27.3.07

Warning – LONG POST. Not to be attempted at work.

Day in the life of – written in ‘real time’ (just kidding!)

I’m sat here having a Kuche Kuche beer in my house in the tea estate after a typically exhausting day and decided that if anyone out there is interested in a ‘Day in the life of…” then today is as good as any. Please excuse if you find this a tad self-indulgent (I used to be very anti-blogging for this reason! But I’m coming round….) – it’s not meant to be….

I awoke to the usual sound of the slightly troubling swallows. When Anita and I first came to the house I thought the swallows were so pretty and thought in my temporary wave of hippy-dom that we would live in harmony in this beautiful place of nature. Not so. The swallows are leading an increasingly violent campaign against my home and have moved to storming the bedroom windows at one gable end. They smack against the window confused, it would seem, by its transparency (but why only the bedroom windows? The attack is targeting me at my most vulnerable). They practically line up to take the next hit. I am completely at a loss what to do, although closing the curtains does seem to assist….for now. If anyone has read du Maurier’s ‘The Birds’, this imagery does not seem completely misplaced here. They too started in small numbers…

6.30 am (a lie in!) I get up and talk half Chichewa and half English with Stanford, who works in the garden, about the itinerary for the day. I have been trying for some time to get the carpenter at the tea factory to come and fit curtain rails that cross slightly but he has balked at the challenge of bending the rails at the end (DIY specialists will know what I mean here). I am not convinced of his credentials. Drawing a diagram for Stanford the light came on and I’m left happy he can explain to the carpenter. We discussed the progress of the tomato saplings, which is good. We also discuss one of our most environmentally and socially friendly schemes of all. I gave Standford all my empty plastic bottles the other day which he took to market and sold for 50p. He gave me the money back the next day but I suggested he used the money to buy some cabbage seeds, which he had seemed keen to grow in our garden. In the end he has bought some spinach which he has planted, and will eventually sell or eat with his family. So in summary the plastic was recycled, income generated, nutrition promoted and environmentally friendly plants planted. Alex nearly cried when I told him….

Stanford inspecting the progress of the tomatoes in the morning, my neighbour Barbara modelling a Chitenge and my commute to work

I pick up my neighbour Barbara en route to take her to the Boma (administrative centre in Mulanje town) which is about 6km. It’s easier for her than a bicycle taxi to the tarmac road and I like catching up with her. Barbara’s husband works at Lujeri tea estate and she’s a partially (!) trained journalist. Barbara has recently decided to go back to Secondary school to graduate with higher marks so she can enter university and is going to town early to study for her first exam. Going to university there is not like in the UK, when maybe one in three or even more make it to quality tertiary education. Here it’s more like 1%. If you meet a graduate here you know they are going to be one smart and determined cookie (and quite often well off too, is the sad reality).

Barbara and I have a brief chat about the party we are planning at the end of April. We’re going to have some drinks and snacks (I think you can already guess the division of labour on THAT one) at my house as a joint housewarming and birthday party for Barbara, who will be 23. Luckily, despite being a born again Christian, Barbara is NOT overtly against alcohol consumption so I have a free reign at the bar.

I drop off Barbara and subsequently pick up Chris – my newly acquired informal IT support who is a graduate from the best university college in Malawi. Chris had at the weekend bought me a usb modem for my laptop having had my last one fried by lightening down the telephone lines. I was pretty impressed with Chris’s rapid diagnosis (“Was it raining when you were using the internet?”) and he generally is a very switched on, funny guy. He told me the story of an NGO here that he was working with removing viruses from their PCs. The NGO, not, perhaps, the most IT savvy, has refused to pay him because they accused him of stealing their “D” drive (assigned letter of a USB port). In fact I think the letters had been reallocated to different ports as Chris had been doing the work, but the NGO are accusing him of stealing the whole drive. I tell you I nearly cried with laughter as he told me that story….

Anyway, the modem had proven faulty and so I drove the 70km up the Robert Mugabe highway to Blantyre, with the hope of returning it (it’s the fastest road so no time for ethics on that one). Chris and I chew the fat on the way. He creases up when I tell him about Alex’s journey in progress – Alex is currently just off the Canary Islands on ship to Cape Town. He suggested the difference is a drop in the ocean of carbon omissions. I say that may be true but there is a growing group of people who are changing their behaviour based on principle and the environmental lobby is really gaining currency in the UK and elsewhere. I also mention that poorer countries like Malawi, dependent on agriculture are often hardest hit and less adept to deal with changing weather patterns.

We shelve that one, however (I suggest we have the conversation again in 20 years), and get on to localized environmental stuff, like the government’s attempt (as in Tanzania) to ‘ban’ charcoal production when they don’t offer any feasible alternative for people in towns (where charcoal is chiefly consumed, for obvious reasons). He made a very salient point about how much hydroelectricity there is generated in Malawi and how this is to some extent ‘free’, but incredibly overpriced. We also talk about Chris’s previous work with an environmental NGO and a friend of his that does ‘mapping’, be it social, environmental, economic for an NGO. My ears prick up and try and get a voluntary placement for Alex. The cross between the environmental, the field work, the purposefulness of the task and the numbers and software may well make him the happiest boy alive.

We arrive in Blantyre but the computer shop is not yet open so I buy Chris breakfast. We continue to talk about a whole load of things, including, interestingly enough, witchcraft. He asks me “Does witchcraft exist in the UK?”. I said not really, although people have their superstitions. I also cite the case of the (was it Congolese?) women in the press a couple of years ago who burnt their niece as a witch. I told him about the way the story was reported and the shock it caused in the UK as distant, almost alien concepts such as witchcraft emerged on their doorstep. Some papers explored the issues of cultural insulation in diaspora communities.

