Civil Unrest

We live in exciting times! Rather too exciting actually. But let me begin at the beginning... Yesterday I went to the airport to meet my brother and his wife who have come for three weeks holiday, to see me, to get a proper idea about what it is that I am doing in Malawi, and to have a holiday. The trip has been planned for several months, so there was no way they could have known that the 20^th July would be chosen as a day of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. Back in April you will probably have read in the British papers that the British High Commissioner was recalled to England following remarks concerning Malawian foreign policy and I think the way in which UK aid money was being used. Anyway Bingu Mutharika was not happy about it and a diplomatic dispute has been rumbling along ever since. UK aid has been withdrawn and I understand that several other countries have followed suit. Malawi is a very poor country and the withdrawal of foreign aid makes for a serious budget deficit. For some weeks we have noticed an increase in the frequency of interruptions to the power supply and imported commodities such as petrol, diesel and cement have been harder to obtain. Ordinary Malawians do not have Kwacha to spare, and gradually rising prices will cause difficulty to everyone. July 20^th was chosen as a date for anti-government demonstrations protesting about the situation and also on that day pro-government solidarity demonstrations were arranged. As azungu volunteers we were advised to keep well out of the way, which meant not going into Blantyre. Dave and Fiona were arriving at Chileka Airport, just outside Blantyre at lunch time. I consulted Peter about whether he felt it would be OK to drive to fetch them. As the march was not planned to go through the part of Blantyre I needed to cross we decided that it should be safe enough for me to go. I took David with me for moral support, and off we set. David took the precaution of asking his mates in the Liquor Garden whether there was a way to cut through to the Chileka Road without going into central Blantyre and they explained that there was, but it involved dirt roads. He memorised the directions but we decided to go towards town and see whether we could get through the usual way. All was well. The streets were very quiet, very few cars were on the road and on our side of town walkers were also much less apparent than on a normal day. We sailed through without problems and continued to the airport. On a normal day the road is lined with markets and trading areas. You can buy anything along that road: building materials, furniture, clothes, coffins, fruit and veg, blankets, pots and pans, rocket stoves and charcoal, anything you need to help Malawian life run smoothly. The sides of the road normally throng with people and bicycles, and there are many cars and trucks about, pausing to buy and load up with all kinds of commodity. Yesterday it was very quiet. There were a few cars on the road and a few people walking along, but not nearly the number you would expect on a normal day. We made it to the airport in record time even though I was careful to keep to all the speed limits and not draw any attention towards us. We parked the car and went into the bar by the viewing gallery in time to take our drinks out onto the balcony and watch the plane from Johannesburg as it came into land. After half an hour or so Dave and Fiona emerged through the arrivals door. It was lovely to see their familiar faces. We packed ourselves and the luggage all inside the car, not wanting to leave temptation in the way of exposed suitcases in the back of the pick-up in case we did encounter the demonstrators, and turned back towards Blantyre. The road remained under-populated, calm and clear almost all the way back to the city, but a few hundred yards from the right turn which would have taken us back down Glyn Jones Road, past the Mount Soche Hotel and back to Chilomoni there were men waving their arms in the middle of the road and urging us to turn and go back the way we had come. I glanced to my right across an open patch of ground and a couple of hundred yards away could see marchers in red t-shirts spilling out over the whole width of the parallel road, so I made a hasty u-turn. David then had to cudgel his brain to follow the cross country instructions in reverse. It took us a while to find the end of the right dirt track; at first we passed it and had to stop and ask for directions. As we reached it, several other cars that had been turned back after us diverted from the main road, so we tagged on the end of the line, and a small convoy wended its way up the narrow, twisty track. We emerged safely in Namiwawa and from there were able to find our way safely back to Chilomoni where we dropped David off at his house on the high street and then made our way back to Mitsidi for a well deserved cup of tea! This was followed by a lot of introductions and an impromptu gathering on the khonde with gin and tonic and several Greens, before eating Charles excellent dinner and then retiring early for Dave and 'Ona to sleep off the jet lag.

