It's time-out time!

Whether all that whinging had an impact on the cosmos I am not sure but as of tomorrow I am having time-out for ten days. We are off to Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town.

It has been a busy week with quite a few people in town from the company and dinner out Thursday and Friday night and then five of us for dinner here on Saturday. All seemed to go reasonably well until it came time to cook the Steak Diane and the generator kept collapsing on us. Luckily we could re-start it the six or eight times required to get dinner cooked but it was a challenge all the same.

We are now thinking, having had advice from a colleague who knows much more than we do, that there is a problem with the wiring between the cooker and the genset, or 'jenny' as they tend to call them. That makes sense. Better that than having a problem with the generator. Anyway, it will be nice to have a break from recalcitrant cookers, generators, internet and the like.

Joburg will be pretty much Sandton City which isn't the real South Africa but I will be able to get a massage, see a movie, buy some books and maybe even find a podiatrist. Wearing slip-on sandals all the time does not make for soft feet. I also need a haircut and while I have been threatening to 'go local' I have not gotten around to it.

Sandton is one of our old 'homes' given the number of times we have transited through Joburg while living in Angola, then in Cape Town, later in Zambia and now in Malawi. We also had a stint in Johannesburg itself but thankfully, only for six months.

The number of times I have walked around Sandton in a daze, trying to adjust to the nearly nine hours time difference from Oz must be in the hundreds. Luckily I know my way around the place pretty much blindfolded which is what jetlag can feel like at the worst of times. I will say, while practice may not make perfect, it does make for progress and we really don't suffer too much from jetlag these days.

My favourite haunts in Sandton are the bookshops and the South Africans also seem to be into the esoteric and the spiritual so I rarely come away empty handed. There are also some really nice restaurants, particularly on Nelson Mandela Square, which, while something of a 'fortress' is a pleasant place to sit outside and have dinner.

No malaria in Joburg so sitting outside at night is absolutely fine. Although we do sit outside here as well and we did in Angola. You just have to take your chances sometimes and the worst period is dusk.

We had some people in town earlier in the week and went to Buchanan's and sat outside on the terrace. It's a pretty spot with a huge pond which is Frog Central. The noise they make has to be heard to be believed. Then again, frogs love mosquitoes which is why one can sit outside at Buchanan's and not get eaten alive.

It was nice to get out and about and to have company again although the food was mediocre. There is better food in Lilongwe so Buchanan's don't really have an excuse. I suspect they just have a very bad chef which is a pity because otherwise, it is a really nice place run by a really nice Australian whose family is from Malawi.

We met the owner's parents one night; apparently they have a farm nearby which is where the lamb and beef are produced. I think they originally came from Zim (Zimbabwe) which is where a lot of the Anglo farmers in Malawi and Zambia are from. They fled to 'safer' parts when times got tough. Let's hope Malawi doesn't follow the slip sliding path which is so common in Africa. One wonders if even South Africa will survive while hoping fervently, while holding that thought, that it can. Only time will tell.

It will be my first time back in Cape Town for nine years. We lived beneath the brooding mountain for a year . I must be one of the few people who have lived in Cape Town and who never went up the mountain. Somehow it did not feel right. I suppose a bit like Uluru - there are some 'mountains'  or monoliths, one is not meant to climb.

I could see the mountain from my front door. It rose, dark and forbidding, like a giant scowl, behind where we lived. As often as not the top was completely shrouded in mist. I did not feel it had a benevolent presence and when I did some research into African myths for the area it seemed I was right. It is certainly impressive but I don't regret not going up it and have no intention of doing so on this visit.

I wonder if Cape Town has changed in the past ten years. Probably not. The best bit was always the 'tourist trap' at the Waterfront. The city itself was rundown and seedy and while there were some truly lovely suburbs and we lived in one of them, the crime was as bad, from what I could see, as Johannesburg.

Crime does rather spoil things and it certainly 'sours' one's view of a place. I found living in South Africa harder than living in Angola during the war. I think that was because in Angola the war was a known thing; it was very real although the chances were good that it would not again reach the capital, Luanda. Not certain, but good. 

