It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegone...

(If you don’t get that reference, you’re probably under 40)

Have I told you how quiet Lilongwe is? It’s one of the aspects of this summer that I wasn’t quite prepared for. I think I’ve mentioned that Lilongwe is set up in two sections. I heard a story that it’s like that because the Apartheid government of South Africa some decades ago paid for and designed the city. As a result, the wealthy and foreign residents of the city are housed in one section, while the native African and poorer people live in another section. In the rich foreigner section we all live in big houses with increasingly bigger fences, based on status I presume. I.e. the US Ambassador has a bigger fence than some ordinary citizen. My wall stands proudly at 9 feet tall.

The crummy part of this set up is that you really need a car to leave my section of town where there are no bars, restaurants, or even grocery stores - just miles and miles of walled-in houses. So the evenings here, which start at about 5:45pm, can get pretty long and boring. Combine that with my job kind of slowing down this week and I’ve been struggling to find things to post here.

Luckily things will be picking up in the next few weeks. Tomorrow I go to South Africa for some fun in the sun with some friends from my graduate program. We’re going to rent a car and drive over to Mozambique to relax on a beach, order drinks with little umbrellas in them, and get in touch with our inner-Jimmy Buffett. I’m going to really watch out for those pot-pots so I don’t blow out a flip flop. Then, I’m organizing some trips for work that will include visiting schools that are doing innovate things to keep kids involved, free of HIV/AIDS, and safe from violence. I’m also going to visit some summer camps for Malawians that should be loads of fun.

In the meantime, about all I could muster for this spot is an update on the political turmoil taking place in Malawi and some strange things I’ve noticed around Malawi…


Seeing all of the problems going on in Zimbabwe makes me really glad that Malawi has never had any kind of nation-wide violence like that. They had a somewhat benign dictator, Hastings Banda, who finally submitted to multi-party elections in 1994. Of course he lost, and willingly gave up power. The new president became Bakili Muluzi (muh LOO zee) who represented the Southern Region of Malawi, which is the most populous. He didn’t really distinguish himself as a very bad or very good president. After serving two terms, he tried to have the constitutional limit of 2-terms for a sitting president amended so that he could continue in power, but failed. So instead, he hand-picked a member of his party to run for him and basically be a puppet. That guy is the current president, Bingu wa Mutharika (moo THAW ree cuh). Unfortunately Bingu (as he’s affectionately and derisively called here) decided he didn’t want to be a puppet and went about being his own man. He even went so far as to create a new party, of which he is the head. Obviously this made Muluzi pretty mad and he has been scheming to get back into power ever since. He decided to make Bingu’s life a living hell until they could run against each other when Bingu’s term runs out in 2009. This is kind of like if Bill Clinton tried to get back into the White House after George Bush’s term ended…wait, never mind. That would never happen in the States.

In the meantime, like I said, Muluzi is doing everything he can to ruin Bingu’s presidency. The battle has really been heated over the fact that Bingu switched parties and convinced other members of parliament to do the same. Well, apparently this is unconstitutional and anyone who switches parties is supposed to be kicked out of office, which is what Muluzi is screaming. At the same time Bingu is trying to run the government and pass a budget and stuff. Bingu finally had to shut down parliament because he was so afraid that all of his party members would get kicked out and he would get impeached and also because nothing was getting done because of the political deadlock. (Aren’t you glad our Congress isn’t like this?!...wait, never mind.) And so now we sit, and these two heavyweights sling mud at each other and try to make each other’s lives miserable. And all the while serious problems are going on in Malawi and nobody is able to fix them. This will probably continue until the elections take place in May 2009. Everyday the parliament meets, Bingu’s people try to start the budget process, while Muluzi’s party screams about the constitution. Wild and crazy stuff.

Ok, I really needed to get that off my chest. I feel better now, and I’ll keep you posted “as the world turns” in Malawi. It’s really some great theater, so I’ll post some of the juicier news pieces such as when a member of parliament yelled called a Muslim member “al Quaeda”.

Other news and notes:

-It’s getting colder and colder here in Malawi. This morning I could actually see my breath, and I started using the heater in my room. Definitely didn’t think this would happen in the heart of Africa. Stupid southern hemisphere.

-I was talking to a coworker of mine about music in Malawi because I’ve been dying to find a guitar here I can borrow. Over the course of the conversation I found out that, inexplicably, Malawians are in love with Country & Western. But not just any C&W. Only the old stuff. We’re talking Hank Williams, Sr., Kenny Rogers, and the person they love the most – Jim Reeves! This has been verified by every Malawian I have spoken to since hearing the news. They all give me an embarrassed little smile and then tell me it’s true. Too much fun. So, of course, now I have this grand idea of bringing my guitar back here one day and kicking off my career as a traveling C&W singer in the heart of Africa. Wait, this makes too much sense. I better just move on…

-There’s a belief among Malawians here that if you are a man and you eat raw cassava plants freshly picked out of the ground, that you will inherit strength and virility. They even have a modern song about it with the chorus “Fire, Fire, Cassava. All the women get worried when they see men with cassava because there’ll be no sleep tonight.”

-And I finally hit up a very Malawian church. It was a neat experience, culturally speaking. The room had about 100 people in it, and about 60 were kids. I thought it was so cool that they just let the kids run all over the church while they played songs. One interesting thing about Malawians is that kids never seem to be a nuisance to adults. They don’t notice crying babies and pay very little attention to little kids running around. This transfers to church where kids are just running around having such a good time. I loved watching it. They all played a game of “who can stare at the lone white guy the longest”. There was one little baby crawling on the ground and I never did figure out who his mother was. He kept getting picked up by a different woman every five minutes or so. They also had a time to meet the new visitors – which was me. Their tradition is that every member of the church comes over to shake the visitor’s hand. So I sat there while 60 kids all practically jumped on me trying to shake my hand. It was a little embarrassing at first, but after awhile I enjoyed kidding around with the kids. Good times.

Happy July 4th Ya'll!!! Have some hamburges, apple pie, and sweet tea for me!!!