Real Issues

Towards zero HIV infection with male circumcision

2011-12-02T12:05:00.001-08:00

Picture yourself relaxing with a partner in some confined place. You only prepared for some nice time to relax. But you find emotions getting the better of you. Regardless of not knowing the partner’s sero-status, you have unprotected sex.

You are a man and you are not circumcised. Do you know that within a short period of you reflecting on the experience or seeing off the partner the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that causes the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (Aids), would get into your blood system?

According to a 2008 report, Male circumcision and risk for HIV transmission and other health conditions, which quotes several other pieces of research findings and published on the United States (US) based Centre for Disease Control (CDC) website, the foreskin provides conditions favouring the development.

“Compared with the dry external skin surface, the inner mucosa of the foreskin has less keratinisation (deposition of fibrous protein),” reads the report, quoting a 2004 report titled Neonatal circumcision: a review of the world’s oldest and most controversial operation.

“The foreskin has a higher density of target cells for HIV infection (Langerhans cells) and is more susceptible to HIV infection than other penile tissue in laboratory studies.”

In its posting on December 20, 2005, the journal Science Daily website states that researchers at Yale School of Medicine demonstrated that, contrary to what was thought that they alert the immune system about invasion by pathogens, Langerhans cells dampen the skin’s reaction to infection and inflammation.

Thus, engaging in unprotected sex with an HIV positive partner renders an uncircumcised male vulnerable to HIV infection.Fatima Zulu, Project Coordinator for Johns Hopkins at the Malawi College of Medicine, says an uncircumcised male has the ground prepared for contracting the HIV even before penetration.

“When a man who is not circumcised experiences an erection, the tip of the foreskin stretches. That leads to cracks in the foreskin which create a highway for such a man to contract the virus,” says Zulu.

“That aside, there is a belief by most men across Africa that they are real men if they ejaculate faster. Ejaculating faster mostly goes with dry sex, and dry sex is dangerous for an uncircumcised man.”

She says with the less keratin deposits within it, the foreskin stands higher chances of suffering abrasions during dry sex. Consequently, she adds, the man with such a condition has greater chances of contracting the virus as the foreskin provides a portal of entries.

The report further states that with the foreskin on, the sac between the unretracted foreskin and the glands penis provides a conducive environment for the survival of pathogens, including HIV.

“Viruses often survive in a moisturised environment as a result they stay alive longer,” adds Zulu. “Unfortunately, the longer one keeps the viruses under their foreskin, the more they give out chances for the virus to penetrate into their body.”

She says that all this would never be the case to men who underwent male circumcision, which is defined in the report as the surgical removal of someor all of the foreskin from the penis. But can that bring down the HIV infection rate?

According to the report on the CDC website, several research findings have pointed to circumcision as an effective way of taming the spread of the HIV.

“In these studies, men who had been randomly assigned to the circumcision group had a 60 percent (South Africa), 53 percent (Kenya) and 51 percent (Uganda) lower incidence of HIV infection compared with men assigned to the wait-list group to be circumcised at the end of the study,” adds the report.

“In all [the] three studies, a few men who had been assigned to be circumcised did not undergo the procedure, and vice versa. When the data were reanalysed to account for these occurrences, men who had been circumcised had a 76 percent (South Africa), 60 percent (Kenya) and 55 percent (Uganda) reduction in risk for HIV infection compared with those who were not circumcised.”

Unfortunately, the reduction in the infection trend is one way. Zulu says that circumcision only reduces chances of a circumcised man contracting the virus from an HIV positive woman.

“This means that if a man is HIV positive and is circumcised, he will still pass on the virus to a woman who is HIV negative,” she says.

However, the situation should still count as an effective measure of halting the spread of the HIV considering what society holds culturally. It is considered normal for a man to have many women but not vice versa.

This is what has led to several civil rights activists to blame the man for the devastating rate at which the virus has spread. Many say the man gets the virus from other women and dumps it in his own.

Going by such arguments, a man who underwent male circumcision should stand fewer chances of getting the virus from outside his marital confines and dumping it within them.

“But circumcision should not be cause for being promiscuous,” warns Dr Mary Shawa, Principal Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) responsible for Nutrition and HIV/Aids.

“Research findings indicate that circumcision only reduces chances of contracting the virus by 60 percent. There are 40 percent chances for a man who underwent male circumcision to contract the virus.

“This is why we encourage the usual means of preventing contraction of HIV; namely abstinence, being faithful and using a condom even to those who underwent male circumcision.”

While research findings have backed male circumcision to reduce chances of one contracting the virus, Zulu says there is need for related research to establish whether male circumcision can lead to reduced infections by way of satisfying the woman sexually so she does not increase her chances of getting the virus by seeking such satisfaction elsewhere as some circumcised men have claimed.

MISA MALAWI STATEMENT ON DEATH THREATS OVER CHASOWA STORY

2011-10-13T07:03:00.000-07:00

13th October, 2011

For Immediate Release
The Malawi Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) is disturbed with reports that Nation Publications Limited (NPL) Journalist Phillip Pemba is receiving death threats over an article that revealed that Robert Chasowa had dealings with the police before he was murdered.

We are also disturbed with reports that the police summoned Weekend Nation
Editor George Kasakula and Malawi News Deputy Editor Innocent Chitosi of
Blantyre Newspapers Limited – papers that carried detailed insights into Chasowa’s death and dealings with the police – for questioning over recordings of the articles.

Pemba’s article, published in Weekend Nation of October 8, gave an insight into what could have led to Chasowa’s death and exposed his dealings with police to help stop the planned August 17 protests against government.

“One of the callers said they know where I stay and another one asked why
I mentioned the name of Inspector General of Police (IG Peter Mukhito) in my story. He said I will die over the story. They said I would have been safe if I left out the names of the police officers involved,” Pemba is quoted as saying in The Nation of Wednesday, October 12.

MISA Malawi considers these threats as well as the summoning of editors
Kasakula and Chitosi as deliberate attempts to muzzle journalists and instil fear in the media sorority. As always stated in our statements, these acts instil fear and curtail meaningful dialogue and debate on pertinent issues that affect our country, the murder of student Robert Chasowa for example.

These developments are barbaric, retrogressive and superfluous in an open and democratic Malawi and require collective condemnation.

We, therefore, call upon the authorities to openly condemn and call for thorough investigations into such threats. We also call upon the police to support and work with media in uncovering the truth about Chasowa’s death and not to intimidate and gag journalists. The media helps the country expose various ills that affect our country and summoning and intimidating them over the Chasowa article will only raise suspicions than answers.

We applaud the police for launching an investigation into Chasowa’s death.
MISA Malawi is, however, calling on IG Peter Mukhito to openly denounce such barbaric acts and for the law enforcers to protect journalists and indeed members of the public who are constantly receiving threats from unknown persons.

IG Peter Mukhito and Southern Region Police Commissioner Rodney Jose, who were both mentioned in the article by Pemba and subjects of the death threats, have chosen not to comment on the threats levelled against Pemba.

The article by Pemba indicated that Commissioner Jose took late Chasowa and his colleague to Lilongwe on August 7 to meet Mukhito over the deal to foil the August 17 demonstrations. The story revealed that the IG gave them Chivas Whisky and MK50, 000 each. Jose confirmed taking the group to Lilongwe to meet Mukhito.

MISA Malawi is, thus, appealing to the IG and Commissioner Jose to openly denounce the death threats on Pemba and summoning of editors whose papers published the insightful articles. Malawi Police is supposed to protect and ensure peace and security and should, therefore, condemn and distance itself from these death threats which are most likely tarnishing the image of the service and its top brass.

Finally, we appeal to journalists to be professional, alert and to openly report threats of any nature to relevant authorities.

Signed
Anthony Kasunda
MISA MALAWI CHAIRPERSON

The Dead Cannot Talk

2011-10-03T00:40:00.000-07:00

By Francis Chuma

Your body was laid to rest the other day
We interred your remains:
The clothes you wore
Your shoes, the wrist watch
Still sticking to tell us endlessly
The changing of the seasons
The signs of the times

We buried your football skills
But we failed to bury your soul.
Your spirit lives on
Your passion for the wellbeing of our nation
Your zeal to stop the decomposition of our freedom
No zikwanje can hack to death
No stiletto can pierce to oblivion
No blow can hurl into the void of non-existence

The morning we found you
After the cloak of night opened up to shed light on the truth
The lie on which you lay bore no marks
No signs to shore up the official explanation
They say you left farewell notes
Yet the deed is not keeping with the strength of your spirit

Your pursuit for the truth
Your inability to suffer in silence
Threatened to derail the construction of private palaces
Shook the foundation best laid plans to keep it in family
But the Truth does not die.

They find comfort in the fact that the dead cannot talk
Cannot dispute the authenticity of farewell notes
Cannot disclose the duress under which the notes were written
It is sad the dead cannot talk

There will be no closure in this death
No end to the mourning
Each morning on the long queues of fuel
We will mourn
Each time bogus salaries are splashed on spouses for charity work
We will mourn
Each time we find no medicine in hospitals
We will mourn
Each time they threaten a journalist with death
We will mourn
Each time they set ablaze the abode of an activist
We will mourn
Each time they raze the markets
We will mourn
Each time appointments are made from one ethnic group only
We will mourn

Go well Dear Friend
We will ignore the farewell notes
They have failed to kill your spirit
These idiots.

Published under The Sunday Times Column: Mouthpiece on October 2, 2011.

International Development, Andrew Mitchell, to Malawi president, Bingu wa Mutharika.

2011-05-20T00:30:00.001-07:00

Dear Mr President

We recently agreed that Malawi should be one of 27 priority countries for future UK development support. Stephen O’Brien discussed our future plans with you in January, and confirmed them in his letter of 24 February to your Finance Minister. But as you know, following your expulsion of our High Commissioner, we’re reviewing the wider relationship with Malawi. Before I make decisions on the future of the aid programme, I would welcome your views on the concerns set out in this letter. Until I have completed my consideration of these issues, following your response, I will not be making any budget commitments to Malawi.

Our partnership is based on a commitment to poverty reduction, respect for human rights and accountability and sound public financial management. Malawi’s economy has grown well in recent years, and good progress has been made on maize production and against some of the MDGs. But major development challenges remain and I am concerned that some of the policies of your government may jeopardise progress in reducing poverty.

First, there are growing risks to the Malawi economy, which if not urgently addressed will seriously limit progress in reducing poverty. Malawi’s chronic foreign exchange shortages are having a very serious impact on the private sector, which should be driving future growth. Declining global demand for tobacco combined with rising fuel and fertiliser prices also suggest a serious terms of trade shock for Malawi. In the short term this requires some changes to economic policy agreed with the IMF. In the short term export competitiveness, power shortages, high transport and finance costs and skills gaps need to be addressed. These issues are all covered by joint work between your government and the development partners, but I’m unclear what action you propose to take. As a relatively small and landlocked country, there are opportunities to take advantage of regional integration of transport and power. Again I am not sure of your government’s intentions.

Second, on human rights and domestic accountability, I welcome the greater transparency and accountability around the national budget and consultations to inform the new Malawi Growth and Development Strategy. But there have been a number of worrying developments over the last eighteen months. Reports that demonstrations have been suppressed and civil society organisations intimidated indicate that space for normal democratic debate is narrowing and that tolerance for opposition voices, and for organisations that can help to hold the government to account, is declining. Stephen O’Brien raised with you in January our concerns about the implications of the revised Penal Code for freedom of expression and minority rights. We are extremely disappointed to learn that this Bill was signed into law shortly afterwards and that homosexuality between women will be criminalised. I hope also that we can work together to ensure that institutions, such as the National Audit Office, the Anti Corruption Bureau, the Ombudsman and the Malawi Human Rights Commission, are given the necessary independence and financial support to do their jobs and provide a formal avenue for Malawians seeking redress.

Third, on public financial management, I remain concerned about the use of scarce public resources for luxury items, including the $22 million plane in 2009 and continued purchase of expensive cars. As you will recall, the UK deducted 3 million pounds of general budget support in 2009 and recently reclaimed 500,000 pounds following evidence of poor value procurements in the health sector. I understand that reviews of fertiliser and road procurement highlight opportunities for major savings. At a time of austerity in the UK when the Coalition Government has agreed to continue increasing the aid budget, I need to be able to assure British taxpayers that partner governments are using our resources, and theirs to deliver better results in reducing poverty. I would welcome reassurance on your commitment to value for money and details of your next steps.

Fourth, I was disappointed with the Government’s slow and limited response to the hunger faced by many families in Southern Malawi, following localised droughts in 2009/10, especially given the assurances I received last November. This weak response undermines the Government’s very positive record in improving food security at the national level.

I look forward to your response on all of these issues, which are fundamental to our future partnership. I would like to reassure you that we respect Malawi’s right to shape its own policies. But you will understand that I also have responsibilities to the British taxpayer to ensure that their money is used to reduce poverty in the most effective way. I will be making decisions on the UK’s development programme in Malawi by the end of June. I would like to take account of your answer to this letter and would be happy to discuss the concerns in this letter with you. I also intend to consult Malawi’s other development partners. The Foreign Secretary, the Right Hon William Hague, will be interested in your reply as he considers other aspects of the UK’s relationship with Malawi.

With best regards

Yours sincerely

ANDREW MITCHELL
SECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

CC
Hon Prof Etta Banda MP, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Hon Ken Kandodo MP, Minister of Finance
Hon Abbie Shawa MP, Minister of Development Planning and Cooperation

The return of floods in Karonga

2011-05-19T23:51:00.001-07:00

April Fools’ Day, that was it: Friday April 1 2011. I would say it was very early in the morning. I say very early in the morning because it was around 3am. I was still in bed half sleeping and half awake and listening to the BBC World Service.

I have told myself to take it as awkward to get a phone call around that time unless my phone rings more than three times or it is that most peculiar tone which means the fiancée is calling. She’s among the few that possess visas to call anytime.

But the one I got on that April Fools’ Day was nowhere near the peculiar tone. They were the traditional tones I set to my handsets. First, it was the handset with the TNM line. It briefly rang on two occasions. Flashers, I told myself.

Then, before I cured myself from that disturbance, the second happened. It was the handset with the Airtel line. It briefly rang twice as well. I quickly told myself that it should be someone who knew the two of my numbers – a relative, maybe, and my immediate elder brother came to mind. What could it be, I asked myself.

I woke up, fished out the handsets and it was not the brother. It was someone from Karonga whom I have known since I transferred to Mzuzu. We talk often, less on a personal note and more on a business one.

Hypotheses went around my head. It must be fire at a shop, I told myself. No, it should be another devastating earthquake. No, but eeeeh! Hey, you are not sure – I told myself. Call! Yes, call! I called and the guy sounded so devastated that I quickly shed off the half-sleep.

The man was rusty but I clearly heard ‘Fargo’ and ‘floods’. I quickly thought something belonging to Fargo Limited has been washed away. But I fell short of asking myself what that could be as I have never heard of Fargo in Karonga.

Was it an April Fools’ Day? I never thought so because I convinced myself this guy knows nothing about it. Again, it appears we both know what issues we can personally discuss and to which limits.

Floods? Yes! Just a few weeks before this I saw floods around Malungo area in the district and just after the North Rukuru roadblock. I remember a hawker plying his trade near the roadblock challenging that the floods could not bring down his stall because it is strong. He sold me a packet of biscuits while standing in water flowing through his shop.

I called the guy first thing in the morning and we understood each other this time around. A dyke constructed in 1985 to block water from North Rukuru River from flooding a number of areas around the boma had collapsed.

As is the case in many areas, people there called the dyke Fargo because it was constructed by Fargo Limited. It is the collapsing of the dyke that resulted in the flooding. The issues were connected now.

We talked about the state of the affairs there and I quickly thought I should verify the details with the office of the District Commissioner. I called the DC, Gasten Macheka, and he sounded a worried man.

He said Baka area around the boma was in danger of being completely submerged. The dyke that collapsed had shielded this low lying area from fluctuating water levels in North Rukuru River since 1985.

True to his fears, the worst was to come a week later. It was on Thursday, April 7. I had just sank in bed at around 10pm. The same man called again this time sounding more devastated than before.

“It has rained heavily and is still raining here. Floods are everywhere. I don’t know where I should take my property because the water is knee high inside the house now. There is water everywhere outside the house,” said the man.

Before I completely digested his story, another one called. It was from the Karonga main market, one of the only reasonably higher areas around the boma. He told me that water was everywhere and business in the market had completely grounded.

I tried to put together the bits and get a wider picture. I talked to a few people who confirmed that the situation was horrible. But I failed to confirm the situation.

The DC was already locked in a crisis meeting as early as 7am on Friday. Karonga police spokesperson Enock Livasoni was more concerned himself. His colleagues at Kaporo police post were swimming because there was water all over the place.

Livasoni was there. He told me four people had been confirmed dead and one of them died while trying to save his cattle from the floods.

I waited for the DC and when I got him I knew the floods had returned to Karonga. He told me that 60 villages were affected, up to 348 houses had collapsed and 3,287 people were destitute. All these were from Traditional Authorities Kilupula, Mwakaboko and Kyungu.

Most of the affected had camped on the M1 tarmac road to Songwe border post. But this was not the complete picture. The assessment was continuing and there were other areas in the southern part of the district that had been affected by the floods as well.

I had never heard of such degrees of flooding in Karonga with the only closer picture being around 2005. Hence, having had the current picture, I knew an old monster had come to haunt again.

And I remain concerned for the welfare of those affected just as I am concerned about the disaster recovery programme put in place because of the devastating effects of earthquakes that hit mainly the district and Chitipa at the end of 2009.

