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A Tale of Two Dawns
Sitting alone on the western shore of Île Louise on the Kiamika Reservoir in the pre-dawn, I wait for the sun to come up. It is a special time of day for me and waiting for the dawn has been an integral part of my daily routine for much of my adult life. As an hyperactive person, the early morning is my quiet time to sit and reflect on the previous day and what has be done today. Watching the sun give new life to the day provides a spiritual moment in the life of an ADHD retiree. It becomes easy to understand how so many of the ancestors in different places around the world worshiped the sun as a god resurrecting life in the world. The class of anglo-Quebeckers, being teenagers, are still sound asleep, snug in their sleeping bags so I have the world to myself.
Across the bay in front of me is Le Grande Île de Perdrix with its Mount Royal sized hump blocking the sun from rising directly before me. Instead of a spectacular ball climbing into sight, I am treated to a slow glow over and around the mountain and the sky becomes gradually lighter. The period of mystical predawn is a very special time on Kiamika. Vapour mists lift from the lake and in colder corners whole clouds have settled into strategic bays. It’s cool in the autumn morning and the loon quivering call sends another shiver of excitement through my body. There is a light but stiff little breeze blowing on-shore, making the forest leaves and needles rustle, chilling the air and causing the waves to lap at my feet. On other days, I have waited on the shore for the sun to rise and been swallowed by the silence of a lake as still and smooth as glass and the quiet forest around me.
Kiamika was created, in part, to control the downstream flooding which results from the excess water released by the springtime thaws. It is a man-made reservoir created during the last gasp of the log drives so the draveurs would be able to stock the cut timber during the winter and in the spring drive the logs down the Lièvre River to the mills in the Ottawa Valley below. The reservoir serves 2 other purposes. First it controls the flooding in several rivers downstream including the Ottawa River. Because of a network of reservoirs far away to the north, the once perennial spring floods have more or less been eliminated on Île Jésus, Montreal’s sister island on which the City of Laval sits. The Kiamika also serves to hold back the water freed from the winter snow to make sure that the hydro generating plants, canals, irrigation projects and recreational boaters downstream will have the reserves they need to get through the driest summer. The real issue is an excess of water and controlling its flow to prevent destruction and improve productivity.
As I watch the sunrise, the smell of smoke on my clothes reminds me of the huge bonfire of the previous night fed by Céline, who calls herself the Fire Witch. She tells us her name with pride as she loads the bonfire with logs as big as her waist. Spruce, pine, birch and some maple logs lay as dead fall all over the little Île Louise and every spring the winter brings down more trees to be harvested for the campfires we enjoy on these crisp fall evenings. The island is uninhabited and covered by dense woods and underbrush so typical of the northern forests of Quebec. There is wood to burn for generations. The shores of the reservoir are also lined with tumbled heaps of beautiful, dry driftwood, sculpted and sanded into beautiful forms and figures fit for an art gallery but destined to be harvested for fuel and doomed to join the inferno of the bonfire.
As the flames leapt high into the night air, the 25 young students warmed themselves. The flames were so high and the heat so intense that they had to sit several feet away from the fire pit and sometimes stepped back into the fresh night air to cool off. The fire’s warmth lulled them into a comfortable glow and allowed them to open up into wonderful, warm revelations that could never occur in the noisy thump, thump atmosphere of an urban club where the kids would typically spend their Saturday nights. They were city slickers and had no idea how to use the fire to cook, apart from marshmallows and hot dogs on a stick. Still they were drawn to the flames and many of them spent the whole night chatting and basking in the warm security and comfort of the bonfire.
A short two months ago, I was shivering in the pre-dawn chill of an African July winter, sitting on the back porch of my sister-in-law’s house in Makupo Village, Malawi waiting and watch for the sunrise over the hills on the other side of the dambo behind our village. I was there guiding another group of Montreal college students and the early morning is my quiet time to plan the day and catch up with my journal writing. The first glow in the sky was very similar to what I saw over Île de Perdrix but the the rest of the scene was so very different.
Across the shallow valley called a dambo, the sun highlights a few trees along a horizon that stretches as far as the eye can see. The African high plateau is savanna country, not very different than the Canadian prairies in outline but totally different in content. The glow of the rising sun outlines in profile the women and girls walking through the fields from Mlangali and Chiwengu, the neighbouring villages carrying pails under their arm and making their way to the well. They walk up to a kilometer to get to the well, the nearest water to their homes. Their morning chatter brightens the soundscape with murmuring and laughter. The gathering around the village well grows and the rhythmic thump thump of the pump provides the bass to their gentle choir.
Smoke fills the air and makes the link to the camp on Île Louise. Again the comparison quickly ends there. Despite being rural, there are people all around and virtually everyone is up before dawn to get the day started. Fires for cooking breakfast and warming bathwater have been restarted by fanning into flames the coals left from the night before. No valuable matches or paper are used – that would be a waste. A cooking fire uses a pot sitting on 3 equally sized stones with 3 or fewer pieces of wood carefully burning under the pot. Just enough flame is nursed from the wood to cook the meal and after it has been prepared, the pieces of burning wood are withdrawn from the fire and extinguished, to be conserved for the next round of cooking. The wood is so judicially used that hot water for bathing can be heated at the same time as food is being cooked. The women can cook a four course meal on these little fires and deliver it steaming hot to the table.
These fires burning all over the country have led to very serious deforestation and soil depletion. In addition, more and more people are burning bricks to make permanent housing. The brick kilns are voracious and burn oxcarts full of logs. The few trees that remain from an earlier period of copious forests are very utilitarian – fruit trees for food, blue gums for construction, and the scrubby, or decorative shrubs planted around houses and as fences in dambo gardens. Even these survivor trees are at risk as the people, desperate for firewood, cut and burn almost anything in order to feed themselves and their families.
