All of this, of course, again right next to my office ... gladly, I worked from home as I was waiting, of course in vain, for the scheduled petrol delivery to be made to the filling station outside my house. Tomorrow, I will make sure to wear a chitenge on the way to work as I do not even possess a skirt long enough not to be considered 'mini' by these idiots ...
http://www.malawivoice.com/?p=23478
As background information, women were not allowed to wear trousers in Malawi during Banda's rule 1965 - 1994. Men were not allowed to wear beards or long hair, visitors were shaved upon arrival to Lilongwe Airport. Unbelievable, and ridiculous. Do we really need to go back?
Dienstag, 17. Januar 2012
Sonntag, 15. Januar 2012
This is rather old, but hilarious nonetheless, and sadly all still true ...
This weeks NEWS IN BRIEF
by Scott Gray, posted on Lilongwe Chat in August 2011
A survey conducted this week concluded that Malawi is still the best place in the world to live. This conclusion was supported by the fact that people are queuing up to be here.
As a follow up to the new Malawi flag, a new name is being considered for Malawi. At this stage Machina seems to be a very likely choice. Traditional dancers will be replaced by acrobats and karate while the Dragon dance will be the new Gule Wam Kulu. A multi million dollar Chewanese Cultural Center is also being proposed.
Malawi has been nominated for a Nobel Prize for successfully implementing a national policy to totally eliminate the use of fossil fuels. However, it is being argued that much of the benefits of reduced use of fossil fuels have been offset by the excessive amounts of hot air and pollution emitted during parliament sessions.
In an interesting turn of events at the end of last week, the entire ‘cabinet was dissolved’. Sources say they were forced to drink tap water from Lilongwe Water Board.
The long term strategy behind the Zero Deficit Budget has been explained to the public as follows :
Zero Donors = Zero Forex
Zero Forex = Zero Fuel
Zero Fuel = Zero Business
(Zero Business X 16.5% VAT) = Zero Government Revenue
(Zero Business = Zero Profit) X 30% Corporate Tax = Zero Government Revenue
(Zero Business = Zero Employees) X 30% PAYE = Zero Government Revenue
(Zero Government Revenue = Zero Government Spending)
Therefore (Zero Government Revenue Less (-) Zero Government Spending) = ZERO DEFICIT BUDGET
ZERO DEFICIT BUDGET = Zero Education, Zero Health Services, Zero Fertiliser Subsidy and Zero Food
Zero Education, Zero Health Services, Zero Fertiliser Subsidy and Zero Food = HUMANITARAN CRISIS
HUMANITARAN CRISIS = DONORS
DONORS = Forex
Problem Solved.
*Please note the above figures have been rounded off to the nearest Zero for simplification of this otherwise complicated formula.
*To get a better indication of the forecasted final DONOR figure, simply add a few Zeros.
* Also note that if you are using an outdated version of Excel some of the cells cannot be formatted to deal with some of these large numbers, however, the final answer is roughly the same.
by Scott Gray, posted on Lilongwe Chat in August 2011
A survey conducted this week concluded that Malawi is still the best place in the world to live. This conclusion was supported by the fact that people are queuing up to be here.
As a follow up to the new Malawi flag, a new name is being considered for Malawi. At this stage Machina seems to be a very likely choice. Traditional dancers will be replaced by acrobats and karate while the Dragon dance will be the new Gule Wam Kulu. A multi million dollar Chewanese Cultural Center is also being proposed.
Malawi has been nominated for a Nobel Prize for successfully implementing a national policy to totally eliminate the use of fossil fuels. However, it is being argued that much of the benefits of reduced use of fossil fuels have been offset by the excessive amounts of hot air and pollution emitted during parliament sessions.
In an interesting turn of events at the end of last week, the entire ‘cabinet was dissolved’. Sources say they were forced to drink tap water from Lilongwe Water Board.
