Kumbali cultural village is one of Malawian tourist resorts that is using traditional innovative methods to boost the struggling Malawian tourism industry. At the same time it is fighting poverty. Africanews.com reporter Madalitso Kateta knows more.
The traditional chalets, situated 8km north of the heart of Malawian capital, Lilongwe are made with un- baked mud bricks, pine wood planks and reeds. They reflect the cultural set up of the Kumbali cultural village.
Kumbali village was established in 2007 at the Natures Gift Farm, which also has the Kumbali Country Lodge where pop star Madonna lodged in her maiden trip to Malawi which saw her adopting Malawian toddler David Banda.
"We saw that there was a lot that Malawi had to offer to the west from its culture, but no tourist resort was doing that," said Scot Gray Manager at the Kumbali village.
The village was opened as one way of preserving the Malawian culture and at the same time preserving its natural diversity and ending poverty of people from the surrounding villages. “We all know African economics and culture are all about working with the environment, " he said.
The Cultural Village supervisor Eston Mgala said the village does not offer services as one could expect at a hotel as every tourist that visit Kumbali has to do anything by himself.
"When we receive a guest, we give him his beddings so that he can make the bed for him or her self, he or she is given a bucket so that he can make a bath on his or her own and feel that African village experience," said Mgala.
"We currently are having a concept where we want to have a residential chief for the village who is going to be narrating African folk roles and explain some African customs to the tourists," he said.
The gifts-kiosk at the village offers a wide range of pottery and other Malawian crafts which according to Mgala are made by local residents of the nearby Kauma village.
Local Malawians benefit as well
Apart from the tourists, local Malawians are also benefiting from the skills they gain at the village. Mgala said that while many Malawian locals have the belief that iron sheeted houses are the most durable, the village has started teaching them that if a traditional hut is build on a proper foundation its grass thatched roofing can stand for 25 years.
Cecelia Sikoti, a traditional hut care taker, said the village has assisted to end her family's financial burdens. Sikoti who is one of the decorators of the 12 traditional mud huts said before she was employed at the village her family was under going financial hardships.
"I was failing even to buy a pinch of salt at my house, but now my whole life has been changed, "she said.
Cultural Village supervisor Eston Mgala points out that the Village has two residential bands and cultural dancing troupes that entertain guests the traditional African way at night as the guest surround a fire. The bands and the troupe are made up from community members from the surrounding villages.
"The material we sell at the gift shop is made by local residents from Kauma, except a few that are bought from other sources, " he said, adding:"this is the corporate social responsibility plan that the village has of fighting poverty in the area.”
Samson Kankhande is a residential potter at the cultural village. He says the cultural village has boosted his business. Mr. Kankhande was initially vending his products on the street in the capital. He now sells his products at the village which is very organized and profitable. "Tourists are afraid to buy on the street because they fear encountering crooks or thieves, but this set up makes them to have confidence in us, "said Kankhande who now owns a pottery shop within the village.
Tourists
Emanuel Ike is a Nigerian tourist visiting the village and believes the innovative ideas being used at Kumbali cultural village is a very positive development in the Malawian tourism sector.
"If we are thinking about promoting tourism in Africa then we have to be innovative and include the African way of life in our tourism strategic plans," he said.
Simon Phatiko a youth from youth organisation Active Youth in Development who once visited the village on an education excursion, said the cultural village needed more of government assistance as the innovative ideas being used at the village were in line with the Malawi Development Strategy.
"The village is using over 75 percent natural products and if government assisted the owner to transfer the skills to other areas we could be talking of ending poverty in the country using sustainable tourism resources," he said.
Deputy Minister of tourism, parks and wild life Honorable Billy Kaunda said government was impressed with the innovative ideas being used at the Kumbali cultural village. The deputy Minister: "As a government we are to make sure that such innovative ideas are promoted.”
Kumbali village receives a cross section of local and international guests.
According to cultural village supervisor Eston Mgala the lodge also trains newly arriving British VSO and the Japanese volunteers the Malawian way of living before they are dispatched to their places of work in rural Malawi.
Kumbali cultural village has 12 traditionally constructed huts which can accommodate guests ranging from 2 to four.
The village also has a traditionally constructed conference room that can accommodate up to 100 tourists, a bead shop, a paintings shop, a pottery and a bar which serves its customers in the traditional African way.
The cuisine that is saved at the village is traditional Malawian, so as is the hospitality.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Malawi halts nursing brain drain
Christine Gorman is an independent health journalist based in New York City who traveled for three months throughout Malawi in 2008.
LILONGWE, Malawi (CNN) -- Like most African countries, Malawi has suffered from a severe shortage of nurses and key health workers.
Godfrey Mdzudzuma, a nurse at Embangweni Mission Hospital, delivers a baby in the maternity ward
In the past, workers in the tiny southeast African nation of just 13 million inhabitants have been lured abroad by the promise of higher wages and better working conditions.
