
The education group hit a snag because the Ministry has changed the school year from the calendar year back to the old colonial system to begin in September and end in July in parallel with the northern hemisphere’s school calendar. This meant we arrived in the last 2 weeks of the semester. What with exams for 3 grades disrupting school life and the regular disruption of end of semester activities, they have not been able to get the same contact time that the Vanier students had with the Malawi students last year. Despite that they have found ways to become involved and enrich their learning experience.
The other group is what we called in French ‘divers’ or varia in English, but as a joke we now use the English pronunciation as if we are snorkelling divers. Alida is in sociology and political science, Katie is political science and economics, Barbara is the sociology and gender studies professor and Alice is a college student who wanted to come to help her grandmother with the support she has been providing the small village of Mnjale.
Alida and Katie are considered interns and since their interests were similar and dealt with the aid relationship, we agreed that they would help me in my work as a case study for their internship credit. It has proven to be an invaluable support. They have scoured Kasungu for possible internships for next year’s group or groups, looking at everything from PAL, Press Agricultural Limited, the country’s biggest enterprise to a small dynamic local NGO known as Council for Sustainable Community Development CSCD. They are building the inventory of internship possibilities, they are sitting in on meetings between me and partners and in return I am helping them prepare to write their school assignments about this attachment, all of which should enrich the work we are trying to do.
More than anything I appreciate the moments with them when I can talk out the issues of the moment and get their feedback. It has sharpened my decision making and kept me focused on the priorities and recognize the need to involve others in the work.
Christopher is into research and has mobilized Thomas to work with Kristy, one of his students, as research assistants and it is wonderful to see the guy rise to the challenge. Christopher has taken a particular interest in him and is still willing to help him become a teacher despite a couple of major mistakes he made last year. Kristy is researching the learning the students are going through and how culture shock affects that learning. He is also organizing a 2 day seminar of exchange between the Bishop’s profs and students and the Kasungu TTC profs and students. A lot of learning is going on.
The Beria Tembo-Saka Guest House
OPSEU has helped fund three projects leading to self-sufficiency. The first is a guest house named in honour of Nellie’s late mother who was always hosting people in her house so it seemed appropriate to name a house that hosts visitors in her name.
A local contractor has agreed to build the basic structure for the money we have available and will be the first to be called to complete the project when more funding comes available. She is a woman well known in the Kasungu area. She is on the site early in the morning and stays until late in addition to running a number of other projects. Her work caught my eye when we pass the Chinkhoma turnoff to Mchinji some 20 kilometres south of Makupo on the M1 highway. I had admired the thatch roofed bar many times in passing by and decided to stop last January. She is the owner and builder and was present when I visited so we struck up a friendship as we shared our preference for thatch roofing and other construction ideas. She owns the By the Road Bar as well as another one in Kasungu called the Groove 2000 Bar. In addition as a contractor she owns a large truck and a fleet of smaller ones.
I sought her out for and estimate and she introduced me to her husband who took the rough sketch of the idea Nellie and I had proposed and turned out 4 pages of beautifully drafted design and another 2 pages costing the project down to the Kwacha at something close to twice what we had available to spend. Our original design would have cost $25,000 and we were working with $10,000 so after some serious negotiations we came up with a compromise that would get the basic structure of foundation, walls and roof installed before the end of November and they would be prepared to come back and complete the project if and when the balance of the funds become available. We needed to get it up and covered before the rains started to protect the walls. That will give us the time to fundraise to complete the rest of the work before the next group comes in May of 2011. In the meantime we can continue to host small groups as we are now doing using three houses scattered around the village. WUSC Malawi would like to schedule an orientation for their recently arrived Canadian volunteers and Vanier College is hoping to bring some nursing students in May and a focus group on water in the month of June. Bishops seems to be a sure thing for another visit in July or August. We will be ready for next year which should be the last time I have to be away for any extended period.
One Well Becomes Three
Katharine Cukier and the Social Justice Club at Royal West Academy spearheaded a fund rising campaign based on the request by Chief Bwanali a lady who was once a student of mine when I first taught in Malawi in 1968. The villages she covers were all served by one very overworked well ever since the old decrepit well built in colonial times had given up the ghost. She estimated that almost 2000 people depended on one well. The children did so well that it appeared that we might be able to put a well in Chiwayu as well. Based on our calculations from the previous experience in 2007, we feared we would be a bit short for the second well, so we applied for help from our good friends at OPSEU and they gave us what we thought we needed for the two.
As soon as I got to Malawi I visited Jacob Mpemba at WUSC who is an agricultural graduate from Bunda College and sought his advise on a number of matters. He pointed out that we do not have to deal with the private companies since the Ministry of Irrigation and Water can give quotations which cut out the double dealing of the companies. Sure enough their quote was 25% below what the best company had given us and the savings allowed us to put in a third well. Our goal was to work in an ever expanding radius out from around Makupo to provide the villagers with the shortest walk possible to lighten the daily burden of water carrying by bringing water closer to them. The next well then was to be in Mlangali the home of the Group Village Headman that Makupo falls under. Needless to say the chief was very pleased.