The people like to cook and heat with the gradually disappearing African hardwoods, because they burn slowly and intensely and create a long lasting coal which is good for cooking. Now they must pay a high price for the softwood pine scraps trucked hundreds of kilometers from the Vipya plateau to the north and sold in the local market. The pine burns with a quick hot flame, but turns very quickly from coal to ash and so much more wood must be used to cook the same meal. Even then, most villagers cannot afford to buy firewood in a country where many people never see a cash income, so the woman scrounge the fields and paths they walk along for ever smaller pieces of twigs and shrubs. The women collect these into waist sized bundles longer than they are tall and head-load them home with their babies on their back and carrying in their hands the tools they were using in the fields.
Even one year ago, bicycles passed by with firewood on the rear rack piled higher than the rider’s head on their way from Ngara Mountain, forty kilometers to the south. They could be flagged down in order to buy their loads for so little money that it could not adequately compensate them for the labour they had invested in their cargo. Now Ngara has been shorn almost bare and firewood is so scarce that people have resorted to cutting down the last productive trees on their postage stamp sized farm plots. With wood so scarce, each piece of fuel is used with care. For warmth in the cool July evening, people sit in tight knots squeezing as close as possible to the coals of the supper fire and then getting into their warm beds shortly after sunset. This also explains why they are also up and about as early as possible the next morning.
Water is life they say in Malawi. Even when it comes in the rainy season, so much water falls in one tropical rainfall that erosion is a serious problem. The rest of the time everyone worries about too little water. Lake Malawi, the tenth largest freshwater lake in the world fills the Rift Valley less than 100 kilometres from the village but it may as well be on another planet. Makupo sits on the high veldt more than a kilometre above the lakeshore and Malawi’s 14 million people would drain the lake very quickly if it were to be pumped and chanelled to every part of the country that needs water. During the rainy season, water is readily available, but when the life giving rains finish in April, the soggy mud that is the ground slowly dries into compact laterite as hard as concrete and the dry season forces dependence on well water.
The people of Makupo have traveled for years across the highway to the old mission to collect their water. Relatives in Canada recently raised the money to put a well in the middle of their village which changed the life of everyone there. The Makupo residents are the lucky ones and now the women of the nearby villages of Chiwayu and Mlangali trek to the new well and more than 250 people get the life sustaining water they need. They are all lucky because the Bwanali village 2 or 3 kilometres to the south must sustain almost 2000 people with one borehole. The women line up their pails in patient order and often wait 2 hours getting their chance at the pump. People are forced to use unsanitary groundwater or shallow hand-dug wells that disappear completely during the dry season.
Water and wood. In Canada, we seem to have a surplus of both and we hardly give a thought, let alone respect and care for them as essential resources. Clean water from a bore hole pump and a cheap plentiful supply of wood close to home would be a rural African woman’s dream.
I have been intimately involved with Malawi, since 1968 when as a young teacher I arrived for the classic volunteer experience. In my rural Malawian secondary school, I watched as the women and children struggle with the old wheel style pumps that required a lot of effort to turn. The rural women had much better biceps than me from turning that wheel and chopping the evening meal with the basic axe they used. I admired how they were so economical with water and wood and how they worked so hard to carry the heavy bundles of wood and pail loads of water home on their heads. Even then, wood was becoming less available as more and more land was brought under cultivation to feed a growing population and to grow the tobacco, cotton, tea and groundnuts that earned the country’s meagre export income.
Whenever homesickness struck, I was never nostalgic for the fast food and flimsy attractions of city life. I dreamed of my boyhood at the cottage near Lively and my boy scout canoe trips on the water paddling through the Canadian northlands and sitting around blazing campfires. The Laurentian shield and its endless forests and lakes and rural the villages of Malawi always seemed so distant and disconnected. The expensive and extensive systems set up to harness the surplus in Canada stood in stark contrast to the struggle to satisfy the basic daily needs in Africa.
Over the years, governments have come and gone, international experts have ridden their development models into Africa and then ridden off into the sunset while the life of the rural women remains very much the same struggle to find clean water and enough wood to cook a meal for her family. My marriage to a Makupo maiden almost 40 years ago connected me to their condition beyond the normal 2 year volunteer commitment. Nellie and I have traveled down many paths together and now our four children and their kids are all comfortably settled in Montreal. But our concern for the sisters, nieces, and the whole over-extended family living the dilemma has only grown as their perennial struggle for the basics of life and dignity never seems to abate.
I have retired from my work as a college educator and come along as an instructor on the outdoor education courses in northern Quebec to earn some extra money to supplement my pension. With that money and what we recruit from friends and from a variety of fundraising schemes, we are trying to set up small enterprises, restore the environment and end the dependence of the people of Makupo. We have learned from the large scale development schemes that have generally left the rural people impoverished. We are modestly aiming very small ̶ just Makupo and its close vicinity. The well was a first step, planting African hardwoods around the village territory is another. A small piggery will provide a steady income for the village women and other ideas are in the works. The villagers have never dreamt large when life has been so circumscribed by the constant struggle. They know the situation is desperate and are eager to regenerate the soil, reforest the land they can influence.
Still in the morning quiet, I dream of how to bring a Canadian lake and forest to Makupo or of resettling African villagers on Île Louise so they never have to want for water and fuel again. Life should be that simple…
Friday, March 19, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
CAF African Cup January 2010
CAF Coupe africaine de football - The famous Malawi “pafupi”. It’s not far.
There was a time in Malawi when the only football we saw was the local secondary school and sometimes a side in town against the corporate teams. There was football on the radio, but since it was in excited ChiChewa, it was hard for me to follow. Now Malawians in the town and rural areas follow their teams with avid dedication. Everyone has a favourite team in the British premier league. During the Confederation Cup last June and July, I was dragooned by the village youth to drive them into kasungu every second night to follow the play.
