7th April 2012
We’re currently in Blantyre,
having a little city break (of sorts) in the economic and cultural capital of
Malawi. As you can imagine, the journey from Nkope was far from easy. We had to
get up at 5am on Friday to make sure that we reached Blantyre at anything
resembling reasonable o’ clock. While we were waiting for transport from Nkope
to Mangochi, we discovered that we weren’t the only ones who had had an
unsettled night’s sleep. Everyone had been up listening to the radio, because
the news had come through during the wee hours that the president had suffered
a cardiac arrest and had been flown from the hospital in Lilongwe to one in South
Africa. We later found out that he had died.
I don’t know anyone has been
following this in other parts of the world, but the strange thing is that any
of you watching the news would have known about the president’s death before a
large proportion of the Malawian population. Those of us with access to the
international news sources found out fairly quickly, but it wasn’t declared on
the local news until yesterday (for reasons that I still don’t fully
understand). The political situation here is already a bit delicate. Speaking
to people over the last few days, it has become clear that there has been a lot
of dissatisfaction with the government, largely due to the destabilisation of
the kwacha, which has put the Malawian economy in a precarious position. Among
other things this has caused massive fuel crises for the past few months, and
people are now queuing for hours at petrol stations. It will be interesting to
see what happens with the cabinet over the next few days. Neither Dan nor I
have been in a country where the head of state has died before, so it’s a bit
strange. Being in a tourist bubble in Blantyre means that not too much has been
affected for us. That said, the Easter weekend when the president dies is not a
weekend to try sightseeing. A lot of places have been closed, for one reason or
another.
One of the interesting things has
been the reflection on the quality of healthcare in Malawi. Apparently it’s
quite unusual for the president to ever be treated in Lilongwe (which is the
capital city) and the reason that the president’s body was flown to Cape Town
was due to a lack of electricity. Although we’re used to conditions like that
in Nkope (the maternity unit was repeatedly lit with candles this week) we were
sad to discover that things aren’t necessarily that much better at the
hospitals in the big urban centres.
In better news, part of the
reason that we came to Blantyre was to start sorting out the purchase of
supplies for the hospital with the money raised via the ‘Come and Sing Haydn’s
Paukenmesse’. We’ll be presenting the equipment to the hospital on Thursday,
and we’ll let you all know how it goes!
Hope everyone is having a great
Easter weekend,
Danni
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