“According to the government” says Chris “witchcraft does not exist here. But you can see stories about it in the paper almost every day”. I’m reminded of a first year philosophy lecture about whether a ‘unicorn’ can be said to exist as people all have the same or similar concept when they refer to one and so it exists as an idea. Not the time, with egg and chips at breakfast, to tangent on THAT one though. “Do you believe in witchcraft?” he says.

“I believe in the power of the mind to create and reinforce the social world people are living in” I said. He looked mildly disappointed. “Do you?” I asked, rather surprised that a university graduate believed in such a thing. “I believe in the devil” he said “and that he acts in particular ways”. And so lies the relationship between fervent religious belief and a fear/fascination of/with the occult. Religiousity is so high in Africa and so strong. Traditional beliefs have been incorporated into imported belief systems and the result is pervasive and powerful. The source doesn’t necessarily lie with barbarism, backwardness or tribal practices. It is religion’s gravity in promising a better future for those who have a lifetime of struggling to make ends meet, alongside the fear of the unknown and a culture of sharing spoken stories and tall tales. Add onto that the longstanding system of traditional beliefs and maybe that might go someway towards an explanation; far more complex than a dismissal of barbarism or ignorance.

Wow, so it’s still only 9.30am! We go to the shop and I decide, based on the terrifying presence of the pitbull manager not to try for a refund but get a replacement instead, which was victory enough. I get a receipt for another previous purchase (if you don’t pay government surcharge you don’t get a receipt so I forked out) and then drop Chris back at the minibus terminal. I find out at this juncture he wasn’t coming to Blantyre for other business, as I had assumed, but just to help me as he had originally purchased the modem. I felt terrible, as I could have easily managed alone, but reminded again how many decent, honest and genuinely helpful people I had met in a short time in Malawi.

Cue the morning phonecall from Liz, the project Manager for Dedza (first district) once again voice raised with panic. Yesterday it was a call to warn me that the army was in Mulanje dispersing an opposition rally. That turned out to be true – a little out of town – but it completely bypassed me. Today it was an issue regarding our vehicles in that our application to register these vehicles duty free had been rejected. The long of the short of it is that I’ve been driving around since the 10th of March in an illegal vehicle. Luckily when I am stopped at roadblocks they only want to see my insurance and my driver’s license. Seemingly whether a vehicle is legally registered is covered in the advanced ‘corrupt traffic police’ course.

Liz wants us both to leave the country, meet in Mozambique, switch cars and then return back via our respective border crossings, flummoxing the border staff. I suggest we hold off on that brainwave and promise to find out what I can in Blantyre and email relevant people in LCD (Liz has been without email for 1 week so need to do so on her behalf). After dropping Chris off I hit the Council for NGOs in Malawi (CONGOMA) and actually make some progress. A whole load of legal speak, 90 minutes and a headache later I leave and email work peeps the news the relevant information.

I try to head back to town in my illegal vehicle with the hope of dropping in on the Ford Dealer to fix my bonnet which doesn’t shut properly. After 8 hours over 3 days at a garage near Mulanje the mechanics were none the wiser how to close the thing and so I have been driving for around 3 weeks with a bonnet that could be ripped off into the windscreen at any moment. “That is very dangerous” I am regularly told. “That is true”, I say, “Do you know anyone who can fix it?” No, didn’t think so.

Fixing the Ford was one of the main reasons for coming to Blantyre. Unfortunately my road to the dealer is blocked by about 200 protesting students, no doubt loving the weekend’s events in Mulanje as an excuse for some good old civil disobedience. I’ve heard about this lot from my colleague Wilford in Dedza. The university is a hotbed for protests but many of them are just bandwaggoning and students aren’t always sure what they are protesting for. Either way, I can’t get through to the Ford dealer and turn back.

Next on the list is immigration – it’s now 1.30pm. I’ve been trying for some days (in person, only ever in person) to get a file number for my employment permit application lodged at the beginning of February – thus proving it was at least along its way in the system. Unfortunately it would appear immigration have lost the file. It’s not an earth shattering surprise for me. They lost two of Liz’s and the guy who took my application told me it was probably his last day ever. I have not seen him, or my file, again. Of much more newsworthy note was the apologetic stance by the immigration officer who told me a) it was their fault and they will transfer the first payment to the new application on producing a receipt b) they could accept my photocopies of my first application as my new application, rather than new originals of everything c) he was going to take it straight to the boss for instant initial approval – ie application complete - and the boss duly stamped it.

This is the point I nearly fell off my chair. It was almost worth them losing the first application as I think with that stamp I gained about 3 months of time. It took Liz 9 months to get her full permit altogether (including about 3 days’ of my time). To get this far in 6 weeks ain’t bad – at least people (including the big boss) are aware of the application.

On the way home I bought some creature comforts at the posh shopping centre and cruised back down Bobby Mugabe. I picked up some paintings that I had had framed by a local carver in Mulanje, stopped off to invite some people to the party and get home to find the carpenter had found inner inspiration and attached the curtain rails in the curtain box.

It’s never a dull moment here and I find, as I sip my beer with another beautiful sunset, that I’m in a fantastic mood. Trying to pinpoint why exactly, after such a heavy day, I decide that not only did I move that bit further forward today, but I had the support of some awesome people doing it.

Hope this finds you all well. Photos will follow when I hit Cape Town in 2 weeks – I can’t seem to upload anything that big onto my blog!

Thanks for all your comments! It’s really nice to have people keeping me company!
xxx