For the AIDS orphans of a Malawi border town, local clay and sand are the building blocks of a sustainable future, Steve Meacham writes.
Construction workers in southern Malawi have a traditional way of building homes. They'll dig a big pit, shape bricks by hand, cover them with wood - and set fire to the primitive kiln.
It's simple and it works but unfortunately, says a Sydney architect, Sam Crawford, it's also environmentally unsound.
"The kilns use a huge amount of timber, so they have to cut a lot of trees down. And it is really unnecessary," he says. "Timber and firewood are scarce resources in Malawi. Deforestation and soil are major problems throughout the region."
That's why Crawford, a board member of the Australian volunteer group Architects Without Frontiers, was keen to use another brick-making technology in his design for an educational youth centre in Thyolo, an AIDS-afflicted town near the border with Mozambique.
The centre's three pavilions, serving about 1100 children, will instead be built using bricks made from clay and sand that is readily available near the site and dried in the sun.
The locals were reluctant at first, even when Crawford told them research showed sun-dried blocks were more durable than wood-fired bricks. But they came around when they realised their centre would not only save trees but be a monument to sustainability.
"One of the directors over there said he was very excited about the building being not just an education facility, but an education in the way it is built," Crawford says.
The Malawi project is one of 12 being developed in 10 countries by Architects Without Frontiers. Based on the highly regarded Medecins Sans Frontieres, the non-profit organisation was set up by Dr Esther Charlesworth in 1998 and now has about 120 members. Three of the latest schemes - including Crawford's Malawi centre - feature in a new exhibition, Without Frontiers, which opens in August at Customs House. Many - like the biodegradable waste pits being built in Nepal - have a green dimension.
Crawford joined Architects Without Frontiers last year, having already committed himself to helping the photographer Claude Ho develop the educational youth centre in Thyolo.
Ho had spent three months in Malawi documenting the medical work being done by Medecins Sans Frontieres and thought something should be done to relieve the grim existence of children orphaned by AIDS.
Crawford, 35, a father of four, had flown to Malawi and been shocked. "I've travelled the world a lot, but it was my first time in sub-Saharan Africa. I had never seen poverty like it."
About 23 per cent of Thyolo's adult population have AIDS, leaving vast numbers of children without fathers (in Malawi "orphans" may still have mothers). "Where an orphan once would have gone to live with relatives, now those relatives don't exist any more," Crawford says. "They're often left destitute."
One journalist asked Crawford why poor children should get an architect-designed building when what they really needed was food or money. His answer? "Poor people need art and poetry just as much as rich people. Not that what we are doing is poetry, but we are providing them with something more than just the basics. Architecture has as much to offer poor people as it does to rich people."
Yet from the beginning Crawford's team realised "that a building designed for a small community based organisation in a very small rural town … should not draw attention to itself. Cutting-edge design produced by someone from an alien culture seeking to bolster his or her reputation is not called for".
Instead "we're not going to use any technology that is not available in town. Local materials save on transport costs and emissions. We're not importing anything, except for the tin roofing. That's a key thing that is often missed when people talk about the environment."
At first Crawford wanted to use thatch for the roof. "But the tradition of making good quality thatch has been lost, and the locals weren't keen for us to use thatch because that is associated with the rich tourist resorts on Lake Malawi." Instead, they have agreed to use thatch as the insulating material beneath the tin roof.
So far, about $145,000 has been raised towards the project, which will eventually cost up to $200,000 - "about a tenth of what it would cost in Australia", according to Crawford.
The centre will include the region's best library, training rooms and a youth club. Nothing fancy, says Crawford. "Just somewhere the orphans can go at the weekend to escape their misery and play table tennis."
Without Frontiers shows at Customs House, Circular Quay, from Thursday to September 23. www.architectswithoutfrontiers.com.au.
Monday, 30 July 2007
Mutharika orders spying on diplomats, opposition
Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika has ordered the Secret Intelligence Services (SIS) to spy on foreign diplomats, top government officials at principal secretary and directorship level – opposition party leaders have also been targeted - Nyasa Times has learnt.
The stunning revelation has been made at a time when Mutharika has ordered the deployment of spymasters as security attaches in all its diplomatic missions to spy on Malawians living abroad.
“Mutharika is so
scared thinking that the foreign diplomats are working with his government during the day and opposition at night. He is questioning their stance on Section 65 and current stand-off on the national budget in parliament.”
“He wants to spy on his principal secretaries, directors as well as bosses of state owned companies. He thinks all of them are working with the opposition to bring down his government,” our source at national police headquarters revealed.
