Some call it culture shock - temporarily feeling low

I was warned, so I knew the time would come when my life in Malawi didn’t seem so rosy. EWB calls it culture shock. Megan (my coach who lives in Ntcheu) says it is caused by reacting to a whole bunch of specific things that you don’t even realize until you break down. All I know is that when I burst into tears in front of one of the administrative staff at the Dedza field office of CU where I work, I knew something was up and that I needed to figure out what I had been bottling up / avoiding in favour of being completely optimistic about everything that I encounter.

I like making lists, so I figured that sharing some of the reasons I’m at a low would perhaps make certain aspects of Malawi a bit more personal to those back in Canada.

* Three people died this week, although I don’t personally know any of them. What I do know is that people around me are enduring an incredible amount of loss and grief.

o The first is the young child of a guard at CU – the child choked on something and could not be saved in time. Some office staff were away today to attend the funeral. I can’t imagine how terrible it would be to lose a child.

o The second is a person I don’t know, but whose family spread two lines of leaves across a dirt path upon which we travelled on the way to a meeting yesterday. The two lines of leaves signify that a death has occurred at a household somewhere between the two lines, and that vehicles should slow down in passing as a sign of respect.

o The third person is one of a few Malawians who have been killed in South Africa by a few resentful people who want foreigners out of the country (they believe foreigners are taking job opportunities in South Africa that should be reserved for South Africans alone). A CU co-worker was friends with one of these Malawians killed, and walked around the office this week looking very lost.

* I have yet to find a family to stay with. I never expected this to be a problem, but with every day that goes by, and with every night spent in a sketchy, gloomy, concrete guesthouse room with nothing to do except to go sleep at 6:30pm because it isn’t safe to be out after dark, I get more and more anxious. It’s much more difficult than I anticipated to walk into a nearby village and tell everyone that I’m looking for a family to live with for the next few months. I’ve spent a few nights with friends I’ve met, here and there, but I don’t want to couch-hop for too long. I’d like to settle soon. And not having a family is lonesome, isolating, and probably a major contributing factor my current (but hopefully temporary!) state of distress.

* Explosive diarrhea. I know this sounds funny (and before it happens to you, I fully understand how the concept is rather hilarious). But frankly, if you had lined my intestines with firecrackers and set them off, it would have been better than whatever bug was trying to exit my system in what felt like an Indy 500 race. Not to mention that it occurred within a few days of beginning work in the office, while I was still trying to meet everyone… Well, sprinting to the office toilet with an intense, panicked expression will make anyone look like an otherworldly freak of nature in a professional office environment.

* The poverty in Malawi is simply widespread. There really is no other way to describe it. So far, I’ve been absorbing the positive side of poverty: the collectivist / sharing nature of communities, the hard-working attitudes, and the close ties to extended families. However, the negative side of poverty have been creeping up on me, and up until now, I’ve been pushing them aside: poor sanitation, malnutrition, lack of access to clean water, vulnerability to weather that causes poor harvests, a parent’s inability to fund their child’s education, a variety of diseases that are rare in the developed countries, among others. These are all factors in a cycle of poverty that so many organizations are trying to help people break themselves out of. And the determination is there; it is alive and abundant in all aspects of people’s lives. It is just frustrating to see people’s determination being blocked by barriers supported by the very same countries funding aid organizations.

I know that these issues rank very differently on the worldwide scale of importance. Nevertheless, they each are a struggle, so my hope is that the beauty of Malawi will once again shine and bring my motivation back up to normal levels.

Malawi's foreign aid in-flows expected to jump by 46%

LUSAKA, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Malawi's foreign aid in-flows are expected to jump by 46 percent from 71 billion in the fiscal year 2007/08 to (about 489.655 million U.S. dollars) 104 billion (about717 million dollars) in the 2008/09 financial year set to start on July 1 thanks to economy's impressive track record that has instilled confidence in the country's donor community.