We would often hear the gunfire at night and wonder if a coup was underway, or see the tracers streaking into the sky and wonder if the rebels were heading our way. They were not. Jonas Savimbi was killed a few days before we were due to leave the country after our four year stay and that was the end of a quarter of a century of civil war.

But while we lived there we had to be protected. We had guards at the gate armed with machine guns 24/7 and when we went out in the car we went with an armed guard.

I won't say I liked it but it was easier than South Africa where despite the deadly 'lick' of razor wire along walls and fences and the ever-present electric fence; guard at the gate and often a dog, the 'war' was hidden or denied. It was as if everyone played a game that it was much safer than it was. I do believe that when your number is up it is up but human nature being what it is, such beliefs do not remove anxiety or even fear. It was not a relaxing place to be and is still not, but time out is time out and life after all is an adventure.

The thing about South Africa was the gratuitous violence. If the house had been attacked in Luanda, and we did come under fire one time when the police were involved in a shootout with car thieves in the street outside, and I am sure our guards joined in, there was a good chance that we would be robbed but not killed.

In South Africa however it was and is a very different matter. If thieves break in there is a very, very good chance you will be shot or killed just because you are white. The hatred is that great and the violence that gratuitous.

Anyone who is lucky enough to not live with such violence or in a society which is heavily armed or at war, is very, very lucky indeed. One of the nice things about Malawi is that for an African country it really is comparatively safe. But the word is comparative. We still have razor wire and an electric fence ... which I think is working again... and guards at the gate. The guards are not armed however but we live in a fenced and gated compound. Such is the way of it in Africa.

Raining on my own parade.....

The internet is painfully slow; the cable television is not working and the laptop has been freezing, otherwise things are petty damn fine.

I am not sure I really mean that. I am trying to see things in the best light when really what I probably need is a serious whinge. I think it is harder doing Third World on one's own. With Greg away, and no friends or family around, there is probably too much time alone.

The problem is I am hardly here long enough when I am here to get much of a social network organised. I don't mind being alone but the alone of being alone with Greg away is verging into the 'lonely' alone instead of just the 'not having friends' around alone. Grizzle, grizzle, whinge, whinge.

I am good at being alone. I know that. But it wears hard at times and grates along the edges of 'making the best of things.' Maybe it is the weather. It has been pouring with rain and the skies are mostly grey. It's a green world which is good but a grey one all the same. The brightest thing at present are my oil paints and yet the picture I am painting is brown and dull. I am pondering whether to attack it with dots of green, yellow and red... it's a landscape and can be anything I want really. My version of an Aboriginal dot painting. It will probably not be very good but its execution could be cathartic.

Birgitte has been busy for the past few days but I went over and asked her for coffee on Friday. She had just come back from the dentist and said she is busy playing golf. I think they only get leave once a year so life is more stable for the other residents although Pawadee is away and will get back about a week before I leave again. This is the way of it in expat world... 'ships' passing in the night.

Now to do Pollyanna and look on the bright side. It is a reminder I think that it is too easy to become 'attached' to work, the net and at night, because I never put it on during the day, the television.

But I should be grateful. Birgitte was telling this morning me that one day, while we were away, there was no water and no electricity for the entire day. Now that is inconvenience particularly since she was in the shower washing her hair when the water stopped.

I wonder where the days go and they go chasing people to get repairs done; waiting around for someone to arrive... either today or tomorrow or whenever and checking that a repair has actually taken place. Then again, they came to look at the internet today and they did get it up and running as it should, well, pretty much, but within two hours it was back to its old tricks. I don't know why I am bothering writing this. It probably won't save or publish. Venting I suppose is as good a reason as any.

Then again, I am enormously grateful that the DVD player works. There is a limit to the amount of reading one can be bothered doing and my 'store' of books is a bit slim.

And yet why the sense of feeling a 'bit lost?' I have also been cooking but there is a limit to the number of biscuits and cakes I can fit in the freezer. Maybe it is 'worse' because I am on my own and when we are alone we more instinctively crave distraction and habit.