The money was paid to Miinstry accounts office on a Thursday. On the following Monday, this week we are ending, the hydrologist arrived with his equipment and spent the better part of 2 days siting the wells. In 2 cases the placement of the villages was right above rock bearing no water so the wells ended up a little farther from the centre of the villages than the villagers wanted. In fact it was interesting watching the interaction of the chief who wanted the well just outside his door and the women who were the actual carriers of the water. They couldn’t argue with their chief but it was clear they were happy the well was moving closer to where they were going to be convenienced. He left on Wednesday and the drilling rig arrived on Thursday, a week to the day from when the money had been paid to the Ministry. They expect to do all three wells in just a couple of days. Needless to say there is much anticipation with all this progress coming about so quickly.
Royal West raised enough money from the energy of their enthusiastic and commited students to put in 2 wells at Bwanali and Mlangali and OPSEU gave us the ability to put in the third at Chiwayu. Rest assured the people appreciate your support.
More to come soon. As I send this to the blog the drill rig has just completed the first two holes at Mlangali and Chiwayu.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Mini-bus non campaign
The minibus non-campaign
The word has been out since Bingu wa Mutharika’s first term that his brother, Peter, would be dauphin or the next in line for the presidency. The rumours were driven by his unelected very senior appointment as advisor to the President during the first term and since this second term it has been an open debate within the party and outside. One local artist had his song banned from the public airwaves for denouncing the phenomenon. Every week another district governor of the DPP declares his or her support for Peter as candidate. Just this past week the papers tried to whip up a story by getting quotes from some of the people in the civil society organisations who denounced this tendency and how it by-passes the normal handover to the Vice-President who is a woman.
Tuesday night there were vehicles driving up and down the M1 highway in front of Makupo with loud speakers blaring something out in ChiChewa that I didn’t get. Wednesday morning I wanted to go by the schools at Chilanga to see how the Bishop’s students were doing and I found all the school closed and a couple of large tents mounted on the primary school football pitch where a large crowd had been assembled. I was told that the President’s brother was there to hand over a mini-bus to the school for the blind. The headmaster of the primary school came to offer me a chair under one of the large canopies, but I was wearing my bush shorts and vest and wasn’t prepared to be seated amongst people dressed in their Sunday finest. I excused myself and ran back to Makupo to change into my suit and came back in the vain hope of saying hello, no matter how briefly to Peter.
We had worked quite closely with Peter when we were all members of the Malawi Action Committee from 1992 to 1995. Nellie and he were on the executive and communicated frequently and met periodically during that time. We felt quite comfortable with his integrity and enthusiasm. He was a professor of law at Washington University in St-Louis, Missouri and like ourselves paid the price of transport and inconvenience to get to meetings in Toronto, Washington, Buffalo and elsewhere because we were committed to bringing down the abusive dictatorship of Hastings Kamuzu Banda.
There before me was a scene reminiscent of the days of the Malawi Congress Party. Crowds of women wrapped in DPP cloth with Bingu’s picture in a very prominent position were seated before the dais. They periodically got up to sing or dance. Men were scattered about with DPP shirts. The blind school children and the staff of all the Chilanga schools were under a neighbouring canopy and sang as requested. Security was tight. Regular police men and women organised the crowds. Outside the perimeter were the Police Mobile Force like our tactical squad and scattered in and amongst the officials were the omnipresent plain-clothes types who never smile and are always watching the crowd. Like me they were the only ones not to close their eyes during the prayer.
Peter was sitting enthroned in the central and highest position with a scattering of Ministers around and beside him. Ken Kandodo our MP and the Minister of Finance was nearby as well as the Minister of Disabilities and Women, and a couple of other Ministers, deputy ministers, senior chiefs and senior officials sat at ground level beside the stage. The business of governing had ground to a halt with so many senior people assembled to attend a minibus handover.
Their relative significance in the hierarchy was determined by the quality of the chairs with sofas and easy chairs for the biggest poohbahs and the regular issue garden chair for the ordinary officials. The green and white plastic garden chairs had been imported from the Kasungu Teachers Training College for the occasion. I managed to score one of these.
Because Chilanga is church land, there was also a gaggle of reverends and church officials on the other side of the stage. I saw the reverend Nehemiah Kanzathu amongst them and in a small break, I went over to greet him and was immediately offered a chair with the church elders that was much closer to the dais. Kanzathu had been the minister of the Chilanga church over the course of last year and had been a breathe of fresh air since he had a solid activist approach. He left before the end of last year to take up a church position which will challenge him much more.
The focus of attention was the fine, brand new Toyota mini-bus which was much needed for the Blind School students. In addition, on a table nearby were 2 brand new computers, 2 magnificent laser printers, a pile of paper, bundles of salt and sugar. All these were gifts donated by a parastatal organisation, the Malawi Communications Regulator Agency (MACRA) with the assent of the Minster responsible for the treasury. The reverend Kanzathu had been one of the most activist church ministers I had met in Malawi and was responsible for the request and the lobbying that had resulted in the arrival of the van. All the gifts were much needed but the whoopla around the presentation was not about the needs of the school. They were most certainly mentioned in a couple of speeches, but the real purpose for the MP from Neno far way in the Lower Shire of the Southern Region to appear at Chilanga in the northern part of the Central Region was to cement his admiration for Kamuzu Banda and seal the support of the old die-hard Banda supporters in the heartland and home of Kamuzu in the campaign to become the next president.
Speech after speech lauded his qualities. What the politicians couldn’t say publicly about his candidacy, was given voice by the party praise singers, the party ‘youths’ seated on the ground in front of the dais who often interjected to state very openly their support for Peter as president as did the women’s league dancers and singers. When Peter finally spoke he was the only one that did not have to open by reciting the list of honourable dignitaries and he declared that he was not campaigning, because that would only start in 2013 the year before the election. 2014 was a constant reference in all the speeches – very clearly the party plans its strategy long in advance.
