2 minutes greeting each person in the office every morning 2 minutes greeting each person in the officer every afternoon 2 minutes wishing everyone safe travels and good night after work 1 hour- the allotted amount of time that people are late for meetings 45 minutes reading the newspaper while you wait for the meeting to begin. 3-5 days - the amount of time meetings get delayed due to unplanned other meetings. 2-3 weeks for documents to get completed due to delayed meetings. 1 month - the amount of time it takes to get an all staff meeting for the introduction of google calendar to help with the failed meetings 3 months to find fresh milk in Mzuzu 1 week waiting for the milkman to deliver milk 30 seconds - the amount of time it takes to miss the phone call from the milkman who is passing by the house 2 weeks (so far) waiting again for the milkman to deliver milk 45 minutes to walk to the market 1 hour to walk to various shops to get everything you need to eat for three days (vegetable market, meat market, bakery, mzungu market...) 45 minutes to walk back from the market 3 days before we need to walk back to the market for more food 5 hours to get the capital for NGO meetings 3 hours to go to Usisya by road for Area Development Council meetings 3 more hours to get from Usisya to Mtawa village fo AIDS support group meetings 1 hour to get to the District Office for meetings 1 month for a letter to make it across the ocean 2 months for a package to make it across the ocean 1 week to eat all of the chocolate which was in the package, 2 weeks with a little willpower 24 hours to take a flight from US to Malawi 2 months to find a house to live in in Mzuzu 1 month to wait (so far) for the house to be fixed up for living in. 10 months to get settled in the house before another 24 hour flight back across the ocean. 1 year to hopefully create sustainable development ... as long as African Time doesn't get in the way too much.
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Africa, as a continent, has lots to offer tourists from the Western World- Breathtaking landscape, miles of games reserves full of large wild animals, tropical climate, culture, art, affordable pricing ... Malawi, while it does have all of these things, cannot seem to get itself into the game. South Africa gets roughly 9 million tourist annually, Malawi only about 700,000. Yes, it is a smaller country; but it is safer, more affordable, and the people are amazingly accommodating. In fact, they will give you directions even if they do not know the way. One challenge is that the only successful businesses I have found are owned by expats, and when turned over to locals- they always seem to drop two or three stars in quality. I do not blame the Malawians for this, but rather the expats that leave a business to people with no concept of how to run it properly, and the government for not training entrepreneurship or business in its schools. How is someone supposed to make a budget without getting past standard six in school, or accommodate the needs of Westerners without understanding the level of luxury which they are accustomed to? I recently travelled to Nkhata Bay and found the lodges which I frequented in my Peace Corps days were either no longer running or run down. A once safe and vibrant volunteer lodge was opening the door to drunk beach boys who hassled us to smoke weed with them and buy them drinks. Another one was completely closed after the owner moved back to her home country. I heard from locals that it went through several owners after she left- each one less qualified than the one before - and eventually just stopped running altogether. The only functional lodges and restaurants I saw were still in the hands of expats, who are fantastic people, but shows just how little Malawians get to benefit for the beauty of the land they were born on. Even the game reserves, where simply having hippos and lions sells itself, don't seem to be able to stay afloat. Vwaza Marsh, has changed ownership four times in the last six years and seems to barely do well enough to pay the guards. Additionally, all of the game reserves are under constant threat of poachers- due to the inability to have enough rangers or outreach programs to keep the reserves protected. So, even those places where the animals are- may one day cease to have that because of poor management. There are some game reserves doing well (mostly in the South) but they are once again run by the expat community. The only Malawians that do benefit from tourism seem to be the artists. There are many fantastic people in Malawi who paint, make wood carvings, or sow clothing from local fabric. All of these things are very labor intensive, but they can bring in more money than most jobs in Malawi could ever provide. The shame is that these artists have very few venues through which they can get their products to tourists. In Mzuzu there is no culture or art market so the artists hang out by the fancy grocery store and hassle any mzungu they see passing by. They are not bad people, they do not wish to beg or steal money, they just want to sell some art so that they can buy food or pay their children's school fees. On the other hand, if they were to learn salesmanship and be provided with a space which tourists could browse freely- then they could be self-sustaining and respected for the craftsmen they are. I remember in Ghana I went to several markets which were full or artists making Kente Cloth or wood carvings. They were in the Lonely Planet books, visited by thousands of tourists annually, and became sustainable in tourism economies. So what is Malawi to do? How can the people of Malawi begin benefiting from the one obvious resource they have - tourism?
'There was an accident'... 'hurry, they are bringing the boy'... 'Crocodile'... These are the words I remember hearing when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer at Usisya Health Centre in 2010. 'My translation has be wrong, there aren't crocodiles in Usisya'...Moments later I see a man running and carrying a small boy screaming in pain. Malawian children rarely cry, so the sound was both unfamiliar and terrifying. When you hear someone crying in so much pain your heart starts racing and your mind immediately begins searching for solutions. Should I go get the ambulance driver, should I offer my assistance... Helpless, and with no real skills which could help, I sat at my house and waited- if I was needed I would be called. Even the staff at the clinic could do little more than basic first aid - tie a tourniquet and get the ambulance ready. The district office could never seem to keep a doctor at the clinic for more than a few weeks, no one with money wanted to live in a rural village without electricity or a market. So, without any real medical training all they could do was load the boy in a Land Cruiser-turned ambulance and begin the 3 hour journey to Mzuzu Central Hospital. Later, I heard the boy survived, but the details of how he came to be attacked by a crocodile were lost in translation. Until recently, we were interviewing Temwa beneficiaries and met the boy, Robert, who was now a teenager. He lost his leg that day and now has a prosthetic which you can't see under his school uniform. I wouldn't even have known he was missing the limb except for the slight limp he has as he runs back to class after our conversation. He told us how he lost his leg... He was fishing by a river, about an hours walk south of Usisya Health Center, when the crocodile came out of the water and grabbed him by the leg. Luckily some men were around and grabbed the young boy's arms. Robert then became the rope in a human tug-of-war as the men and crocodile both pulled for the life of the boy. Luckily the men won and quickly ran him to the clinic. He then remembers going to Mzuzu where they had to amputate the leg because they told him there was no way to reattach it. I don't know if his leg would have been saved had there been a doctor in Usisya, but it was fantastic to learn that the boy managed to make it this far in life. Robert is now 17, in the 12th grade, and lives with his uncle in Luvu Village. He just finished writing exams and hopes to pass with high marks so that he can one day become a doctor. He said that the day he lost his leg he saw what doctors can do to save lives and he wants to do the same for the people of Malawi. However, he cannot afford to go to college, he wouldn't even be finishing school now if it weren't for Temwa paying his school fees (about 15$ USD a term), and because of the hunger crisis he is only eating one meal a day (which is just nsmia and small fish). While he survived the attack, life in the village is difficult and poses new challenges with each passing day. But today he is full of dreams and future plans. Robert hopes to one day own a bike so that he can get around better and people wont notice his limp as much. He also plans to become an entrepreneur and save the money needed to become a doctor by selling fish at a shop in Nkhata Bay. It is inspiring to see a young man with so little, have so much hope for his future. I hope he will find the funds to go to college, and that he will become the doctor he dreams to be. |
Bonnie HarveyCurrently working in northern Malawi as Programs and Evaluations Coordinator for Temwa Archives
June 2019
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