I have done some painting but not much. The main reason is that I have not yet sourced mineral turps and cleaning up oil paints is virtually impossible without it. I have barely a quarter of a cup to use and so am dabbling discreetly until I can buy some more. It's the Virgo in me I think that I avoid doing something unless I am able to clean up easily and properly. Someone else would not care. They would leave the paint splashed around and the brushes soaking in soapy water. Maybe it is all an excuse.

Talking about cleaning up, I managed to splash dobs of paint onto my white linen shirt yesterday and thought that was the 'end of it.' I have never managed to get oil paint off clothes. I had planned to say to Limited that he would not be able to get the stains out but when I saw him this morning he mentioned it and said he had! I must admit, I was astonished but just said: 'Great. Well done.'

I cannot help but wonder if in his hands, the 'stain remover' which looks pretty ordinary to me and probably suffers from the Third World 'flaw' of being 'diluted' and therefore less effective than anything one might buy in Oz, takes on greater and seriously impressive 'power' because he believes it will work.... he has no concept that it is impossible to remove oil paint from fabric and so, with the power of belief, the impossible becomes the possible. I can in all honesty think of no other explanation and I have no intention of ever conveying negative belief about anything to either Limited or Andrew.

Not that it helped when Andrew went to look for work clothes for the two of them. We said we would get two shirts and two pairs of trousers each and he took K200  for the taxi ride and went into town to find the shop. But the shop has moved and so he has returned empty handed. I am sure there are places in Lilongwe where one can buy cotton shirts and trousers for men... it can't be that hard? Can it? I shall have to ask Cynthia at the office. Nothing is ever simple and everything takes longer than one expects. I mean, there are men here, they wear clothes - there must be shops which sell them. Then again, I am really not sure how well Andrew understands either English or my accent.

But the changeover seems to be going well. I really do think it suits the two of them better and it certainly suits me, which, at the end of the day makes everything work better for everyone. A variation on the theme of :'happy wife, happy life.'

I think one of the difficult aspects of wormhole life is that I am not anywhere for long enough to get anything much organised. By the time I leave again in a couple of weeks, I will have been back about six weeks; then about five weeks in Oz and then back here again for 5-6 weeks before heading to the US for our son's wedding. It takes a couple of weeks to get organised when I get back and then a week or so before we leave I am once again in wind-down mode. There's a 'treading water' aspect to life at times.

I am sure it is exactly what I need and I am sure the world will be a sunnier place tomorrow when Greg gets back. Although that is for all of five days before he leaves again for a week or more. Then back for a couple of days and then gone again.

Then again, no excuses for not getting into the next draft of my latest novel. I don't think I wanted to hear that! There you go, talking to myself. Time for coffee. It is probably too early for gin at 3.43p.m.

Electrical storms; electrical surges; electrical cuts

We had a mighty electrical storm last night but I must have slept through it. Unless it hit Karonga harder than it did Lilongwe. My friend Iris who rang this morning said it was impressively scary or is that scarily impressive? I did hear the rain.

I like storms actually. Well I like being inside listening to them. There is such powerful beauty or such beautiful power or both in an electrical storm. The snap/shudder of thunder; brittle flick of lightning and the drench of rain. It is as if the world is re-energised and refreshed.

This morning, as I sat on the verandah for breakfast, it was cool and damp and the birds were in full throat. A desperate, juvenile tweeting on one side; long trilling sighs on the other; deep throaty 'coughs' in front and a general cacophony of birdsong.

Some fresh papaya and a boiled egg on toast. Tea of course. What would breakfast be without properly brewed leaf tea? The only thing missing was company. Greg is away and once again I return to that strange and solitary place of aloness. I know it is a place where many people live all of the time but for me and for him it is odd. There is something missing; a sense of echoed completeness and while the days are full they are not as fulfilling. When Greg walks through the door, even after more than forty years, it is still the best part of the day for me as he says it is for him.