Several things are worrisome with this phenomenon. From dictatorship to democracy to monarchy seems to be the trend. It was hard work after 30 years of totalitarian dictatorship to move to a democratic arrangement. That was subverted by the venality, greed and corruption of the UDF that contaminated political life and spread like a cancer throughout society. The arrival of Bingu was greeted by many with apprehension because of the way he was parachuted in over the heads of many others by his predecessor and patron Bakili Muluzi. He campaigned against the corruption of the Muluzi regime, but despite this negative connection, his first term won him wide support from all layers of society and from all ends of the country. The DPP swept the election last year and seemed to have released us from the blight of regionalism. The move to crown Peter as Bingu’s successor has disappointed many who read it as another subversion of democracy.
In order to garner favour in Kamuzu’s home base amongst the Chewa people of the northern part of the Central Region, the DPP began to rehabilitate Kamuzu’s image. A tall plinth was erected in his honour and a huge tomb placed in a very prominent place in the new capital of Lilongwe. After the first democracy vote, his name had been removed from many public buildings but was returned during Bingu’s first term. The atrocities and injustices of the dictatorship were lifted from his shoulders and ascribed to the people around him. This served 2 purposes. It demonized John Tembo the leader of Kamuzu’s old Malawi Congress Party and allowed the DPP to coopt Kamuzu and the respect Malawians have for the elders in favour of the DPP. The strategy worked as the DPP swept the MCP out of the whole Kasungu region where they held sway even after the fall of the Banda government.
The van was a donation from a parastatal and it should be normal that where these produce a profit, they be plowed back into the common wealth. However, the DPPs instant wealth since its creation during the first term some 6 years ago has been a source of great mystery. Fleets of fancy party buses, hummers and more lately a state jet for the president have all come too easily and can only be considered a diversion of government funds to maintain a ruling group in power. In addition, it is a perversion of the principle of separation of state and party. We saw the blurring of the lines under the Chretien government in Canada when state funds were used for purely patronage purposes. The MBC still gives little or no air time to the opposition parties and plays the same old praise singer to the ruling clique.
I am also disappointed with the phenomenon of the intellectual whose training should be to serve the interest of the greater good. Here is a man for whom the rigour and training of the law, indeed as a professor imparting respect and ethical conduct to his students should be setting the impeccable example of sacrifice and integrity. To aspire to replace his brother as president in a such a crass and venal way. All the skills acquired in his years of exile are being used to consolidate power around a ruling clique which is out of touch with the needs of the people, which calls on the ghosts of one of the most evil dictators to validate its existence, and thwarts the goals of democracy by subverting the chances of any real change and shutting out of power the possibility of younger dynamic and more representative leadership is indeed reprehensible. It is not just lawyers, but doctors and university professors who accept the dictates of the powerfulrather than standing up for the needs of the weak and powerless. They could use their voices and skills for good but instead defend dictators and corruption. The real battle against corruption has not really been fought in Malawi. This is not particular to Africa. Micheal Ignatieff the noted Harvard prof strongly defended America’s policy of imperialism, returned to Canada and tried to end run his way to power through the text book rather than by a life time of representing the interests of the Canadian people.
As a footnote to the van presentation, non-campaign, I spoke with numerous Malawians who had been in attendance and checked out his claim that he was not campaigning. They clearly stated that it was a campaign even though not all of them were critical of it. One however reflected that Malawians were much smarter voters than the politicians gave them credit for. He used the example of how the MCP had trotted the teetering elderly Kamuzu all over the country in their campaign to outflank the multiparty elections in 1994. They came out in great numbers and sang the songs that the party liked to hear, then went into the polling booths and threw the MCP into the dustbin of history. According to my friend, the election in 2014 that was so much anticipated by the leaders and their coteries would come as shock when they discovered that people were no longer willing to take the abuse.
The word has been out since Bingu wa Mutharika’s first term that his brother, Peter, would be dauphin or the next in line for the presidency. The rumours were driven by his unelected very senior appointment as advisor to the President during the first term and since this second term it has been an open debate within the party and outside. One local artist had his song banned from the public airwaves for denouncing the phenomenon. Every week another district governor of the DPP declares his or her support for Peter as candidate. Just this past week the papers tried to whip up a story by getting quotes from some of the people in the civil society organisations who denounced this tendency and how it by-passes the normal handover to the Vice-President who is a woman.
Tuesday night there were vehicles driving up and down the M1 highway in front of Makupo with loud speakers blaring something out in ChiChewa that I didn’t get. Wednesday morning I wanted to go by the schools at Chilanga to see how the Bishop’s students were doing and I found all the school closed and a couple of large tents mounted on the primary school football pitch where a large crowd had been assembled. I was told that the President’s brother was there to hand over a mini-bus to the school for the blind. The headmaster of the primary school came to offer me a chair under one of the large canopies, but I was wearing my bush shorts and vest and wasn’t prepared to be seated amongst people dressed in their Sunday finest. I excused myself and ran back to Makupo to change into my suit and came back in the vain hope of saying hello, no matter how briefly to Peter.