I arrived in Malawi on Friday, January 8 and the first game of the CAF was Sunday night between the host Angola and Mali. By pure luck I was lodged at the Korean Garden Lodge and had access to a satellite feed on the tv in my room. I had wanted to go to a local pub to take in the game, because football is always more fun in a social atmosphere, but I had already been to Blantyre and back over the previous 2 days and I was still suffering from jet lag.
It was supposed to be no contest and Angola quickly took a 4 point lead, but the plucky Mali side held strong and in the last 20 minutes or less made a spectacular comeback and scored 4 points to finish the game with a draw. We knew then that there would be some upsets. These teams were in the same group as Malawi and Algeria and if Mali could take on the strong Angolan team, perhaps there was some hope for Malawi.
Malawi had not been to the CAF for 25 years. In fact, their coach, Kinnah Phiri had been a player in that long ago appearance. He has rebuilt the Flames and the team has had considerable success against some of the African powerhouse teams beating DRC in October 2008 and Egypt 1-0 this past year. Their first game was to be Monday, 11 January and I had some small hope that if I arrived at Makupo early enough in the day, I would be able to go into Kasungu to take in the game.
Unfortunately, a number of inconveniences kept me in Lilongwe till early afternoon and I arrived late in the day at the village after the game had already started. I had written off the trip to town to see the game. Since this was my first visit to the village since the death of Nellie’s mom, all the elders were present to console me upon my arrival. I was installed in the front room of my house as all the elders passed through and we said “Pepani” to each other.” It means, sorry in the sense of condolences. The chief had even come from his homestead to be there to greet me. We arranged for the elders from our group village headman to come early the next morning so we could go pay our respects at the graveside. I noted that there were no young men present in the greeting committee. They were all watching the game somewhere.
After an appropriate time, my brother-in-law, Frazer, took me on a walk around the village to see the changes and talk. We had no sooner set out than my cell phone rang. It was Chimwemwe from Montreal where he was watching the game with his wife, perhaps one of the few places in the world where a Malawian and Algerian were sitting side by side at such a moment. He was in an elevated state of excitement, “Dad, are you watching the game?” Malawi was leading against Algeria 2-0 at the half-time. He was incredulous that I was missing the game.
Frazer and I caucused for 3 nano-seconds and went back to the main house to collect Mr Kupera (80 years), Mr Chikapa (73) and the chief (65 to 69?) and a car full of elders headed into Kasungu to find the first television we could stumble across to watch at least the last few minutes of such a historic game. We managed to see the last goal that made the final score 3-0 and watched a skilful and talented Malawi side hold the ferocious Algerians off with ease until the final whistle sounded the end. Needless to say the celebrations across Malawi were wild and ecstatic.
Malawi hopes were up to make a big splash in the rest of the games of the first round and even move on to the quarter finals. The next game on Thursday night I was supposed to be in Nkhata Bay with Davie Chimango arranging our kayaking trip up the northern shore of Lake Malawi, the following week. The game was at 8 and the Mayoka Village lodge was a 2 kilometre walk over a mountain goat path from the television in town. Davie and I made it there, paid our kwacha 40 entry fee and settled into a sizeable hall with about 250 other people to watch Malawi play Angola.
It was so hot, I struggled to stay awake. The Angolans were ready. They had already faced a tremendous humiliation against the upstart Mali and they were not going to let Malawi get past them. The Malawi side just couldn’t get the spark back that had set them aflame against Algeria and they went down to defeat. There was no jubilation, that night.
I was due to be in Karonga when Malawi played its final game of the first round against Mali. The hopes were high that we could prove a match against them and still move to the next round. I spent a couple of days interviewing my old comrade Kaphote Mwakasungura and getting to know the elite of Karonga. Sophera Mwafulirwa was my host at the Club Marina and he reserved a chair for me in front of his bar’s tv so we could watch the game together. Despite a valiant effort, the Malians were too tough for Malawi and hopes of moving on to the next round ended.
After that I did not pay much attention to the quarter finals. Back in Kasungu, there was a free evening when I went with the elders again to watch Zambia play Tunisia to a 1-1 draw, but thereafter I was on the water and far from television or any other electronic communications. I was kayaking with Guy Quinn, Monica Giacomin and Marvin Biemans and we had reached Ruarwe about 4 days up the coast from Nkahata Bay. We had settled into a beautiful and isolated lodge, Zulunkhuni Falls. Our guides were a group of 3 young bucks and the lodge employee Dampson wanted to go to Khondowe, the next community up the lake to see the final gold medal game between Ghana and Egypt.
The famous Malawi “pafupi”. It’s not far.
It was only a half hour paddle and the game started at 6:00 p.m. We only managed to get off at 5:45 and rounded the point. The boat was much like a Newfoundland dory with a high bow and a low flat back. Beside the 4 Malawian guides, there were 3 Aussies, a French nature guide, as well as Guy, Monica and myself. Two guides at the back paddled with the traditional dugout paddles, 2 tourists rotated paddling at the centre and the indomitable Dampson sat high on the bow and paddled and ruddered at the same time.
We were making decent time as we saw the first cracks of lightning, but by our count of the time for the thunder to arrive it was 5 to 6 kilometres away, so we weren’t worried. We still weren’t worried as the wind picked up and the lightning was still 3 kilometers away, but then it was upon is with a fury that was amazing for the speed it came upon us as well the contrast to the tranquility of the lake we had set out upon. The lightning was so close and the thunder powerfully loud. The rain was antediluvian and was pushed so hard by the wind that it inflicted pain when it hit the face. The gentle swells turned to nasty whitecaps and we were stuck without much choice but to carry on.
