MALAWI

I have spent the last week in Malawi – partly business, partly holiday (well the weekend!)

Firstly a few observations about the 14 hour journey.

1. A good tip for anyone making the same journey – don’t do it in an unleaded petrol car! Each time we stopped at a petrol station in Zambia the attendant kept telling us that we would find unleaded at the next stop – we never did! So, when we got desperate we spoke to the lady in the BP garage, who was telling us it was fine to put Premium Leaded in our Unleaded car. Then it turned into a Premium Leaded Anonymous meeting.

Here is the conversation with the Zambian drivers on garage forecourt (this is the honest truth!)

Garage Attendant: Sir, it is definitely ok to put Premium in your car – everyone who has an unleaded car round here does it.

Driver 1: She’s right – my car is unleaded petrol and I have just put a tank of Premium in

Driver 2: Even me – look at my new motorbike. It’s unleaded; I’ve just put Premium in.

Driver 3: Sir, it’s true! I’ve had this car for two years and I’ve never put anything but Premium in it and I am supposed to be putting unleaded in it.

So my name is Richard and I put 10 litres of Premium petrol in an unleaded petrol car (it was THQ’s car!) It took us the 120 kms to Chipata on the Malawian border without any problems, where we filled with unleaded. As with many other things, unleaded petrol seems more readily available in Malawi compared to Zambia

2. The mileage signs in Zambia and Malawi are about as accurate as England’s penalty takers.

3. The road from Nyimba to Chipata in the Eastern Province of Zambia is one of the worst main roads I have even been on in my life. Forget about speed traps, road humps, speed camera, rumble strips and all the fancy road safety gadgets and lights we have in the UK; if you want to slow traffic down put about a zillion billion pot holes in the road!!! It comes to something when you choose to drive on the dirt track on the side of the highway rather than the tar road.

4.. The roads in Malawi are much better, the signs are much better, the policeman are much more efficient and the cars look safer and don’t have 500 people sitting in the back of them.


So, a few observations about Malawi

Malawi is like Scotland in miniature. It has beautiful hills, lakes / lochs and today (Thursday) it is blooming freezing. I am staying with the General (David not Eva) Burrows and his wife Jean. They have served overseas for 35 years in Pakistan, Tanzania and now Malawi. This whole Chikankata adventure has really opened my eyes to so many things including the different people serving in TSA. It’s a great movement, with some great people.

I had three meetings on Thursday and Friday – one at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Again, I was surprised. I expected the hospital to be much more derelict and poverty ridden but again it was in better shape than our own central hospital (UTH) in Lusaka. Blantyre, as you would expect, has a very Scottish flavour and I visited the Presbyterian Cathedral and Mission in the centre of town.

Over the weekend we made a trip to Lake Malawi. What a beautiful place. It reminded me a little bit of Loch Lomond but again the mountains were a little smaller. It was a really nice setting and we very much enjoyed the company of the Burrows and Nakaanga. On the way back we stopped at a mountain top hotel for lunch at Zomba which had spectacular views. Malawi is much more geared to tourists than Zambia and there a far more throwbacks and reminders of its colonial past.

So far as I can see so far, Malawi is much better placed that Zambia in many ways and I am impressed with how they are organizing themselves. Malawians seem to have got it together much more that the Zambians. I must admit I expected to Malawi to be much poorer than Zambia but what I have seen it is definitely not. I am sure Malawi has similar problems to Zambia but Malawi has better shops, more selection in the stores there is less street kids, more stone houses, nice restaurants, bigger companies and is generally cleaner and brighter, I could go on but you get the picture.

That said, there seems to be more of a reliance on NGOs in Malawi (apparently 53% of national income is aid money) and maybe the culture of being poorer but trying to be more self-supportive is better one. It’s an interesting debate.

Heidie was also in Botswana on a train the trainers training course until the Saturday and when she joined up with me by flying Air Malawi (or Air Malarky as some people call it). She was pleasantly surprised by the service and enjoyed being taken through the VIP entrance on arrival at Blantyre Airport.