We had worked quite closely with Peter when we were all members of the Malawi Action Committee from 1992 to 1995. Nellie and he were on the executive and communicated frequently and met periodically during that time. We felt quite comfortable with his integrity and enthusiasm. He was a professor of law at Washington University in St-Louis, Missouri and like ourselves paid the price of transport and inconvenience to get to meetings in Toronto, Washington, Buffalo and elsewhere because we were committed to bringing down the abusive dictatorship of Hastings Kamuzu Banda.
There before me was a scene reminiscent of the days of the Malawi Congress Party. Crowds of women wrapped in DPP cloth with Bingu’s picture in a very prominent position were seated before the dais. They periodically got up to sing or dance. Men were scattered about with DPP shirts. The blind school children and the staff of all the Chilanga schools were under a neighbouring canopy and sang as requested. Security was tight. Regular police men and women organised the crowds. Outside the perimeter were the Police Mobile Force like our tactical squad and scattered in and amongst the officials were the omnipresent plain-clothes types who never smile and are always watching the crowd. Like me they were the only ones not to close their eyes during the prayer.
Peter was sitting enthroned in the central and highest position with a scattering of Ministers around and beside him. Ken Kandodo our MP and the Minister of Finance was nearby as well as the Minister of Disabilities and Women, and a couple of other Ministers, deputy ministers, senior chiefs and senior officials sat at ground level beside the stage. The business of governing had ground to a halt with so many senior people assembled to attend a minibus handover.
Their relative significance in the hierarchy was determined by the quality of the chairs with sofas and easy chairs for the biggest poohbahs and the regular issue garden chair for the ordinary officials. The green and white plastic garden chairs had been imported from the Kasungu Teachers Training College for the occasion. I managed to score one of these.
Because Chilanga is church land, there was also a gaggle of reverends and church officials on the other side of the stage. I saw the reverend Nehemiah Kanzathu amongst them and in a small break, I went over to greet him and was immediately offered a chair with the church elders that was much closer to the dais. Kanzathu had been the minister of the Chilanga church over the course of last year and had been a breathe of fresh air since he had a solid activist approach. He left before the end of last year to take up a church position which will challenge him much more.
The focus of attention was the fine, brand new Toyota mini-bus which was much needed for the Blind School students. In addition, on a table nearby were 2 brand new computers, 2 magnificent laser printers, a pile of paper, bundles of salt and sugar. All these were gifts donated by a parastatal organisation, the Malawi Communications Regulator Agency (MACRA) with the assent of the Minster responsible for the treasury. The reverend Kanzathu had been one of the most activist church ministers I had met in Malawi and was responsible for the request and the lobbying that had resulted in the arrival of the van. All the gifts were much needed but the whoopla around the presentation was not about the needs of the school. They were most certainly mentioned in a couple of speeches, but the real purpose for the MP from Neno far way in the Lower Shire of the Southern Region to appear at Chilanga in the northern part of the Central Region was to cement his admiration for Kamuzu Banda and seal the support of the old die-hard Banda supporters in the heartland and home of Kamuzu in the campaign to become the next president.
Speech after speech lauded his qualities. What the politicians couldn’t say publicly about his candidacy, was given voice by the party praise singers, the party ‘youths’ seated on the ground in front of the dais who often interjected to state very openly their support for Peter as president as did the women’s league dancers and singers. When Peter finally spoke he was the only one that did not have to open by reciting the list of honourable dignitaries and he declared that he was not campaigning, because that would only start in 2013 the year before the election. 2014 was a constant reference in all the speeches – very clearly the party plans its strategy long in advance.
Several things are worrisome with this phenomenon. From dictatorship to democracy to monarchy seems to be the trend. It was hard work after 30 years of totalitarian dictatorship to move to a democratic arrangement. That was subverted by the venality, greed and corruption of the UDF that contaminated political life and spread like a cancer throughout society. The arrival of Bingu was greeted by many with apprehension because of the way he was parachuted in over the heads of many others by his predecessor and patron Bakili Muluzi. He campaigned against the corruption of the Muluzi regime, but despite this negative connection, his first term won him wide support from all layers of society and from all ends of the country. The DPP swept the election last year and seemed to have released us from the blight of regionalism. The move to crown Peter as Bingu’s successor has disappointed many who read it as another subversion of democracy.
In order to garner favour in Kamuzu’s home base amongst the Chewa people of the northern part of the Central Region, the DPP began to rehabilitate Kamuzu’s image. A tall plinth was erected in his honour and a huge tomb placed in a very prominent place in the new capital of Lilongwe. After the first democracy vote, his name had been removed from many public buildings but was returned during Bingu’s first term. The atrocities and injustices of the dictatorship were lifted from his shoulders and ascribed to the people around him. This served 2 purposes. It demonized John Tembo the leader of Kamuzu’s old Malawi Congress Party and allowed the DPP to coopt Kamuzu and the respect Malawians have for the elders in favour of the DPP. The strategy worked as the DPP swept the MCP out of the whole Kasungu region where they held sway even after the fall of the Banda government.
The van was a donation from a parastatal and it should be normal that where these produce a profit, they be plowed back into the common wealth. However, the DPPs instant wealth since its creation during the first term some 6 years ago has been a source of great mystery. Fleets of fancy party buses, hummers and more lately a state jet for the president have all come too easily and can only be considered a diversion of government funds to maintain a ruling group in power. In addition, it is a perversion of the principle of separation of state and party. We saw the blurring of the lines under the Chretien government in Canada when state funds were used for purely patronage purposes. The MBC still gives little or no air time to the opposition parties and plays the same old praise singer to the ruling clique.
