click here

My Malawi Journal Part II

Here is the second part of my Malawi journal...

Today we are visiting a village called Galufu, mostly made up of a tribe called Manganja. As we pull into the entrance, in our big white jeeps, we are welcomed with a performance like no other. The whole village from the little kids to the old grannies are singing and dancing.

Elvis tells us that they’re singing about how much they’ve been looking forward to us coming and how today, for them, is a great day because they believe we bring them new hope.

I feel both honoured and awkward. I start clapping to make an attempt at joining in and at this point i'm having major flashbacks of being a wallflower at the school disco. But it becomes so very apparent that us British folks are so very reserved. The Manganja tribe however, have no inhibitions and are so full of joy to see us that they keep dancing and singing for a good ten minutes. It’s a tradition that I think we should adopt back home. I wonder if my folks would burst uncontrollably through the door moving and shaking, wailing at the tops of their voices about how happy they are to see me. Hmm. Too good to be true?

Anyway we sit down in a perfect row of chairs under the cool shade while the villagers gather round us in the scorching sun, some of them sitting on the ground, some sharing benches. I feel terrible and don’t agree with the fact that i've been allocated a chair but the chief woman of the village, Lydia Bisitoni, assures me its fine.
Still revelling in the shock of our welcoming reception the various members of the community begin to stand up and introduce themselves. There is a newly built child care centre here which Oxfam have made possible and so its given the children and the young women and men a chance at a better start in life.

One by one they stand up and explain what they do here. There are homecare helper’s, youth workers and teachers. It all seems like a normal schooling environment. But the fundamental difference between this school and the schools that you and I are used to is that half these children and orphans under the age of five, some of them are likely to have HIV or Aids and most of them are surviving on one serving of maize a day. Can you imagine that?

But despite all of this, despite the fact that they’ve lost both their parents, living in one roomed houses with no furniture, beds, showers, electricity and nothing that they can call their own they display a greater strength of human spirit than anyone I’ve ever known. It’s incredible really. The phrase ‘laugh in the face of adversity’ has new meaning to me.
After a few more songs and a little performance from me by way of thank you, the village chief Lydia shows us what they’ve been doing to generate a new food supply. First of all they show us a garden full of unplanted indigenous trees. She says there are fifteen thousand of them and the villagers will plant every one of them by hand.

The reason for the trees is so they can replace some of the millions that have been cut down by man in the last century. The trees will primarily provide nutrients for the soil, which will help harvest the crops. They will also use the wood to burn in kilns; a giant oven capable of binding soil and water together to produce bricks by which they can build houses with.

Next we travel by foot through the fields, to show us a giant bore hole; a massive deep pit with water layering the bottom. Elvis explains to me that contractors dig the holes and that these contractors are experts in sourcing the location of water. This particular borehole is funded by Oxfam and I’m told costs approximately three thousand pounds.
The water that is sourced here is used solely for the harvest and coupled with fertilizers, subsidised by the government, can produce a healthy crop. But remember this is still living on just maize.

Next we have a bit of a meet and greet with a few families from the village.
The first lady we are introduced to goes by the name of Katerina Sakiako, born in 1956. She has had four children, two of which are dead. One of her children died as a baby and her eldest son passed away four years ago from Tuberculosis.

She has seven grandchildren and two remaining daughters. Her husband, she says, died in the same year as her son, the cause of death is meningitis.
Around these parts you are most likely to die from Aids, Malaria, Yellow fever, Tuberculosis, Polio, Diphtheria or meningitis and the life expectancy is around 35-40, because there is limited access to public healthcare. So Katerina (or Catherine as she likes to be called) is doing well at 52.
But she looks old. The lines on her face are deep, her eyes are dark and tired and she speaks with a degree of sadness in her voice. Only to be expected from a woman whose lost two children and her husband. I can’t imagine that, can you?

Malcolm, our Oxfam rep and the media manager for Oxfam Scotland, asks her about the crops. She says that erratic weather patterns and unpredictable rainfall is causing a whole host of problems. She says that in the past seed was planted in April and the rains came in October. It used to be very reliable but now something has changed.