Business in the face of poor sanitation

2011-05-01T12:15:00.000-07:00

As she sits between her bags of maize just outside the Karonga district market, Bertha Nyondo has to strive to deal with three things: an offensive smell from a drain lying nearby, scorching heat and customers.

One hand stands still under the pressure of an umbrella; another keeps flying across her face from side to side. She has to fan off the offensive smell and wipe the sweat dripping down her face. As all this happens, her mind has to focus on the customer.

Nyondo and other, mainly, female businesspersons and their bags of maize sit just above a drain full of stagnant water. A look at this water cannot be sustained. So you can concentrate on negotiating the price of a tin of maize with Nyondo or others. But the smell from this water quickly aborts such negotiations.

“This stinking is how the situation is like here. We have complained to the district council about this situation but we cannot force them to come and improve it. So I just have to concentrate on my business,” says Nyondo.

“I leave everything to the people from the council. After all, we pay something to them every day for us to sell our maize here. So they have to come and clean this place every day.”

Nyondo’s sentiments can easily fuel debate as regards who is responsible for ensuring that the environment like where she sits every day is free from any disturbing developments like the stench from nearby.

However, she attests that one thing is exact: the more the sanitation is poor around her, the more people shun her business.

About 100 metres from where Nyondo plies her trade, 30-year-old Mercy Gondwe testifies to how poor sanitation has left her struggling to pin down customers.

With her baby on her back, she sits on a bench just outside a small room. She stares at a small hill of trash just in front of her, stagnant water all around it. She has prepared a variety of meals and her being out here is to woo customers to buy the meals.

“I struggle everyday to get a customer into my restaurant because they say they do not enjoy their meals while seeing trash just outside the restaurant,” she said while pointing at the collection of stinking trash that included leftover foods.

“There was a bin there in which people were throwing waste matters. But although the bin is no longer there, people are still dumping their wastes there. And our businesses are what suffer because of this.”

The collection of trash she referred to produces a strong smell, and it is this smell that makes one feel uncomfortable when in Gondwe’s restaurant.

The trash gets wet during night downpours and although it is often very hot during the day, this trash maintains moisture thereby keeping the environment around it wet.

Poor drainage also worsens the situation. Even if it rained days ago, stagnant water remains all around Gondwe’s place.

She lacks comparative figures for each of the corresponding seasons, but Gondwe remains sure that poor sanitation causes business misfortunes in her restaurant because such misfortunes are not there in the dry season.

“All these things were not there when I was doing the same business within the bus depot complex even during the rainy season. The situation there is a little bit clean,” said Gondwe.

“So many people were coming to eat from my restaurant and I did not even have problems to get them into there.”

Like in many urban and suburban locations in the country, waste management in Karonga is a problem. Trash litters almost everywhere around the boma area and collecting it to dumping sites is usually a problem.

A report prepared by the Environmental District Officer (EDO) late last year indicates that there is only one vehicle to collect and ferry the trash to the dumping site. Unfortunately, the vehicle is old.

“Apart from the district council, not many members of the civil society or private sector are taking part in waste management in the district,” says the report.

It adds that only the only organisation coming closer to ensuring proper sanitation in the district is the Malawi Red Cross which is undertaking a sanitation project involving construction of sanitation facilities in some of the rural areas. The facilities only include hand washing facilities, urinals and pit latrines.

This means that there is no private sector involvement in the collection and dumping of wastes like that in front of Gondwe’s restaurant. Hence such a responsibility remains the district council’s.

“The presence of only one vehicle makes the town council fail to implement the collection of the refuse from the households to the dumping site,” says the report of the 3-tonne tractor.

“Workers in the markets [also] complain about shortage of financial resources, human resources, working materials and safety gear. Working materials include: shovels, wheelbarrows, rakes, bins; and safety wear includes gumboots, overalls and many other tools.

“These are really in short supply and they defuse the morale of the cleaners to perform effectively. The town section has ever supplied some of these items but vandalism has been a discouraging factor.”

According to the report, there are currently no strategic plans in place to improve the status of waste management in the district. There are only proposals and suggestions on how the situation can be improved.

As such, for now, people like Nyondo and Gondwe are doomed to doing their business in this poorly sanitised environment. And this means fewer customers coming to buy from them.

Mysterious cattle that don’t have the mystery

2011-05-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

One who has travelled down the Livingstonia escarpments from the location of the Mchenga coal grading machine down to Chiweta – or down Boliwoli – especially during the rainy season will live to remember a common sight henceforth.

You may just hear a bell ringing as you get engulfed in fear because of the steep slopes that leave you shaking in your seat. Or, you will see cattle dung in the middle of the road – testimony that the cattle turned the tarmac into bed. Or, mainly at night, you will find the cattle lying in the middle of the road.

I have had this captivating experience more often. And, often, I have failed miserably to convince people that the cattle that ring their bells, or dump their dung or lay stubbornly in the middle of the road are not mysterious as many think.

So mysterious have many people believed these cattle are that when you travel on a ride up or down the escarpments, you will hear neighbours sharing stories about the ‘mystery’ these cattle boast.

Magic at work

One will say the owner of these cattle died a long time ago – maybe before you were born – but these cattle have remained a fixture in the escarpments and all they have done is to multiply and keep filling the road with their dung.

Another will say that the fact that these cattle roam the bush in the escarpments even at night without being stolen or killed shows that they are fortified with magic.

Yet others will say that the fact that these cattle do not run away from the middle of the road even when loaded trucks approach them is testimony that the magic with which they are fortified is so potent that it forces drivers to, usually, stop or travel at snail speed and ably pass them without killing one.

In the line of duty

The latest I heard people debate this was last week. After finishing my business on Thursday I thought I should spend my time doing some feature stories around Chilumba in Karonga.

We passed through the area infested with the ‘mysterious’ cattle at around 10:20pm. We saw two groups about 10 metres apart. One group occupied a lane and another was grazing by the road side. It is common for cattle to graze at night especially when the moon is shining.

I heard a male passenger telling his female seat mate in front of me that the cattle we had seen are fortified with magic and the owner died a long time ago.

He said one cannot kill the cattle which is why they kept multiplying and never got stolen. He claimed that even if one killed the cattle, they would not eat the meat because it can’t be cooked.

One season phenomenon

I asked the man if he had seen all this by himself. Seemingly not ready to give in, he repeated exactly what he had told the lady passenger. I felt the impetus run around my body telling me that this time around I would defeat the claimant.

I started by telling him what happens around the area and why the cattle are not stolen. I told him I came from near the place we were passing through and personally knew the owners of the ‘mysterious’ cattle.

Having been involved in such a practice back in those days, I told the man that it was common for people to ‘abandon’ their cattle in the bush like this. The practice was particularly common in the rainy season when all land close to the homes was used for growing crops.

The man never bought it and only succumbed after I dealt him a lethal blow. I let him argue his cause. And when he seemed finished, I posed two questions to him. First, I asked whether he has ever lived close to where we saw the ‘mysterious’ cattle. Second, I asked whether he had seen the cattle we saw in the same area in the dry season.

Naked evidence

The man succumbed and never spoke again. In the dry season the cattle are grazed on the land used for crops.

Evidence of what I had said presented itself in total nakedness on Saturday afternoon. I had joined some media colleagues on the way back to Mzuzu and there were four of us the ride.

As we neared the top end of the escarpments, we saw four cattle grazing by the road side. I asked the colleague that was driving to slow down a bit so I could take a photo.

I fished my phone and snapped the cattle, telling my colleagues what I was up to. About half a kilometre later, we heard the bell and later saw someone driving the cattle towards the location of the coal grading machine.

We could not hesitate but stop. We pounded the man who identified himself as Sangwani Chisambo with questions. He confirmed what I had told the people some two days earlier. People dump their cattle here during the rainy season because they cultivate the land near their homes.

The cattle are taken back home in the evening. He said they only sleep in the area when nobody goes to get them. This happens when people are tired with their jobs. Chisambo is a driver and that is what keeps him busy during the day.

A beast who became a husband again

2011-01-21T23:59:00.000-08:00

When she married him, thought that he would one day become an enemy in her bedroom never crossed her mind. For Brenda Kumwenda her involvement with Ronnex Nkhonjera was wrapped in love and nothing else.

They got married and enjoyed their union. They were poor. So when Ronnex was selected to Domasi College of Education to train as a primary school teacher in 1988 Brenda thought happy times lay ahead. But did they?

“He never allowed me to use his money. Each time I asked for money to buy things for the house, he shouted at me. He said I was not there at the college when he ate beans that smelt paraffin,” said Brenda in an interview at Rukuru in Mzimba north.

“He failed even to attend to the needs of our children. What he was good at was spending his money on beer and coming home late and kick around plates containing his food each time he noted that the relish was not good or without salt. He found no problems with sitting on the floor.”

Such are some of the forms of gender based violence (GBV) that Brenda went through at the hands of the man she thought would be king of her heart but suddenly turned into a beast in her home.

A number of such cases have been documented. However, still many more have not yet been documented. This is because those sailing through situations mired in gender-related abuses like Brenda’s feel scared to open up and talk about them.

They often feel their marriages would break up when they talk about the abuses they go through. And culture plays a greater role in causing this silence. Women are always encouraged to persevere in marriage regardless of whatever they meet. And Brenda was told the same.

“I complained to relatives and parents-in-law. But each time I did so I was told to go back to my husband and endure whatever happened because marriage was endurance. I was told to live with whatever I experienced,” added the mother of four.

“I tried virtually everything but he could not just abandon his behaviour.”

Today, Brenda can stand tall in front of people and tell them what she went through. The problems that rocked her life are no longer there. But it is not that she has absorbed them up. People who saw her suffering helped solve these problems for her.

Agnes Vileme Msiska, Primary Education Adviser (PEA) for the Rukuru education zone in Mzimba north, is one of the people who helped change Brenda’s abusive husband. Sitting in that position means Msiska is empowered. And being an empowered person, she commands influence in the society and this influence enables her to convince people like Ronnex to abandon their violent conduct.

And in Ronnex’s situation, Msiska found herself with additional influence. Ronnex is her junior. He is a teacher at Kasuma primary school which falls under Msiska’s jurisdiction.

“We trained him and the other men who behaved the way he did but it was very clear at the beginning that he was not ready to change his behaviour just overnight,” said Msiska of Nkhonjera.

“However, he started coming up after frequent visits by the Village Action Groups and the Mother Groups. Now he is a completely changed man. And the situation is the same with the other men who behaved like him.”

The Village Action Groups and the Mother Groups which Msiska credited for changing the behaviour of people like Nkhonjera comprised people who were trained to convince those that perpetrated the acts of GBV to change.

They were trained under a project implemented in the area by the Creative Centre for Community Mobilisation (Creccom) with funding from the European Union (EU). The project was called Violence Against Women and Girls – an Enemy to Development (Vawogede).

Together with the Peer Outreach Workers (POWs), these groups have spread messages against gender based violence. And since inception of the project in January 2007, a lot has changed.

Men have realised their responsibility. Those parents who rushed their young girls into marriage have stopped. In fact, most of the girls that were rushed into marriages are back in school.

But most of all, the new dawn as regards GBV sits on top of everything. Listen to what he says and watch what he does. You will be convinced that the beast Ronnex has transformed into a husband again.

“Yes, I used to beat my wife and deny her access to my salary. But now the situation is different. She knows how much I get and she is the custodian of the salary,” said Nkhonjera in an interview as Brenda nodded in agreement.

“Some might think that my wife charmed me. But to me the strongest charm are the lessons that these people took me through. I have been a changed man ever since I attended their first class. I stopped drinking beer.”

He added that his family now worked together to provide for their household needs. They have good furniture in their house. Three of their four children are well supported in secondary school. They also have a grocery shop which supplements their household needs.

Some time ago, Ronnex saw the love from his wife fly away very quickly. And he was scared his wife was going.

But being what he is now, he feels gone are those possibilities. The situation is back to normal. The love he saw flying away has come back. And the two can walk together side by side and share experiences about their turbulent past with other people including those gathered at public rallies.

And Msiska feels there is no going back for Ronnex and the other men that were in a situation like his. The villagers have adopted the approach and they are running the show. They have even started village lending institutions to help the needy.

Whichever the case, one thing stands. Ronnex Nkhonjera is a husband that turned into a beast. But now he has become a husband again.

Certified rice seeds restore pride in Hara scheme farmers

2011-01-06T23:44:00.000-08:00

After a long time of toiling in their rice fields only to realise miserable and less quality rice yields, some rice farmers at the Hara rice scheme in Karonga are breathing a new lease of life thanks to certified rice varieties they are growing.

The rice varieties are multiplied by some selected farmers in the area with the help of the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat) and sold to the farmers around Karonga and in other areas for growing.

“The returns realised after using the certified rice varieties are unimaginable,” said Alick Msuku, Secretary for the Chigomezgo club, one of the certified rice growers, during a field day held in the area on Friday.

“When we plant 3kg of the certified PUSA 33 rice seeds we realise between 12 and 15 bags of rice each weighing 50kg. This means that the 3kg give us between 600 and 750kg.”

Icrisat started implementing the seed multiplication programme under the Malawi Seed Industry Development Project with funding from the Irish government after continued complaints against pollution of the romantic Kilombero rice with other varieties.

Since the implementation of the project started, groups of farmers have multiplied the certified seeds which are later sold to farmers helping them realise quality and bumper rice harvests in the wake of changing weather patterns.

“When we plant the Kilombero variety, we realise between 10 and 12 bags of rice each weighing 50kgs. This means that the same 3kg give us between 500 and 600kg of rice,” added Msuku.

“This was hard to realise the time we used part of the rice we harvested as seeds for the next growing season. The maximum we could go to was only five bags each weighing 50kg.”

He added that those multiplying the seeds are advised to leave 5-metre wide breaks between the gardens on which the multiplied rice varieties are grown and those on which the other varieties, mainly for consumption, are grown.

This, added Msuku, prevents pollen grains from the other varieties fertilising the certified rice thereby defeating the idea of coming up with a pure crop at the end of the project.

“We are very serious about it and we always certify that the multiplied seeds are not contaminated or mixed with the other varieties before we start distributing,” said Felix Sichali, Icrisat Project Manager, in an interview after the field day.

“Customers across the country have been complaining that they don’t get the real Kilombero rice these days and what they get is a mixture of different rice varieties at a high price charged on pure Kilombero rice.”

He warned farmers from being carried away by vendors who often buy the rice in buckets stressing that the farmers lose. He said since the harvest from the certified seeds is heavy, farmers would gain more if they measure what they sell on scales.

Traditional Authority Wasambo, who was guest of honour at the event, urged his subjects to have desire to do better saying they could change their livelihood if they embarked on farming as business.

“Good farmers who listen to advice from the Agricultural Extension Officers have built good houses and stocked it with excellent property beating most graduates who do not have houses,” he said.

“The trick is simple. Just follow the modern farming techniques and you will always do better. When you see problems, sit down and see how they could be solved. Otherwise, no one will be laughed at if they have food in their homes.”

Meanwhile, Sichali encouraged farmers to exploit contract farming saying this enables them to have a picture of how much they would get at the end of the day.

He added that there was a lot of demand for the certified rice seeds stressing that some customers were even demanding tonnage that the groups would not realise just in a year.

Holding food on the table as rains keep going

2011-01-06T23:37:00.000-08:00

The sun has slightly moved away from the hills on the east. From where Amina Ndisale kneels, it is about 30 centimetres between the sun and the hills.

It is already blistering hot. But Amina stays where she has knelt for more than half an hour. A big mango tree standing a few metres from where she kneels could give her excellent shelter from this heat. However, she will not go under it.

She throws a lump of wet clay at a small hill of trash. She throws another lump. She will continue with this until the hill – almost as tall as herself – is thoroughly covered in the wet clay.

Like all people in this part of Karonga in northern Malawi, Amina has seen the length of the period rains take to stop falling shorten over the years. The pattern of the rains within this shortened period is also erratic. And the end result is that people’s yields have leaned.

“The harvest is no longer as much as what we used to get,” says Amina, 63, and mother of six.

As a woman, Amina has more trouble to suffer than her husband in the wake of this changing rainfall pattern which scientists say is one of the direct effects of climate change.

Culture accepts that Amina’s husband, like all husbands, is the bread winner. Yet, it has all reasons to spare him the shame when his family has nothing on the table.

Instead, it will be people like Amina that will labour to come to terms with pressure from the children and the bread winner himself because there is no food.

Across the country, this picture mirrors a situation over 4 million women are in. According to the 2008 population and housing census, there are about 3,861,971 females between the ages of 14 and 49.

The 14-49 years age bracket comprises the most sexually active age group and most women within this age group are mothers.

In the wake of such unfairness in what is expected to be a shared responsibility, it would not be surprising to see Amina toiling in the sun all day in an attempt to hold food on the table.

And as the rains keep going, Amina has found gathering trash and burying it in small mounds for a while and applying it to her maize field later as perfect means of keeping food for her children and husband on the table.

“It is very simple,” she boasts. “It will take you anything that can rot except bluegum, mango and gmelina leaves to make this manure. Bluegum, mango and gmelina leaves are less nutritious.”

She calls what she is preparing chimatu manure, probably because the trash that graduates into manure is smeared around with wet clay, an action called kumata in chiTumbuka.

“You can even use fresh leaves to make this manure,” says Sheri Kayuni, another woman who has adopted the concept. She comes from Kaswera II village in TA Mwilang’ombe’s area in the district.