I am also disappointed with the phenomenon of the intellectual whose training should be to serve the interest of the greater good. Here is a man for whom the rigour and training of the law, indeed as a professor imparting respect and ethical conduct to his students should be setting the impeccable example of sacrifice and integrity. To aspire to replace his brother as president in a such a crass and venal way. All the skills acquired in his years of exile are being used to consolidate power around a ruling clique which is out of touch with the needs of the people, which calls on the ghosts of one of the most evil dictators to validate its existence, and thwarts the goals of democracy by subverting the chances of any real change and shutting out of power the possibility of younger dynamic and more representative leadership is indeed reprehensible. It is not just lawyers, but doctors and university professors who accept the dictates of the powerfulrather than standing up for the needs of the weak and powerless. They could use their voices and skills for good but instead defend dictators and corruption. The real battle against corruption has not really been fought in Malawi. This is not particular to Africa. Micheal Ignatieff the noted Harvard prof strongly defended America’s policy of imperialism, returned to Canada and tried to end run his way to power through the text book rather than by a life time of representing the interests of the Canadian people.
As a footnote to the van presentation, non-campaign, I spoke with numerous Malawians who had been in attendance and checked out his claim that he was not campaigning. They clearly stated that it was a campaign even though not all of them were critical of it. One however reflected that Malawians were much smarter voters than the politicians gave them credit for. He used the example of how the MCP had trotted the teetering elderly Kamuzu all over the country in their campaign to outflank the multiparty elections in 1994. They came out in great numbers and sang the songs that the party liked to hear, then went into the polling booths and threw the MCP into the dustbin of history. According to my friend, the election in 2014 that was so much anticipated by the leaders and their coteries would come as shock when they discovered that people were no longer willing to take the abuse.
Friday, July 23, 2010
The Red Zebra
18 July 2010
I have been in Malawi since Friday, July 10 and prior to leaving Montreal it had
been a very intense few months of work and planning. The grand-nieces, Victoria
and Lorleyn had been asking to go to the lake again, because they had had so
much fun over Xmas of 2008 when we went to Nkhata Bay together. I decided I
would take a weekend off to gather my strength and my wits before the Bishop’s
University group arrived this coming Wednesday, but having left the booking too
late we couldn’t get in to the cheaper backpacker hotel, so we came to the Red
Zebra.
It is down the road, not far from where the old Fish Eagle Inn used to be. Nellie
and I spent a few days of honeymoon there in April 1971 after our wedding. That
Inn has become part of the Malawi military college and is off limits for civilian
tourists so just down the road facing north across Senga Bay we booked into the
Red Zebra.
When we arrived on Friday night, we were the only guests. The receptionist,
waiter, bar-tender, problem solver is Mike Msuku from Ruarwe and he hosted
us magnificently. It looked like we would have a very quiet weekend and even
Saturday morning started slowly. Overnight some German backpackers had
appeared, but this hotel doesn’t serve that sort of clientele so they drifted to the
neighbouring hotel with its tents and cheap rates.
On the Friday night we walked out the long pier that had been built out into the
lake. It is an unusual construction made of large round cement pipes like we use
under roads in North America. They have been set on end in the lake bottom and
built up with brick work to hold two metal railway ties each. There are over forty
of these pillars about 6 feet apart. Railway tracks extend out the full length and
then cement slabs have been laid across the tracks as the platform. With lighted
posts and a line of chain on either side it is quite a long walk out into the lake
and gives a really beautiful view of the bay. It was a big job to create and for the
moment seems to be very underused for all the investment it required.
On Saturday morning, we met Mrs. Grant, the owner. She is a Malawian whose
late husband had set up the fish exporting business. She invited us to visit the
tropical fish operation that she runs in addition to the hotel. We had arrived in the
evening and driven by what appeared to be several large barns, so we walked
back down the lane to take a look. What an operation she is running from here.
We quickly realised that the Lodge is only part of her enterprise and perhaps only
a small part.
A team of divers travel up and down the full coast of Lake Malawi collecting
a small lake fish unique to the Great African Rift Valley lakes. The cichlid is
highly prized by tropical fish enthusiasts all over the world. They can be brightly
coloured, striped vertically or horizontally and come in a dazzling array of hues.
In the first barn kept cool by a very high roof are rows and rows of large
aquariums with air bubbling through their filters and schools of these little fish
swimming about in all their diversity. They would swarm towards the children’s
fingers as they tapped the glass in anticipation of being fed. Across the lane were
more than a dozen huge cement tanks, about 4 metres square, covered by a
large roof to keep them cool. A little further down the lane was a structure like a
greenhouse covered with a black net mesh to cut the direct rays of the sun and
it had hundreds of cement tanks one metre square. All the tanks big or small had
fish in them. All of them categorised by their species and genus and where they
had been caught.
I had seen a man on the Ilala in February transporting a dozen foam crates each
containing several sealed plastic bags with a couple of cichlids each. He used a
tank of oxygen to bubble in some air to keep them alive and told me they were
to be exported. Now at the Red Zebra, we had stumbled into the heart of the
operation. Shipments leave here on weekly basis for markets around the world.