The intelligence officers track down who is having a meeting with the diplomats among the political leaders. They are bugging the phones as well.
A cabinet minister told Nyasa Times that Mutharika in an emergency cabinet meeting told the ministers that their phones were being monitored both fixed landlines provided by Malawi Telecoms Ltd; and the two cellular network operators – Celtel Malawi and Telecom Networks Ltd.
“He clearly said that our phones and those of opposition parties are being monitored by SIS working with the telephone service providers,” the minister said on condition of anonymity.
Malawian in the era of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda lost their lives through undercover intelligence police officers who committed the worst atrocious and murderous activities in foreign land.
“In all embassies that we have there will be an intelligence official as a security attaché.
“This is a practise that the country is copying from Zimbabwe where their intelligence service - Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) - is all over their embassies and they are able to spy on dissidents in Diaspora,” bragged a Foreign Affairs Ministry official.
Identities of intelligence officers being deployed to embassies could not be verified.
“This is a bad practice …. it is bringing back the old days of dictatorship … what does the government want to put on surveillance in the embassies? ..Innocent Malawians?” wondered Jones Banda, a retired Police Officer in Lilongwe.
Malawi’s SIS formed by Mutharika – after disbanding National Intelligence Bureau which operated during the Dr Bakili Muluzi era - is being modelled to the notorious Zimbabwe’s CIO.
Malawi has no law permitting it to tap or intercept telephone conversations and the act - although a security precaution - is a total violation of personal privacy.
The stunning revelation has been made at a time when Mutharika has ordered the deployment of spymasters as security attaches in all its diplomatic missions to spy on Malawians living abroad.
“Mutharika is so
scared thinking that the foreign diplomats are working with his government during the day and opposition at night. He is questioning their stance on Section 65 and current stand-off on the national budget in parliament.”
“He wants to spy on his principal secretaries, directors as well as bosses of state owned companies. He thinks all of them are working with the opposition to bring down his government,” our source at national police headquarters revealed.
The intelligence officers track down who is having a meeting with the diplomats among the political leaders. They are bugging the phones as well.
A cabinet minister told Nyasa Times that Mutharika in an emergency cabinet meeting told the ministers that their phones were being monitored both fixed landlines provided by Malawi Telecoms Ltd; and the two cellular network operators – Celtel Malawi and Telecom Networks Ltd.
“He clearly said that our phones and those of opposition parties are being monitored by SIS working with the telephone service providers,” the minister said on condition of anonymity.
Malawian in the era of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda lost their lives through undercover intelligence police officers who committed the worst atrocious and murderous activities in foreign land.
“In all embassies that we have there will be an intelligence official as a security attaché.
“This is a practise that the country is copying from Zimbabwe where their intelligence service - Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) - is all over their embassies and they are able to spy on dissidents in Diaspora,” bragged a Foreign Affairs Ministry official.
Identities of intelligence officers being deployed to embassies could not be verified.
“This is a bad practice …. it is bringing back the old days of dictatorship … what does the government want to put on surveillance in the embassies? ..Innocent Malawians?” wondered Jones Banda, a retired Police Officer in Lilongwe.
Malawi’s SIS formed by Mutharika – after disbanding National Intelligence Bureau which operated during the Dr Bakili Muluzi era - is being modelled to the notorious Zimbabwe’s CIO.
Malawi has no law permitting it to tap or intercept telephone conversations and the act - although a security precaution - is a total violation of personal privacy.
Malawi Red Cross to launch a K64 million project in Mchinji
The Malawi Red Cross Society, through its Community Based Health Care Programme, will from this month (July) implement a K64 Million health project aimed at reducing premature deaths in Mchinji.
The programme will run from 2007 to 2010, and is expected to raise the health status of communities through disease prevention.
The project will target 3,000 households in the area of Traditional Authority Mduwa in the district.
Briefing members of Mchinji District Executive Committee (DEC) on the project on Friday, Malawi Red Cross Society Project Officer for Mchinji, Linda Mwambakulu said the project will also tackle HIV and AIDS.
Mwambakulu said the other component of the project will facilitate access to safe drinking water as well as encourage hygiene practices among people.
"Over and above, we want to reduce diseases that attack mothers and under five children which lead to deaths," she said.
The programme will run from 2007 to 2010, and is expected to raise the health status of communities through disease prevention.
The project will target 3,000 households in the area of Traditional Authority Mduwa in the district.
Briefing members of Mchinji District Executive Committee (DEC) on the project on Friday, Malawi Red Cross Society Project Officer for Mchinji, Linda Mwambakulu said the project will also tackle HIV and AIDS.