“These leaves could be mixed with fresh cow dung, maize bran or ash. A layer of such leaves is separated from another by either the dung, bran or ash. Within three months, the manure is ripe and ready to be applied to the garden.”

Kayuni is not sure of how much of such manure she should exactly produce for a particular size of a garden. However, she is stark sure that 16 such mounds are enough for a garden measuring up to an acre.

On average, each mound is roughly around a metre in diameter and 1.5 metres tall.

The manure is applied into the gardens before the rains and between planting holes. In there, the manure holds the little water it gathers when rains fall. This ensures that plants are always in a moistened environment even when rains do not fall for some time.

That aside, the manure gradually releases the nutrients leading to a robust crop that cannot be realised even with chemical fertilisers.

With this manure, communities in Karonga have held food onto their tables despite seeing the rains run away from them.

It was not raining there early in January during the hustle and bustle necessitated by the earthquakes that hit the district late last year. And the rains had bid goodbye by late in March, meaning that the rainfall season lasted for less than three months.

However, one going around villages in the district now will see traditional granaries fully filled with maize. What caused this magic?

“This manure is so good. I have never suffered from hunger ever since I started using this manure about three years ago,” says Sara Ngobola, wife to Mwangobola, a traditional leader in the district.

“The amount of my harvest has always been increasing since I started using the manure.”

No wonder, the communities in the district have firmly adopted the concept of using such manure. And the grip is tightened by the Karonga Agricultural Development Division (Kradd).

With its jurisdiction spreading over Karonga and Chitipa, Kradd is championing production and use of such manure as means of ensuring that food remains on the people’s tables even when the rainfall season keeps waning.

Paramount chief Kyungu is impressed that his subjects have adopted this adaptive concept in the wake of climate change. And he is pleased with the agricultural development officers there too.

“I am very much impressed,” says Kyungu. “This system has brought about improved harvests although the rains have not been enough to warrant a good crop harvest.”

“I am particularly impressed because it is women that have taken a leading role in making use of the concept. I know that this is because they are the ones who suffer most when there is no food on the table.”

But the paramount chief wants things to change.

He says: “I will talk to all my subjects and ask them to embrace this. And I know we will win because the [agricultural] advisers are there. They have always made people aware of the roles they are supposed to play in things like these.”

Malawi and many other southern African countries have seen the worst as a result of harsh weather patterns resulting from climate change. Harvests have leaned because rains no longer fall reliably. Floods have also provided another version of torment as the rains are sometimes just too heavy.

But while most people can hunger because of floods, there is no excuse for them to suffer because of inadequate rains. Organic manure is a proven treatment for weather patterns that lead to lean harvests.

Human rights marry sports to improve education

2011-01-06T23:31:00.000-08:00

It is something that might have happened to all of us at some point in our education but we could be deliberately pretending that it never happened. Think about the day you were punished for coming to school late. Did your teacher ask why you got to school late before punishing you?

The situation is mostly like this. A rainstorm blows part of the roof of your house in the middle of the night. In the morning, you take part in moving household items to drier areas before going to school. Your teacher will rarely listen to your story before punishing you.

Catalysts for positive change as they might appear, such punishments have rarely yielded in stopping coming to school late. Instead, they have performed exceptionally well in ensuring that pupils do not come to school at all when late.

“In the end the pupil suffers and the pupil’s suffering impacts very negatively on the quality of education. It is very simple: a pupil who does not attend all lessons does not complete the syllabus. As such, they fail in examinations,” says Joseph Nyondo, Desk Officer responsible for primary schools in Karonga.

Punishing a pupil on the basis of their coming to school late is a national issue. And the fact that it succeeds in denying a pupil an opportunity to quality education makes it a human rights issue.

Elsewhere, such an issue might walk alone. But, in Karonga the vice is further lifted aloft by equally perilous human rights issues. They include sending children into business at a tender age and thrusting them into a booming fishing business. This makes the situation worse there.

Gracian Mbewe, Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) District Coordinator for Karonga, says the district’s location heavily worsens child rights.

“The northern part is close to the border where a lot of hazardous things that include child trafficking happen to children; the boma at the centre is conducive for all sorts of business and the southern part has a booming fishing business,” says Mbewe.

In one way or the other, says Mbewe, everything has led to the pupil getting to school late. And getting to school late has affected the pupils’ education. The punishments that come with late coming to school scare the pupils instead of correcting their situation, he adds.

From this background must, therefore, come ways of dealing with this situation. Education qualities have to remain high at all costs. After all, education is the only investment that can never be snatched away.

The people of Karonga are fighting the vice in a peculiar way. CHRR has brought a very strange marriage to the area. In this marriage that is the Learn Without Fear programme, human rights and sports tied the knot and the two expect just one child – quality education.

It is believed that human rights violations lead to pupils getting to school late. As a result, they get punishments that only worsen the situations as they are kept out of class.

“Pupils themselves will take a leading role. As they involve themselves in sporting events, notably football and netball, they will display messages against various forms of human rights abuses,” says CHRR Executive Director Undule Mwakasungula.

“Similarly, as they watch the sporting events, members of the community will learn about human rights abuses. The messages regarding children’s rights and responsibilities will, thus, be passed on.”

In the end, he says, communities will create a friendly environment for children; one that is free from human rights abuses. Such an environment will see pupils concentrate on education rather than things that would compromise their education.

Currently, the programme runs in Traditional Authority (TA) Mwakaboko’s area in the northern part of Karonga where the infamous Kupimbira is very rampant. Kupimbira is a traditional practice by which older males make arrangements to marry girls of their choice with the girls’ parents.

The practice infringes on the girls’ rights as such marriages are often arranged without their consent and knowledge. Consequently, they are forced to be in a union they did nothing to be part of.

The same programme also ran in the areas of TA Mwilang’ombe and Kilupula.

In TA Mwilang’ombe, boys often spend their time on Lake Malawi fishing. Girls are often forced into early marriages with businessmen who dangle their money at them when they come to buy fish mainly at Ngara. In TA Kilupula, both boys and girls are forced into business.

Mwakasungula says this marriage – which CHRR implements with funding from Plan Malawi – targets three components, namely the communities, teachers and pupils.

“Teachers must understand that much as punishments are something that will always be there, they must be pregnant with lessons. And these punishments must be handed after engaging the pupil on why they came to school late,” said Nyondo, a teacher by profession.

“Since pupils are likely to tell teachers what their parents do to them, the teachers can in turn engage parents on the pupils’ rights and responsibilities. As such, the parents will not send their children into something that will affect their education. In the end, the quality of education will improve.”

He says teachers should realise that they sometimes wrong the pupils, and adds that once they appreciate this, teachers shall only give punishments whose size corresponds with the affected pupils’ age and not otherwise.

Children that are less occupied with household chores at home, Nyondo says, will likely come to school early. When they come to school early, they will avoid punishments. And they will complete the syllabi leading to them passing their examinations well, hence improving the quality of education, when they avoid punishment.

Sending children to perform duties that violate their rights and punishing them merely for coming to school late is a combination so deadly for quality education. But when human rights marry sports, quality education becomes the offspring.

Certified seeds thrust hope through changing weather

2011-01-06T23:29:00.000-08:00

For a long time, Rachel Nyamphotwa gradually but sustainably saw her rice harvests get miserable. Being someone from a remote setting and not so much there education wise, she remained ignorant of the causes of the dwindling harvests.

If she consulted Felix Sichali, Project Manager for the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), as early as possible, she might have quickly realised that weather changes had enveloped her and led to the misfortune.

Unfortunately, since the ignorance remained, Nyamphotwa could only watch as the quality of her rice harvest also followed the route taken by the amount of harvest. She completely lost hope and all she got each time she wanted to sell her rice were insults.

“I tried everything to maximise the harvest but I did not succeed,” says Nyamphotwa. “People even thought we wanted to dupe them when we sold them such rice.”

Nyamphotwa referred to the Kilombero rice variety. This is a highly revered rice variety whose aroma catapults it well over the other rice varieties and helps it attract customers.

But, courtesy of a changing weather pattern – a result of climate change – and use of recycled seeds, this variety gradually but continuously lost all the attributes that helped it dwarf the other rice varieties.

The aroma went, and possibly faster than it came. And when people like Nyamphotwa wanted to sell a little of such, potential buyers thought they had mixed miserable varieties and wanted to dupe.

“It is very impossible to realise the same quality of rice and get the same amount of harvest in these times of climate change. But that is something we can’t live with because people need quality,” says Sichali.

“There is need to introduce certified varieties which quickly adapt to these climatic changes and maintain the quality that recycled seeds lose quickly.”

And Icrisat, with financial support from the Irish Aid, extended the Malawi Seed Industry Development to Karonga. Its mission was very simple: produce certified Kilombero seeds and allow it to thrust hope through the climatic changes back to Nyamphotwa and other farmers in the area.

Through the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (Nasfam) Karonga branch, the certified seeds landed in Mwenewisi Village in TA Kilupula’s area in the district. This was at the beginning of the just ended growing season.

Forward came eight farmers’ clubs encompassing 58 marketing action centres (Macs). Each farmer got 20 kilogrammes of the certified seeds and away they went into their gardens.

“I planted early in the season and I applied manure to the field,” says Hastings Sinkhutwa, lead farmer in the Peter Marketing Action Centre (Peter Mac). As lead farmer, his role is to show others how to grow the rice.

“The results were stunning. People kept asking me what variety I had planted in the field. They could not even believe that I just applied manure and nothing else to the rice.”

When harvest time came he bagged 20 bags each weighing 100 kilogrammes. This was a record breaker. Before jumping to certified seeds, he says, he harvested between nine and 10 bags – not more.

He adds that he sold 10 bags and realised a record K58,000. He chose to sell after weighing on the scales and got K58 per kilogramme.

Nyamphotwa, chairperson for the Chitukuko club in the area, also got the miracle from the certified seeds.

She says: “I planted one seedling per hole. As the paddy grew, I realised that these seeds are very different from what we had been planting. The rice just grew vigorously and never fell down.

“It grew just very well. Cooking this rice is also very simple. And it is just very tasty and aromatic.”

She adds that the harvest realised from the certified seeds has changed the farmers’ enemies. With the harvests from uncertified seeds, buyers were the enemies. But now, buyers are friends and those still using the uncertified seeds are the enemies.

“The rice from the certified seeds sells very well. Buyers come for it and people hate us because of the way this rice attracts customers,” she adds.

Sichali says the clubs in the area were handed the seeds on trial basis. He says after multiplying at Wovwe and Hara in the district, the seeds needed to be tested on suitability in the wake of the changing climatic patterns.

“After noting how people were struggling to realise bumper rice harvests we said what needed to be done. We came up with the idea of multiplying the certified seeds,” he says.

“Clubs were established and the certified seeds were multiplied. Then it was time to look at getting the certified seeds to the farmer and Karonga Nasfam [branch] was brought in.

“We are pleased that the farmers got the certified seeds and tested them. Lucky enough, government policy towards the initiative is positive. There is political will through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to promote use of certified seeds.”

He says having been impressed with the success the certified seeds registered, the seeds will be availed to farmers through Nasfam.

Karonga Nasfam board chair Howard Msukwa says there is more reason to embrace the certified seeds because they bring more hope than just returning the aroma. He says the crop harvest is heavier than one realised after using the uncertified seeds.

He says this has stopped farmers from selling through buckets. The farmers realised that they can get more from their produce if they weighed it before selling.

“And Karonga Nasfam has broken its record on buying the produce as well,” he says. “We bought 700 metric tons in seven weeks. In the past, we were hovering around 500 tons after buying for over three months.”

People like Nyamphotwa might have struggled to get the best from their rice plantations because of recycled varieties and changing weather patterns. But there should be jubilation now because the certified seeds can thrust hope back to them through the weather changes.

Man a problem, its own solution

2011-01-06T23:27:00.000-08:00

The story of 42-year-old Nolida Silumbu is probably the best yardstick to measure how much of a problem a man – as part of the male folk – is. She says when rumour goes around that she has an extramarital affair, her husband beats her up.

One would think the husband knows the dangers of engaging in extramarital affairs in these days of the deadly HIV and Aids to the family. But nay! Hear this.

“When I hear reports that he engages in extramarital affairs and dare ask and advise him against the practice, he quickly turns on me as if he is not the person who does not want me to engage in extramarital affairs,” says the mother of eight.

“He beats me up the way he likes. I have just remained quiet because I don’t know where to complain. I never thought someone who beats me when he hears rumours of me getting involved in extramarital affairs would beat me when I present evidence of such conduct on his part.”

Brought into perspective, the story of this woman who comes from Nixon Munkhondya Village in T/A Mwenemisuku’s area in Chitipa would just be a drop in the ocean.

And one would quickly think that Nolida is facing such a situation because her husband paid something to her parents when he went into marriage with her – don’t forget that Chitipa follows patrilineal descent.

However, you need to think twice before arriving at the conclusion. Man is generally a problem when it comes to marital issues.

True to Nolida’s situation, a man will – to a large extent – always fight to be in the right. Do you remember Dowa’s Herbert Mankhwala who broke up with Marietta Samuel only to return and permanently maim her immediately he realised that she was going out with another man?

“Several researches have shown that man is most of the times the problem when it comes to perpetrating issues of domestic violence,” said First Grade Magistrate Julius Kalambo of the Chitipa Magistrate’s Court.

“Most of the issues brought to court involve man inflicting a number of problems on the woman. You can name them: assaults, involvement in extramarital affairs and economic problems.”

He says most of the times men leave their wives in economic turmoil only to return home and cause havoc if they don’t find things that would have only been availed had there been money to buy them.

But why does the situation unfold like this?

“Everything boils down to the ego. Men feel they should be the most authoritative, they feel they are the most intelligent and they feel they are superior to the women,” adds Kalambo.

“But we have women who are intelligent hence superior.”

Domestic violence is a problem many want to do away with. Locally, the Malawi Government designed the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act 2006 to guide in the fight against the vice. And courts have used the Act to hand stiffer punishments to offenders with the aim of deterring offenders in waiting.

The Act has also been used to help placate couples mired in problems revolving around the practice.

Internationally, the United Nations (UN) Millennium Summit held in September 2000 formulated the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 which aims at promoting gender equality and empowering women.

With particular interest in eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education preferably by 2015, the goal looks at ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education; share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector; and proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments.

Generally, it is believed that if women were empowered whichever way, men would find it difficult to prove how much of a problem they are when it comes to such issues as domestic violence.

But in a country where illiteracy levels among women are staggering high, the best solution might not be in MDG 3 or in the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act. It should certainly be in the problem itself.

“We have generally believed that you have to send a thief if you want to catch a thief,” adds Kalambo.

“Equally, we can change the situation if we engaged men who have realised that domestic violence is evil to convince their fellow perpetrators of the problem who have not yet come out to appreciate that this is evil.”

Surely, the man who engages in extramarital affairs or assaults his wife or inflicts on the wife so many economic problems would be an excellent solution to such problems rather than the victim.

Currently, the Men for Gender Equality Now (Megen) have borne the yoke and launched a campaign to end problems of such nature to their fellow men. And positive results are already showing.

“The results are so encouraging. So many men are committed to ending gender based violence by targeting their fellow men,” says Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) responsible for operations in the northern region, Isaac Maluwa – also a member of Megen – in an interview.

“The perpetrators of domestic violence are men from our communities so the problem could easily be rooted out if they were targeted. Yes there are other men who are victims of gender based violence but to a larger extent men are the perpetrators.”

Nolida’s husband might be a problem to his wife now. But the solution to himself as a problem has not yet been exposed.

But it is simple: sit him down, talk to him on the dangers of domestic violence to his better half and he will stop the evil practices on his woman. In this case, isn’t man a problem that is a solution in itself?

Collateral damage? The case of Viphya plantation fires

2011-01-06T23:26:00.000-08:00

It is a sunny afternoon in October. From a far, a cloud that engulfs the gigantic Viphya Plantation leaves you convinced that the dreaded cold weather associated with this manmade resource lies ahead.

But move a bit closer and see how misled you are. It is hotter than your imaginations. And the clouds you saw from a far are clouds of smoke. Below them, fires uncontrollably ingest the predominantly Pinus patura plantation. And you will see that the trees being consumed give energy to the fires to keep raging.

Make no mistake. These are both old and young trees.

Fires have of late undoubtedly shot to top of the list of factors behind the fast depletion of the Viphya plantation which is billed as the largest manmade forest reserve in Africa. It sits on a staggering 53,000 hectares (ha) of land but 20,000 ha of this is under a concession by Raiply.

“This year’s (2010) fires have never been seen before,” said a forestry officer stationed at Nthungwa forest reserve, one of the three major sections under government control in the plantation – the others being Lusangazi and Luwawa.

“You will see fires from Lusangazi on the northern tip of the plantation down to Luwawa on the southern tip. And this year’s fires have even affected the area that is under a concession by Raiply. This has never been the case before.”

The first major fires started in the Lusangazi reserve around September and the effects were so devastating. People around Elamuleni, a trading centre along the M1 road within the forest, lost property worth millions and included livestock and stalls.

And by November, the fires had spread to a bigger part of the neighbouring Nthungwa forest reserve. According to details sourced from Nthungwa forest station, up to 82 ha had been consumed within three days that also saw two lives lost. Other properties including milling machines also went with the fires.

Collateral damage?

In all, 162 ha of Nthungwa reserve which covers 8,847 ha had been consumed in the fire since September. This, according to the reserves Technical Officer Charles Lungu, is a deplorable situation.