The long term strategy behind the Zero Deficit Budget has been explained to the public as follows :
Zero Donors = Zero Forex
Zero Forex = Zero Fuel
Zero Fuel = Zero Business
(Zero Business X 16.5% VAT) = Zero Government Revenue
(Zero Business = Zero Profit) X 30% Corporate Tax = Zero Government Revenue
(Zero Business = Zero Employees) X 30% PAYE = Zero Government Revenue
(Zero Government Revenue = Zero Government Spending)
Therefore (Zero Government Revenue Less (-) Zero Government Spending) = ZERO DEFICIT BUDGET
ZERO DEFICIT BUDGET = Zero Education, Zero Health Services, Zero Fertiliser Subsidy and Zero Food
Zero Education, Zero Health Services, Zero Fertiliser Subsidy and Zero Food = HUMANITARAN CRISIS
HUMANITARAN CRISIS = DONORS
DONORS = Forex
Problem Solved.
*Please note the above figures have been rounded off to the nearest Zero for simplification of this otherwise complicated formula.
*To get a better indication of the forecasted final DONOR figure, simply add a few Zeros.
* Also note that if you are using an outdated version of Excel some of the cells cannot be formatted to deal with some of these large numbers, however, the final answer is roughly the same.
Freitag, 14. Oktober 2011
First months in the warm heart of Africa
Dear all,
I cannot believe I’ve been in Malawi for almost three months already – so much has happened that time flew by. So let me try and briefly recount the major events, and take my promise that I will write on a more regular basis from now on. I also uploaded some pictures, you can find them here, here, and here.
On the day of my arrival, there were peaceful anti-governmental demonstrations taking place, which sadly turned violent, leading to 20 people dying from police guns. People had good reason to demonstrate as Malawi is facing quite a number of problems, but I will get to that some other time.
Somehow, the protest actually came to my advantage as I my colleagues took extra special and quite amazing care of me. After spending the first night at Annie’s Lodge, my colleague Cäcilia took me in and I ended up staying with her for five weeks. As my GIZ coordinator, Michael, was on vacation when I arrived, I travelled north to Mzuzu after three days to spend my first week with my colleague Elke who works in the Mzuzu equivalent of my office. I enjoyed a highly interesting introduction to the health zones, getting the chance to join a supervision visit to a number of Malawian health centers and hospitals – interesting, but also quite shocking. Again though, more on the Malawian health system some other time. Elke and my other Mzuzu-based colleague Sophos also made sure I had a fabulous first few days, taking me out at night, spoiling me with wonderful food, and taking me to the lake at Nkhata Bay.
On the way back to Lilongwe, a surprise came by phone, with Marisa calling to ask if I wanted to join in on a visit to Kasungu National Park. So I was dropped in Kasungu (which conveniently was on the way) at my colleague Jörn’s place, where we were later joined by Cäcilia and Tatjana. The next morning, we drove to the National Park, and spent a wonderful two days hanging out at the Lodge, watching the Hippos at the nearby dam, taking a walking safari around the lake and a game drive around the park. Unfortunately, the elephants hid well from us, but we got to see some antilopes and many, many birds.
My first weeks in Lilongwe and at my new office went smoothly, my colleagues at the Zonal office are very nice and welcomed me warmly. I was introduced to some people at the ministry, all my colleagues from GIZ, taken around town. Due to the security situation (demonstrations … ) and since my office is located in a ‘critical area’, Michael convinced GIZ that I needed to have a car to go to work. So far, they haven’t taken it away from me :) However, the arrangement is that it needs to ‘sleep’ in the GIZ office, so I ride my bike there in the mornings (10 minutes), pick up the car, drive to work, and so on. Still, I am happy with the arrangement as I get to explore the city a little, can do my shopping on the way …
Speaking of shopping, as far as groceries are concerned, you can get almost everything you want in Lilongwe, although some things at horrendous prices. Cheese, for instance, goes at 7 Euros per 250g piece of processed cheese that is barely recognizable as such … Restaurants have European prices, but unfortunately, the food is usually not worth its money. In terms of food, Malawians live primarily of Nsima, a maize porridge that to me tastes like nothing, but they love it. A huge portion of Nsima is served with a homeopathic portion of vegetables and chicken or beef. Other than that, it’s chicken or beef and chips (French fries) or rice, always and everywhere – from local restaurants to expensive hotels. There is also a lot of Indian and Chinese food, as many Indians and Chinese live in Malawi, a handful of good Italian restaurants (many major businesses in Malawi belong to Italians, strangely), and some other international restaurants.