In his 52-paged State of the Nation Address delivered during the opening of the 2008/09 Budget Sitting of Parliament in Lilongwe earlier this week entitled 'Malawi: A Nation of Achievers', President Bingu wa Mutharika said that since 2004 the country has regained the confidence from quite a good number of development partners who continue to express interest to pump their funds into the country's development buffer, according to website of The Nation newspaper of the country.

He said the development partners express such gestures because of a sustained satisfactory economic performance. "Government has continued to receive support from cooperating partners because of the confidence they have in us...""We have been running the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 2005 and have gone through six reviews . We are, therefore, confident that the final review will go through paving way for a successor program," Mutharika said.

Malawi begins SA evacuations

BLANTYRE - The Malawian government announced today it had begun helping to evacuate 850 of its citizens trapped in the wave of violence against immigrants in South Africa.

"More than 850 Malawians have been affected by the current violence. All Malawians willing to return home will be evacuated," Ben Mbewe, foreign affairs principal secretary said in a statement.

He confirmed that a Malawian citizen had been shot dead in the city of Durban and said a task force had been set up to coordinate the evacuation. The first batch of people would be home this weekend.

"The government will do everything possible to ease the plight of affected Malawians," he said.

Mbewe said hundreds of Malawians had camped at police stations. Some 850 Malawians and 3,000 other immigrants were sheltered at Klipton camp in Johannesburg, he said.

Embassy officials were visiting to check if they were any Malawians hospitalised and to offer help.

Malawi’s Foreign Minister Joyce Banda flew to South Africa on Sunday where she was briefed by the country’s emabassy officials on the situation.

Hundreds of Malawians have flocked to South Africa in recent years seeking employment.

Foreigners in South Africa, many of whom have fled economic meltdown in neighbouring Zimbabwe, are being blamed for sky-high crime rates and depriving locals of jobs.

Honoured for Malawi work

A LOCAL woman has received the 'Strathclyder of the Year' award from the University of Glasgow.
Dr Tracy Morse has been recognised for her outstanding contribution to the health and lives of women and children in Malawi as Project Manager of the University's Scotland Chikwawa Health Initiative.

The scheme is funded by the Scottish Government to improve maternal health and drive down infant mortality rates in four villages in Southern Malawi where poverty has led to widescale health problems.

Around four in ten children die before the age of five – most commonly from malaria and diarrhoea - and one in six mothers die in childbirth.

The initiative involves the rebuilding and re-equipping of rural clinics, retraining of traditional birthing attendants, health staff and volunteers, provision of mosquito nets, improvements to water supplies and sanitation, and the provision of bicycle ambulances to improve health access as well as emergency response to natural disasters.

Many lives were saved when in February this year sudden floods hit Chikwawa, which swept away more than half the houses. Thousands of destitute people were helped when Dr Morse organised the immediate despatch of four lorry loads containing medicines, food, mosquito nets, building materials and water purification tablets.

Dr Morse, who is originally from the Inverurie area, said: "It was a total surprise to win the award, but a very nice one. It has also been a great opportunity to come back to Scotland to visit colleagues, family and friends.

"We try hard to work with our colleagues in Malawi and Scotland to ensure long standing health improvements within the programme, and to have that recognised is great. The award really goes to all those involved and shows that in today's society, we are finally recognising the need for preventative health and environmental health in addressing mortality and morbidity."

Dr Peter West, Secretary to the University and Chairman of the Scotland-Malawi Partnership, presented Dr Morse with her award.

He said: "The new partnership between Scotland and Malawi has grown directly out of the Strahclyde Malawi Millennium Project. It would never have developed as it has without the huge personal contribution of Dr Tracy Morse, and it is entirely fitting that she should be our Strathclyder of the Year."

Dr Morse is also the Malawi-based co-ordinator of all the activities of the University's Malawi Millennium Project. This involves organising and delivering Strathclyde's support to orphanages and Malawi Polytechnic, overseeing the building of a house for the Chief Nurse at Chikwawa Hospital, and coordinating the increasing number of visits to the country by Strathclyde students.

The Strathclyder of the Year Cup is an annual award made to a member of University staff who has made an outstanding contribution to society.