“A number of factors have led to these fires but everything revolves around policies government has instituted to properly manage the forest and save it from complete depletion,” said John Nkunika, a foreman with a milling company in the forest.

“The coming in of new logging prices and the cooperatives has left some of those who operated businesses in the plantation frustrated. Most of them cannot manage the new prices as such they leave.”

Government introduced new prices per cubic metre of forest products in a move to help ward off foreigners who took advantage of the low prices to deplete the country’s forest mainly the Viphya plantation.

The prices were hiked to K10,000 from around K1,200. And the coming in of cooperatives was meant to bring soberness in harvesting wood in the forest.

Nkunika said many operators have taken the two developments as a plot by politicians to ensure that only politicians benefit from the resource. This, he said, has borne a feeling that if those who are leaving cannot benefit from the plantation then nobody else should benefit. Hence they set the plantation on fire.

“Apart from those that have been fished out, most fires are also started by their employees upon their being declared jobless. People are earning a living out of this forest,” he added.

“While some are employed in the milling section, others carry the planks from the bush to near the roadside at a fee. Many more carry the remaining logs and sell them as firewood. Hence, stopping milling angers a lot of people.”

Structural conduciveness

The fires have usually been aided by a huge bush overgrowth below the trees in the plantation. This has seen fires spread vastly within a short period of time. And the situation is complicated by the fact that there is insufficient labour force to fight the infernos.

Officers at Nthungwa forest station revealed that there are just around 20 people on standby to manage everything in the entire reserve including fighting fires instead of a possible 40. Plantations Manager Seliano Chipokosa confirmed the shortfall and added that most of the labour force was ageing.

“Insufficient manpower aside, those of us available here do not have the equipment with which to fight the fires. You will be shocked to learn that we use panga knives to create breaks when fighting the fires,” said a forestry officer who declined to be named.

“We are supposed to use chainsaws when doing this but we don’t have chainsaws. We also don’t have fire fighting vehicles which means we have to wait to get to where fires start. And we fight the fires while barefooted.”

Debilitating factors

Further, the ability to fight or contain the fires is defeated because of failure. Chipokosa said in an interview that the plantation’s management has failed to upgrade about 600km of a road network in the plantation citing lack of capacity.

“Out of the 600km, we only upgraded about 190km. We also have a network of firebreaks which we were supposed to scrape last season but we have not done that. Therefore, it almost runs to zero when it comes to preparing to prevent occurrences of fires,” he said.

“Fire management is generally pathetic. We have the personnel [that could fight the fires] but there were only two vehicles last season. The means we use in fire fighting are also very basic.”

He said with all resources available, it would take manpower of between 25 and 35 to successfully deal with the fires.

Any hope?

Chipokosa said the plantation’s management was engaging the Mzuzu city council fire brigade for a possible helping hand in fighting the fires. However, this appears a long-term dream especially because the assembly itself lacks such equipment.

But if all the wrongs, including the pathetic fire fighting means, were corrected the cloud engulfing the plantation would only be that from the humidity created by the many trees.

Otherwise, the plantation is on its way to complete depletion and the country would have failed miserably in achieving Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7 which seeks to ensure environmental sustainability.

Rural nurse’s tales on safe motherhood

2010-03-07T22:41:00.000-08:00

First published in The Sunday Times (Malawi) on February 28, 2010

A few years ago, government banned Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) from delivering pregnant women. The move was in line with efforts to reduce maternal mortality thereby part of efforts to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 which seeks to reduce maternal mortality and achieve universal access to reproductive health.

At first, there was apparent resistance to the move partly because of the country’s rich cultural legacy. However, with chiefs joining the bandwagon of those encouraging pregnant mothers to be attended to by qualified health personnel, there has been a change. Thousands and thousands of mothers deliver at health facilities manned by qualified staff. And, Malawi has seen some changes. The maternal mortality rate has reduced to 807 per 100,000 live births from 1,120 per 100,000 live births in 1990.

However, apart from driving the nation towards achieving MDG 5 by 2015, the development has brought enormous pressure on health facilities. The need to bolster numbers of nurse/midwife technicians in such facilities has come to the fore. And the situation is at its worst high in rural areas where most of the TBAs used to operate and but which most nurses shun due to the absence of some luxurious facilities like electricity.

KAREN MSISKA (KM) learnt of the effects the ban on TBAs has brought, particularly on health facilities in rural areas and the personnel working there, from 40-year-old EVALISTA MKANDAWIRE (EM), a community health nurse at Chilumba Rural Hospital in Karonga. There are five nurses there and because of the inadequacy, there is one nurse on duty at a time at the hospital which serves a catchment area of about 15,000 people. At the moment, there are three nurses as one is on maternity leave and another is on relief. Excerpts:

KM: What happens when one is on duty?

EM: If working during the day duty, we begin by getting handovers from the night duty nurse. You are told everything that happened during the night. After learning about what happened, you decide which of the cases carried forward from the previous night to take as a priority and which ones to shelve.

KM: What do you do when on duty here?

EM: First, one has do dust the labour ward and prepare it for delivery. Then, you have to determine if the labour ward can handle an emergency. If some requirements are missing, one has to order for some. From there, you have to find out if there are pregnant women that would get into the labour ward any time. You have to examine them accordingly, and see if everything is fine.

If there is no case, then one moves on to those who already delivered. You examine them and their babies. You look at bleeding, and if everything is okay then you go to pregnant women that have come. You examine them by looking at their weight and blood pressure. We accordingly give medication and mosquito nets. We also assist them if there is a problem. Once done, we book them for the next visit.

Next, we move to those seeking family planning. We teach them everything and ask them questions. Depending on their answers, we give appropriate family planning methods.

After finishing with the family planning crew, we move on to those who have come for postnatal check up. We examine them and their babies and ask if the babies have any problem. Once done, we give them mosquito nets.

Once this is done, we go to the wards. We attend all the orders doctors will have done. We do everything in the wards like giving drugs, look at drips, everything. Then we move to the outpatient department (OPD) and work on everything that needs attending to there.

KM: You say the nurse on duty moves from one area to another. Who attends to cases that emerge in one section when the nurse is in another?

EM: Because of the shortage, as I said, there is one nurse and one medical attendant on duty at a time. So when we are out, we leave things in the hands of the attendant. But since they also attend to other issues, we tell guardians about our whereabouts and advise that should something happen, they should immediately come to tell us wherever we are.

KM: What happens when you are badly needed everywhere?
EM: We always give priority to the labour ward. Whatever happens – accidents, whatever – the labour ward comes first.

KM: What happens when two women are ready to deliver at the same time?

EM: If it happens that way, we help one woman deliver, cut the baby’s umbilical cord, wrap it and give it its mother and move to the other. We do the same and go back to the one we first delivered and continue.

KM: Is this what is supposed to happen when it comes to delivering mothers?

EM: No, it’s not what is supposed to happen. What is needed is that everything should be completed. Everything should be declared alright before leaving the mother. But because of the shortage here, we force ourselves to do it.

KM: How many deliveries do you handle a day?

EM: At first, the work was simpler. We looked at between 35 and 40 deliveries a month. But since the TBAs stopped, we are handling between 65 and 69 cases a month. Before the TBAs stopped we sometimes attended to two cases a day, now we are talking of up to five deliveries on some days.

KM: As someone working under such pressure, how do you view reports that government stopped sponsoring students in Christian Health Association of Malawi (Cham) training institutions and that those at Malawi College of Health Sciences (MCHS) will be paying K300,000 fees?

EM: Definitely, the development means that the number of health personnel will remain on the lower side. This means that the problems we are facing now will continue. This is because the number of people going to study for qualifications in the medical field will be small. Very few people would afford such fees. In the wake of such shortages, what was supposed to be done was scale up training.

KM: What would you say is the impact of this shortage and consequent pressure on the patient?

EM: Because of the shortage, we face a situation where you are on straight duty (day duty) and night duty. As such, there is no resting. But a human brain needs rest to work properly. As a result, we attend to patients in an angry manner since we are affected psychologically. People follow procedures to be attended to but because they face an angry nurse, they are not attended to properly. Consequently, they don’t come to hospital the next time because all they think about is facing an angry nurse.

KM: Why did you choose nursing?

EM: As a young girl growing up, I used to admire nurses in hospitals. I really wanted to help patients the way they did. However, nursing in those days is different from nursing today.

KM: Your last words?

EM: I wish government looked at the issue of accommodation here. Nurses are there for government to send here. But where are the houses? Where will the nurses stay when they come? Besides, those who need to go to school should be assisted so that our numbers are boosted.

When accurate reproductive health information lacks

2010-02-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

Speaking when she received a K2 million cheque donated to the maternity wing at Chilumba rural hospital by Bottling and Brewing Group Limited (BBGL) on January 27, Vice President and the country’s safe motherhood ambassador Joyce Banda emphasised the need for education in an effort to achieve safe motherhood. In Malawi, sources of education are many. However, there is only one reliable source for such: school. KAREN MSISKA asks, is the system up to the required reproductive health standards?

For all the time she had been rejecting sexual advances from her male acquaintance, Viwongo Manda (not real name) had thought of pregnancy – and nothing else – boggling her mind.

She says that when she was growing up, her grandmother always talked about pregnancy as the consequence of having unprotected sex. She listened soundly.

But once someone convinced and demonstrated to her that not every sexual encounter leads to pregnancy, Viwongo, 17, became a different being. And she has seen the other consequences.

“I wanted to see what it means and I had my first sex about three years ago when I was 14. There was no protection as the one who did it with me said condoms were porous so there was no difference between using condoms and not using them,” said Viwongo recently.

“Of course, I did not get pregnant and I haven’t been pregnant in spite of doing it again a number of times. But I have experienced some things since that first sexual encounter.”

She said, while looking away, that she has had sores and “some bumps” in her private parts and, at some point, she experienced extreme pains when passing out urine.

She added that she never sought treatment during any of these experiences.

Viwongo, who says is in Form III at a non residential secondary school in Mzuzu, could be a tip of a problem that is a collection of misled adolescents.

According to a survey conducted by, among others, Youth Net and Counselling (Yoneco) and published by the Guttmacher Institute in 2007, many adolescent youths have a wide base from which they draw information on sexual and reproductive health.

However, the report – titled ‘Protecting the next generation in Malawi: New evidence on adolescent sexual and reproductive health needs’ – points out that most of these sources of information are inaccurate and grossly unreliable. It identifies, particularly, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as an element where such inaccurate information exists.

“Although about two out of three Malawian adolescents have heard of STIs other than HIV, much smaller proportions of young people are aware of the symptoms that accompany these infections,” reads the report in part.

“Only one in 10 knew that tenderness in the lower abdomen and itching could indicate an STI.”

The report categorises adolescents as those aged between 12 and 19, and states that most of this inaccurate information is drawn from peers. It says up to 60 percent of the adolescents surveyed said they received sexual and reproductive health information from friends.

It further says adolescent girls are mostly at risk as they are targeted by men who are much older than them. The older men are mostly the ones that infect the young girls with STIs as they might have had other sexual partners before.

On the ground, this translates to an overwhelming number of girls. Results of the 2008 Population and Housing Census conducted by the National Statistical Office (NSO) indicate that there are 844,315 girls aged between 10 and 14 and 651,028 girls aged between 15 and 19 in the country.

Thus, according to the survey, there are 1,495,343 girls aged between 10 and 19 in the country.

Since children aged between 10 and 19 are either in the later stages of primary education, in secondary education or in early years of tertiary education, the question whether their inability to have accurate information on sexual and reproductive health issues is a result of absence of such in schools begs.

The Yoneco reproductive health report acknowledges the availability of sex education in schools. However, it criticises implementation of such education.

It says: “Although sex education is now mandatory in all public schools, implementation remains somewhat problematic.

“For one, the introduction of sex education met with resistance from some teachers. Although their reluctance to teach the subject is said to be waning, facilitated in part by teacher training, some teachers continue to skip some topics because of embarrassment or personal beliefs.”

It says the teachers choose only those topics that they are comfortable to discuss openly and leave out those that would bring them discomfort.

Further, the report says that another barrier to effective sex education is that it is not currently a subject that is tested or graded in the country.

Director of Reproductive Health in the Ministry of Health and Population, Dr Chisale Mhango, agrees and says that if the subject is not examinable students will not pay much attention even when teaching was enhanced.

“We have developed the syllabus for life skills but we do not have nurses who can go to teach it in schools, said Mhango in response to an e-mailed questionnaire late last year.

“The Ministry of Education [Science and Technology] has to teach it otherwise many girls will continue to drop out from school because of pregnancy and, worse still, acquire HIV (Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus).”

A snap check with some students at Msongwe Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) in Mzuzu indicated that the subject has been lined up for examination at Junior Certificate of Education (JCE) level this year.

Ministry of Education Science and Technology spokesperson Lindiwe Chide confirmed that the Malawi National Examinations Board (Maneb) will examine Life Skills at both JCE and Primary School Leaving Certificate (PSLCE) levels this year. Life Skills is a subject that has a sexual and reproductive health component in it.

“Teachers have been sent through some in-service training so that they ably teach the subject. Of course, hiccups have been encountered since the subject was introduced,” said Chide in an interview.

“It’s true that some teachers completely refused to teach the subject the time it was introduced but the situation has improved nowadays since the teachers went through the training.”

The Yoneco report recommends bolstering life skills education at all levels, supporting teacher training so that they impart accurate and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health information and increasing health information reaching the youth.

Whether the situation changes and sexual and reproductive health education is bolstered, one fact will always remain. And this is that, as Vice President Banda put it, education will push efforts to achieve safe motherhood a very long way.

As pan Africanist Marcus Garvey said, an educated community knows what it wants and how to achieve what is wants. But communities made of people like Viwongo would never know what they want and how to achieve them.

Project that opens people’s eyes

2009-12-14T11:32:00.000-08:00

Rose Nyirenda was a businessperson many enjoyed buying from. It is not that she knew how to market her goods. Neither was it because her goods were the best. All businesspersons sold the same goods.

The attraction to Nyirenda’s goods was her ignorance. She could not count. Thus, when she gave change, it was more than what a buyer was supposed to get. Who would have avoided such kind of a generous businessperson?

“I never got the best possible benefits from my business. People were just stealing from me,” she said.

“I spent a lot on transporting fish mostly from Mlowe to Nkhata Bay.”

That is not the only misery Nyirenda went through. She could also not read or write. As a result, her life was something she never enjoyed. Someone had to be by her side to give a helping hand.

That was not all. Because of her illiteracy, Nyirenda never knew what to do to prevent some preventable diseases that easily smashed her household.

But the situation is different now. And one feeling they would steal from Nyirenda again would have a rude awakening as she will expose them clean.

“I now know how to read and write. My business is booming now. Besides, I know what to do to live a better life,” says the 31-year-old mother of four.

“I know a lot about issues to do with HIV and Aids. I know how to keep my home clean and hygienic. I don’t see diseases like cholera within my home anymore.”

Nyirenda is among a group of older men and women that joined literacy classes at Chinguluwe primary school in T/A Timbiri’s area in Nkhata Bay.

The classes are under the Functional Literacy for Integrated Rural Development (Flird) programme. It is run by the United Nations Volunteers (UNVs) and seeks to integrate different development works around reading and writing.

“The programme started in May 2005 and has adopted a concept called Regenerated Freirian Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques (Reflect),” said Flird Coordinator Prince Kaunda.

“The villagers now understand a number of development works. They have embarked on road construction. They also construct toilets to improve their livelihoods and started community based organisations (CBOs) to deal with issues of HIV and Aids.”

According to Kaunda, the programme has also cultivated a better understanding of gender issues in people of the area. They have also become successors in almost everything they have embarked on.

Currently, the programme covers 65 villages. It runs to 2011 and by that time, it is expected that capacity building will have been achieved.

With the period it has been alive, the programme has attracted many people. There were only seven participants when the literacy classes started in 2006.

But at some point, the figure shot to 60. Unfortunately, because of religious beliefs, a number of participants have pulled out.

“Some of our colleagues mainly those belonging to the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church pulled out because they said they could not rear pigs,” said Nyirenda.

“We tried to reason with them that pigs were not the only option. We encouraged them to rear goats but they still insisted. However, one of the SDA members understood us and is now doing very well after agreeing to take up goat farming.”

Such has been the only drawback to the programme. However, the programme has proven a success in other aspects. As a result, when the UNV Deputy Executive Coordinator Naheed Haque visited the project recently, those who have seen the benefits recommended that it should be replicated across the country.

Said Haque: “From the impression I have gotten from the projects we visited, functional literacy has manifested itself as the entry point to all aspects of development.”

“After learning how to read and write, people can get into income generating activities like pig farming as we saw down there. This improves their economic status.”

Haque said there are up to 94 United Nations volunteers in the country. They are involved mainly in the health sector, social welfare and community development.

The programme that has opened the eyes of people like Nyirenda falls under social welfare.

“We want to raise the spirit of community participation in development projects. At the end of the day, we want to put development projects in the hands of the community,” added Haque.

The success of projects like Nkhata Bay’s Flird is what raised the impact of UN volunteers in the country thereby attracting Haque to visit them.

She said as a new person at the UN Volunteers headquarters, she had to familiarise herself with countries that were transmitting success stories. She said Malawi and Zambia are some of the successful stories in Africa.

The Nkhata Bay project, small as it may look, has impetus to push Malawi for a long way in its quest to achieve the millennium development goals (MDGs) by 2015.

In Nkhata Bay, the project is already achieving goal one, namely to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

However, the knowledge Nyirenda revealed indicates that she could also directly help in achieving goals six and seven, namely to combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases and to ensure environmental sustainability, respectively.