I feel fortunate. We both feel fortunate. To remain friends and lovers for so long is a precious gift. And I do think it is a gift. There is as much luck as there is good management in relationships and marriages which endure. I know other people have worked just as hard as I or we have done on their marriage or relationship only to see it slip through their fingers. It isn't just about work although work is an important part of it. I do believe there is such a thing as fate, destiny or plain old fashioned luck or good fortune.

It is anyway, written into both of our astrological charts such good fortune and for that we both remain eternally grateful. Not that we take any of it for granted. For many years now, after challenging times, we both took the view that just because it was good now did not mean it would be in 12 months time! Assume nothing. No-one knows what the future holds. Enjoy the moment, continue the work and hope for the best. It is all one can do.

Hmm, I need to apply that approach to my laptop. I have had issues with it pretty much since I got it and finally, after six months of negotiation, Hewlett Packard have agreed to replace it under the three year warranty. It has been seriously overheating for the past year and then, as part of the process trying to fix it, a hard drive problem was discovered. HP then wanted to replace the hard drive which would not have fixed the overheating problem so I said no, just replace it. But they would not replace it anywhere but Oz and by the time they made the decision to do so I had left for the US and then on to Malawi. Fingers and toes crossed that it would keep working for me until I could get back to Australia to replace it.

And it has been working okay until I got back here. One blue screen last week and two this morning. Sigh. I am praying and saying nice things to my laptop to keep it functioning until the end of February when I will be back in Perth and can do the change over. How dependent we become on these things. For me even more so because I work editing manuscripts and on my own writing. It has occurred to me that in my situation I need a backup... one computer is not enough because one never knows.

Did I have two typewriters? I think I did. Anyway, always easier to repair and the reality is they did not break down as easily or as badly as computers can. I am also wondering how much 'energy' I am sending out to interfere with my electrical equipment. This is not the first time I have had computer issues. Although to be fair, I had three Toshibas which never caused any problems despite being hauled around the world and my first issues began when I inherited Greg's Quasio three years ago. Major meltdowns which is why I bought the HP. Maybe I should have stuck with Tosh.

Damon, my son recommends Apple and I am thinking a Macbook might be a good 'extra' to give me permanent backup. All this equipment. What did we do with our time when we did not spend so much time on the net? Good question. Maybe time to go and make some more biscuits.

On the plus side of the African experience the generator/inverter seems to be working more effectively. Although when the air conditioner in the bedroom switches off when the generator switches on, it doesn't return to sleep mode... as in no lights. I am a bit of a bat when it comes to sleep but couldn't be bothered getting up to change it because the generator was off and on all night.

We seem to be averaging two to three power cuts a day. Sigh. I have heard on the grapevine that some country or another is pouring money into Malawi's power system and I certainly hope so. But I can no longer complain. The power goes and the inverter kicks in seamlessly to run everything but the oven and cooktop and the air conditioners. The generator does that. We have also had it set up so the generator can re-charge the inverter batteries. So, all in all, finally the system seems to be working.

I made Finnish Sour Cream Cake yesterday and some Vanilla Biscuits and was unaffected by power cuts. Today I have a beef and potato pie ready for the oven and plan to make some cinnamon biscuits. It is nice to be able to cook once more without doing the 'power dance.'

It is, like many things in life, a learning curve. The other learning curve is that I have decided there is a place for chilled red wine. The Brazilians used to serve this in Angola years ago and I thought it was awful. Ah, how times and tastes change as needs must be.

Our Danish neighbours, Birgitte and Henning, asked us over for a meal last Sunday night. Pawan also came; Pawadee is in Thailand. They served chilled red wine and actually it was not too bad. When it warmed up I realised it was extremely mediocre red wine but chilled it was more than okay. Given that we often get mediocre wine around here I am thinking the solution might be to chill it. Who says I am not adaptable? I was however somewhat ruined having spent a few weeks back in Adelaide in November-December. We really do produce good, quaffable wine in Oz. I think we have somewhere sacrificed Soul for market but it is still much, much better wine that you get elsewhere for similar prices.

Henning had made a wonderful Osso Buco and Birgitte made a delicious tart. It was a lovely meal and nice to go out to eat even though it is no more than a walk across the driveway. We plan to make it more of a regular event which will be nice. I just have to fit it in between when Greg gets back and we leave again. And that date is coming up fast.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose - The more things change the more they stay the same!