But, the country best-known as the homeland of Madonna's adopted children now has another claim to fame: It has succeeding in halting -- at least for now -- its crippling brain drain of nurses.
Malawi's solution? To expand educational opportunities for nurses at all levels and keep them out of poverty by paying modestly more money.
Countries don't come much poorer than Malawi, but its healthcare system worked well back in the 1970s and early 1980s.
When the former British colony gained independence in 1964, president Hastings Banda, himself a physician, maintained a high level of training for nurses that included teaching all classes in English.
By the late 1990s, however, Malawi was reeling from the AIDS epidemic. As if that weren't bad enough, the government also had to cut spending on health care and education as a condition for getting help from the U.S. and other countries to liberalize its trade and economy.
The publicly funded health system, on which more than 95 percent of Malawians still depend for treatment, quickly started to fall apart.
Video Watch a report about the impact of Malawi's nursing shortage »
Registered nurses began leaving in droves.
"Every day I received reports from Nurses' Council that so many nurses are now at the airport," Ann Phoya, the former head of nursing services for all Malawi told CNN.
"It was obvious that we needed to do something drastic."
Phoya worked with others in Malawi's Ministry of Health (MOH) to come up with an emergency plan that focused on nurses as they provided most of the primary care.
The MOH then applied for around $160 million (£100 million) in international funding for their six-year initiative, primarily from the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom.
The money was to be used to pay higher salaries to nurses -- quite a radical move in global development as donors worry it is unsustainable in the long haul.
However, the situation in Malawi was getting desperate.
The gamble paid off: The number of registered nurses leaving Malawi fell from a high of 111 (the equivalent of two years of Malawi's entire nursing graduates) in 2001 to just six in the first half of 2008. Enrollment at Malawi's nursing schools jumped up by 50 percent.
Success in one area has revealed a different problem -- that of an internal brain drain.
As more international aid groups and universities set up health programs in Malawi, they are hiring nurses, all trained at Malawi taxpayer expense, away from publicly funded hospitals and clinics.
The problem is even more acute in the rural areas, where most of Malawi's people live.
Embangweni Mission Hospital in northern Malawi has a good reputation but is located at the end of a long, dusty road, far from major towns, let alone cities.
"Young nurses with families do not really want to work here," said Catherine Mzembe, head of nursing at Embangweni.
"The local market is very small and although the hospital has running water, that is not the case in many homes."
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Even so, the hospital has made impressive strides in the past five years preserving mothers' lives during pregnancy, as well as cutting the number of deaths due to malaria among children and adults.
And that is perhaps the most important lesson to draw from Malawi's efforts: it pays to look at how much has been accomplished with so little.
LILONGWE, Malawi (CNN) -- Like most African countries, Malawi has suffered from a severe shortage of nurses and key health workers.
Godfrey Mdzudzuma, a nurse at Embangweni Mission Hospital, delivers a baby in the maternity ward
In the past, workers in the tiny southeast African nation of just 13 million inhabitants have been lured abroad by the promise of higher wages and better working conditions.
But, the country best-known as the homeland of Madonna's adopted children now has another claim to fame: It has succeeding in halting -- at least for now -- its crippling brain drain of nurses.
Malawi's solution? To expand educational opportunities for nurses at all levels and keep them out of poverty by paying modestly more money.
Countries don't come much poorer than Malawi, but its healthcare system worked well back in the 1970s and early 1980s.
When the former British colony gained independence in 1964, president Hastings Banda, himself a physician, maintained a high level of training for nurses that included teaching all classes in English.
By the late 1990s, however, Malawi was reeling from the AIDS epidemic. As if that weren't bad enough, the government also had to cut spending on health care and education as a condition for getting help from the U.S. and other countries to liberalize its trade and economy.
The publicly funded health system, on which more than 95 percent of Malawians still depend for treatment, quickly started to fall apart.
Video Watch a report about the impact of Malawi's nursing shortage »
Registered nurses began leaving in droves.
"Every day I received reports from Nurses' Council that so many nurses are now at the airport," Ann Phoya, the former head of nursing services for all Malawi told CNN.
"It was obvious that we needed to do something drastic."
Phoya worked with others in Malawi's Ministry of Health (MOH) to come up with an emergency plan that focused on nurses as they provided most of the primary care.
The MOH then applied for around $160 million (£100 million) in international funding for their six-year initiative, primarily from the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom.
The money was to be used to pay higher salaries to nurses -- quite a radical move in global development as donors worry it is unsustainable in the long haul.
However, the situation in Malawi was getting desperate.
The gamble paid off: The number of registered nurses leaving Malawi fell from a high of 111 (the equivalent of two years of Malawi's entire nursing graduates) in 2001 to just six in the first half of 2008. Enrollment at Malawi's nursing schools jumped up by 50 percent.
