First Malawian Friend

I have made my first Malawian friend who I will call D-Bear in order to respect his privacy. We met at Nzazi’s bar and we have hung out a few times since then.  He calls about 5 times a day mostly when he is waiting in line for petrol since there is a serious fuel shortage. Yesterday, he told me he thought I would be pompous because I am white but actually he thinks that I am quite nice. I have been asking him a million questions. How old are you? Are you married? Don’t Malawians get married much younger? Do they think you are a weirdo? And so on. I feel like he is a snapshot of Malawian culture.

D-Bear is my age (28), says he is not married; he lives with two nieces and two nephews. Three of the children are his late sister’s and one is his brother’s. The mother works in Mzuzu and comes to visit from time-to-time. We talk of mixed and increasingly complex family structures in the west but my experience of African families is that they are much more complicated. Life is hard here and many children are orphaned due to the death of their parents and/or other family members who were caring for them. With a population of 15 million there are 600,000 orphaned from HIV/AIDS alone and abject poverty. You will find that most households are mini orphanages within themselves.  A popular expression here is  “Mwana wa mzako ngwako yemwe ukachenjera manja udya naye ”which means “our friend’s child is your own”.

D-Bear works one month on and one month off because he is training to be an accountant and it sounds like he owns a small electronics shop and that is where he works. There is a shortage of foreign exchange in Malawi so when he drives to Tanzania for merchandise he will bring a couple thousand basic cell phones to use as currency. In university, I read that when the Soviet Union was collapsing people didn’t trust that the money would be worth anything. Consequently, people began to use cigarettes as currency instead because whether you smoked or not they did have a value. Before I came to Malawi my friends told me to bring as much US money as possible to exchange because the official rate is 164 Malawi

Kwacha for 1 dollar, but it is sold for 270 on the black market and the IMF is suggesting that it is lowered even further to 300. Good business plan but it takes money to make money and I have taken a vow of poverty.

Malawi Milk Producers Association (MMPA)

I am working with the MMPA, which is an umbrella group of 3 milk producer associations in Malawi. We have been advocating to ammend the milk act in Malawi which was written when there were 5 large state run dairies and now they just protect a oligopoly of privately owned dairies. However, the majority of people cannot afford that processed milk consuming an average of about 6 litres a year, despite the surplus of milk being produced in some areas of Malawi. This surplus is often wasted because 80% of the population cannot afford to shop in the ‘formal sector’ at super markets and the ‘middle class’ in Malawi is not growing. If we change the policies that protect these monopolies and allow the informal sector to thrive more small holder dairy farmers will have access to emerging markets in the poorer areas. Producing milk that is affordable to the poor and promoting a culture that drinks milk would have significant impacts on a country that suffers food insecurity and malnutrition. For example, 53% of children have stunted growth due to malnutrition and Malawi continues to lose productive power in the labour force as the 12% with HIV/AIDS, including people taking ARV’s require more energy in order to have the strength to work.

Counter arguments are about health and safety; however, there are many factors that complement the informal market including the fact that Malawi has a culture of boiling milk even when it is pasteurized and boiling just as if not more effective at killing disease than pasteurization does. The pasteurized milk is collected from the small holder farmers that would be producing for informal sector so you can’t complain about the source and one is more likely to give a cow TB than to contract it through milk.

I’ll give you more information as it develops.

Stupid things I have said…

Instead of saying ‘Khalani pa mpando’ - please sit on a chair, I say ‘Khalani pa Mphatso’ - please sit on Mphatso, which is my boss’ name.

Then I went around the office thinking I was inviting them to my house warming party on Saturday, I went around inviting them to join my political party. Opps!