I have spent the week pondering whether or not to change Limited and Andrew around in terms of house responsibility. Actually I have spent months pondering it and asked the Tarot for guidance as well.

One is hesitant to make changes too soon or too lightly but I really do feel that Limited is better for the responsibility of this house and Andrew for the guest house.

I am however conscious of what it all means in terms of 'face' although I suspect the 'lighter duties' of the Guest House would better suit Andrew and the more constant work of this house would better suit Limited. What to do? I first thought about it when we moved in but did not want to act too quickly and have been pondering it ever since.

I have been putting off the decision because I felt uncomfortable about doing it and then told myself that I was 'telling myself a story' about what it might mean to Andrew and there was always more than one story. Anyway, I finally bit the bullet today and did the deed. Not surprisingly Andrew hardly seemed surprised. I had wondered what he was thinking about how it was all going... he works more slowly than Limited and forgets things more easily ... and worrying that he might lose his job. Perhaps, I told myself yesterday, that having it settled might be a relief. And I think it was.

If anything Limited looked a bit horrified but I suspect that has more to do with dynamics regarding the hierarchical nature of his relationship with Andrew. Still, there is no point keeping either of them in a job to which they are not best suited. Andrew has very good handyman skills and we need to get some work done on the Guest House and he can oversee this. I told him this. Limited wants to learn to cook and I need to have him in this house if I am to teach him.

Anyway, great relief on my part now that it is done and perhaps on theirs. Limited is a very good worker and he thinks for himself - not always common in such places - and takes responsibility. Andrew will have less to do at the Guest House because guests are infrequent and he can work at a more leisurely pace which I am sure will suit him better as well.

I have told them they do not need to come in the morning and we can begin afresh on Monday with new jobs and new routines.

One of the things of which I am reminded is how much time is spent organising 'staff.'  I have been back nearly two weeks and the time has disappeared on disobeying generators; disappearing septic tank covers and disappointing performances. The reality is that the supposed time-saving of house staff or servants, which is not a word I like but which is the reality, is swallowed up by the monitoring, managing and manoeuvring of it all. But it is the way of this world and the most valuable thing you can give in such places is employment.

That is not to say that it should be a free ride. I have had to get in touch with the security people this week.... Buffalo Guards.... now there's a name, no doubt given because the Buffalo is, after the Hippopotamus, Africa's most dangerous animal... because the guards have been a little lax about who they allow into the compound. Malawi is not like other places in Africa but it would be foolish to forget that it is Africa.

Yesterday afternoon Limited came to tell me there was a man from the Water Board outside. In fact there were five men in a car, supposedly from the Water Board, waving a piece of paper relating to invoices from last March. I said they would have to go to the office and gave them an address. No-one appeared at the office and Cynthia, who works for Greg, sent a note saying one had to be careful because they might not be legitimate and there were thugs around.

It raised the issue of how effective the guards really are, particularly given the fact that the lids to our septic tanks were stolen on Tuesday night. These tanks are out the front of the property and without lids incredibly dangerous, particularly for small children or people walking in the night. Falling into a septic tank must be a ghastly experience even if not deadly, which I imagine, with fumes, it would be. Not to mention health issues with open tanks of sewage out the front of our compound.

I told the guards to put an old water geyser which has been sitting by the driveway for more than a year, waiting to be collected by the property manager, over the top. With a few hours it was back by the driveway. The guards insisted they could not protect the old geyser and had put bricks and plastic and branches around the open tanks. Ridiculous I said, put it back. If a child falls in they will die. For that matter, if an adult feel in they would die. God, what a horrible end!!

Later that day Charles, one of the night guards came to beg me to let them take the geyser off at night and put it inside the compound for safety. There was a logic to that which escaped me, or maybe it didn't. The logic was he did not want the responsibility of staying awake to watch it.