The other goals include to achieve universal primary education (goal 2), to promote gender equality and empower women (goal 3), to reduce child mortality (goal 4), to improve maternal health (goal 5) and to develop a global partnership for development (goal 8).

If it were not for this programme, Nyirenda could still have been a victim of exploiters today. But, her success will not go without mention of one John Mtambo, her teacher.

“My focus on topics is very simple,” said Mtambo about his classes which run for two hours.

“We start by reciting the alphabet and then graphics and we start learning how to take on problems.”

He added that his classes include a practical work on how to take care of livestock. There is also a provision for participants to study in the library.

Growing cancer that is forced adolescent marriages

2009-12-14T11:23:00.001-08:00

Published in The Sunday Times, Malawi, on December 13 2009

About three years ago, Thokozani (not a real name) was a source of happiness in her village. Drums sounded loudly and the noise of celebration ricocheted between the hills that surround her village.

Thokozani was being married off. Her parents craved happiness which only marriage would guarantee; she succumbed to their whims. She was only 13, and had just menstruated for the first time.

“I was told that I should leave their house if I didn’t get married to this man,” recalled Thokozani, now 16 and a mother of a two-year-old, in an interview. She left her husband because she needed some more time before going through another pain of giving birth.

Issues of early marriage are rampant in the country. Even though the law restricts marriage to people aged 15 (for anyone below, one needs parental consent) and above, more and more girls aged below 15 find their way into marriage. Thokozani is a perfect example.

Once in marriage, these girls are expected to fulfil conjugal obligations; thus, they get pregnant regardless of the age. According to a 2007 report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) titled ‘Giving girls today and tomorrow, breaking the cycle of adolescent pregnancy’, most girls get to this stage before they are physically, emotionally and socially mature enough.

“Globally, the overwhelming majority of adolescent girls who become pregnant are married,” reads the report in part.

In Malawi, statistics on how many get married and fall pregnant before the legal marriage age are lacking due to the absence of comprehensive research. As such, stories of those falling into the trap might sound mythical.

However, bits and pieces of information emerging from across the country show the problem could be colossal.

For instance, a baseline survey conducted by Action Aid International Malawi in Phalombe indicated that up to 112 girls were forced out of school and into marriages between January and September this year.

Action Aid International has taken a campaign to keep girls in school and prevent early marriage to areas it operates in. One such area is Chitipa, and there the campaign group was also forced to digest stories of parents forcing their young girls to get married.

“It was in 2007 when I asked my father to provide me money for school fees as I was about to start secondary education which is paid for. He promised me that he would borrow money from somebody because he didn’t have the money himself,” said 16-year-old Flora Mweso, and a form two student at Nthalire Community Day Secondary School (CDSS).

She revealed this to members of the press who visited the area courtesy of the group Action Aid. Then only 13, Flora was being forced into a marriage with a 79-year-old in a practice called Kupimbira.

Under the practice, a man, old as he may be, enters into a contract with a girl’s parents. He provides what the parents need or pays a bride price in return for the girl. And, he demands that his ‘wife’ joins him in matrimony any time. The practice is prevalent in Chitipa and Karonga.

“After some time he told me to go and collect the money from a certain man with whom he had negotiated. Fortunately, my friend tipped me that my father had arranged with the man that he should lock me up in his house the moment I arrived.”

At the same gathering, a 14-year-old girl had a tale to tell similar to Flora’s. Like Flora, this girl (name withheld) lives to tell the tale because of efforts to prevent such marriages by some chiefs and organisations like Action Aid.

But not many adolescent girls are as lucky.

“There are so many others who are in a situation like the one I went through. I am luckier because it happened when I was 13. It happens to girls as young as 12 in most areas,” added Thokozani, now a housemaid in a Blantyre suburb.

Although this growing problem seems to provide financial bailouts to parents who praise it, the consequences on the girls have capacity to overshadow the happiness that overwhelms the parents when these girls succumb to their pressure and accept to be married off.

Since they are expected to perform conjugal obligations when they get married, these girls are exposed to unprotected penetrative sex. This exposure leaves them vulnerable to cancer of the cervix, the leading cause of death amongst all cancers affecting women.

According to Dr Frank Taulo, Director of Centre for Reproductive Health (CRH) at College of Medicine, girls who have unprotected sex before turning 20 have highest chances of contracting cancer of the cervix compared to those in the older age band. Further, when they fall pregnant and go for labour, these girls face a death trap.

“Pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths are the number one killers of adolescent girls worldwide,” reads the UNFPA report which quotes earlier research conducted by partner organisations World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

“Each year, nearly 70,000 die. At least two million more are left with chronic illness or disabilities that may bring them life-long suffering, shame and abandonment. Physically immature and often with few resources, the youngest first time mothers are the most at risk.”

The report ranks Malawi seventh out of 10 countries where early motherhood is most threatening. Malawi got 75 points based on three indicators, namely early marriage, early motherhood and infant death risk.

Testimonies quoted in the report stamp the importance of abandoning the practice and leaving girls in school.

“I married at age 12, before I even had my first period. I am from a lower caste family … we cannot afford nutritious food or a decent house to live in. I have three children: two daughters and one son,” reads testimony from a 19-year-old Nepalese girl only identified as Ganga.

“My last childbirth was especially difficult. I still feel weak, and I look like an old woman. I wish I had not married so young and had babies so young … my message to all teenage girls is do not marry before age 20 and wait to have children until you are 22. That is the right age for child bearing, when a woman is mature and can look after herself and her baby.”

In Malawi, the law is the supreme authority. But as debate on what should be the marriage age continues, Dr Chisale Mhango, Director of the Reproductive Health Unit (RHU) in the Ministry of Health, warns that putting it at 16 will increase the number of parents violating the law on marriage.

“Raising the age to 16 will not protect these girls,” says Mhango in response to an e-mailed questionnaire. He says many parents will continue to break the law by allowing their daughters to marry before the legal age.

The situation on early marriages is an established problem. However, with all hands together, the situation could be reversed and girls could live to live a better future.

Paradoxes, malice in equitable access to tertiary education

2009-11-26T06:30:00.000-08:00

When he presided over the first congregation, president Bingu wa Mutharika told the 2008 University of Malawi graduating students that the day marked a point in their lives when they exited a world where people sympathised with them and entered one in which, as he put it, dog eats dog.

The president might not have been as explicit in his speech. However, whatever he said was understood to emphasise the importance of hard work.

That they were alighting from the University corridors wielding diplomas and degrees did not mean that the graduating students were there, so said the president. But it was their ability to stand the harsh and competitive world they were entering that would make everyone appreciate them.

From the president’s speech, one could easily see that hard work – nothing else – was the ladder to success.

Unfortunately, almost a year – or slightly more than a year – after his insightful speech, especially to those that revere hard work, the president is a manifestation of that which is but the opposite of hard work.

After rumours that he was the architect of a bid to bring back the quota system of selecting students to institutions of higher learning – in the name of equitable access to tertiary education – the president has come out clearly supporting the system that was outlawed in 1993.

The president told a press conference that he was absolutely in support of the system, stressing that he wanted to change the system which benefited one region, namely the northern region.

He added that through quota system, people from across the country would enjoy equal opportunities when it comes to accessing tertiary education. To defend this, the president singled out Mzuzu University which he said benefits the minority, namely people of the northern region.

The president statistically backed his reasoning. He said the northern region, with just 12 percent of the country’s population, enjoys 38 percent of those selected to the University while the central and southern regions – with significantly higher percentages of the country’s population – shared the remaining 62 percent of those selected to the institution.

Off the allocation of bed space in public institutions of higher learning, the president singled out the civil service as an entity that manifested bias towards, again, the northern region. Statistics were also at play here.

The president – confirming reports that he decided to vouch quota system after he established that the civil service was dominated by people from the northern and central regions – said Chitipa and Karonga combined has up to 225 in the government super scale grade while Chikwawa has only 55 yet the population of the two districts combined was not “even half of Chikwawa.”

By quickly changing colour like he has done, the president is presenting a paradox of himself.

Firstly, by bringing in quota system the president is discouraging hard work. Yet he is the one who has all along preached the gospel of hard work. The system, as authorities put it, will give each district 10 automatic places. Consequently, those who have cherished hard work all along will develop feeling that they should not work hard anyway because even if they do only 10 people and slightly more will fill the places.

As quota system would be awarding those who don’t even work hard, the spirit of laxity would go on and on and affect the civil service and government’s operations.

Hard work is what we have all believed in; and I humbly opine that the president should have considered where those who sat Mzuni entrance examinations came from before he could start blaming the distribution of the institution’s students based on their place of origin.

Does the president want to convince the nation that that 38 percent was favoured to get there? How much do we know that it is not through hard work that the 38 percent went to Mzuzu University? If he had the numbers of those who sat the entrance examinations, wouldn’t the president have had better ground to analyse the situation and establish why people from the other regions failed to get higher percentages? Did the president establish how much the mentality that Mzuzu is not a ‘city’ held by many contribute to the inconsistent figures?

Again, did the president find out why only 55 people from Chikwawa made it into the government super scale? Are they the only educated people in Chikwawa? It would have been fair to find out where other educated people from Chikwawa are because, honestly, the 55 are not the only ones.

It would also have been fundamental if we looked at the available alternatives for educated people from Chikwawa and those from Karonga and Chitipa. It might happen that people from the former have alternatives hence shun the civil service which is generally blamed for low salaries, while those from the latter don’t have such alternatives.

The president could have enough ammunition to start agitating for a change if he had established that the status quo was a result of dubious acts and not hard work. He would not have been blamed if he agitated for this change after establishing that the status quo led to inefficiencies in the civil service.

Secondly, the president is sowing seeds of disunity by propagating quota. Yet it is the president himself who has been in the forefront singing Tiyende pamodzi ndi mtima umodzi.

By consistently singling out the northern region in his bid to advance quota system, the president is seen to be against people – either apparently or really – from the region. Who knows, with intermarriages one would sound northerner when they are southerner or vice versa. So, who would the president be fighting?

Through such references the president is seen to be attempting to marginalise people from the north. Quota system is like telling one’s ten children that he or she knows that not all of them want to eat but they should share the little food. The question ‘how will those that hunger most feel about such a parent?’ begs.

As father of the nation, the president should be the last person to divide his children. This conclusion begs specifically when one looks at the uniform pattern with which the president and his party won the May 19 polls. Why should such a unified nation be divided because of a poor policy on education?

To say the least, quota system is not a solution to what authorities see as disproportionate distribution of tertiary education in the country. It is but paradoxical and malicious. It is going to discriminate against those who work hard and favour those who don’t.

Even Minister of Education George Chaponda has – most definitely – alluded to the fact that quota system is not the solution. In many public attempts to defend reintroduction of quota on radio, Chaponda has used the gap between those who qualify for tertiary education and those who go there as reason for the change.

For instance, Chaponda said on state-run MBC that last year, 5,000 qualified for entry into the University of Malawi but only 1,000 went there. By presenting the figure, Chaponda attempted to defend quota system as a solution to the problem. However, he exposed government’s lack of strategy when it comes to catering for those who qualify for University. Further, he exposed government’s lack of ground for reintroducing quota.

Government should stop advancing quota as a solution to the problem that sees few of those that qualify for it going for university education. Instead, authorities should find means of accommodating those that do not go to university despite qualifying. I stand to be corrected if need be, but creating more bed space is the only solution.

Otherwise, we are putting at stake the quality of our education in that through quota system, we will give the cap to those whom it does not fit – namely, those who do not deserve university education because they don’t work hard. Again, the peace with which we have been cherished is being staked. And, the president will be the first to be blamed for he is seen to be advancing issues that could lead to all this.

To a better future with family planning

2009-09-02T04:10:00.000-07:00

Picture a situation where a secondary school girl is impregnated. The result is dismissal as Malawian schools do not condone pregnancies. And this marks the beginning of problems for her. Interjections from fellow pupils; sarcastic jabbering and disturbance from education are just some of them.

According to research conducted by, among others, Youth Net and Counselling (Yoneco) and published in 2007 by the Guttmacher Institute, “early marriage and child bearing may isolate young women by leading to school attrition and reduced independence.”

The paper, titled ‘Protecting the Next Generation in Malawi: New Evidence on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Needs’, says 11 percent of the girls and young women aged 15-19, and interviewed during the research, said they “discontinued schooling because of pregnancy.”

Getting pregnant while in school highlights how unexpectedly pregnancy comes — pregnancy is often unintended or unplanned. It also points to how unaware partners are as regards sexuality and pregnancy issues. Pregnancy is testimony of unprotected sex. And pregnancy leads to birth.

Women the world over die while giving birth. Many others die from complications related to the pregnancy, thus adding to woes which a secondary school girl who falls pregnant while there would face.

In Malawi, recent statistics indicate that up to 807 women in every 100,000 die while giving birth. Many others suffer complications as others die. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says the world over, “for every woman that dies due to pregnancy complications, 20 or more are injured or disabled.”

And for Malawi, the situation is more than scaring. With a fertility rate of up to 6.3, chances are that girls and women are destined for death and injury. Survival is rare. One may be trapped at any one of the average six pregnancies.

According to the Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM), 30 percent of all maternal deaths are due to abortion. Such abortions are undoubtedly aided and abetted by the Malawian law which does not condone any form of abortion — safe or unsafe, medically necessary or not. And because hospitals will not go against the law, those who fall pregnant but do not want it choose this perilous route.

It is hard to get a confession from those that have ever aborted. Who doesn’t fear the law? As such stories of how abortion is conducted may only come from the grapevine. Some say those who do it overdose themselves with drugs or drink soapy solutions. Others say they force sharp objects through their vagina resulting to injury. Yet others say such people take equally deadly concoctions which they get from mostly herbalists.

“It’s two things if one aborts. Either she dies or she gets permanent damage to the reproductive system. When permanent damage occurs, the affected person never gives birth again,” says Lawrent Kumchenga, FPAM Information Education and Communications, Advocacy and Public Relations Officer.

“As such, the solution to an unwanted pregnancy, thus an end to such deaths and injuries, is family planning. Pregnancy is avoided when a family planning method is used. And when pregnancy is avoided, one cannot think about abortion. Therefore, there is no death and injury because of abortion and society would remain progressive.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO) reckons family planning as an initiative through which couples can “anticipate and attain their desired number of children and the spacing and timing of their births.” It further reckons that family planning has a direct bearing on a woman’s health.

UNFPA says reduced child bearing prevents injuries in the birth canal. One such injury is obstetric fistula, a hole in the vagina or rectum often caused by prolonged labour without treatment.

“It leaves women in social isolation, depression and deepening poverty as it leaves them leaking urine or faeces or both,” it says.

Family planning methods like condom use also save women from cancer of the cervix, the deadliest of cancers affecting women. The Centre for Reproductive Health (CRH) at the Malawi College of Medicine says the human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes the disease is transmitted during unprotected penetrative sex.

CRH Director Dr Frank Taulo says protecting women from the disease would create a better future as death of a woman mirrors a troubled and compromised future.

“The entire family is affected and the impact is far reaching,” he says.

Besides, family planning accords the mother’s body adequate time to regain strength after the pregnancy, according to Malawi Health Equity Network (MHEN) Country Coordinator Martha Kwataine.

“Additionally, for those who deliver through caesarean sections, the uterus requires at least two full years of break before it can accommodate another foetus,” she says.

Benefits of family planning go beyond those on women’s health. Kumchenga says employing methods of birth control for periods of financial struggle, while setting money aside for unseen hardships (infertility, illness and loss of income) during times of prosperity, will help avoid financial anxiety an unplanned pregnancy may bring.

He adds that besides enhanced family time management as result of fewer children to look after, family planning leads to attainment of higher education because “there is less stress, worry and guilt”. Higher education contributes greatly to a country’s productivity. Earth’s resources also last longer with fewer people, a direct result of family planning.

Kwataine says family planning also takes away the depression older children suffer because mothers abandon them and focus on looking after the newborns. She says such depression leads to loss of appetite which results into malnutrition in these children.

“Family planning can help to break the vicious cycle of poverty. Having a relatively small number of children economically empowers the family to ably provide for the needs of the children such as high quality education, food and clothing, among others,” adds Kwataine.

“Well cared for children tend to excel in life and contribute to economic development. Thus, family planning is a key to reducing poverty both nationally and at household level. Family planning is also a tool to controlling population growth hence protection of the environment.”

Seven family planning methods are available for use in Malawi. They include pills, condoms, Depo Provera, Norplant, loop, Tubal ligation and vasectomy. Tubal ligation is a permanent method for women while vasectomy is a permanent initiative for men.

“The mostly used in Malawi is Depor Provera,” says Kumchenga. “Women do not need to go to the hospital often. It is done once in three months. It is cheaper, not many women complain about side effects, it is readily available and can be administered by nurses unlike others which require more skilled personnel.”

Unfortunately, only 41 percent of women in Malawi use a family planning method. This could be a result of “poverty and profound inequalities between men and women limiting women’s ability to plan their pregnancies.” UNFPA notes these as women’s major barriers to access contraceptives in many countries. Culture and religion could be other reasons.

This calls for action. The action is to propagate benefits of family planning. Let there be male involvement. What culture and religion hold on family planning should be revisited just as was the case with HIV and Aids. There is need for civic education. And when advocacy starts, there should be no relenting.

'Screening can stop cervical cancer'

2009-08-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

If you are a woman aged 25 and above, you have or you have had multiple sex partners, or, in fact, your partner sees other women, you could be in a big health trouble.

You need to go to hospital and get screened. You might be carrying the human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes cancer of the cervix.