Stop Stunting

I am pretty used to being the 6 foot baby giraffe towering over everyone, but I do find many Malawians to be particularly short.  I also started noticing public health posters to “stop stunting” all over town. I read that 53% of children have stunted growth due to malnutrition. The main meal here is “nshima” which is corn with all the nutrients smashed out of it and turned into “Miele Meal”, which is then mixed with boiling water and ends up looking a lot like mashed potatoes. At lunch they give you huge portions with a little bit of relish (vegetables), and maybe some local chicken or fish. You use your hands to roll it into a little ball and dip it into the relish. Not very healthy. A lot of the work we do at the VSO Malawi office has cross cutting themes that promote better nutrition and diversifying diets which are vital components of improving food security, securing livelihoods in agriculture, increasing educational levels and improving the quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Trampy Guard

I live in a beautiful compound surrounded with a high fence wall with electric wires at the very top. There are 3 semi-detached 2 bedroom flats and I live in the middle one between a Kenyan woman and a British woman both around my age. There is a lush garden all around and then another small building where the man who was hired by the landlord to keep up the property.  His name is Noel and he has a wife and two small boys that live with him. Noel is he best! For example, our friend left his bike here with a flat tire and in the morning Noel had already fixed the tire. He always has a giant smile and he is very patient with me when I am practicing my Chichewa. I give his wife 2000 kwacha ($12) a month to clean my house on Wednesdays and do my laundry.

My work gives me 9000 kwacha ($53) a month to hire a night guard. He works 6 nights a week and comes at sun down around 6pm and leaves around 5 in the morning. One of us 3 girls will leave our porch light on and he sets up this 2.5 foot high and 4 feet long makeshift curtain and he sits on the floor behind it with a flimsy school workbook. I think he is in his fifties and he looks like what a homeless person would look like at home in Canada, This is why the British neighbour calls

him “Trampy Guard’,  I know nothing about his life but I feel horrible about what I see of it. Today at 8pm I remembered to check if anyone had turned on the light for him and he was sitting on the step in the dark because my bike was up against the wall that he sits against. He just sat there because he can’t speak English and thought he couldn’t ask me to move it. I have such guilt about sitting here in my comfy bed, under a mosquito net with my laptop while he sits out there. I try to make myself feel better by saying at least it is an income but it is a shitty income and a shitty job. Just because it may be better than what others have here doesn’t make it good.

Trouser Attacks

Just when I accepted the contract (on Tuesday, January 17th ) a shockwave struck Malawi. Youth masquerading as vendors went on a rampage – They stopped, beat up, and stripped women they found wearing mini-skirts, trousers or leggings in Lilongwe, Mzuzu, and Blantyre for “provocative and untraditional attire.” (Women won the right to wear pants in 1994) In the aftermath, vendors have proclaimed their innocence in the attacks and blamed unemployed, youthful mobs lurking the city streets.

In an address to the nation, Malawi's president, Bingu wa Mutharika, ordered the police to arrest those who attack women: "I will not allow anyone to wake up and go on the streets and start undressing women and girls wearing trousers, because that is illegal," Mutharika told state radio. "Every woman and girl has the right to dress the way they wish."

In response to the attacks, men, women, and politicians joined forces to hold a demonstration against such violence. Many wore trousers and mini-skirts in defiance of this most recent display of gender bias. Others carried placards and wore T-shirts that denounced the harassment of women.            

To be safe I happened to pack a lot of dresses! 

It also takes some time to acclimatize to the heat when have been living in 20 below weather for months,  hence why I cannot stand to wear anything other than an my airy dress. On the 2^nd week of work, there was a rumour going around that I hadn’t dared bring pants to Malawi for fear of being attacked. No one failed to comment the next day when I wore slacks.

What brings me to Malawi you ask?

 

Originally, I was recruited by Cuso International to work as a Knowledge Management Advisor for their Making Markets Work for the Poor (MMW4P) initiative funded by Accenture in Nigeria.  I was stoked to be moving to the “Hollywood of Africa’, but  in reaction to the Christmas Bombings, petrol riots and escalating violence throughout the country, I ended up backing out at the last minute.

Luckily, there were 5 of Knowledge Management positions available including positions in Tanzania, Cambodia, Guyana and Malawi. I was fortunate enough to be posted to Malawi instead. You never know where you will end up until your soles have touched the soil of that place. For instance, last year I applied for a job with Mines Action Canada (MAC) in Cambodia, I thought for sure I had it and then they called me saying was not selected for the Cambodia position but would I want to go to Zambia? I was so disappointed and I didn’t even want to go because I thought I knew all about southern Africa already because my father lives in South Africa and has brought me on many tours. But I ended up taking the position anyway and I fell in madly in love with Zambia.