We had cut across the mouth of the bay instead of hugging the coast so we were out in the big lake with no cover and facing the wrath of a full tropical storm. Dampson, at the front, began to fatigue under the double duty of paddling and ruddering, so the guys decided to turn the boat around and proceed stern first.
The famous pafupi turned out to be around yet another point of land. There was no light visible on shore. Our hope was that this would be the classical tropical squall and pass as fast as it arrived. It wasn’t soon enough, but it did pass and with me bailing and the crew paddling we bumped up on shore. It was more than an hour of paddling away – pafupi indeed.
We were a bedraggled soaking wet lot, but without missing a beat, Dampson, did the mountain goat thing in total darkness to a house a couple of hundred metres up the hillside where we stumbled into a room packed full with fans watching the half-time commentaries. The reception was crystal clear, but there wasn’t enough room inside for the arrival of 11 new people, so they moved the set outside to a sort of backyard amphitheatre, and we paid our 60 kwacha entry fee. Needless to say the move screwed up the technology and there was no picture when they tried to star up the set. There was a certain amount of grumbling and we felt that people were annoyed because enjoyment of the game had been disturbed by the arrival of the all the azunga, the white guys. Fifteen minutes later the French guy went up and did a diagnostic and had the game up and running to great cheers and our reputation as fans of integrity was restored.
We got in the last 20 or so minutes of the game. Ghana was playing brilliantly and looked to have the game under control, but Egypt’s forwards got a fortunate break and made a decisive goal. It was quickly over thereafter, but we still had an hour or more of paddling to get back to Ruarwe and the Zulunkhuni Lodge, made somewhat longer by being against a stiff headwind and all of us in wet clothes.
Despite being on a stretch of remote coastline in northern Malawi with no road access, the house in Khondowe was equipped with solar panels, battery packs, inverters, a 30 inch television, and a satellite dish. I am sure that the owners watch other programmes, but it was clear from the house full of people and the outdoor amphitheatre, that people were willing to pay to watch quality football. We were not alone on our way back, so others had shared our own adventure to get to the game. Even though Malawi was out of the play, it was of national importance to see the game and people are willing to pay the price to be part of it even in a vicarious way.
There was a time in Malawi when the only football we saw was the local secondary school and sometimes a side in town against the corporate teams. There was football on the radio, but since it was in excited ChiChewa, it was hard for me to follow. Now Malawians in the town and rural areas follow their teams with avid dedication. Everyone has a favourite team in the British premier league. During the Confederation Cup last June and July, I was dragooned by the village youth to drive them into kasungu every second night to follow the play.
I arrived in Malawi on Friday, January 8 and the first game of the CAF was Sunday night between the host Angola and Mali. By pure luck I was lodged at the Korean Garden Lodge and had access to a satellite feed on the tv in my room. I had wanted to go to a local pub to take in the game, because football is always more fun in a social atmosphere, but I had already been to Blantyre and back over the previous 2 days and I was still suffering from jet lag.
It was supposed to be no contest and Angola quickly took a 4 point lead, but the plucky Mali side held strong and in the last 20 minutes or less made a spectacular comeback and scored 4 points to finish the game with a draw. We knew then that there would be some upsets. These teams were in the same group as Malawi and Algeria and if Mali could take on the strong Angolan team, perhaps there was some hope for Malawi.
Malawi had not been to the CAF for 25 years. In fact, their coach, Kinnah Phiri had been a player in that long ago appearance. He has rebuilt the Flames and the team has had considerable success against some of the African powerhouse teams beating DRC in October 2008 and Egypt 1-0 this past year. Their first game was to be Monday, 11 January and I had some small hope that if I arrived at Makupo early enough in the day, I would be able to go into Kasungu to take in the game.
Unfortunately, a number of inconveniences kept me in Lilongwe till early afternoon and I arrived late in the day at the village after the game had already started. I had written off the trip to town to see the game. Since this was my first visit to the village since the death of Nellie’s mom, all the elders were present to console me upon my arrival. I was installed in the front room of my house as all the elders passed through and we said “Pepani” to each other.” It means, sorry in the sense of condolences. The chief had even come from his homestead to be there to greet me. We arranged for the elders from our group village headman to come early the next morning so we could go pay our respects at the graveside. I noted that there were no young men present in the greeting committee. They were all watching the game somewhere.
After an appropriate time, my brother-in-law, Frazer, took me on a walk around the village to see the changes and talk. We had no sooner set out than my cell phone rang. It was Chimwemwe from Montreal where he was watching the game with his wife, perhaps one of the few places in the world where a Malawian and Algerian were sitting side by side at such a moment. He was in an elevated state of excitement, “Dad, are you watching the game?” Malawi was leading against Algeria 2-0 at the half-time. He was incredulous that I was missing the game.
Frazer and I caucused for 3 nano-seconds and went back to the main house to collect Mr Kupera (80 years), Mr Chikapa (73) and the chief (65 to 69?) and a car full of elders headed into Kasungu to find the first television we could stumble across to watch at least the last few minutes of such a historic game. We managed to see the last goal that made the final score 3-0 and watched a skilful and talented Malawi side hold the ferocious Algerians off with ease until the final whistle sounded the end. Needless to say the celebrations across Malawi were wild and ecstatic.
Malawi hopes were up to make a big splash in the rest of the games of the first round and even move on to the quarter finals. The next game on Thursday night I was supposed to be in Nkhata Bay with Davie Chimango arranging our kayaking trip up the northern shore of Lake Malawi, the following week. The game was at 8 and the Mayoka Village lodge was a 2 kilometre walk over a mountain goat path from the television in town. Davie and I made it there, paid our kwacha 40 entry fee and settled into a sizeable hall with about 250 other people to watch Malawi play Angola.