In general, Lilongwe is a very strange town – built after South African model, it stretched out very far, with even a nature reserve in the middle of the city. At a population of almost 1 million, you do not feel the size at all. To move around comfortably, you need a car. Cars, however, are extremely expensive (even the 20 year old crappy Japanese cars), and considering my meager salary, a car is not in the picture. Fuel is a problem currently anyway (another one of these issues I will talk about some other time). Minibuses run frequently during the day from outside our house, though, and taxis are also available, so we (my housemates have no cars either) get along. As Malawi is so close to the equator, the sun sets almost exactly at 6 pm every day. At night (i.e., after dark), Lilongwe is practically dead. There is a large – and as far as I can yet tell, overall very nice – expat community and which creates their own leisure time activities. And there are a couple of restaurants, bars, and night clubs to go to where you also meet the small Malawian upper and middle class. The ordinary Malawian, however, goes to bed when it gets darks, so that streets are empty at night, no public transportation (!), very little restaurants, bars and other public meeting points as we know it from home or other countries. During the day, however, Lilongwe is very busy, and I am lucky to work in the middle of it all, in Old Town, right next to the local market and shopping.
In September, I moved to another house and am now living with three nice girls, two of them Germans – Marisa and Jacqueline – who work for GIZ as well, and one Spanish girl – Iratxe – who is leaving soon, though. Then there is Rusty, our watchdog, and Bridget with her husband Stanley, who live in the staff quarters on our compound. Bridget is the cleaning lady at the GIZ office and also works in our house for three afternoons a week. We enjoy not having to do the dishes and clean the floors, and very much appreciate that she does our laundry as we do not own a washing machine! Apart from the three of them, we have a day guard and gardener, Bamus, and a night guard, Madson. Our house is huge and the compound even bigger, though we do not make much use of the garden which is completely dry at the moment anyway.
In Malawi, you do not speak of winter and summer, but of the dry and the rainy season. Winter and summer would not make much sense anyway as the coolest month is July, and the warmest month November already. By ‘the coolest month’ I actually mean freezing, I slept in my sleeping bag with my fleece pullover on for the first four weeks! Houses are not isolated and there is no such thing as heating, although some houses have fireplaces – in Mzuzu, Elke put hers on every night, very Alpine feeling :) At the end of September, it started getting hot again, and we are currently at 30 to 35 degrees Celsius every day. The dry season starts around May and usually runs through the middle of November, with no rain whatsoever, at least in Central Malawi – even though Malawi is comparably small, the landscape is very diverse, from 400 to 3000 m in altitude, and climate varies a lot from region to region. Surprising to everyone, we had the first and quite heavy rain last week though, and it rained again yesterday. Let’s hope that these rains were a warning only!
As part of our in-country orientation, GIZ sent us to Mua Mission for a wonderful, fun, and highly interesting five day cultural course with Father Boucher, a Canadian white father and anthropologist who has been living in Malawi for 45 years, was initiated into a local tribe and even became a local chief. He has installed a museum on Malawian culture, arts and crafts workshops, runs the mission, supports the local communities, quite impressive overall. Take a look at http://www.kungoni.org/! On the way to and from Mua, we spend a day at the lovely beach in Senga Bay.
Work in Malawi started with a lot of meetings and workshops, some of them outside Lilongwe. We spent three days in Mangochi for a Lessons Learned workshop of all Zonal Health Support Offices – there are five in Malawi, I work in one of the two Central Zones. The workshop took place at a nice hotel right by the beach, Nkhopola Lodge. Surprisingly, it was quite productive, though ;) Just a week later, we spent two days in Senga Bay at yet another nice hotel for the Zonal SWAp Review meeting. SWAp stands for sector-wide approach – I will explain what it means some other time.
Our travelling on the weekends continued. We went to Ntchisi Forest Reserve in early September, one of the few spots of original rain forest that have not yet been deforested (another issue that I will come to at some later point in time). I did not even realize how much I missed trees, and we took a great hike up the mountain, enjoyed a spectacular view, saw some monkeys, and had a nice homemade meal at the Forest Lodge.
Long-anticipated highlight of the last week was the Lake of Stars festival (http://www.lakeofstars.org/), taking place at Nkhopola Lodge as well. Three days of great music, beach, camping, fun. Bands came mainly from Africa, but some British bands made it over to Malawi as well. Our favorite Malawian band Mafilika (http://www.myspace.com/mafilika) played as well!