Success in one area has revealed a different problem -- that of an internal brain drain.
As more international aid groups and universities set up health programs in Malawi, they are hiring nurses, all trained at Malawi taxpayer expense, away from publicly funded hospitals and clinics.
The problem is even more acute in the rural areas, where most of Malawi's people live.
Embangweni Mission Hospital in northern Malawi has a good reputation but is located at the end of a long, dusty road, far from major towns, let alone cities.
"Young nurses with families do not really want to work here," said Catherine Mzembe, head of nursing at Embangweni.
"The local market is very small and although the hospital has running water, that is not the case in many homes."
advertisement
Even so, the hospital has made impressive strides in the past five years preserving mothers' lives during pregnancy, as well as cutting the number of deaths due to malaria among children and adults.
And that is perhaps the most important lesson to draw from Malawi's efforts: it pays to look at how much has been accomplished with so little.
Malawi: Ex-president’s property seized
Malawi's Anti-Corruption Bureau has seized the property of the country's former president Bakili Muluzi as a bond to the corruption case.
The ACB which is still conducting investigations in the case in which Muluzi is accused of diverting donor money amounting to $ 11 million into his account, has since said it has seized his multimillion residence in the commercial city of Blantyre.
The graft bursting body is also said to have seized 44 of the ex-president’s 149 vehicles, Keza Office Park and all his bank accounts. The former president is currently in the United Kingdom where he is reported to be seeking medical attention.
The ACB Public Relations Officer Egrita Ndala was quoted by the country’s local daily -The Daily Times - as saying that the Bureau was still conducting investigations.
“The Anti-Corruption Bureau is still conducting investigations in relation to other property in order to ascertain ownership. It is difficult to say which other properties are earmarked for seizure,” said Ndala.
Recently the former president was stopped from travelling to the UK and his travel documents seized over information that he was going there for good. He however, was given a go ahead to travel before the ACB pounced on his property as a bond once he loses the case and does not return.
Reports in the country quoted Muluzi’s lawyer Jai Banda as saying that he has applied for dismissal of the seizure warrant. The ex-president was once arrested over the same corruption case.
The ACB which is still conducting investigations in the case in which Muluzi is accused of diverting donor money amounting to $ 11 million into his account, has since said it has seized his multimillion residence in the commercial city of Blantyre.
The graft bursting body is also said to have seized 44 of the ex-president’s 149 vehicles, Keza Office Park and all his bank accounts. The former president is currently in the United Kingdom where he is reported to be seeking medical attention.
The ACB Public Relations Officer Egrita Ndala was quoted by the country’s local daily -The Daily Times - as saying that the Bureau was still conducting investigations.
“The Anti-Corruption Bureau is still conducting investigations in relation to other property in order to ascertain ownership. It is difficult to say which other properties are earmarked for seizure,” said Ndala.
Recently the former president was stopped from travelling to the UK and his travel documents seized over information that he was going there for good. He however, was given a go ahead to travel before the ACB pounced on his property as a bond once he loses the case and does not return.
Reports in the country quoted Muluzi’s lawyer Jai Banda as saying that he has applied for dismissal of the seizure warrant. The ex-president was once arrested over the same corruption case.
Multichoice Malawi enters pact with National Bank
Multichoice Malawi has entered a pact with the National Bank of Malawi where its clients will use the bank's service centres across the country to pay their subscriptions.
The agreement made in Blantyre, was officially announced by the bank's chief marketing officer Wilkins Mijiga and Multichoice marketing manager Chimwemwe Nyirenda.
“It would be very convenient for...customers based in areas far from cities where they can pay subscription to pay through our service centres,” said Mijiga who also disclosed that the next payment platform would be through mobile phone and the auto teller machine.
At the moment customers would be required to fill the bank's utility deposit slip according to the bank's transactional manager, Ellen Kumpukwe.
“Our system would be gathering data on DStv subscribers every 15 minutes and sending it to Multichoice,” she said.
Multichoice's Nyirenda said customers must always leave their decoders on within paying bugdets for undisturbed activation.
The agreement made in Blantyre, was officially announced by the bank's chief marketing officer Wilkins Mijiga and Multichoice marketing manager Chimwemwe Nyirenda.
“It would be very convenient for...customers based in areas far from cities where they can pay subscription to pay through our service centres,” said Mijiga who also disclosed that the next payment platform would be through mobile phone and the auto teller machine.
At the moment customers would be required to fill the bank's utility deposit slip according to the bank's transactional manager, Ellen Kumpukwe.
“Our system would be gathering data on DStv subscribers every 15 minutes and sending it to Multichoice,” she said.
Multichoice's Nyirenda said customers must always leave their decoders on within paying bugdets for undisturbed activation.
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