Cancer of the cervix, otherwise known as cervical cancer, is the leading cause of death among all cancers affecting women. It could also be described as one of the most intricate diseases. One suffering from the disease cannot easily detect it in its early stages.

“There is a lengthy period between the time one contracts the virus and the time the disease develops. It may take between 10 and 30 years for the disease to develop,” says Dr Frank Taulo, Director of the Centre for Reproductive Health (CRH) at the Malawi College of Medicine.

“The majority of women are able to clear the virus after contracting it and never develop the disease. But up to about 30 percent of those who contract it are unable to do so and harbour the virus and if there is no screening, they would develop the disease.”

The irony of the disease, however, is that the HPV is carried by men but they do not suffer from the disease. But like mosquitoes spreading the malaria virus each time they bite people, men spread the virus to as many women as possible with whom they have unprotected sex.

Once in the woman, the virus plays a harmless waiting game. You cannot suspect you have it. That is why only screening is paramount. The virus only starts leading to abnormal growth of cells at the mouth of the womb (the cervix) after more than 10 years. This abnormal growth of the cells is the cancer.

At this point, the infected woman experiences abnormal bleeding from the reproductive system. This happens mostly between regular menstrual periods and after sexual intercourse. Those infected also experience menstrual periods that last longer and are often heavier than before.

According to Medicine Net, an online healthcare media publishing, those infected also bleed after menopause. This is usually between the ages of 45 and 50.

“There are also stinking vaginal discharges released by those that are infected. Those infected also experience difficulties in emptying the vagina and there is no sleeping because of abdominal pains,” adds Taulo.

“This is no point of return, and it is advisable that medical personnel should recommend thorough examination rather than just giving antibiotics. Antibiotics are not a treatment.”

According to Taulo, every woman “with a womb and who has had unprotected penetrative sex” is at risk. This group, he says, mostly comprises women aged 25 and above. That is why screening is particularly recommended for such an age group.

He, however, says this does not automatically mean that those under 25 are free from the virus. He says all those who have had sex before attaining the age of 20 should also go for screening because they are also at risk.

Research conducted by the Malawi Cancer Registry between 2004 and early 2006 indicates that cancer of the cervix tops the list of all cancers affecting women with 33 percent. The other cancers affecting women are Kaposi’s sarcoma (25.5 percent), cancer of the breast (6.9 percent), cancer of the oesophagus (6.7 percent) and cancer of the urinary bladder (3.1 percent).

The research registered the largest number of cases of the disease among those aged above 40.

Dr Charles Dzamalala, Medical Director of the Malawi Cancer Registry and Consultant Pathologist at the Malawi College of Medicine, says there are more cases of the disease in the advanced ages because of the time the disease takes to develop.

He says: “One can get the virus at say 25 but they will only start showing signs of the disease when they are around 40 or 45. The disease takes time to develop from the time one contracts the virus.”

According to the cancer registry, by mid 2006, there were 6,772 cervical cancer cases out of a total of 38,292 cancer cases registered in the country. Dzamalala says the figure could be higher now and that would only be confirmed by recent research.

Taulo says this high figure is a result of failure by the women at risk to go for screening.

“When one goes for screening, there are chances for early detection of the virus hence the chances for treatment. When there is no screening, there cannot be any treatment which means more and more women keep dying of the disease,” he says.

This is undoubtedly a worrying situation. Most of the women within the affected age group are breadwinners in their families. They are also those who look after the family.

Consequently, death of such women mirrors a troubled and compromised future. The entire family is affected and the impact is far reaching. School going children might stop going to school because they miss the care of a mother at home.

Screening services for cancer of the cervix are offered in most hospitals across the country. There is also treatment for pre-malignant stages of the cancer although only a few hospitals offer the service.

But according to Taulo, this is not enough as other services have to be offered as well. He says for a comprehensive cancer treatment programme, up to four services have to be offered. Malawi currently offers three, the other being palliative care for cancer patients. It does not offer radiation therapy which comes at stage three.

“It is everybody’s duty. Let us support and encourage women to go for screening. There is also need to invest in the problem. Currently, it is only lip service,” adds Taulo.

“There is need to educate the masses and train people to deal with the problem. Current indications are that training is declining. Not many are trained in the area.”

HIV positive? Courage routs discrimination

2009-03-16T23:39:00.000-07:00

From mere looks, Eliza Kazonga is just like any other woman. Unless you start getting her story through your ears, thought that this Mangochi lady is HIV-positive should only get you while in dreamland. She is healthy and strong.

The 33-year-old Kazonga will tell you that it was in 2000 when her husband’s serious sickness prompted both of them to go for HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT), otherwise known as Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT).

“We both tested positive to the virus, and I have lived with the virus since then,” she says. “I was recommended for anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy in 2004.”

While one would expect Kazonga to conceal such a status, she went public after testing positive and spread the news. But the development attracted what she did not expect. Her husband’s relatives came out guns blazing, labeling her names.

For a while, Kazonga was overwhelmed by fear, fear to repeat her story. She thought the more she openly talked about her status, the more she would attract the interjections. But how far would she have gone? She was HIV-positive first and last, and hiding this status would never have reversed the situation. So she started fighting the fear.

As Kazonga raced from testing positive, to getting the interjections and landing at the decision to fight fear, more and more people tested positive to the virus which causes the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (Aids). One of them is Isaac Stephano.

“I went for a test and tested positive in 2003,” says Stephano. “I had been feeling very weak, steadily losing weight and suffering from rashes before deciding to go for testing.”

“Breaking the news to my community attracted me misery. They said a lot of bad things about me, labeling me the most evil person in that community. But I was not afraid of repeating what I had said.”

Unlike them, Stephano – who started taking ARVs in 2005 – was steadfast in his mission because he pooled courage from the fact that the likes of Kazonga were already known to be HIV-positive. If they are ridiculed but keep going, who am I not to, Stephano asked himself.

As more people who tested positive but initially concealed their statuses came out to join the likes of Kazonga and Stephano, a block started forming. The more they bonded, the more the philosophy of fear escaped them. Now it was time to confront discrimination.

“We were 13 when we started moving together as a group,” says Kazonga. “We used to go around with volunteers who used us as examples of people who lived positively with the virus.

“But we went our ways because we discovered that the same volunteers who appeared to be using us to encourage people to come out and declare their status went behind our backs and used us as bad examples to their children. We felt that was discrimination.”

That was in 2006. The group named itself Lonjezo People Living With HIV and Aids (PLWHA) Association. And, presumably drawing inspiration from its name, the organisation promised to accomplish one thing: fight fear.

With the philosophy of fear fully concurred, the group believed, those that tested positive but did not openly declare their status would come out. As people see what these people are like, in spite of their status, they would gradually start accepting them as they are. Hence, discrimination would be conquered.

The trick is working. From 13, membership of the group increased to 36 and now there are 73 of them. And the group has moved from one that was discriminated against to one that is the most sought after.

“All those people who do not feel well are advised to come to us. We advise them to go for testing, and when they test positive they become part of our group,” says 45-year-old Anne Chikhadzula, the group’s Treasurer. She tested positive in 2007 and enlisted for ART the same year.

“Because people see how we look, they think we are lying when we say we are HIV-positive. They say HIV-positive people would not look like us.”

Chikhadzula says that the group is today a guiding light. Everyone wants to meet and see them. There is no doubt about this.

At a World Aids Day commemoration ceremony at Palm Beach in T/A Mponda’s area in the district in December last year, people who braved the heat of a clear sunny day and attended the occasion wobbled around looking for even the smallest of shelters from the sun.

But when the Master of Ceremonies announced that it was time for members of the group to manifest their positive living, everybody came out of the shelters, crammed the space around a small circle in which, one by one, the group members stood and narrated their situation.

But in a society where many who declare their status have cried under the force of discrimination, what has openly declaring their being HIV-positive benefited the members of Lonjezo PLWHA Association?

“We have changed the way people here perceive those living with HIV and Aids,” says Kazonga. “We have shown the communities that one who is HIV-positive is just like any other individual as such they should not be discriminated against. We are getting accepted into the community rather than being shunned.”

“Even the church is using us as a good example and is taking part in spreading the HIV/Aids messages.”

Chipped in Chikhadzula: “Communities call us to help them establish Aids-related organisations in their areas. We go to Mangochi Prison to deliver messages about HIV and Aids and the Officer-In-Charge (OC) wants us to be going there regularly.”

She adds that the group has instilled in most people in the area a mentality of doubting those that they see and feel like falling for.

“When they look at us, they don’t see any difference with those that have not come out openly to declare their sero-status or those that do not have the virus.

“So when they hear that we are HIV-positive but look like anybody else, they itch to go for testing with those that they fall for lest they fall for one who is positive. In which process, they know not only their status but also those of the ones they love,” she says.

“Besides, our messages have created knowledge so that in case one wishes to start a relationship with one who tested positive, they should know what they are getting into and how to handle themselves. If I kept quiet, who would know I am HIV-positive?”

The organisation spreads messages about HIV and the benefits of openly disclosing one’s status by playing football and netball games. It also has a counselling committee and has a home-based care programme to assist the chronically ill in different localities.

Apart from spreading the messages that would help those that tested positive but are currently concealing their status to come out, members of the group are also spreading the benefits of enlisting for the anti-retroviral therapy.

Seeing hope through goats

2009-03-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

Goats are undoubtedly the most troublesome of livestock. And any herdsperson should voluntarily testify to this. Once loose, goats will not let you sit down and rest. They could lie down one minute and convince you it’s time to rest. But the next minute, the same would be wreaking havoc in people’s gardens or kitchens. That is why they are often on the leash.

But for the people of Kalanga Village in Traditional Authority (TA) Lundu’s area, goats mirror hope. Hope that would take them out of their problems. Hope that would bail them out of poverty. And slightly over a year ago, they vowed that they would not rest until they landed their hands on goats.

“There is a woman in this village whose life has completely changed because of goats. She started with two goats, but they multiplied significantly,” says Thomas Chiphwanya, Malawi Council for the Handicapped (Macoha) community rehabilitation worker for the area.

“She sold some and was able to buy fertiliser for both her tobacco and maize gardens. She has built a very big house from proceeds realised from tobacco sales.”

The said woman is among a group of people who received goats under a pass-on programme a few years ago. The programme falls under Macoha’s Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) in which those in the villages are assisted with the things found in their areas. Goats are some of these things.

Under the programme, each individual receives two nanny or female goats. A billy or male goat rotates among these recipients. After they multiply, some of the kids or young goats are passed on to other beneficiaries.

Benefits of such a programme are what sent a number of people with physical disabilities and guardians of children with physical disabilities in the area itching to be part of it. They did not want to be begging for help each and every day. They wanted to be self reliant.

But for some time, their calls landed on deaf ears. And these deaf ears were very deliberate. Many, including Macoha community rehabilitation worker Chiphwanya, thought that they were a joke. They wanted to test the people’s seriousness.

“We initially wanted to gauge their seriousness on the issue. After observing that they were serious enough, we set up groups in January last year (2008),” says Chiphwanya.

“However, they did not receive the goats there and then because they lacked expertise on goat husbandry. Unfortunately, there was none who was prepared enough to fund their training.”

As such, the groups waited until early this month when Chiphwanya got into contact with the Disabled Women in Development (Diwode). The organisation sourced funding to aid training in goat husbandry for members of the groups.

The funding came from the Royal Norwegian Embassy through the Non-Governmental Organisation Gender Coordination Network (NGO-GCN’s) agricultural and economic empowerment programme. As such, the groups finally attended a five-day training at Linjidzi Court in the area from Monday to Friday last week.

“We feel farming is wealth. So work very hard and take full use of the expertise you have acquired in the five days to enjoy full benefits of farming,” Diwode Executive Director Sigere Kasasi told the participants when she officially closed the training.

Among others, the training focused on how to properly care for the goats with the view of reaping maximum benefits from the animals. Participants also went through a demonstration on how to build a good kraal (khola) for their share of the animals.

As the participants walked out of the court after another session of the training on Thursday, hope shone all over their faces for all to see. They were seeing a new world through the goats.

“With this training we can now see an end to poverty and hunger and our lives completely changed,” said Mustapha Mtendere, chairperson of the Namisu Goat Club which was among the participants to the training. He has a physical disability.

“After some time, we will sell the goats. We will use the money to buy whatever we want at our homes including fertiliser for our gardens. But while we wait to start selling the goats, we will use manure from these goats to maximise harvests in our gardens.”

This gentle song of hope did not come from the mouth of Mtendere only. He just started it. Afterwards, it was repeated by every one of the twenty participants to the training.

Falida Msosa, a guardian to a child with a disability was one of those that attended the training and reflected this song. She said in the goats she saw hope for a rich generation from her household.

“When the goats multiply, we will sell some of them and pay school fees for our children. When these children get educated, they will secure good jobs for themselves. As such, they will be independent and self reliant. They will not be ridiculed for going here and there begging,” she said.

“That aside, we will also use the money to eliminate poverty in our households. With the money realised from the goat sales we will buy whatever we like including subsidised fertiliser.”

Fortunately, the programme is well coordinated such that talk of its failure could only get one who is in dreamland.

Chiphwanya said veterinary experts and officials from the Blantyre Agricultural Development Division (ADD) are well aware of the programme and ready to assist with expertise wherever it is needed.

“Those who receive the goats under the programme are advised to quickly rush to these officials whenever they see something wrong with the goats. It could be a disease, therefore, the earlier they report it to veterinary officials the more the chances of that disease being cured,” said Chiphwanya.

Kasasi said although her organisation was formed basically to fight for the rights of women with varying degrees of disability, who – according to her – were not accepted even by fellow women, it feels obliged to assist all those that need help. The bottom line is that they should be organised like the groups in TA Lundu’s area. That is why the likes of Mtendere had a chance to benefit from the training.

At the moment, a number of herdspersons may keep looking at their goats as the most troublesome of livestock. But the story of people in TA Lundu’s area is presents enough a dimension to tell us that there is more than trouble from the goats.

Creating hope for food processors

2009-02-27T07:46:00.000-08:00

For all the time he has been in food processing, ensuring that their product attracts the consumer is what has bothered the mind of Prince Mang’ombe and all those with whom he runs the Wovwe Rice Producers and Processors Association.

Their product, Kilombero, is a rice brand so popular and tried and tested for one to ignore. But Mang’ombe and his friends have remained worried.

“Enhancing hygiene during food processing is of paramount importance. Any food discovered to be contaminated will be shunned regardless of how good it looks,” says Mang’ombe.

“Packaging and its design is another challenge that we need to overcome if our product is to continue attracting customers on the market.”

These challenges are not only for the Karonga-based group which is registered under the One Village One Product (Ovop). Many other organisations established to respond to the call of enhancing production and ensuring good representation of Malawian products on the global market face similar challenges.

The Malawi Bureau of Standards (MBS), an institution established to standardize and accredit manufactured products with the view of removing safety doubts from those wanting to buy it, agrees that most of these organisations are below the desired standards on sanitation and quality control.

“The greatest shortfalls in goods by these organisations have been registered in sanitation and quality control particularly in volume and performance of the products,” says Davlin Chokazinga, MBS Acting Director General.

“But quality management is the most important tool for any business growth. Customers should be assured of safety before they buy the product. There is no entertainment for less quality products on the market.”

With such revelations, the likes of Mang’ombe and company should really be thrown into action, action to improve their situation. There is a lot of potential for Malawian products to penetrate the global market.

But all products targeting global markets have to pass the test of safety or risk rejection. Precedents set elsewhere by food goods lacking safety and quality have given consumers another sense – attention to detail when buying food items.

Less than a month ago, up to 84 children died in Nigeria after being fed on a product aimed at enhancing the growth of milk teeth in the children. The product, My Pikin, Pidgin English for My Child, was found to be containing a thickening agent normally used in brake fluid as an anti-freeze. It was discovered by the National Agency for Food, Drugs Administration and Control (Nafdac).

Again, in 2008, another incident bordering on food safety caused jitters across the world. The incident dubbed “2008 Chinese milk scandal” and registered in the People’s Republic of China involved milk and infant formula, and other food materials and components.

The products were reported to have been contaminated with melamine, a white crystalline solid used in the manufacturing of resins and in leather tanning. With China’s wide range of export food products, the incident affected countries on all continents. China reported an estimated 300,000 victims and up to 860 babies hospitalized.

“The developed world stresses a lot on safety and quality,” added Chokazinga.

Unfortunately, the challenge to ensure safety and quality in goods produced under the Ovop concept is overwhelming the organisations concerned at a time when stakeholders are converging efforts to enhance production initiatives.

With funding from the European Union (EU), The Story Workshop, an organisation promoting grassroot development, is running a Mwana alirenji programme aimed at promoting food processing at household level.

The programme seeks to avert a situation where Malawi keeps harvesting plentiful food, yet failure in storing such food due to lack of expertise in food processing leads the country’s populace to feeling the pinch instituted by hunger.

Recently, the Malawi Government also signed a partnership creating a highway for a lot of locally produced goods to Chinese markets. The agreement is an addition to other initiatives aimed at sending Malawian products to regional and overseas markets including EU countries.

The development means that a lot of items would be processed. Unfortunately, they would not take advantage of the several agreements and offer competition on the global market unless safety and quality controls are swiftly adopted.

“There is no room for substandard products,” says Director of Industry in the Ministry of Industry and Trade Chris Kachiza. “There could be opportunities, but without quality products risk rejection.