Another trip will begin in about 10 hours, when we’ll start of to Domwe Island, a small and – apart from the camp – uninhabitated island in Lake Malawi for a long weekend. Malawi has great holiday regulations – whenever a holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the following Monday is free as well, and since Mother’s Day is a public holiday in Malawi, we get Monday off, yay :)
So enough for now, I need to pack. I hope you are all doing wonderful, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
Love,
Julia
I cannot believe I’ve been in Malawi for almost three months already – so much has happened that time flew by. So let me try and briefly recount the major events, and take my promise that I will write on a more regular basis from now on. I also uploaded some pictures, you can find them here, here, and here.
On the day of my arrival, there were peaceful anti-governmental demonstrations taking place, which sadly turned violent, leading to 20 people dying from police guns. People had good reason to demonstrate as Malawi is facing quite a number of problems, but I will get to that some other time.
Somehow, the protest actually came to my advantage as I my colleagues took extra special and quite amazing care of me. After spending the first night at Annie’s Lodge, my colleague Cäcilia took me in and I ended up staying with her for five weeks. As my GIZ coordinator, Michael, was on vacation when I arrived, I travelled north to Mzuzu after three days to spend my first week with my colleague Elke who works in the Mzuzu equivalent of my office. I enjoyed a highly interesting introduction to the health zones, getting the chance to join a supervision visit to a number of Malawian health centers and hospitals – interesting, but also quite shocking. Again though, more on the Malawian health system some other time. Elke and my other Mzuzu-based colleague Sophos also made sure I had a fabulous first few days, taking me out at night, spoiling me with wonderful food, and taking me to the lake at Nkhata Bay.
On the way back to Lilongwe, a surprise came by phone, with Marisa calling to ask if I wanted to join in on a visit to Kasungu National Park. So I was dropped in Kasungu (which conveniently was on the way) at my colleague Jörn’s place, where we were later joined by Cäcilia and Tatjana. The next morning, we drove to the National Park, and spent a wonderful two days hanging out at the Lodge, watching the Hippos at the nearby dam, taking a walking safari around the lake and a game drive around the park. Unfortunately, the elephants hid well from us, but we got to see some antilopes and many, many birds.
My first weeks in Lilongwe and at my new office went smoothly, my colleagues at the Zonal office are very nice and welcomed me warmly. I was introduced to some people at the ministry, all my colleagues from GIZ, taken around town. Due to the security situation (demonstrations … ) and since my office is located in a ‘critical area’, Michael convinced GIZ that I needed to have a car to go to work. So far, they haven’t taken it away from me :) However, the arrangement is that it needs to ‘sleep’ in the GIZ office, so I ride my bike there in the mornings (10 minutes), pick up the car, drive to work, and so on. Still, I am happy with the arrangement as I get to explore the city a little, can do my shopping on the way …
Speaking of shopping, as far as groceries are concerned, you can get almost everything you want in Lilongwe, although some things at horrendous prices. Cheese, for instance, goes at 7 Euros per 250g piece of processed cheese that is barely recognizable as such … Restaurants have European prices, but unfortunately, the food is usually not worth its money. In terms of food, Malawians live primarily of Nsima, a maize porridge that to me tastes like nothing, but they love it. A huge portion of Nsima is served with a homeopathic portion of vegetables and chicken or beef. Other than that, it’s chicken or beef and chips (French fries) or rice, always and everywhere – from local restaurants to expensive hotels. There is also a lot of Indian and Chinese food, as many Indians and Chinese live in Malawi, a handful of good Italian restaurants (many major businesses in Malawi belong to Italians, strangely), and some other international restaurants.
In general, Lilongwe is a very strange town – built after South African model, it stretched out very far, with even a nature reserve in the middle of the city. At a population of almost 1 million, you do not feel the size at all. To move around comfortably, you need a car. Cars, however, are extremely expensive (even the 20 year old crappy Japanese cars), and considering my meager salary, a car is not in the picture. Fuel is a problem currently anyway (another one of these issues I will talk about some other time). Minibuses run frequently during the day from outside our house, though, and taxis are also available, so we (my housemates have no cars either) get along. As Malawi is so close to the equator, the sun sets almost exactly at 6 pm every day. At night (i.e., after dark), Lilongwe is practically dead. There is a large – and as far as I can yet tell, overall very nice – expat community and which creates their own leisure time activities. And there are a couple of restaurants, bars, and night clubs to go to where you also meet the small Malawian upper and middle class. The ordinary Malawian, however, goes to bed when it gets darks, so that streets are empty at night, no public transportation (!), very little restaurants, bars and other public meeting points as we know it from home or other countries. During the day, however, Lilongwe is very busy, and I am lucky to work in the middle of it all, in Old Town, right next to the local market and shopping.