The Lodge really was only part of Mrs. Grant’s operation. She does get a lot
of visitors in September and October when the lake is calmer and the weather
hotter. They come on cichlid tours and are taken by guides to dive and snorkel
where ever these beautiful little fish are found in their natural habitat. That is how passionate cichlid lovers can be that they take cichlid vacations.
It didn’t take long to discover our common connection to Ivy Gondwe, Nellie’s
cousin sister who is a successful business woman herself. That led to a wide
ranging discussion which eventually came around to family and schools. Louise
and Justin, Mrs Grant’s last 2 children are currently studying in the US. Louise
was impressed by the mention of the name of McGill University. She will finish
her International Baccalaureate programme next year and was keen to hear
more about the place. I shared my card with them and who knows, we may have
a visitor in Montreal next year.
I have been in Malawi since Friday, July 10 and prior to leaving Montreal it had
been a very intense few months of work and planning. The grand-nieces, Victoria
and Lorleyn had been asking to go to the lake again, because they had had so
much fun over Xmas of 2008 when we went to Nkhata Bay together. I decided I
would take a weekend off to gather my strength and my wits before the Bishop’s
University group arrived this coming Wednesday, but having left the booking too
late we couldn’t get in to the cheaper backpacker hotel, so we came to the Red
Zebra.
It is down the road, not far from where the old Fish Eagle Inn used to be. Nellie
and I spent a few days of honeymoon there in April 1971 after our wedding. That
Inn has become part of the Malawi military college and is off limits for civilian
tourists so just down the road facing north across Senga Bay we booked into the
Red Zebra.
When we arrived on Friday night, we were the only guests. The receptionist,
waiter, bar-tender, problem solver is Mike Msuku from Ruarwe and he hosted
us magnificently. It looked like we would have a very quiet weekend and even
Saturday morning started slowly. Overnight some German backpackers had
appeared, but this hotel doesn’t serve that sort of clientele so they drifted to the
neighbouring hotel with its tents and cheap rates.
On the Friday night we walked out the long pier that had been built out into the
lake. It is an unusual construction made of large round cement pipes like we use
under roads in North America. They have been set on end in the lake bottom and
built up with brick work to hold two metal railway ties each. There are over forty
of these pillars about 6 feet apart. Railway tracks extend out the full length and
then cement slabs have been laid across the tracks as the platform. With lighted
posts and a line of chain on either side it is quite a long walk out into the lake
and gives a really beautiful view of the bay. It was a big job to create and for the
moment seems to be very underused for all the investment it required.
On Saturday morning, we met Mrs. Grant, the owner. She is a Malawian whose
late husband had set up the fish exporting business. She invited us to visit the
tropical fish operation that she runs in addition to the hotel. We had arrived in the
evening and driven by what appeared to be several large barns, so we walked
back down the lane to take a look. What an operation she is running from here.
We quickly realised that the Lodge is only part of her enterprise and perhaps only
a small part.
A team of divers travel up and down the full coast of Lake Malawi collecting
a small lake fish unique to the Great African Rift Valley lakes. The cichlid is
highly prized by tropical fish enthusiasts all over the world. They can be brightly
coloured, striped vertically or horizontally and come in a dazzling array of hues.
In the first barn kept cool by a very high roof are rows and rows of large
aquariums with air bubbling through their filters and schools of these little fish
swimming about in all their diversity. They would swarm towards the children’s
fingers as they tapped the glass in anticipation of being fed. Across the lane were
more than a dozen huge cement tanks, about 4 metres square, covered by a
large roof to keep them cool. A little further down the lane was a structure like a
greenhouse covered with a black net mesh to cut the direct rays of the sun and
it had hundreds of cement tanks one metre square. All the tanks big or small had
fish in them. All of them categorised by their species and genus and where they
had been caught.
I had seen a man on the Ilala in February transporting a dozen foam crates each
containing several sealed plastic bags with a couple of cichlids each. He used a
tank of oxygen to bubble in some air to keep them alive and told me they were
to be exported. Now at the Red Zebra, we had stumbled into the heart of the
operation. Shipments leave here on weekly basis for markets around the world.
The Lodge really was only part of Mrs. Grant’s operation. She does get a lot
of visitors in September and October when the lake is calmer and the weather
hotter. They come on cichlid tours and are taken by guides to dive and snorkel
where ever these beautiful little fish are found in their natural habitat. That is how passionate cichlid lovers can be that they take cichlid vacations.
It didn’t take long to discover our common connection to Ivy Gondwe, Nellie’s
cousin sister who is a successful business woman herself. That led to a wide
ranging discussion which eventually came around to family and schools. Louise
and Justin, Mrs Grant’s last 2 children are currently studying in the US. Louise
was impressed by the mention of the name of McGill University. She will finish
her International Baccalaureate programme next year and was keen to hear
more about the place. I shared my card with them and who knows, we may have
a visitor in Montreal next year.
The Problem Isn’t Over
14 July 2010
The appeal came early and it was passionate and desperate. An in-law explained
how she had come to her husband’s village because his people had promised
help with her husband. His health had deteriorated so much that he was close to
the end when we finally got the diagnosis and he began to receive the ARVs that
stopped the decline but could not reverse the damage already done. That was in
early 2008.
Now the problem remains that she has to take him every 3 months over 300
kilometers by public transport to the southern region where he began his
treatment and which apparently is the only place where he can get the ARV
cocktail designed for his stage of the disease.