“Customers will shun them and prefer foreign products. That has been proven even on the domestic market. Customers go for quality products and those that are well packaged. You can rest assured that a customer will go for a bottle of honey that does not leak even when a bottle that leaks contains the same quality of honey.”

Fortunately, hope is being created to see products like those of the Wovwe Rice Producers and Processors Association and other Ovop-registered manufacturers adopt safety thereby trade competitively on the global market. The MBS has targeted such groups, teaching them how to add quality to and enhance safety of their products.

The MBS, blamed for not standardizing most of these products leading to their tough life on the market, is coordinating workshops on how these groups could add quality to their products.

Chokazinga said on the sidelines of an opening ceremony for a two-day Food Safety and Quality Assurance workshop in Blantyre Tuesday that equipping a participant with such skills would cost K20,000 a day. But what is at stake convinced the organisation to facilitate the workshop for free.

“Liberalisation has opened up opportunities for products to trade freely and without barriers. As we send our products on the global markets customers should be assured of safety,” said Chokazinga. The Blantyre workshop attracted 25 representatives from across the country. They included Mang’ombe.

The organisation is also visiting individual groups to ensure that they adhere to proper sanitary measures.

Such workshops collectively and generally target those organisations operating under the Ovop concept. However, with the impact of My Pikin and the Chinese Milk scandal fresh in people’s minds, organisations in food processing would be the ones seeing greatest hope and benefiting the most from such initiatives.

With The Story Workshop promoting food processing under the Mwana alirenji programme and the global market steadily opening up for products processed under initiatives like one by Ovop, Malawian food products could soon find themselves on such markets. But who will risk their lives and go for them when they lack quality and hardly exhibit safety?

Making money out of food processing

2009-02-17T07:31:00.000-08:00

When he thinks of money from his Irish potato garden, one Anganile Kalonda (not real name) visualizes himself standing between huge sacks of the produce along the Blantyre-Lilongwe road at Lizulu in Ntcheu.

Here – he convinces himself – he can sell a small basin full of the potatoes at a set price and fatten his pockets before going back home to enjoy with his wife and children.

Unfortunately, Kalonda would not get a lot of money from this.

Sweet potatoes are seasonal; as such those who plant the crop harvest it at the same time. And, if they all decide to sell it, they do so at the same time. Therefore, Kalonda has to set attractive prices for him to escape the burden of transporting the gigantic bags back home and failing to store them.

To Kalonda, an attractive price is that which buyers – mostly passengers on buses commuting along the road – opt for: the cheapest.

A situation like Kalonda’s is one that confronts a lot of individuals across the country. After sweating to yield a crop, most of them hardly enjoy the fruit of this sweat because most of the prices are ones that would help clear the stock.

Consequently, lip smacking bananas from Thekerani in Thyolo and Nkondezi in Nkhata Bay; rice from Bwanje Valley and Karonga; Irish potatoes from Khosolo in Mzimba and Tsangano and Lizulu in Ntcheu and groundnuts, maize, cassava and various leaf and fruit vegetables grown across the country will sell cheaply.

However, the situation could have been different if there were food processing.

“When you process your food crops, you increase the shelf life for such crops,” says Kamia Kaluma Sulumba, One Village One Product (OVOP) National Coordinator.

“As such, you sell your products not because you are afraid that the produce would get damaged and that you would find problems storing it, but because you are impressed with the prices offered at the market. Hence, you gain more.”

She says lessons should be drawn from basic things such as maize flour and the harvested maize itself. While harvested maize will need a lot of attention to for it not to go bad or rot, she says, one can store flour for a long time without much attention.

Many might only agree with Sulumba on the issue of flour and not on fresh foods like Irish potatoes. But after listening to the story carved by the Bvumbwe Vegetable Growers Association and that of the Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society, very few would disagree with the fact that food processing helps one spoon lots of money.

“When we used to sell fresh vegetables, we hardly got enough profits,” says Clement Banda, Secretary for the Bvumbwe Vegetable Growers Association.

“For instance, we sold a one-metre bag of fresh vegetables at between K200 and K300. But when we process by drying that same one-metre bag, we realize from it 175 packets.

“We sell each packet at K150 which means that we realize up to K26,250 on a bag that used to give us only about K300 when sold unprocessed.”

He says the association also spoons more money when it sells processed tomatoes than fresh ones.

He says when sold fresh, a kilogramme of tomatoes fetches them around K120 while the same kilogramme of tomatoes processed into sauce fetches not less than K350.

“These differences are also experienced when we sell pawpaws and granadillas in fresh and processed forms,” says Banda.

He says unlike the fresh produce, processed products are easy to transport. He says once transported unprocessed, a lot of tomatoes, for instance, are damaged.

The gainful story of food processing narrated by Banda is repeated by Mercy Butao, Coordinator of Ngolowindo Horticultural Cooperative Society of Salima.

She says the cooperative society, which mostly processes baobab fruits into baobab fruit juice, buys a 25 kilogramme bag of the fruits from local suppliers at K700.

However, after processing the fruits, the 25 kilogramme bag brings them 75 litres of the fruit juice.

“Each litre of the fruit juice is sold at K180. This means that we spoon in K13,500 from the 25 kilogramme bag which we buy at just K700,” says Butao.

“Since we have a steady market in Lilongwe and we buy a lot of these fruits to last until they are in season again, we are not out of business. The processing is not that hard job.”

Unfortunately, although food processing has capacity to spoon a lot of money for individuals that engage it, not many Malawians have embraced it.

A snap check on the Ovop website, www.ovop.org.mw, reveals that only a handful of organisations that enrolled to engage in small-scale manufacturing under the Ovop engaged in food processing.

The list shows that only seven of the organisations, namely Bvumbwe Vegetable Growers Association, Rumphi Cassava Flour making, Lilongwe Cassava Flour and Starch making, Bwanje Rice Milling and Packing, Michiru Khumbo Seed Oil processing, Bvumbwe Milk Processors Group and Mitundu Model Village Factory are in food processing.

Kaluma Sulumba says there are six others that are not on the web site but are in full scale food processing. There is the Mapanga Honey Processors, the Wovwe/Hara Rice scheme, the Limphasa Rice scheme, Nkondezi banana wine manufacturers, Kunthembwe Nsinjiro and Zipatso Association.

But looking at the amount of food produced in the country, this list of food processors is too short.

Agrees Kaluma Sulumba: “A lot needs to be done. It is only a small percentage of the population that is in food processing.

“When you drive along the Blantyre-Lilongwe road, you see a lot of tomatoes. But very little of such produce is processed. People don’t know even how to properly process maize for storage that is why we find that a lot is lost.”

She says because of the absence of processing, demand for most processed foods is not met.

Because of the situation, Ovop is currently training some people who are to work as extension officers closer to the farmers so that whatever is available in an area is properly processed.

“Ours is a bottom-up approach. We want a decentralized set-up. By being exposed to the Ovop concept, they should be able to look at what is in their areas for processing.

“We don’t want to reinvent the processes and the expertise required. As such, we are engaging organisations like the Malawi Bureau of Standards, the Malawi Entrepreneurship Development Institute, Bunda College of Agriculture and the Malawi Industrial Research,” she says.

Such interventions are what would lead Malawians into appreciating the monetary values of food processing.

With a Mwana alirenji food processing programme currently run by the Story Workshop with support from the European Union (EU) in full swing, efforts to change the mindset of those not yet in food processing should not be a big problem.

Soil: Can it be Malawi’s cash cow?

2008-12-23T00:31:00.000-08:00

Malawi is a landlocked country without gold and oil – two minerals that have proven to be wealth earners wherever they exist. As such, the majority of the population is poor. But, as KAREN MSISKA asks, can’t the country’s soil be its gold and oil?

From the highest point of Misuku Hills in Chitipa on the northern tip of Malawi to the lowest point of the Shire Valley in Nsanje lying on the southern tip of the country, Malawi’s soil has capacity to give life to more than one crop that would change one’s life through generating income.

Yet, Robson Watayachanga, a 30-year-old villager at Munonono in Rumphi, will tell you that he was born with poverty, lives with poverty and will die with it.

“We have been told more than once that Malawi has no gold, oil or a port that can bring about riches for us. So we were born this way, live this way and – unless God suddenly drops a miracle – we expect to die this way,” he says.

Such a mentality is not only in Robson’s head. It is a common problem amongst a number of Malawians. In the run up to the 2004 general elections, then a presidential candidate, President Bingu wa Mutharika used the least time allocated for him to ‘greet’ those who gathered for rallies to confess this when he said that Malawians are the ones that are poor, not Malawi.

Mutharika has since tried to change the mentality by encouraging people to think critically and adopt initiatives that could enrich them. Through such attempts to end poverty, Mutharika has since changed fortunes for tobacco farmers in the country.

For the first time in recent history, the country’s tobacco industry raked in a whopping K75 billion, which translates to about 33 percent of the 2008/2009 initial national budget pegged at K229 billion.

Considering the fact that tobacco grows in the soils of mainly the central region and that other soils elsewhere across the country support crops that can also rake in money for the country, the question ‘can’t Malawi’s soil be its gold and oil?’ begs.

“Absolutely,” said Clement Thindwa, Chief Executive Officer for the Tea Planters Association of Malawi, in an interview. “Land as one of the factors of production can be used to generate a lot of wealth.”

He says, however, that the mentality that land is for traditional use only should change.

“We should harness our land, adding value to it. We have tended to be very traditional when handling land issues, as such we need to change our thinking and look at innovations that would bring high value out of low volume of land,” he says.

Tea, grown mostly in Thyolo and Mulanje districts and on a lower scale in Nkhata Bay, is the second highest income earner for the country. Thindwa said the crop fetches about K5 billion yearly, but there is enormous room for improvement.

He said, currently, there is an export void between June and July because growers mostly rely on rain.

“We need to exploit irrigation as well so that we produce the crop all year round. There is a lot of demand for tea internationally because the plant has more than just one use. Most products including T-shirts have the flavour of tea,” he says.

“Domestic consumption of tea should also improve because only 3 percent of the tea grown in the country is consumed locally. The rest is consumed outside the country. So the question is why don’t we drink our tea?”

Thindwa adds that the association is also looking at means of making its marketing strategy aggressive so that there are more buyers at the tea auction floors, just as has been the case with tobacco this year.

Coffee Association of Malawi (Camal) Technical and Marketing Executive Officer, Peter Njikho, concurred with Thindwa, saying if fully exploited, coffee growing would make people realize that their soil is as good as gold and oil elsewhere.

He says: “If the coffee industry is revived and invigorated, more returns would be realized. There are a number of areas where coffee was grown on a large scale in the past but are no longer growing the crop.”

Currently, most of the coffee is grown in Misuku Hills in Chitipa, Phoka Hills and Mphompha in Rumphi, and in some estates in the southern region. Njikho says Mwera and Ntchisi Hills in the central region are fertile for the crop but people there have turned to growing tobacco thereby abusing the potential.

“The crop is just growing like natural bush there now, but if we came back and revived business of growing the plant we can make effective use of the soil. Otherwise people in the areas are just forcing themselves on growing tobacco,” says Njikho, adding that some hills in Dedza and Ntcheu are also ideal for the crop.

He said current statistics indicate that coffee sells at $2.50 (about K350) per kilogramme on the export market. This translates to between K700 million and K850 million yearly as the country realizes between 2,000 and 2,500 metric tons of the bean annually. (1 metric ton equals 1,000 kg).

Njikho says the industry could realize a windfall if all that amount were consumed locally as statistics show that the crop sells at $12 (about K1,680) on the local market. This translates to between K3.36 billion and K4.2 billion annually.

“We need to produce more because we drastically fall short of demand for Malawian coffee on the international market. Otherwise, we should also change our belief that coffee is for the whites and start consuming the produce,” he says. According to Njikho, only 3 percent of coffee is currently consumed locally.

“We are on a marketing drive to equip most hotel operators on how to prepare coffee because when asked why they don’t serve Malawian coffee, there answers have been that they don’t know how to prepare it,” he adds.

Tobacco, coffee and tea are just some of the cash crops that the country’s soils give life to. Lakeshore districts and the Lower Shire have areas that are capable of growing cotton on a larger scale. With a boom in the textile industry in the United States and China, the crop could fetch a windfall for the country in general and farmers in particular when supplied with great quality, say analysts.

Another crop that can generate reasonable amounts of cash for farmers and the country is Paprika. The crop is widely used to flavour and spice up foods. And with global food prices rising by day, maize is gradually becoming another crop that could bring in cash.

So far, indicators are that the country’s soil is enough gold and oil. But, according to Harrison Kalua, president of the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (MCCCI), the mentality of people like Robson Watayachanga has to be changed first.

“If you convince yourself that you are poor, you will be poor but if your thinking is different you can turn the situation around. We need to change the mentality in most of our people. You can see, in the village people feel happy where they are even when you note that there are problems there,” says Kalua.

“Take the instance of Japan. It has no minerals whatsoever, but it has a people that can think and create wealth for themselves and the country is rich. Let us teach our people to think. Let us educate them.”

Today minus food processing is tomorrow without food

2008-12-17T23:36:00.000-08:00

The equation T - FP = TWF is nowhere near Mathematics. Not even in C.V. Durell, that Mathematics book which every Mathematics genius wants to flip its pages.

But this equation, Today (T) minus Food Processing (FP) equals Tomorrow Without Food (TWF), is everywhere. And everybody – Mathematician or not – in hills or valleys, can bear testimony to it. If you said you cannot, read this.

At Bvumbwe market, a few kilometres off the eastern outskirts of Blantyre City, along the Thyolo road, there are times when the hustle and bustle that dictates matters there is about fruits and vegetables. And, Blantyre’s townships quench their thirst for good pineapples and cabbage there without any problems.

Yet, there are times when Bvumbwe – known for its riches in avocado pears, pineapples, Irish potatoes, tomatoes and many kinds of leaf vegetables – cannot quench even its own thirst for these produce.

“If you want to buy pineapples here, then you have to come between November and February. You will have completely no chance of finding the produce here after May every year.

“As for avocado pears, you should come here between December and June. You may have a slim chance of finding them up to July. Otherwise, in between there is no chance of finding such produce here,” says Clement Banda of the Bvumbwe Vegetable Growers Association.

Problems of gaps in the availability of food are not confined to only one area. This is a national issue, and, in most cases, it goes beyond borders.

For the past three years, Malawi has been registering surpluses in maize production. Yet, like Bvumbwe pineapples that rise and sink like the sun, continued maize availability in the country is something nobody would guarantee.

Only a few months ago, Malawi’s success story of achieving surplus maize harvests was talk of the town. The United Nations (UN) has more than once urged developing nations that suffer perpetual food shortage to adopt Malawi’s technique in dealing with the problem.

Yet, the so-highly-rated Malawi is itself suffering effects of food shortage. Phalombe, Chiradzulu, Balaka, Thyolo and Chikwawa have been highlighted as among a number of districts where food inavailability has taken its toll. But how can a nation that created so much impression in food production be generating stories of food shortage?

“Whenever there is a void in food processing, we will always be talking of this and that food as seasonal,” says Banda. “Otherwise, with food processing there is a guarantee that there will be food today and tomorrow and people won’t be waiting for a season to get a particular food.”

He says that processed food beats time as it is easy to store. As such he and a group of fellow farmers have set up the Bvumbwe Vegetable Growers’ Association, which, apart from growing, processes a wide-range of leaf vegetables which they store and sell later to supermarkets in Blantyre.

He adds: “Most of our leaf vegetables are processed by drying and they are later packaged. With this process, there is no talk of losses in terms of damages or selling at a cheaper price for fear of encountering these damages.”

Tomatoes are processed into sauce; however, the process is not that developed because of shortage of machinery and skill. Otherwise, with support from the One Village One Product (Ovop) we expect a processing factory to take off soon as it is already being built.”

Realising the benefits of food processing, the Story Workshop – with support from the European Union (EU) – has embarked on a campaign to ensure that food processing activities close to the producer, like the one by the Bvumbwe Vegetable Growers’ Association, are done across the country.

Under this programme, Story Workshop seeks to encourage individuals to come together and start simple food processing activities at village level. This is aimed at ensuring that there is continued availability of and value addition to what these villagers produce. As such, they can guarantee food security and more returns on their products.

“Higher food prices ideally benefit the farmers producing the food. Most farmers in Malawi sell the products of the harvest right away since storage is a problem in many areas,” says the Story Workshop in its programme briefing paper.

With the country basking in so many agricultural activities, analysts say there are equally so many food processing activities in which individual groups can indulge themselves.

Charles Kazembe, Malawi Entrepreneurship Development Institute (MEDI) Executive Director, says individuals should just express interest and his institution will show them where to go.

“Everything that is grown has capacity to be processed and stored,” says Kazembe. “Unfortunately, about 80 percent of what is grown in Malawi is wasted because there is no processing, which leads to easy storage. Yet the procedure is simple: once you start with what you know, everything follows.”

Currently, MEDI is known mostly for teaching people how to process cassava into flour. But Kazembe says the organisation has gone far beyond that.

He says, for instance, recently the organisation started processing sumu, which is largely onions mixed with tomatoes and with chillies and vinegar added to the mixture as preservatives.

“There are so many food processing activities which groups of individuals can embark on. MEDI is ready to facilitate the process of imparting skills; however, willingness and real interest is very important,” he says.

Unfortunately, there is little activity on food processing in the country. Oil extraction from sunflowers and juice manufacturing are done on a smaller scale. Only fish drying, cassava processing and vegetable drying in the homes are done to a larger extent.

In Banda’s words, the absence of such food processing activities is what has led to having food only today and none tomorrow. This is why pineapples are seasonal, he says.