Mwambakulu said the other component of the project will facilitate access to safe drinking water as well as encourage hygiene practices among people.
"Over and above, we want to reduce diseases that attack mothers and under five children which lead to deaths," she said.
Malawi's Parliament Sued Over Budget
In Malawi, the political standoff between President Bingu Wa Mutharika and the opposition has taken a dramatic turn. The latest incident followed the decision by some concerned citizens to sue in the high court asking for protection of their rights to development. The citizens claim their development was being hampered by the refusal of opposition parliamentarians to approve the government’s budget. They also implored the speaker of parliament to ensure that parliamentarians consider the budget, saying the financial blue print was not a political issue but a prop of the economy, a bulwark of development, and a matter of life and death. Meanwhile the High Court is yet to set a date when application to discharge the injunction would be heard.
Mabvuto Hara is the chairman of the Malawi Law Society. From the capital, Lilongwe he tells reporter Peter Clottey that the concerned citizens have the constitutional mandate to seek to protect their rights.
“As citizens of this nation, they have the right to go to court and ask to make any orders they think they are entitled to,” Hara pointed out.
He said although there is no legal provision under the constitution that permits citizens to file a suit against the national assembly, the citizens can prevent others from trampling upon their rights as guaranteed in the constitution.
“Not necessarily in this particular circumstances. The rights that the citizens have are that, if the citizens think that a fundamental right or freedom guaranteed by the constitution has been infringed, the citizen is entitled to make an application to court to enforce or protect that rights of the citizen. In this particular case, the citizens who are reported to have gone to court are saying the national assembly is breaking their rights to development by failing to approve the budget,” he said.
Hara explains the action he said the High Court could take based on the citizen’s suit.
“If on the fact as presented before the court the court is of the view that the right to development as alleged by the citizens has in fact been violated, then the court can make an appropriate order to enforce that right. What the citizens are saying is that the national assembly is violating their rights to development by refusing to approve the budget. So an appropriate order then would be to require the national assembly to consider and approve the budget,” he noted.
Hara said the tension in the country is, in his words, political.
“I think first of all it has to be appreciated that the deadlock is not strictly speaking a constitutional problem. It is a political problem,” Hara said.
He expatiated on what the Malawi Law Society could do to help solve the political impasse between the government and the opposition.
“As a law society we have perhaps the ability to provide some kind of mediation, to assist the two parties to come together, discuss matters and pursue a common goal in the interest of the people of Malawi… in practice we would have to determine on the best approach who we would think should be the first party to be approached and see if we can succeed in persuading them to come to a discussion, and see whether we were able to succeed in persuading the other party to come to the discussion also,” he said.
Mabvuto Hara is the chairman of the Malawi Law Society. From the capital, Lilongwe he tells reporter Peter Clottey that the concerned citizens have the constitutional mandate to seek to protect their rights.
“As citizens of this nation, they have the right to go to court and ask to make any orders they think they are entitled to,” Hara pointed out.
He said although there is no legal provision under the constitution that permits citizens to file a suit against the national assembly, the citizens can prevent others from trampling upon their rights as guaranteed in the constitution.
“Not necessarily in this particular circumstances. The rights that the citizens have are that, if the citizens think that a fundamental right or freedom guaranteed by the constitution has been infringed, the citizen is entitled to make an application to court to enforce or protect that rights of the citizen. In this particular case, the citizens who are reported to have gone to court are saying the national assembly is breaking their rights to development by failing to approve the budget,” he said.
Hara explains the action he said the High Court could take based on the citizen’s suit.
“If on the fact as presented before the court the court is of the view that the right to development as alleged by the citizens has in fact been violated, then the court can make an appropriate order to enforce that right. What the citizens are saying is that the national assembly is violating their rights to development by refusing to approve the budget. So an appropriate order then would be to require the national assembly to consider and approve the budget,” he noted.
Hara said the tension in the country is, in his words, political.
“I think first of all it has to be appreciated that the deadlock is not strictly speaking a constitutional problem. It is a political problem,” Hara said.
He expatiated on what the Malawi Law Society could do to help solve the political impasse between the government and the opposition.
“As a law society we have perhaps the ability to provide some kind of mediation, to assist the two parties to come together, discuss matters and pursue a common goal in the interest of the people of Malawi… in practice we would have to determine on the best approach who we would think should be the first party to be approached and see if we can succeed in persuading them to come to a discussion, and see whether we were able to succeed in persuading the other party to come to the discussion also,” he said.
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