It was so hot, I struggled to stay awake. The Angolans were ready. They had already faced a tremendous humiliation against the upstart Mali and they were not going to let Malawi get past them. The Malawi side just couldn’t get the spark back that had set them aflame against Algeria and they went down to defeat. There was no jubilation, that night.
I was due to be in Karonga when Malawi played its final game of the first round against Mali. The hopes were high that we could prove a match against them and still move to the next round. I spent a couple of days interviewing my old comrade Kaphote Mwakasungura and getting to know the elite of Karonga. Sophera Mwafulirwa was my host at the Club Marina and he reserved a chair for me in front of his bar’s tv so we could watch the game together. Despite a valiant effort, the Malians were too tough for Malawi and hopes of moving on to the next round ended.
After that I did not pay much attention to the quarter finals. Back in Kasungu, there was a free evening when I went with the elders again to watch Zambia play Tunisia to a 1-1 draw, but thereafter I was on the water and far from television or any other electronic communications. I was kayaking with Guy Quinn, Monica Giacomin and Marvin Biemans and we had reached Ruarwe about 4 days up the coast from Nkahata Bay. We had settled into a beautiful and isolated lodge, Zulunkhuni Falls. Our guides were a group of 3 young bucks and the lodge employee Dampson wanted to go to Khondowe, the next community up the lake to see the final gold medal game between Ghana and Egypt.
The famous Malawi “pafupi”. It’s not far.
It was only a half hour paddle and the game started at 6:00 p.m. We only managed to get off at 5:45 and rounded the point. The boat was much like a Newfoundland dory with a high bow and a low flat back. Beside the 4 Malawian guides, there were 3 Aussies, a French nature guide, as well as Guy, Monica and myself. Two guides at the back paddled with the traditional dugout paddles, 2 tourists rotated paddling at the centre and the indomitable Dampson sat high on the bow and paddled and ruddered at the same time.
We were making decent time as we saw the first cracks of lightning, but by our count of the time for the thunder to arrive it was 5 to 6 kilometres away, so we weren’t worried. We still weren’t worried as the wind picked up and the lightning was still 3 kilometers away, but then it was upon is with a fury that was amazing for the speed it came upon us as well the contrast to the tranquility of the lake we had set out upon. The lightning was so close and the thunder powerfully loud. The rain was antediluvian and was pushed so hard by the wind that it inflicted pain when it hit the face. The gentle swells turned to nasty whitecaps and we were stuck without much choice but to carry on.
We had cut across the mouth of the bay instead of hugging the coast so we were out in the big lake with no cover and facing the wrath of a full tropical storm. Dampson, at the front, began to fatigue under the double duty of paddling and ruddering, so the guys decided to turn the boat around and proceed stern first.
The famous pafupi turned out to be around yet another point of land. There was no light visible on shore. Our hope was that this would be the classical tropical squall and pass as fast as it arrived. It wasn’t soon enough, but it did pass and with me bailing and the crew paddling we bumped up on shore. It was more than an hour of paddling away – pafupi indeed.
We were a bedraggled soaking wet lot, but without missing a beat, Dampson, did the mountain goat thing in total darkness to a house a couple of hundred metres up the hillside where we stumbled into a room packed full with fans watching the half-time commentaries. The reception was crystal clear, but there wasn’t enough room inside for the arrival of 11 new people, so they moved the set outside to a sort of backyard amphitheatre, and we paid our 60 kwacha entry fee. Needless to say the move screwed up the technology and there was no picture when they tried to star up the set. There was a certain amount of grumbling and we felt that people were annoyed because enjoyment of the game had been disturbed by the arrival of the all the azunga, the white guys. Fifteen minutes later the French guy went up and did a diagnostic and had the game up and running to great cheers and our reputation as fans of integrity was restored.
We got in the last 20 or so minutes of the game. Ghana was playing brilliantly and looked to have the game under control, but Egypt’s forwards got a fortunate break and made a decisive goal. It was quickly over thereafter, but we still had an hour or more of paddling to get back to Ruarwe and the Zulunkhuni Lodge, made somewhat longer by being against a stiff headwind and all of us in wet clothes.
Despite being on a stretch of remote coastline in northern Malawi with no road access, the house in Khondowe was equipped with solar panels, battery packs, inverters, a 30 inch television, and a satellite dish. I am sure that the owners watch other programmes, but it was clear from the house full of people and the outdoor amphitheatre, that people were willing to pay to watch quality football. We were not alone on our way back, so others had shared our own adventure to get to the game. Even though Malawi was out of the play, it was of national importance to see the game and people are willing to pay the price to be part of it even in a vicarious way.
The Rains January 2010
Blog 2 The rains
Farmers everywhere depend on the rain to bring their crops to fruition, some lucky places are able to harness the water in lakes and rivers for irrigation but the vast majority of the world is much more dependent on when the rains come and how much and how long. In this part of Africa the rains are seasonal, starting with an occasional sputter in late November and getting more consistent through December. By July some farmers have already started preparing their fields. They want to be ready for the first rain to plant their crops and hope that the vagaries of climate will bring forth a bounty.
Travelling from Blantye in the highlands of the southern region to Kasungu close to the northern limits of the central region reveals the power of the rain and the thin line between success and failure in farming societies. Around Lilongwe, the rains have been fairly regular and the maize is growing well. The leaves are broad and as high as a person’s head and a few plants can be seen to be tasseling, which means they will start bearing cobs very soon. The Blantyre area looks much the same. In Kasungu, my brother, Frazer said they planted 3 times, because after each planting the rain stopped and the crop withered and died. The third planting succeeded at Makupo and the corn is chest high.
As Sautso and I travelled south towards Dedza we could see that there were sections of the land where the crop was shorter. The real shock was descending off the ridge of highlands that straddles the Malawi - Mozambique border and dropping onto the low flat plains that the Shire River flows through. Having dropped approximately 1000 metres the climate is hotter and we finally closed our windows and turned on the air conditioning. For perhaps 100 km the temperature rises considerably and the almost total lack of rain has left the land parched, and dusty. The maize has a few withered green-yellow shoots that are so short they resemble onions growing rather than the tall full broadleaf of a healthy maize plant.