I have to say that I did not expect the demonstrations to continue on the next day, and to be strictly accurate they have not. What has happened is that protestors are not satisfied with Mutharika's response to the demonstrations, hoping for clear strategies to apologise to the UK, reinstate aid, solve the shortages and stop the expected increases to the cost of living in Malawi. Unfortunately he was not able to reassure them and the result has been widespread looting. Our intention was to have a quiet day in Chilomoni introducing Dave and 'Ona to all the Beehive people and organisations and possibly going for a walk up 'The Way of the Cross'. I think that in order to understand what Beehive is all about it is necessary to go up the mountain to the Cross, and it is beautiful up there, commanding beautiful views across Chilomoni and Blantyre. After the introductions we wished to go into Blantyre to change some money and have a look around. We paid a visit to Bee Books and Bee Bikes on the way, and while we were there I received a phone call from Maureen asking for some advice about what information to put on the graduation certificates for the children who are moving up from her nursery class in to Standard 1 so we took a diversion and went to visit her school. She is really trying hard to put into practice what she has learned on the course, and each time I visit the school has a little more equipment, a little more displayed on the wall, more colour, and more occupied children. I am so proud of her. It is an uphill battle and I wish her success. There were two groups of children in the school today, the under-4s and the over 4s. It is school holidays, so classes are more relaxed. The older ones were sitting in the shade in a circle of little chairs. Each child had a book and Maureen asked them to choose a picture from their book and tell us what they could see. Then she read them a story, involving the children in conversation about the pictures. The younger group were sitting with their teacher on the floor of their classroom. They each stood to tell us their names with various degrees of confidence and then one self-assured little chap took a wooden pointer and went around the pictures on the walls pointing at the letters of the alphabet, at colours and numbers leading the little tots in chanting their lessons. Maureen has a new display in that room, with various cuddly toys pinned to the wall, many by their ears poor things! The child pointed at each one in turn and asked his classmates to name them. They all shouted out the names in chorus. It was hard sometimes to work out exactly what they were saying. There are a couple of new story sacks hanging on the wall since my last visit, and in one room there is a display that Maureen has rescued from my classroom of a huge caterpillar that I made out of their marble paintings. Rather touchingly she has repeated the activity with the children and made a similar caterpillar with their artwork and the whole lot is proudly labelled 'Our Blow Paintings', which they are not! Dave took a lot of pictures and we asked a lot of questions and gave her a few second-hand story books to supplement her collection.

Eventually we set off towards Blantyre but halfway round Chilomoni Ring Road we again encountered men in the road wildly gesticulating that we should turn round. I swung to the right into a driveway entrance but could not turn properly before a whole stream of cars and minibuses came down the road at a rate of knots rarely encountered in Chilomoni. We waited for a big enough gap in the traffic to slip into the column of vehicles and went back into Chilomoni and hence to the Beehive site to join the others. We could hear the sounds of a large crowd coming down the hill. Back at the site everything appeared as normal but we kept receiving phone calls telling us first that the local Metro supermarket was being looted, and later that the looters had moved on to Bee Bikes. The news from Bee Bikes was inconsistent. We heard that all he bikes had been taken, and then that the building was still locked up but Mike and the guards were on the roof, then that windows were being broken, then that all the staff were safely out. Who knows what the truth of it all was! There were rumours that the looters were on the way to the Beehive site, and at one point we heard teargas being released and saw a truckload of armed police drive by to make sure we were OK. Eventually it was judged to be best that all the azungus return to Mitsidi so we all piled in the cars and drove by the quiet back road past Maureen's school, avoiding the High Street, and so to Mitsidi and relative peace. We have been here ever since, reading, blogging, bird watching, facebooking, worrying, chatting: each according to inclination and temperament! We are fine, and now it is ten to six and tea time, so I will close. I wonder what's for tea? EEEEE! the power just went off! Oh well I suppose that is just situation normal for a Thursday night!