In September, I moved to another house and am now living with three nice girls, two of them Germans – Marisa and Jacqueline – who work for GIZ as well, and one Spanish girl – Iratxe – who is leaving soon, though. Then there is Rusty, our watchdog, and Bridget with her husband Stanley, who live in the staff quarters on our compound. Bridget is the cleaning lady at the GIZ office and also works in our house for three afternoons a week. We enjoy not having to do the dishes and clean the floors, and very much appreciate that she does our laundry as we do not own a washing machine! Apart from the three of them, we have a day guard and gardener, Bamus, and a night guard, Madson. Our house is huge and the compound even bigger, though we do not make much use of the garden which is completely dry at the moment anyway.
In Malawi, you do not speak of winter and summer, but of the dry and the rainy season. Winter and summer would not make much sense anyway as the coolest month is July, and the warmest month November already. By ‘the coolest month’ I actually mean freezing, I slept in my sleeping bag with my fleece pullover on for the first four weeks! Houses are not isolated and there is no such thing as heating, although some houses have fireplaces – in Mzuzu, Elke put hers on every night, very Alpine feeling :) At the end of September, it started getting hot again, and we are currently at 30 to 35 degrees Celsius every day. The dry season starts around May and usually runs through the middle of November, with no rain whatsoever, at least in Central Malawi – even though Malawi is comparably small, the landscape is very diverse, from 400 to 3000 m in altitude, and climate varies a lot from region to region. Surprising to everyone, we had the first and quite heavy rain last week though, and it rained again yesterday. Let’s hope that these rains were a warning only!
As part of our in-country orientation, GIZ sent us to Mua Mission for a wonderful, fun, and highly interesting five day cultural course with Father Boucher, a Canadian white father and anthropologist who has been living in Malawi for 45 years, was initiated into a local tribe and even became a local chief. He has installed a museum on Malawian culture, arts and crafts workshops, runs the mission, supports the local communities, quite impressive overall. Take a look at http://www.kungoni.org/! On the way to and from Mua, we spend a day at the lovely beach in Senga Bay.
Work in Malawi started with a lot of meetings and workshops, some of them outside Lilongwe. We spent three days in Mangochi for a Lessons Learned workshop of all Zonal Health Support Offices – there are five in Malawi, I work in one of the two Central Zones. The workshop took place at a nice hotel right by the beach, Nkhopola Lodge. Surprisingly, it was quite productive, though ;) Just a week later, we spent two days in Senga Bay at yet another nice hotel for the Zonal SWAp Review meeting. SWAp stands for sector-wide approach – I will explain what it means some other time.
Our travelling on the weekends continued. We went to Ntchisi Forest Reserve in early September, one of the few spots of original rain forest that have not yet been deforested (another issue that I will come to at some later point in time). I did not even realize how much I missed trees, and we took a great hike up the mountain, enjoyed a spectacular view, saw some monkeys, and had a nice homemade meal at the Forest Lodge.
Long-anticipated highlight of the last week was the Lake of Stars festival (http://www.lakeofstars.org/), taking place at Nkhopola Lodge as well. Three days of great music, beach, camping, fun. Bands came mainly from Africa, but some British bands made it over to Malawi as well. Our favorite Malawian band Mafilika (http://www.myspace.com/mafilika) played as well!
Another trip will begin in about 10 hours, when we’ll start of to Domwe Island, a small and – apart from the camp – uninhabitated island in Lake Malawi for a long weekend. Malawi has great holiday regulations – whenever a holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the following Monday is free as well, and since Mother’s Day is a public holiday in Malawi, we get Monday off, yay :)
So enough for now, I need to pack. I hope you are all doing wonderful, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
Love,
Julia
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