MEDI Executive Director Kazembe says failure to exploit potential in these food processing activities is a result of a negative perception of the process. Nevertheless, he says, there is a lot of value added to food during processing and one has nothing to lose. The foods are grown locally, he says.

According to Ovop National Coordinator Kamia Kaluma Sulumba, a change in the negative perception to food processing can be facilitated by the affected individuals themselves. She says they can form groups and later enjoy every benefit coming from Ovop.

“When they form groups, they can become Ovop members and once they are members all the benefits will be trickling down to them,” she says. “We look at what individual groups need and identify who can impart on them the skills they miss. When they come up with the products, we work with them to come up with marketing strategies that include organising trade fairs.”

She adds that Ovop has an antennae shop in Lilongwe where all its members showcase the products they make.

Tomorrow will remain without food if the Story Workshop programme is not heeded and today continues without food processing. Otherwise, if groups like Banda’s form across the country, utilise Ovop services and acquire skills at MEDI, nobody will tell when it is a pineapple season and when it is not.

Who is your role model?

2008-12-14T01:08:00.000-08:00

WHO IS YOUR ROLE MODEL?

Try it without looking at the answers..... .

1) Pick your favorite number between 1-9

2) Multiply by 3 then

3) Add 3, then again Multiply by 3 (I'll wait while you get the calculator.. ..)

4) You'll get a 2 or 3 digit number….

5) Add the digits together

Now Scroll down ............ ..

Now with that number see who your ROLE MODEL is from the list below:

1. Robert Einstein

2. Nelson Mandela

3. Jerry Springer

4. Barack Obama

5. Bill Gates

6. Mahatma Gandhi

7. Tony Blair

8. Eddie Murphy

9. Karen Iron Msiska (Me)

10. Abraham Lincoln

I know I just have that effect on people. That is why in 2019 I am contesting as Member of Parliament (MP) for Rumphi North and in 2024 I am contesting as President of the Republic of Malawi.

Iron Woyeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

Malawi: Sitting President versus Former President

2008-11-22T03:11:00.000-08:00

Of late, there has been a trade of barbs between Malawi's sitting President Bingu wa Mutharika and his predecessor, Bakili Muluzi. The two wrote each other trading accusations on a wide range of issues. I looked for the letters and today I present one from Muluzi, apparently a response to Mutharika's piece. I haven't got Mutharika's letter to Muluzi yet, but I will present it the moment I lay my hands on it.

Enjoy reading this one.

Muluzi's reply to Mutharika: Malawi Presidential paranoia

31st October 2008

His Excellency Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika
President of the Republic of Malawi
New State House
LILONGWE

Your Excellency,

RE: CRIMINAL LIBEL AND SEDITION-RESPONSE

Please kindly accept my personal greetings and best wishes and those of the former First Lady, and we trust that you are keeping well.

Your Excellency, I am compelled to respond to your letter dated 28th October, 2008, because it contains serious allegations against me personally, Messrs. Humphrey Mvula, Patrick Mbewe, Harry Thomson and Brown Mpinganjira, MP, among others. I note that this letter is a repeat of allegations contained in your letters to me dated 14th July, 2006 and 12th March, 2008.

Your Excellency, I will commence my response by refuting in the strongest terms your assertions in paragraph two where you accuse me of being confrontational and attempting to remove you from the Presidency.

Your Excellency, this is entirely false as you are fully aware that I, Bakili Muluzi, worked tirelessly to secure your Presidency and after the elections in 2004, I went further in assisting you to form a workable government by talking to the leadership of opposition parties, and independent Members of Parliament. This is clear testimony of my personal goodwill and support for your government.

Your Excellency, I would also wish to remind you that I have personally invested a lot energy and effort in the quest of finding a solution to the political impasse engulfing this country today. Your Excellency, under my guidance, members of the United Democratic Front (UDF) have remained calm even after you decided to dump the party that sponsored you to the Presidency in February 2005.

Your letter gives me the impression that there must be something seriously wrong with or in the manner that authentic and credible intelligence information is submitted to Your Excellency as the Head of State and Government.

The allegations raised in your letter are not only false but concocted lies fabricated for ulterior political motives by dubious individuals within the intelligence or your political system.

Your Excellency, upon assuming office in May 2004, I did advise you to exercise extreme caution in the handling of intelligence information that will be passed on to you.

I gave you numerous examples of how late Dr. Kamuzu Banda, the first President of the Republic, was held virtually hostage by intelligence officers and political functionaries who routinely fed him with false information resulting in the Ngwazi making wrong decisions and creating imagined enemies.

Your Excellency, I am always amazed when you attribute to my name all the negative publicity against you even when some of such is borne from unpopular government decisions or where the citizens agitate for a cause that seem to run contra to your own way of looking at issues.

Your Excellency, both of us are aware that democracy is government by the consent of the governed who must approve not only the rules by which they are administered but also the policies affecting them.

Your Excellency, I think time has come when all of us should remember that democracy does not demand blind obedience, unquestioning discipline and acceptance of the status quo; but calls upon leaders to appreciate people’s right to understand and take active participation in matters affecting them.

I am equally amazed and humbled when you assert that I control the media, particularly the on-line publication called Nyasa Times and the independent media in general.

Your Excellency, these allegations are false and I would advise you to stop peddling such allegations because they have the capacity to undermine the credibility of your High Office.

Your Excellency, I have also found it disheartening that you have personally and through your ministers attributed all your failures to me and my colleagues in the UDF. Some of the failures have been occasioned by natural causes and others by accidents that very little could have been done to prevent them from happening.
I think and believe that leadership demands of us objectivity, honesty, transparency and accountability. During my reign, a lot was achieved and several programmes were work-in-progress by the time you took over government and I would therefore expect you to publicly acknowledge such contributions.

Your Excellency, I would like to correct your assumption that Mr. Humphrey Mvula resides in my house and that he has been employed or deployed to write and publish articles that are critical to Your Excellency.

Your Excellency, Mr. Humphrey Mvula has never lived with me in my house and he has never been my employee nor has he been hired to write negative articles about Your Excellency. This is again a case of inaccurate and misleading intelligence information.

Your Excellency may recall that Mr. Humphrey Mvula was one of the few individuals who worked tirelessly during our successful campaign for your Presidency. Unfortunately, like me, Mr. Humphrey Mvula has been a victim of your administration’s witch-hunt tactics having been arrested eleven (11) times in the last four years.

Your Excellency, it is most unfortunate and illogical that the alleged ‘ghosts’ story by Raphael Tenthani and Mabvuto Banda could also be attributed to me personally when it is on record that the story had Reverend Malani Mtonga, your Special Assistant on Religious Affairs, as the source. How does it become a Muluzi fabrication and where does Muluzi fit in this equation?

Your Excellency, the two journalists are employed by international news organizations and have also written very positive stories about Your Excellency and very negative stories about myself.

The allegations that Nyasanet and Nyasa Times are funded by me personally are inaccurate and false. Whilst I cannot answer for Mr. Humphrey Mvula about his alleged involvement, I, however, have my doubts and do not subscribe to the philosophy that he is the Nyasanet/Nyasa Times mastermind.

Your Excellency, such allegations against individuals demand that hard evidence should be available, otherwise you may be targeting wrong people for victimization as you hunt around for real enemies.

Your Excellency, the matter about drunkenness as published in The Dispatch newspaper has no bearing on me personally, and on any of the persons that you accuse.

Your Excellency, you would do me great favour if you sued The Dispatch newspaper instead of attributing it to me or persons believed to be closely connected to me. I cannot bear witness as to whether you take or you do not take alcohol because that is a very personal matter.

Your Excellency, the issues about teargas from Malawi to Zimbabwe and clearance of Chinese arms for Zimbabwe were known to me following media reports. Personally, I did not take keen interest in the two allegations and I viewed them with a lot of skepticism based on my experience of the past.

Your Excellency, the allegations alluding to the COMESA Report are equally strange to me because I have not seen the report in the recent years.

Your Excellency should, however, be appraised that the COMESA Report was brought to the fore during the campaign in 2004 by M’mgwirizano Coalition through The Nation and the defunct Chronicle newspapers. We all worked very hard to diffuse its impact on your candidature then. Fortunately, we succeeded and it did not hamper our quest for you to be elected President.

Your Excellency, the COMESA fiasco should at no time be attributed to me personally or anyone in my political party, the United Democratic Front (UDF) because I did my very best to defend you from a unanimous decision to dismiss you and later report you to police. The minutes of that special COMESA summit would bear witness.

Your Excellency, it is not true that the report was authored with the assistance of a committee comprising Messrs. Harry Thomson, Patrick Mbewe, Brown Mpinganjira, late Dumbo Lemani, late Edward Bwanali and late Chakakala Chaziya.

Your Excellency, from my recollection, the COMESA Report was authored by a special committee of five (5) eminent persons and none of them was Malawian.
Your Excellency, history will judge us as great leaders if we accept that there was once a past, which was checkered with successes and failures rather than exist in the self-belief of omnipotence and infallibility. In this regard, whether COMESA was a smooth ride or not, it is a matter of inclination and subjective debate.

Your Excellency, I would advise you to discard the feeling that it was the UDF that hatched a plan to have you removed as COMESA Secretary General.

I would also advise you to desist from repeatedly referring to the COMESA Report because its contents cannot be changed and there are also other salient features that some of us would rather not talk about; for example, the state of your nationality at that time.

Your Excellency, if it were to be true that indeed out of my hatred for you I had formed a committee to remove you from COMESA, does it make sense, Your Excellency, that the same Muluzi decided to appoint you Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi, later as a senior cabinet minister for Economic Planning and Development and finally as Presidential Candidate for the United Democratic Front.

Your Excellency are aware that I single-handedly proposed your name against fierce protestation from senior members of the party; some of whom decided to leave the party in anger.

Your Excellency, I could not have invested huge personal resources into your campaign nor could I have asked other senior members to invest into your presidential campaign if your theory of hate is anything to go by.

Your Excellency, I would request you to regularly reflect and look over your shoulders in appreciation of the fact that what we leave behind is part of ourselves.

Your Excellency, most of all, as leaders, we must not throw away the ladders that take us to the rooftop and we must always pay special tribute to all that have contributed to our being what we have become.

Your Excellency, I am disappointed to read about your allegations on the state of your health. Let it be said that I am neither a sadist nor do I belong to a category of individuals that enjoy seeing others suffering or in pain nor do I celebrate when someone, whatever his or her disposition, is going through a bout of poor health.

Your Excellency, the state of your health has never been a subject of debate in the UDF and be rest assured that I, personally, and the UDF as a party, continue to wish you good health.

Your Excellency, your comments about my own health are ill-considered and made out of malice because by and large, I am in very good health.

Your Excellency, if at any time my health is not up to the mark, I will be the first one to go public about it as I have always done. I have never pretended to be such a person that cannot fall sick nor have I hidden the state of my health.

Your Excellency, it is true that I had suffered a slipped disc and this condition came about because of the grueling campaign of 2004 that I had undertaken on Your Excellency’s behalf.

Your Excellency, following the slipped disk, I have since undergone operations in South Africa and the United Kingdom and my recuperation has been satisfactory. I still have to go for regular check-ups as advised by my specialist doctors.

I am rather perturbed that you have quickly forgotten that the said slipped disc had been as a result of my active campaigning for you in 2004. I would request you to remember and appreciate my sacrifices and the sacrifices of other UDF leaders whom you fervently tout as enemies today.

Your Excellency, I would like to assure you that it is not true that I went through a blood draining operation in Egypt and that it is also not true that I have throat cancer.

I am disturbed with your claim that I suffer from category “A” diabetes and that I cannot stay very long time without eating food or else I would faint. Your Excellency, your information is wrong and malicious since you well know that this is not the case.

You worked with me as cabinet minister and you spent long hours with me during the 2004 grueling campaign, which at times saw us conduct ten (10) campaign meetings a day without taking food. You are also aware that I am a devout Muslim who observes thirty (30) days of fasting during the Holy month of Ramadan.

It smacks of sadism that Your Excellency can regurgitate information that is false and unfounded; especially considering the fact Your Excellency has demonstrated the rare courage of capturing this information on official record. I find this to be a very unfortunate situation and a demonstration of how much hate you hold against me.

Your Excellency, I would also wish to remind you that you have personally, or through your ministers, party functionaries and the public media, MBC and TVM demonized me, calling me all sorts of despicable names.

There are several other unfortunate actions that you have taken against me as the Former President, who worked so hard for your success. Similar actions have been taken against some of the senior members of the UDF and others sympathetic to the party.

Your Excellency, I have not forgotten my recent dehumanizing and disgraceful arrest at Kamuzu International Airport in June this year on trumped-up treason charges. That arrest was authorized by Your Excellency following your pronouncements at a rally in Nkhata Bay district.

I wonder if you really believe that I can plan to overthrow a government that I helped put together and also considering that from 1983 to 1993 together with so many courageous Malawians who did not run away from the dictatorship fought for multiparty democracy.

Your Excellency, in your letter, you make threats of my arrest and that of the so-called imaginary perpetrators alleged to be spreading what you describe as “diabolic lies” about Your Excellency.

Your Excellency, I am extremely surprised that these threats of arrest are being championed by Your Excellency as the Head of State because the power of arrest lies with the police who are expected to be apolitical whilst serving the government of the day and the power of adjudication is vested in the judiciary.

Your Excellency, as the first democratically-elected President, it worries me to realize that after 14 years of multiparty democracy coupled with the existence of a considerably good Republican Constitution, we still read and hear of the Head of State ordering arrests of political competitors! Your Excellency, I would advise you to stay clear of a leadership that believes in the subjugation of its citizens.

You may wish to know that our democratic agenda has all along been driven by repudiation of the highly noxious phenomenon of the cult of personality so that never again shall this country have one anointed personality sitting above the Republican Constitution, passing decrees and command arrests of citizens.

Your Excellency, I have never wished you dead. Rather that you have wished me and my colleagues in the UDF dead because a lot that can be proved by hard facts and evidence has happened during the past four years.

The bad treatment that you and your government are subjecting me to cannot be compared to the atrocities of the one-party dictatorship. I have also found it unfair that there are attempts to suffocate the UDF as a party through deliberate efforts targeting the top leadership. I must state without fear of contradiction that had Your Excellency not dumped the UDF, the party would have most likely settled for you as its Presidential Candidate for the 2009 General Elections.

I would therefore implore on Your Excellency to allow members of the UDF to field a Presidential Candidate of their choice without coercion and undue pressure from your office and members of your party. In this regard, I would like to personally ask you to tell your supporters in the DPP to stop meddling in the internal affairs of the UDF.

Your Excellency, I know that there are some in our country of feature on MBC and TVM posing as “experts” or “analysts” simply on the basis of their readiness to abandon all ethical conclusions and self-respect, at a cost to the taxpayer, to propagate entirely fabricated and negative notions about me and my colleagues in the UDF.

I cite the names of Messrs. Nawena, Ning’ang’a, Sawerengera, Banda, Ntaba, Dausi, Malopa, Mtumodzi, Molande, Sudi Sulaimana, Prof. Mphande, Mrs. Kaliati among others as the “experts” and “analysts” who are on your payroll to carry out the devilish agenda against me.

As Head of State and Government, you have a responsibility to steer this country towards a free and fair election in 2009, which is Your Excellency’s constitutional mandate and obligation.

Your Excellency, on my part, I can assure you that there is no iota of truth in the allegations that you have levelled against me. I can challenge you to provide evidence to substantiate any of your allegations.

Your Excellency, intelligence information has the potential to make or break leaders when not properly synthesized and utilized. I would encourage you to rigorously evaluate the information that you receive before embarking on a blame game.

Your Excellency, please accept my sincerest regards.
DR. BAKILI MULUZI

Chelsea 0-Liverpool 1

2008-10-27T07:39:00.001-07:00

It can't be more than beautiful to start blogging by commenting on what happened at Stamford Bridge - home ground for one of England's most reverred teams, Chelsea - on Sunday, October 26 2008.

The Blues - as Chelsea is fondly referred to - had gone 86 matches without tasting defeat at the Bridge.

So when an English Premier League fixture indicated that Liverpool Football Club was visiting the Bridge, people expected nothing less than an 87th match without defeat for Chelsea. After all, Liverpool - prior to Sunday - had won only once in League at the Bridge courtesy of that 32nd minute Bruno Cheyrou goal in early 2004.

As such elsewehere, the story was that Liverpool was tasting defeat for the first time this EPL season. I had other views.

At a drinking joint in Mzuzu, northern Malawi, I told a forest of Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal supporters that come the 26th, Chelsea was going to taste defeat at their backyard. Guess what? I was booed, but like any Liverpool diehard, I stood my ground. How I wish I was there the day the game was played. Unfortunately, this time I was in Blantyre, southern Malawi, where I am based.

However, with technology and the world of TV, I was able to be in touch with those that thought I was dreaming when I said Chelsea was tasting defeat.

This is the text message that I sent those overzealous supporters. "Nga umo nkhayowoyera sabata lajumpha, Chelsea tamufyapulira kuchipinda chakhe." This is Tumbuka, which translates to: "As I said last week, we have whipped Chelsea right in its bedroom."

It was funny how one Chelsea supporter responded. He said: "At least, today you played better football." But that was not the case. Throughout the season, Liverpool has been playing like that, but people thought the 2-1 historic win over Man United at Anfield was a fluke - Nay!

Now, only one giant remains in front of us - Arsenal. Unfortunately, the bad news to Arsenal is that they will lose twice - home and away - to Liverpool this season.

What a nice way to start blogging!