Induction cannonball, football and volleyball

Since I signed out from my previous blog, I’ve probably accumulated more factual knowledge about Malawi and its health programme ( incorporating mine) than I have in the entire time I’ve known I’d be going away to do this project. The brainstorming has persisted unrelentingly with some extremely dreary administrative sessions interspersed in our schedule. Thankfully, the closure of daily events was religiously stuck to at a strict 5.30pm. Were it not for the intervening evenings, I don’t think we would have lasted long here. Yesterday saw the first kickabout in the African heat. Even though I certainly am no alien to it, remembering my heydays in Mauritius, it still hit me like a cannonball trying to float! I stared at the volume of sweat I could produce in pure disbelief. The limp that ensued was a reminder that I shouldn’t let myself slip into complacent heat-induced beer-drinking laziness. Today’s football was an answer to that...but I have to admit I’m only barely standing at the moment. But then again, the game went on for some 2 hours! Back to last night was another highlight which appears to animate this part of the capital every Wednesday. Like any curious tourists, we did not miss it: the local volleyball challenge. Some 6-8 teams from around the area (the majority being Muzungus- I’ll come back to that) battled it out from 6pm to later than 10pm, with all their energy, and to think that we’re bang in the middle of the week here. Crazy! I have to say it is a great spectator sport, when you can just sit in the open air, shirt half open with a bottle of Kuche Kuche in your hand. Sweet!
Now that I have reassured you that I am relaxing and having fun too here, let me just share with you some of the fascinating (although in a sad way at times) facts that I’ve been learning all these days.
Firstly, on an etymological level (which many of you realise is a great interest of mine), the origin of the term Muzungu (Caucasians for those not familiar with it yet) revealed itself to me in what was probably the most entertaining lecture we had. This guy, Samu Samu, local historian and outspoken critic of colonial abuses gave us an anecdote to illustrate his interpretation: “Trickster”. So in what was a proper guilt trip for over half of my colleagues, he told us how Shaka Zulu was tricked into giving up all his land to the British in exchange for an immortality potion. That turned out to be simply hair dye which made his hair all black again, so that he looked younger. After that the British said that every time he had the product, he should hand more of his land over. In the end, they pretended to strike a charitable deal by telling him that he could have all his surface land back in exchange for everything deeper than 6ft. Shaka Zulu obviously thought he was the overall winner in that nothing useful could lie 6ft under and concluded the deal. The result of that today is the Muzungu ownership of most of Southern Africa’s mineral mines!
Next on a more sombre note, these are a few hard (and harsh) facts to shed some light on my mission- Malawi’s health and education statistics:
1 doctor per 53 000 inhabitants (cf 1: 300-400 in Europe)/ 1 nurse per 3006 inhabitants
---that's less than 100 doctors in the country (excluding expats)
4 central hospitals and 6 district hospitals for a population of 13million
Life expectancy of ~40yrs
HIV rate of 12% (down from 14%)
40% of Malawi budget funded by donor organisations and governments
Free education only since 1994. 30% complete primary school.
20% enrol for secondary education, 5% for tertiary.
Student: teacher ratio 1:100 primary (only 1:120 if taken for qualified teachers)
Attrition rate of teachers (from death, retirement, move to greener pastures)almost = training rate.
Literacy rate 60%
Of course this is not meant to depress you but just put my work here in context for you- as I am here for work, not just a long sunny holiday! The work of VSO is really starting to inspire me more and more, especially since learning about their concrete successes here in less than 10 years. They place an emphasis on capacity building and empowerment, which very much silenced my fears about causing dependency in a system that might collapse once we all leave. Their support structures are also extremely well coordinated (possibly a bit too pampered- but we’re Muzungus after all!! I’ve resigned to accepting that I’m an honorary one now!) and consequently the individual projects of most volunteers have turned out to be mini-successes. There is no doubt a lot more work to be done, before we can even start contemplating a Malawi that’s free from poverty, serious health issues and under-education. However the current work seems to be moving convincingly in the right direction and for the sake of illustration, DFID (department for international development) and the WHO now consider Malawi one of the few countries to be on track to meet the Millenium Development Goals by the end of the year.
So there is hope.. a realistic one, and I, for one, will approach my mission over here with as much of it as I can possibly muster. Not long before it all starts.
Will keep you posted as and when internet connection appears.


PS: the newly added photos are just a couple of quirky shots the tourist in me couldn't help noticing! Happy Happy!!