In the Monday newspaper headlines, CONGOMA, the Council for NonGovernmental Organisations in Malawi is telling the government to begin planning now for famine relief, since large areas of the country are going to be hard hit by the poor rains. They want all grain exports halted, storage capacity increased and measures put in place to begin distribution to the stricken areas. Already the majority of the poor have barely enough to eat. Because Malawi is so densely populated and because the arable land area is so subdivided into mini- smallholdings, people are only barely able to raise enough food for about the first six months after the harvest in April and May. Hunger is endemic even in the best of times.
By November, many families are already down to one meal a day and even in Makupo with the relative prosperity we enjoy, not one house had a full bag of maize to live on. Anasimango’s gang has not had any for several weeks and have been eating borrowed flour for their one meal a day. Other houses were close to the end of their stores with nothing available after they finished. I had a donation of $200 that I was able to commit to buying about 12 bags of maize to distribute among our houses. I had intended to use it for development investment of projects, but the need was to immediate to ignore.
We will be okay because there are plenty of mangos freely dropping and dambo maize allows a bit of fresh on the cob eating. That will hold us until the crop ripens and can be harvested. But families in the drought stricken areas have already finished their stores from last season and now they know that their crop withering in the fields will give them nothing. They are the ones that need food aid immediately.
Despite the past few successful years, hunger is a regular annual recurrence and widespread throughout the country in the period before the harvest. People are willing to work at day jobs (called ganyu) for food alone. It is one of the reasons why labour is so cheap in Malawi. Desperate people have no choice. Large estate owners, use this fact to extort the almost free labour from the share-croppers they allow to settle on their land. These poor, landless people are given a small allotment to grow their own food on the estate and in return they prepare the owner’s fields for tobacco production or commercial maize or other crops.
I have not seen a government response to the CONGOMA appeal, but the last few years of bumper crops and exports to neighbouring countries may have made people a bit complacent in the planning department. Even with the best of intentions to remain self-sufficient, international organisations will be needed to pitch in both with infrastructure and extra supplies. The fiasco in the early 2000s when the IFI, the international financial organisations, made Malawi sell off their grain reserves in the middle of a serious drought was a glaring example of bad policy. In addition, they forbid the government from subsidising fertiliser for the poorest smallholders. The then new president Bingu Mutharika over-ruled their dictates and re-instated the fertiliser subsidies and combined with several years of good rains there has been no real issue with food ever since. In fact, Malawi became a net exporter with a surplus to spare.
The private enterprise exporters made good money and expect to continue to do so, but in a time of shortage, the country cannot allow free market forces to drain away the available foodstock. If it doesn’t act soon to curtail exports then there could be some real crisis intervention needed to make up the loss. In class terms, the planners have more in common with the exporters. Most politicians and senior government types run these kinds of businesses, so they are well fed and do not necessarily feel the people’s hunger. They would prefer to continue making money, so any decision to curtail exports hurts the pocketbook of the people making the decision.
In the meantime, I have gone North to Nkhata Bay and the rains have been good. Much of the time as I travelled on Thursday, I was in and out of rain showers. Thursday night the coast got blasted and in a call home to the village they told me that they too had had some rain.
In most countries, we would curse the rain for spoiling our day. Here we welcome its arrival and even the atheists pray for more.
Farmers everywhere depend on the rain to bring their crops to fruition, some lucky places are able to harness the water in lakes and rivers for irrigation but the vast majority of the world is much more dependent on when the rains come and how much and how long. In this part of Africa the rains are seasonal, starting with an occasional sputter in late November and getting more consistent through December. By July some farmers have already started preparing their fields. They want to be ready for the first rain to plant their crops and hope that the vagaries of climate will bring forth a bounty.
Travelling from Blantye in the highlands of the southern region to Kasungu close to the northern limits of the central region reveals the power of the rain and the thin line between success and failure in farming societies. Around Lilongwe, the rains have been fairly regular and the maize is growing well. The leaves are broad and as high as a person’s head and a few plants can be seen to be tasseling, which means they will start bearing cobs very soon. The Blantyre area looks much the same. In Kasungu, my brother, Frazer said they planted 3 times, because after each planting the rain stopped and the crop withered and died. The third planting succeeded at Makupo and the corn is chest high.
As Sautso and I travelled south towards Dedza we could see that there were sections of the land where the crop was shorter. The real shock was descending off the ridge of highlands that straddles the Malawi - Mozambique border and dropping onto the low flat plains that the Shire River flows through. Having dropped approximately 1000 metres the climate is hotter and we finally closed our windows and turned on the air conditioning. For perhaps 100 km the temperature rises considerably and the almost total lack of rain has left the land parched, and dusty. The maize has a few withered green-yellow shoots that are so short they resemble onions growing rather than the tall full broadleaf of a healthy maize plant.
In the Monday newspaper headlines, CONGOMA, the Council for NonGovernmental Organisations in Malawi is telling the government to begin planning now for famine relief, since large areas of the country are going to be hard hit by the poor rains. They want all grain exports halted, storage capacity increased and measures put in place to begin distribution to the stricken areas. Already the majority of the poor have barely enough to eat. Because Malawi is so densely populated and because the arable land area is so subdivided into mini- smallholdings, people are only barely able to raise enough food for about the first six months after the harvest in April and May. Hunger is endemic even in the best of times.