 'You have to watch it,' I said. 'But no, he exclaimed, 'it was not possible to make it secure.' Despite there being two of them it seems, or rather it filtered out in conversation that at night one watches and one sleeps which is not at all what they are paid to do. 'You will leave it and you will watch it,' I said firmly.

I had no choice but to take the issue to their boss and have since been told that they will replace the septic tank covers and the guards have been told they are not to sleep at night and no-one but no-one is allowed into the compound without identification or prior approval from a resident. Here's hoping. It is Africa after all.

Needless to say this afternoon, when they turned up to replace the lids the old geyser was still there. It had survived the night. I am sure the night guards have day jobs which accounts for the sleep/watch scenario but that is not what they are paid to do and from what I can see they are quite well paid as guards. At least compared to local standards.

There went another half a day or more on organising. What do I do with my time otherwise? Good question. Edit manuscripts of which I have a few to do; get back to my painting which remains a possibility and a hope, and work on my blogs and books and poetry.

A generally disappointing generator experience but the coriander is happy

I do realise that it will all end well but this has been the week that was in terms of our generator which, instead of fixing all problems has created a cavalcade of new ones most of which have to do with wiring issues. In short, it has been on and off and not doing what it should, like run the oven and cooktop which was why we took this path in the first place.

The kitchen has been full of electricians pretty much every day for most of the week. They seem to arrive at 2p.m. and work until six or seven or eight or nine when things go wrong. Why can't they arrive early so they are not working through dinner time? It's a good question and one which came to mind but did not get asked because this is Africa and it would be seen for what it was; a ridiculous question.

The fact that I spent three days of the week pretty much sleeping because I came down with some flu type thing means that I cared less than I might have done about not having a kitchen or not having dinner. Not that it was anyone's fault. Well, maybe the ability of the electricians to wire things as they were needed to be wired but I won't go there. It is, as I told Manuel, the man behind the generator (and air conditioners and various other things) a lesson in humility. He and we clearly have major lessons to learn. He said his wife said the same thing and said she would keep praying. I am not sure the prayers are working.

I did not have the heart to tell him on Saturday that the new fan in our bedroom is making a clanking noise. I waited until Monday to do that. It is quieter though. When it is not clanking. It is also huge and brown and while it suits the room, it does make a statement. As Greg said to Manuel: 'Holding two of those we could fly to Karonga!' Crazy Australians I am sure he was thinking but he did laugh.

Anyway, it has been decided that we need to restore the inverters (batteries) so that when the power goes off the system immediately resorts to inverter and is seamless... the genset it seems needs time to kick in. I did suggest this in the first place and was dismissed by the various male minds around at the time. 'Told you so,' does spring to mind but I am too gracious to say it. Or maybe not.

We will then set up the genset to be used manually when we need to cook. This will save us diesel which might be useful given that the power was out for 16 hours on Saturday in an ominous First!

Gensets aside all goes well otherwise although my supplies of wine are running low and I have been thoroughly ruined again through time in Oz where one gets to drink more than reasonable wine all of the time. I will have to switch off some of the tastebuds to return to an appreciation of South African wine. It is not that SA does not produce good wine because they do but rather that what makes its way here is not in that category and even if it were, it suffers from transport and storage.

The rains are steady but not heavy and the herbs in my pots are doing reasonably well although I have had to mover them all to one end so they get a smattering of sunlight. Some of them have been crawling desperately out of the pot in a battle to find some rays of sunlight. The garden is really very shaded, which, while lovely, is not conducive to growth on many fronts. Although the corainder does seem happy which is great as this is one of my favourite herbs and I have seen it rarely in fresh form in Lilongwe.

Avocadoes, evangelists and the heavens open!

We are back in Lilongwe and the red earth blushes brilliant green from the recent rains. Andrew tells me it has been a 'dryish' Wet so far but things are looking lush all the same.

Limited tells us he has been home for a few days while we were away. Another brother is ill. He has been in hospital and is HIV Positive. It is unusual for Africans to admit to Aids or HIV and malaria gets blamed for much if not most illness in Africa because it is more culturally acceptable, as in, less shameful, a disease.