There are no machines for the C4 count in Kasungu so it is a 2 stage affair for
them. First they go for the C4 count in Lilongwe which is a 2 hour trip. Then they
have to return some time later and get the results and go to the southern region
for his medicine. He needs to be accompanied because he cannot travel alone
and the overcrowded minibuses cannot handle his wheelchair.
He is not alone. A sister is an AIDS widow with no visible means of support and
children and grandchildren to care for.
Another brother is healthy now and should be good for awhile because of his
healthy life style and the ARVs, but his daughter had reached stage 4 and now
is nearly blind. She had gone to Nkhoma to get her sight checked, but now she
needs help with lenses and lessons in Braille etc… She looks much healthier
now that she is on the ARV and seems to have reconciled herself to having to
live in the village now that her blindness forces her to depend on her family for
support, but she will be dependent for the rest of her life.
In aid circles, we tend to think of solving a problem and moving on to the next
issue. Over the last 2 years, we have put the AIDS issue on the table at Makupo
and made great strides, but the problem doesn’t stop there. It is still with us and
the consequences are still felt. The international community at the G8 and the
G20 barely spoke of these issues which had been such a priority when the likes
of Stephen Lewis and Bono had pushed them into the forefront even 5 to 7 years
ago.
The people with AIDS aren’t cured and don’t go away simply because some
money was thrown at the ‘problem’. They need much better service. The long
trips to the southern region are hard on both them and their long suffering
spouses. The lack of equipment for the most basic surveillance, the limited
range of medications and the inadequate delivery system still mean that many
people go undetected, unserviced and die. In Canada, HIV positive people have
a range of service that would boggle the mind of a carrier here. A fraction of that
would make a huge difference in the lives of millions of people condemned to the
forgotten backwaters of the poor rural areas of the world.
The appeal came early and it was passionate and desperate. An in-law explained
how she had come to her husband’s village because his people had promised
help with her husband. His health had deteriorated so much that he was close to
the end when we finally got the diagnosis and he began to receive the ARVs that
stopped the decline but could not reverse the damage already done. That was in
early 2008.
Now the problem remains that she has to take him every 3 months over 300
kilometers by public transport to the southern region where he began his
treatment and which apparently is the only place where he can get the ARV
cocktail designed for his stage of the disease.
There are no machines for the C4 count in Kasungu so it is a 2 stage affair for
them. First they go for the C4 count in Lilongwe which is a 2 hour trip. Then they
have to return some time later and get the results and go to the southern region
for his medicine. He needs to be accompanied because he cannot travel alone
and the overcrowded minibuses cannot handle his wheelchair.
He is not alone. A sister is an AIDS widow with no visible means of support and
children and grandchildren to care for.
Another brother is healthy now and should be good for awhile because of his
healthy life style and the ARVs, but his daughter had reached stage 4 and now
is nearly blind. She had gone to Nkhoma to get her sight checked, but now she
needs help with lenses and lessons in Braille etc… She looks much healthier
now that she is on the ARV and seems to have reconciled herself to having to
live in the village now that her blindness forces her to depend on her family for
support, but she will be dependent for the rest of her life.
In aid circles, we tend to think of solving a problem and moving on to the next
issue. Over the last 2 years, we have put the AIDS issue on the table at Makupo
and made great strides, but the problem doesn’t stop there. It is still with us and
the consequences are still felt. The international community at the G8 and the
G20 barely spoke of these issues which had been such a priority when the likes
of Stephen Lewis and Bono had pushed them into the forefront even 5 to 7 years
ago.
The people with AIDS aren’t cured and don’t go away simply because some
money was thrown at the ‘problem’. They need much better service. The long
trips to the southern region are hard on both them and their long suffering
spouses. The lack of equipment for the most basic surveillance, the limited
range of medications and the inadequate delivery system still mean that many
people go undetected, unserviced and die. In Canada, HIV positive people have
a range of service that would boggle the mind of a carrier here. A fraction of that
would make a huge difference in the lives of millions of people condemned to the
forgotten backwaters of the poor rural areas of the world.
The meeting
11 July 2010
The issues were hard. They were coated with history, painted with disadvantage
and dripping with personality. We were 10 or 12 people, mostly the elders of the
village coming together to figure out how we are going to use the next 9 days to
prepare for the arrival of 13 Canadian visitors.
Nothing had been done to prepare for this group except that there had been 2
previous, successful experiences. Vanier College had already sent 2 groups of
students to stay in the village in the 2 previous years and both the hosts and the
visitors had marvelled at the richness of the experience.
Makupo is a small rural village right beside the main M1 highway that runs
from north to south in Malawi. Like most of rural Malawi, there is a lot of
unemployment, and a constant struggle to make ends meet in a subsistence
economy tacked on to the big business of estate farming. More than ¾ of the
population lives in these rural areas and many are much more remote and
underdeveloped than Makupo which has already begun to shine in the district as
a bit of a model village.
The elders who had come together for the meeting were preparing to host
another educational study stay by students, this time from Bishop’s University.
There was a great deal of excitement on both sides to emulate the previous two
experiences but things were a bit different this time. There was supposed to have
been a guest house built by the time this large group arrived. Previously, the
visitors had stayed in 2 houses that well-to-do émigré relatives had renovated for
the special guests to stay in. Most village people were too shy to have foreigners
stay in their modest houses so these ‘big’ houses were an effective way to
accommodate the needs of both the hosts and the hosted. The new guest house
had not been built for a variety of reasons, so now all sorts of arrangements had
to be made to accommodate the largest group to date.
