Hear about my road trip in Malawi on RTE World Report today by clicking here.
For my first
trip within Malawi I was instructed to be at Lilongwe bus station by 11am SHARP
for an AXA bus to Balaka. When I got there, I was told “The floor fell out of
the bus”. Lesson Number One: there are no bus timetables – show up, or stand at
the side of the road, and hope for the best.
I resorted to
the dreaded mini-bus – which is how most Malawians get around, if they can
afford it, many standing for hours.
Hordes kept piling in after the small vehicle was full. I took some
iphone photos as my luggage was roped up and made into a seat for others. Too
late to jump out, I took a deep breath, and invoked my new mantra: TIA. (This is Africa).
A coach drove
past whose entire windshield on the driver’s side was shattered and held
together by masking tape – blocking the driver’s view. I nearly got into that bus. Things could be worse.
Out various
minibus windows during my Malawian sojourn, I saw post-apocalyptic, scenes of
people running around in rain and fork lightning with yellow jerry cans of
petrol in a traffic jam outside Lilongwe.
Filling up at a
bootleg fuel station at the Mozambique border, where the siphoning was not a
precise art, there were plenty spills, and, on these spills, people putting out
their cigarettes…
After my
assignment I had hoped to stick around in Malawi, ‘the warm heart of Africa’
and one of the least developed nations in the world to explore lake Malawi,
Malawian culture, and whatever else might catch my fancy. However, lack of fuel – a common
occurrence here – has ground this friendly country to a halt….
Petrol stations
were encircled by kilometre-long queues for fuel. People slept overnight in their cars, in the hope of a drop
of diesel. “You have come to Malawi at a bad time”, I was told…
The reason? No “forex” – or foreign currency. Democratically elected president Bingu
Wa Mutharika had recently expelled the British Ambassador, and hence Malawi’s
primary donor. Papers were full of
his refusal to apologise to the new Zambian president who he had also expelled
before he was elected.
Additionally, he was on bad terms with Mozambique, through which he was
supposedly building a canal to the sea, to improve the trading fortunes of this
landlocked country. Earlier in the
year he had deported tobacco dealers for not paying his minimum prices. Actually, the President’s only friend
in the area is Robert Mugabe.
In the meantime,
while hours of parliament time are devoted to topics like a law criminalising
public farting, only 10% of Malawians have access to grid electricity. The majority cook on woodfire stoves,
three times a day, the equivalent of bringing the barbeque indoors– and as
hazardous to their health as smoking 20 cigarettes per day.
When the sweet
smell of diesel finally filled the hot air again for a short while, I heard a
loudspeaker in the distance. Uh Oh.
Just a few months earlier, fuel shortages had led to the July anti-government
demonstrations, when 19 people were killed by police. Then I made out what they were saying. “Jesus loves you”. “There is only one God”.
“It is God’s
will” is a common refrain in peace-loving Malawi - the only country among the world’s
ten poorest never to have had a revolution. No, I wanted to tell them, it is
not God’s will that you have no fuel, no electricity, and dodgy internet
connection.
In my last few
hours in Balaka, I ran into Malawi’s most famous singer of “rock bottom African
reggae”, Lucius Banda, and put this to him. He told me how in 2004 the same
time President Mutharika was elected, he had been elected MP for Balaka. When Mutharika then invented his own
party, Banda declined his invitation to join, instead proposing a law that
would allow for impeachment of a president. The singer-turned-politician was
immediately accused of forging his primary school certificate, and emprisoned. Fearing
the safety of his family, he apologised, and is now expelled from
politics. Instead he sings subversive
songs, and writes occasional letters to the president – he promises one at the
end of this month. Our chance meeting was all I got of Malawian culture. Unfortunately,
with Malawi’s fuel shortages, bad infrastructure, and poverty – he could be
singing the same tune for some time to come…
SUPPORTED BY SIMON CUMBERS MEDIA FUND.
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