By November, many families are already down to one meal a day and even in Makupo with the relative prosperity we enjoy, not one house had a full bag of maize to live on. Anasimango’s gang has not had any for several weeks and have been eating borrowed flour for their one meal a day. Other houses were close to the end of their stores with nothing available after they finished. I had a donation of $200 that I was able to commit to buying about 12 bags of maize to distribute among our houses. I had intended to use it for development investment of projects, but the need was to immediate to ignore.
We will be okay because there are plenty of mangos freely dropping and dambo maize allows a bit of fresh on the cob eating. That will hold us until the crop ripens and can be harvested. But families in the drought stricken areas have already finished their stores from last season and now they know that their crop withering in the fields will give them nothing. They are the ones that need food aid immediately.
Despite the past few successful years, hunger is a regular annual recurrence and widespread throughout the country in the period before the harvest. People are willing to work at day jobs (called ganyu) for food alone. It is one of the reasons why labour is so cheap in Malawi. Desperate people have no choice. Large estate owners, use this fact to extort the almost free labour from the share-croppers they allow to settle on their land. These poor, landless people are given a small allotment to grow their own food on the estate and in return they prepare the owner’s fields for tobacco production or commercial maize or other crops.
I have not seen a government response to the CONGOMA appeal, but the last few years of bumper crops and exports to neighbouring countries may have made people a bit complacent in the planning department. Even with the best of intentions to remain self-sufficient, international organisations will be needed to pitch in both with infrastructure and extra supplies. The fiasco in the early 2000s when the IFI, the international financial organisations, made Malawi sell off their grain reserves in the middle of a serious drought was a glaring example of bad policy. In addition, they forbid the government from subsidising fertiliser for the poorest smallholders. The then new president Bingu Mutharika over-ruled their dictates and re-instated the fertiliser subsidies and combined with several years of good rains there has been no real issue with food ever since. In fact, Malawi became a net exporter with a surplus to spare.
The private enterprise exporters made good money and expect to continue to do so, but in a time of shortage, the country cannot allow free market forces to drain away the available foodstock. If it doesn’t act soon to curtail exports then there could be some real crisis intervention needed to make up the loss. In class terms, the planners have more in common with the exporters. Most politicians and senior government types run these kinds of businesses, so they are well fed and do not necessarily feel the people’s hunger. They would prefer to continue making money, so any decision to curtail exports hurts the pocketbook of the people making the decision.
In the meantime, I have gone North to Nkhata Bay and the rains have been good. Much of the time as I travelled on Thursday, I was in and out of rain showers. Thursday night the coast got blasted and in a call home to the village they told me that they too had had some rain.
In most countries, we would curse the rain for spoiling our day. Here we welcome its arrival and even the atheists pray for more.
Arrival in Malawi - January 2010
11 January 2010
Yesterday’s heat has dissipated and its 5h30. The morning sky is cloudy and has allowed a fresh breeze to recharge the air. I used to have a quiet corner at the side of the house in Makupo, away from the kitchen where generally no-one passed, but since the new well is in all the folks from the trading centre beside the bus stop, walk right over my feet on their way to the well. Instead of being able to get my head into a thought or write a journal entry, I am continually distracted by the obligatory morning greetings.
I like the spot a lot because it is close to the house and slightly hidden so that I can see the road but am not very visible to those driving or biking by. That is a perfect scene for good sociological observation. But with this new busyness as the women, young girls and small boys go by on their way to the well, it has lost its cache. They are so well trained or culturally indoctrinated that they cannot pass an elder without genuflecting and greeting, which is all well and fine for cultural learning, but really difficult for an old guy trying to get a bit of work done in the early hours of the morning.
The great plan that I had to get straight to the village started falling apart even before I left Canada. With Patrick Bolland getting sick, it complicated things a bit because I no longer had an excuse to stick to my agenda and so I had to be a bit flexible. I had already been pressured by Sautso to spend a night in Lilongwe upon arrival, instead of going straight to the village. She wanted us to catch up on things and have some time together before I disappeared into the countryside. When I passed by Ivy’s place, the famous Ufulu Gardens Lodge, on the way to the hotel, I discovered she had gone to Blantyre to see Miriam so 2 of the 3 sisters (Nellie being the senior and 3rd) were down there.
I had to check in with Miriam once I got settled and she told me that her husband, Henry, was in town, but that he was leaving on the Sunday morning. If we didn’t meet that weekend, then it was a lost opportunity, because his pilot schedule was not predictable enough that he could arrange his times with mine. We had last seen each other for one night in January of 2004 and that was our first time since 1976. We had fled Malawi first, in 1976, Horace died in the early 80s and Henry and Miriam had left in the late 80s.
For the year June 1975 to May 1976 Henry and I were two thirds of the indomitable three musketeers. Along with Nellie’s younger brother, Horace, we spent many a long evening carousing together. Henry married Miriam, Nellie’s cousin sister and became a pilot with Air Malawi. Like so many Northerners under the Banda / Tembo regime, Henry found his career progress blocked by jealous tribalists and fearing arrest in one of the many sweeps of northern professionals, he moved to Gaborone and flew for Air Botswana for many years. More recently he has been in Equatorial Guinea setting up their national airline, but found he couldn’t deal with the repression and is between jobs. Over the years of exile, working at expatriate salaries, Miriam and he have managed to put together the money to build a beautiful house in Blantyre and slowly buy a few plots of land to be developed. The last couple of years now of his work life are going into developing their land so he has a revenue when he eventually retires from piloting.
Whle we were together in Blantyre, I took the opportunity to interview Miriam for the family history and learned a great deal about AnaMumba’s life. That is another story unfolding, but it is due to the motivation given to me by Thokoza. She is very keen to write the family history, and over the years I have threatened to do it but when Thokoza gets it in her mind then I will have little choice but to do it. Drawing some sort of chart or family organigram is useful, but our plan is to augment that with oral histories, written, recorded or videoed and of course collecting pictures whenever we can.