This brother is 28 and one of four surviving sons. Limited has two sisters. One presumes that the wife and children of the brother who died last year are supported by the family. From the look of it this year may bring another funeral for Limited and more responsibility for his family.

Andrew has been unwell with malaria, he says. Such things are part and parcel of life in Africa.

It poured with rain yesterday afternoon and is doing so now. The sky bulges grey and then drenchs the land. Thunder and lightning hold court and it reminds me of the Wet Season in Bombay which I always loved. In India as much as anything it was because the rain washed away the thick layer of dirt which had built up on everything and turned the leaves green once more.

There is something about drenching rain which is appealing. Although I doubt anyone in Queensland would agree with me. We lived in Brisbane for four years in the 90's and I have fond memories. Even as I write they face the deluge. Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains of that there is no doubt.

The avocadoes on our tree have grown enormously but are to get yet more enormous it seems. They are about the size of the avocadoes one normally buys but I am told they will get to twice that size. See pic below.

We arrived back on Sunday, a couple of days earlier than we had planned. The flight was full of Christians heading back to their goodly works in Malawi.. I have never seen such a large business class section on South African Airways. The place is awash, like much of Africa, with American evangelists who seem to spend more time building churches than things the people really need like homes and health clinics. No doubt they add to the Malawian economy and serve some productive purpose.

The baggage carousel at Lilongwe is a scrum at the best of times; a confusion of people, bags and trolleys. Kids run riot and the air resonated with the cries of parents: Levi, Jacob, Miriam .... all good Biblical names.

Religion seems to come naturally to Africans and it is just a pity that the most active Christians are the happy clappers, the evangelists, the 'sound and fury' Christians who from what I can see are so far removed from the teachings of Jesus Christ it isn't funny. Biblical is the word which comes to mind when one listens to them with all the backward, primitive, unenlightened echoes contained within that word. Fear seems to be the fuel of such religions which no doubt is why churches are deemed more important than homes or clinics.

There is no doubt that these evangelist missionaries are 'good people' but it seems to me, having spent quite a bit of time observing them in various parts of Africa that this is the problem. Their focus is on their own 'goodness', read salvation given the vengeful nature of their God/s and the goal of helping others is secondary. They come first no matter how much they may tell themselves otherwise and because they do not really focus on those they are supposed to be helping their actions are always sourced in something which can only be called patronising. One really does get the sense that they see themselves bringing salvation to the heathens and for heathens read 'inferiors.'

The Africans are mere fodder for their faith; a means to gaurantee them eternal salvation or at least the belief in being saved, so fearful are their beliefs. It is sad to see such destructive irrationality. As if any God worth believing in, who is supposedly omnipotent could be as petty, vengeful, mean-spirited, mistrusting and simply unkind as the religions make God out to be? I wonder what the Malawians really think of their 'saviours.'

LEFT: Another church for Malawi.

Perhaps it meets a need in the Africans, stripped as they have been of much of the support of their own 'religions' and beliefs. But what a pity it is a form of religion which is based in fear, intolerance, judgement and pompous righteousness.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that television evangelists have taken off in Africa and the same sad, bigoted ranting now appears in local form.

 But enough of a rant from me. I decided long ago to stick with God and forget about religion; made as they all are in the shape of 'man', read men, and where the original spiritual teachings are buried beneath misogyny, ignorancy, bigotry and rant. I do realise there are some very positive aspects of religions, all of them, but there is more of the negative than the positive and since God is available to anyone, anytime, regardless of religion it is a quagmire I prefer to avoid.

Then again, I have more freedom, choice and opportunity in my life than the average African which no doubt is why churches in Africa are packed on Sundays and in Australia, largely empty. That does not of course explain the American passion for religion; they are the most religious of all developed nations. Then again,  the average American also lives with a lot of uncertainty because of the lack of the sort of social welfare safety net which is found in other developed nations.

Perhaps after all religion is more easily sold to those who live in fear. Perhaps those who live in fear need the dictates of a patriarchal God who tells them what to do. Or perhaps some people only feel safe if they live within a system of rigid, unbending rules? I still think it's a pity that the God-botherers have made such inroads into Africa.