Acclaim for Madonna's Malawi documentary

Madonna the documentary-maker came, saw and conquered the world's biggest film festival yesterday with a powerful polemic on the effects of disease and poverty on Malawi. Next in her sights is the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The queen of reinvention presented her film, I Am Because We Are, which she wrote and produced, to general acclaim. Alongside her was her former gardener Nathan Rissman, who directed.

The film touches on the singer's high-profile adoption of a baby boy, David, whose mother was killed by Aids. Yesterday she compared the process - which generated many negative headlines - to the pain of childbirth. "It was painful and a big struggle and I didn't understand it. But in the end I rationalised that when a woman has a child and goes through natural childbirth she suffers an enormous amount," she said. "So I went through my own kind of birthing pains, dealing with the press on my doorstep, accusing me of kidnapping or whatever."

The singer added: "There's nothing controversial about the adoption. There's just a lot of bureaucracy and administration because this adoption essentially was the beginning of adoption laws in Malawi. I'm sort of the template or role model, so to speak, for future adoptions, and hopefully after we get through this adoption it will be easier for other people to adopt. I'm happy to be the guinea pig." Asked why she chose David, Madonna said: "I don't know, some things are inexplicable. I just felt a connection there. I felt a connection to many of the children, I wanted to take all of them home with me."

While Madonna is the producer, the film-maker is Rissman, who got to know the singer when his wife worked as a nanny. At various times he worked as her research assistant, video archivist, gardener and "manny" and won her over by making short films of her children, which he her sent while she was travelling.

Rissman spent about six months over a two-year period in Malawi, and has constructed a documentary which at times is heartbreaking. Both said they wanted to continue making documentaries focusing on children, with the Israel-Palestine conflict the next project they are working on. The singer said she would continue to help Malawi, and had bought the land, hired an architect and teamed up with Harvard University to build a girls' school in the country. She has also built an orphan care centre. The documentary was not part of the main competition.

Yesterday Steven Soderbergh spoke about his pair of movies, screened together for more than four hours, about the life of Che Guevara, which had been keenly awaited but left the audience baffled by their lack of dramatic structure. Soderbergh said critics complained about movies being too conventional and then complained when someone was not conventional enough. Benicio del Toro, who plays Che, added: "When people see the movie for the third time they will start to see it."

Malawi renames barracks named after ex-president

The Malawi Government has renamed a military barracks in the eastern city of Zomba, which was named after former president Bakili Muluzi.

The Bakili Muluzi Barracks now reverts to its original name, Changalume Barracks .

"The name has been changed with effect from today," said President Bingu wa Muth arika's spokesman Chikumbutso Mtumodzi.

"As the general public may recall, President Bingu wa Mutharika had changed the name of those barracks from Changalume Barracks to Bakili Muluzi Barracks in ord e r to honour the former president, Mr. Bakili Muluzi.

"Unfortunately Muluzi misunderstood this to imply the barracks personally belonged to him and that those serving there oweed their allegiance to him."

Mtumodzi said this has led "to confusion among the officers and men, particularly those serving and living at those barracks."

The development came on the heels of a wave of arrests in connection with an alleged plot to topple Mutharika's four-year administration.

Those arrested included officials from Muluzi's United Democratic Front (UDF) and some serving and retired police and army officers, including the commandant of the then Bakili Muluzi Barracks Brigadier Juvenalis Mtende.

The UDF has meanwhile described the move as politically motivated.

Deputy UDF Secretary General Hophmally Makande told PANA there are several structures, including the country's main barracks in the capital Lilongwe which are n a med after the country's founding father Hasting Kamuzu Banda.

"Is government suggesting that soldiers at the Kamuzu Barracks owe their allegiance to Dr. Banda, his family and his Malawi Congress Party?" he said.

Muluzi, currently away to the United Kingdom on a private visit, has been named as the main architect of the alleged coup plot, is expected back home Saturday b u t it is not clear whether the authorities will arrest him since all the nine all e ged co-conspirators were released on bail on Tuesday.

The UDF, to which Muluzi is national chairman, has planned a big welcome rally in Lilongwe for the former president.