The Mennonite side of the family is relatively easy, since so many people have written about their evolution, It is quite another story in Malawi where the bridge between the old oral tradition and the ability to recall many generations into the past via stories past down from great-grandmother to great-grandchild has been broken asunder by the arrival of European style schools. In her case, Miriam was one of the younger generation to spend as much time as she did with anaMumba. She was there at the inception of Makupo village and was very informative.
So I arrived on Friday. Saturday Sautso and I drove to Blantyre. I took Henry to the airport Sunday morning. He was on his way to India looking for a job in the East. Then Sautso and I came back to Lilongwe. She drove half the distance each way which allowed me to get some scenery photos. We had supper with Undeni and another woman who had been in England with her. Monday I had to do a bit of shopping and settle some money issues before setting off for home in Makupo.
It is good to be home, but boy were there a lot of issues to deal with. The obligatory thing is that everyone had to come and sit with me and share condolences since this is my first visit since Nellie’s mom died. After an hour or so Frazer was showing me around the village and what has changed when I got a phone call from Chimwemwe in Canada. Malawi was beating Algeria 2 to 0 in the first half of the Africa cup of nations competition in Luanda Angola. He was watching the game and couldn’t believe that I wasn’t somewhere taking it in.
I have written a bit more about this in my article on CAF football.
More soon.
Doug
Yesterday’s heat has dissipated and its 5h30. The morning sky is cloudy and has allowed a fresh breeze to recharge the air. I used to have a quiet corner at the side of the house in Makupo, away from the kitchen where generally no-one passed, but since the new well is in all the folks from the trading centre beside the bus stop, walk right over my feet on their way to the well. Instead of being able to get my head into a thought or write a journal entry, I am continually distracted by the obligatory morning greetings.
I like the spot a lot because it is close to the house and slightly hidden so that I can see the road but am not very visible to those driving or biking by. That is a perfect scene for good sociological observation. But with this new busyness as the women, young girls and small boys go by on their way to the well, it has lost its cache. They are so well trained or culturally indoctrinated that they cannot pass an elder without genuflecting and greeting, which is all well and fine for cultural learning, but really difficult for an old guy trying to get a bit of work done in the early hours of the morning.
The great plan that I had to get straight to the village started falling apart even before I left Canada. With Patrick Bolland getting sick, it complicated things a bit because I no longer had an excuse to stick to my agenda and so I had to be a bit flexible. I had already been pressured by Sautso to spend a night in Lilongwe upon arrival, instead of going straight to the village. She wanted us to catch up on things and have some time together before I disappeared into the countryside. When I passed by Ivy’s place, the famous Ufulu Gardens Lodge, on the way to the hotel, I discovered she had gone to Blantyre to see Miriam so 2 of the 3 sisters (Nellie being the senior and 3rd) were down there.
I had to check in with Miriam once I got settled and she told me that her husband, Henry, was in town, but that he was leaving on the Sunday morning. If we didn’t meet that weekend, then it was a lost opportunity, because his pilot schedule was not predictable enough that he could arrange his times with mine. We had last seen each other for one night in January of 2004 and that was our first time since 1976. We had fled Malawi first, in 1976, Horace died in the early 80s and Henry and Miriam had left in the late 80s.
For the year June 1975 to May 1976 Henry and I were two thirds of the indomitable three musketeers. Along with Nellie’s younger brother, Horace, we spent many a long evening carousing together. Henry married Miriam, Nellie’s cousin sister and became a pilot with Air Malawi. Like so many Northerners under the Banda / Tembo regime, Henry found his career progress blocked by jealous tribalists and fearing arrest in one of the many sweeps of northern professionals, he moved to Gaborone and flew for Air Botswana for many years. More recently he has been in Equatorial Guinea setting up their national airline, but found he couldn’t deal with the repression and is between jobs. Over the years of exile, working at expatriate salaries, Miriam and he have managed to put together the money to build a beautiful house in Blantyre and slowly buy a few plots of land to be developed. The last couple of years now of his work life are going into developing their land so he has a revenue when he eventually retires from piloting.
Whle we were together in Blantyre, I took the opportunity to interview Miriam for the family history and learned a great deal about AnaMumba’s life. That is another story unfolding, but it is due to the motivation given to me by Thokoza. She is very keen to write the family history, and over the years I have threatened to do it but when Thokoza gets it in her mind then I will have little choice but to do it. Drawing some sort of chart or family organigram is useful, but our plan is to augment that with oral histories, written, recorded or videoed and of course collecting pictures whenever we can.
The Mennonite side of the family is relatively easy, since so many people have written about their evolution, It is quite another story in Malawi where the bridge between the old oral tradition and the ability to recall many generations into the past via stories past down from great-grandmother to great-grandchild has been broken asunder by the arrival of European style schools. In her case, Miriam was one of the younger generation to spend as much time as she did with anaMumba. She was there at the inception of Makupo village and was very informative.
So I arrived on Friday. Saturday Sautso and I drove to Blantyre. I took Henry to the airport Sunday morning. He was on his way to India looking for a job in the East. Then Sautso and I came back to Lilongwe. She drove half the distance each way which allowed me to get some scenery photos. We had supper with Undeni and another woman who had been in England with her. Monday I had to do a bit of shopping and settle some money issues before setting off for home in Makupo.
It is good to be home, but boy were there a lot of issues to deal with. The obligatory thing is that everyone had to come and sit with me and share condolences since this is my first visit since Nellie’s mom died. After an hour or so Frazer was showing me around the village and what has changed when I got a phone call from Chimwemwe in Canada. Malawi was beating Algeria 2 to 0 in the first half of the Africa cup of nations competition in Luanda Angola. He was watching the game and couldn’t believe that I wasn’t somewhere taking it in.
I have written a bit more about this in my article on CAF football.
More soon.
Doug
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