Paul's Malawi Collection2004 - 2007 |
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Live For Today For Tomorrow May Never Arrive
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Europeans often see Africans as lazy and uninspired. They never get anything done, that is why Africa is in a mess. A look at the shops in Lilongwe would seem to confirm this view. Asian traders run the more profitable businesses and African Malawians work for them or scrape a poor living in the markets. Look a bit further and you start to realise that many Africans, far from being lazy, are endlessly inventive and work for long hours every day of the week. As I left this morning I found a car tipped into the ditch just outside my house. In England this would have been a major problem requiring endless phone calls and tractors or rescue services. Within five minutes a group of people gathered around and lifted the car back onto the road and the bent wing was pulled roughly into shape. There is nothing that is not used, re-used, recycled, re-mended and resold. Aluminium is hammered into a variety of pots, pans, and utensils; lorry wheels become sweet potato cookers, inner tubes become luggage straps, bits of string turn into mops and cans beget lamps. In the poorest area you will see people mending anything that has the slightest chance of being revived. The problem is that the future is not a very reliable friend in African life. The past and particularly the ancestors are much more active and present companions. So it difficult for many Africans to see beyond what is here today. Yesterday I was driving with Mr Newa past a pick-up truck which was so full of people that the body was rubbing on the tyres. The profit for taking on extra passengers was at most MK30 each or maybe MK300 in total. The potential cost of damage might be thousands of Kwatcha . But you have to eat today and people need to get home today. Today we went out to meet young people from the youth network. One of the projects has been income generation by rearing pigs and chickens. CEYCA provided breeders thanks to funding from Action Aid. The idea is that as pigs and chickens breed the progeny is passed to other young people who in turn breed and pass on some of the stock. The full-grown pigs can earn a considerable profit in rural terms. Today we had a big problem. Today we heard that the three breeding pigs had disappeared. Today a group of three young men had arranged for the pigs to be sold to a trader who was to slaughter them so that they could be sold and eaten today. As we made our way around the young people and local leaders the story coalesced into an all too understandable whole. A young man had returned to the village Kwatchaless after a failed farming venture. He persuaded two of the network members to sell the pigs. Even though they were warned by others that it would mean police trouble they carried on. Their wives had new clothes, they had new clothes and they were rumoured to be drinking during the days in Dedza or Salima, returning only under the cover of darkness. Why worry about tomorrow when you have good time today? Tomorrow may never arrive. Footnote - There is no Chichewa word for 'maintenance' - the nearest you get is 'repair '. Hospitals are full of machines that have broken down and been caste aside rather than mended. There is no obvious way that a broken radiography machine can be turned into a microwave oven, but I bet someone is thinking about it. ***************************
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