The rains are falling in unpredictable patterns, sometimes too late, sometimes too soon. But in some cases it’s not even a shortage of rain that causes the problems, its too much rain, which washes away the fertilizers. The question I ask myself is whether this is simply bad luck for Katerina and her family or is this by-product of climate change?

It’s certainly safe to say that in the last decade we’ve experienced increasingly dramatic shifts in the weather patterns and everywhere across the world we have suffered the effects. For example what’s going on with British summer time? In my opinion its nowhere near as predictable as it used to be and can you remember the last time it was guaranteed that snow would fall at Christmas? But lets not forget the natural disasters we’ve witnessed in the last few years such as the African droughts of 2003, the Tsunami of 2004, the Cashmere earthquake of 2005 and the Cyclone in Bangladesh and many more. Could these be a result of climate change.

Well it would appear to be very obvious that the more man messes with mother nature, mother nature will most certainly mess with man.
Is it possible that the western world and countries that have a large carbon footprint are tipping the earth’s natural harmonious balance off the scale?
Is the ‘circle of life’ as Elton John so aptly put it being tampered with too much?

Well unfortunately I believe that the ‘Lion King” is most certainly fantasy in this case as the poorest people continue pay the highest price for the mass of human error. Do you think its fare that Katerina and her family should have to pay for this with their lives? Considering she has one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world I think the answer to this question is clear.

The next family we meet is in an even worse state than the last. The head of the household is a lady called Lucy Maluwa, born in 1952. She has had six children, two of which are dead, and nine grandchildren. Lucy’s husband like that of Katerina’s is also deceased.
She expresses pretty much exactly the same problems as Katerina. She also says that the rains are unpredictable and the crops are failing coupled with the fact that the price of maize has almost tripled in her area; it’s making it incredibly difficult for Lucy to provide for her and her family. At the moment they are living on ‘death benefit’, a one off payment for the death of her daughter given to Lucy by her deceased daughters previous employer.

I ask her what she will do when it runs out, she replies “I Don’t Know”.

Each one of Lucy’s children and grandchildren are surviving on one meal a day, as is Lucy and she is painfully thin. The four and a half year old girls growth is stunted so badly that she’s practically the same size as my six-month-old nephew, believe me, it would break your heart.
After spending the best part of six hours in the village its time to leave. We say goodbye, shaking hands with everyone with such vigour, as if to say; well done for being such outstanding resilient people, living with such tragedies, facing hunger daily and yet still finding hope. I think now I understand what people mean by the spirit of Africa.

That night in the hotel I start reading a book largely based on two British doctors experience of the Aids epidemic. According to this book ‘A Malawi mosaic’ there is a theory that it was originally dormant in monkeys, known as SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus). But as humans cut down more and more trees the monkey habitats disappeared and it is thought that the first case if HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) was detected in Cameroon in 1929. The rest, they say, is history.

We all know how fatal the Aids virus can be and that scientists all over the world continue to search for a cure or a vaccination. But in a country where 1.8 million people are HIV positive and only 30% of the population have access to healthcare, how on earth will it be possible to distribute this vaccination if one were to be found?

The only way forward is for organisations such as Oxfam to provide help but Oxfam is a charity and survives on donations.
The other question is I’m sure on everyone’s minds is why haven’t people been educated on the practice of safe sex? Well in my opinion, it would seem that this is largely due to the church. Most of the population of Malawi are either Catholic or Christian. Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to faith, I myself am a Christian, baptised in Liverpool at the age of nineteen but this is not God’s fault, it’s the churches.
I am appalled at the ignorance of some of the churches here in Malawi to the positive impact they could have if only they sent out the right message.
It’s no good preaching absolution or pretending its not happening. People are quite obviously having unprotected sex and its understandable in my opinion. Consider yourself. If you were penniless and hungry what would you have left if not Love?
However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel as some churches, for example the Church of Scotland, are facing up to the reality and taking positive steps to prevent it from spreading further.
Also, Oxfam funds a programme here totally dedicated to the prevention of Aids and it’s doing great things, but it needs continued funding, it needs our help.

...