With the obvious talent in the room and the willingness to work together, and
with the success of the previous 2 visits, the villagers were determined to show
that they were competent to run their own affairs and to repeat success of the 2
previous visits.
Peter was there and contributing; and even better, he became my indispensable
translator. In the past he avoided the planning meetings and this allowed him to
come after and complain that he had been left out or was being discriminated
against. He is so talented in English and the translations so instantaneous,
fluent and accurate that I felt like the late dictator, Kamuzu Banda, who always
addressed “his people” in English with the aid of one of his ministers who
translated into ChiChewa for his people to understand.
This is still an enterprise in its infancy and up until now I have been the motor
driving it. But this meeting was different. I laid everything on the table, the
budget, the problems, the issues and in the interest of accountability and
transparency explained how I couldn’t be the person responsible for the running
of the show and the handling of the money.
They responded magnificently. Duties were defined and the different people
assigned with lots of discussion about sharing the work and the revenue
equitably among the houses and between young and old. Thorny issues
were debated and resolved. Account keeping was arranged and the Makupo
Investments Limited which had been set up to serve the young farmers now
became an enterprise of the village. They were going to benefit collectively and
do it in one of the most cooperative spirits I had seen.
With their hands on the budget and knowing that the more they spent the less
they saved and earned, they got to work. By the next morning builders were
being selected to erect a kitchen, renovate a house and build beds, tables and
chairs. Bricks were bought, sand delivered and the 9 day countdown well under
control.
Most people would love to flee the hard work and poverty of village life. However,
the village folk are not there because they are lazy and incompetent. They
have many reasons for having chosen not to flee to the city. The decision to
remain in the rural areas nonetheless comes with a price and that is facing the
eternal cycle of subsistence living in an extremely unfavourable environment.
The Makupo people know that they have an opportunity to make some money
not available to many other communities like theirs and they knew what they had
to do to make it work. This meeting was on my 64th birthday and they gave me
the greatest present I could ever want.
The issues were hard. They were coated with history, painted with disadvantage
and dripping with personality. We were 10 or 12 people, mostly the elders of the
village coming together to figure out how we are going to use the next 9 days to
prepare for the arrival of 13 Canadian visitors.
Nothing had been done to prepare for this group except that there had been 2
previous, successful experiences. Vanier College had already sent 2 groups of
students to stay in the village in the 2 previous years and both the hosts and the
visitors had marvelled at the richness of the experience.
Makupo is a small rural village right beside the main M1 highway that runs
from north to south in Malawi. Like most of rural Malawi, there is a lot of
unemployment, and a constant struggle to make ends meet in a subsistence
economy tacked on to the big business of estate farming. More than ¾ of the
population lives in these rural areas and many are much more remote and
underdeveloped than Makupo which has already begun to shine in the district as
a bit of a model village.
The elders who had come together for the meeting were preparing to host
another educational study stay by students, this time from Bishop’s University.
There was a great deal of excitement on both sides to emulate the previous two
experiences but things were a bit different this time. There was supposed to have
been a guest house built by the time this large group arrived. Previously, the
visitors had stayed in 2 houses that well-to-do émigré relatives had renovated for
the special guests to stay in. Most village people were too shy to have foreigners
stay in their modest houses so these ‘big’ houses were an effective way to
accommodate the needs of both the hosts and the hosted. The new guest house
had not been built for a variety of reasons, so now all sorts of arrangements had
to be made to accommodate the largest group to date.
With the obvious talent in the room and the willingness to work together, and
with the success of the previous 2 visits, the villagers were determined to show
that they were competent to run their own affairs and to repeat success of the 2
previous visits.
Peter was there and contributing; and even better, he became my indispensable
translator. In the past he avoided the planning meetings and this allowed him to
come after and complain that he had been left out or was being discriminated
against. He is so talented in English and the translations so instantaneous,
fluent and accurate that I felt like the late dictator, Kamuzu Banda, who always
addressed “his people” in English with the aid of one of his ministers who
translated into ChiChewa for his people to understand.
This is still an enterprise in its infancy and up until now I have been the motor
driving it. But this meeting was different. I laid everything on the table, the
budget, the problems, the issues and in the interest of accountability and
transparency explained how I couldn’t be the person responsible for the running
of the show and the handling of the money.
They responded magnificently. Duties were defined and the different people
assigned with lots of discussion about sharing the work and the revenue
equitably among the houses and between young and old. Thorny issues
were debated and resolved. Account keeping was arranged and the Makupo
Investments Limited which had been set up to serve the young farmers now
became an enterprise of the village. They were going to benefit collectively and
do it in one of the most cooperative spirits I had seen.
With their hands on the budget and knowing that the more they spent the less
they saved and earned, they got to work. By the next morning builders were
being selected to erect a kitchen, renovate a house and build beds, tables and
chairs. Bricks were bought, sand delivered and the 9 day countdown well under
control.
Most people would love to flee the hard work and poverty of village life. However,
the village folk are not there because they are lazy and incompetent. They
have many reasons for having chosen not to flee to the city. The decision to
remain in the rural areas nonetheless comes with a price and that is facing the
eternal cycle of subsistence living in an extremely unfavourable environment.
The Makupo people know that they have an opportunity to make some money
not available to many other communities like theirs and they knew what they had
to do to make it work. This meeting was on my 64th birthday and they gave me
the greatest present I could ever want.
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