Fury, food, fuel and forex!

We have been away for six weeks and while all looks as we left it in the house, things have been less than quiet in Malawi and problems have intensified because people are angry.

The word is that diesel supplies will begin to improve from next week following Government action but in the meantime the queues around the petrol stations are longer than ever. Limited tells me that maize flour is in short supply and for Malawians, this is dramatic indeed. The flour is used to make their staple dish, Nsima (pronounced en-seema, a thick porridge which sustains even if it does not thoroughly nourish.)

I saw some flour in the local supermarket yesterday so it is available but not where it is needed, in the cheaper markets and shops which most Malawians can afford. However, we will buy some bags for everyone here and hand them out next week. It isn't much but it all helps. We gave them rice and sugar at Christmas so perhaps that can be a gift for next time.

Things have settled down but reading the local press there is no doubt that the recent riots were nasty. As is so often the way, it was the women who bore the brunt of it, or rather, the women wearing trousers who did. It seems the rioting vendors decided that it was not appropriate for women to wear trousers and so they set upon them, women of all ages, and stripped them naked! For a Malawian woman this would be a terrible shame. Needless to say the act itself appears purely vengeful and perhaps self-serving with dozens of cowering, naked women for the mean to leer at - and all for the crime of wearing trousers.

Photo: Nsima tastes like it looks but Malawians love it and would no doubt find Vegemite as appealing as we find Nsima.


But, as is the way of it, there is always a reason for why things happen and I learned later that the previous government had a rule about women wearing trousers so this attack appears to be more about politics than modesty. It is hardly surprising, the people are angry. Prices have risen more than 30% in the past year and fuel is in short supply. It should not be this way. The story is that maize is in short supply because the government has sold the crop to the Zimbabweans - to raise much-needed foreign exchange - to purchase, no doubt, supplies of diesel and petrol. It is a vicious cycle and one where the average Malawian suffers most of all. The Third World has ever been thus.

But beyond attacking trouser-wearing women and girls it seems there were running battles with police and barricades of burning tyres, baskets and wood while the angry vendors from the market pelted the police with stones and the police responded with teargas.

As a local paper reported:


'Lilongwe main Market shop owners were not happy with the number of people entering the market. One of the shop owners told the crowd in vernacular that they had to move out.
"Apa tikutseka geti chifukwa ambiri a inu mulibe ma shopu muno. Ndiye mutionongeletsa katundu apolisi akakuonani (Most of you don't own shops in here, and your presence will attract the police, something which might lead to damage of our property. So I am closing the main gate)," the shop owner said.
The only gate that was open was the one leading to Devil Street which the shop owners forced the 'encroachers' to use in getting out.'


My problems by comparison seem minor and are minor. Beyond the power cuts, inadequate inverter, telephone not working, internet not working and grappling with Malawi's version of buttermilk, Chambiko, things for us are pretty good. Yes, the supermarket shelves are looking troublingly bare which is why I came to pick up the Chambiko in the first place - thinking it was milk, because there was no milk.

We went to both Foodworths and Spar when we flew back in on Monday, through literal Wet Season stormclouds which were echoed in the social 'stormclouds' on the ground. Fresh produce was very limited in the former and the shelves were pretty much bare in the latter. It is always worse in the Wet Season because local crops are not growing well and storage in moist humidity is ineffective beyond a day or two.

But, I did find some reasonable onions, potatoes, apples, nectarines and lemons. We had carried in some garlic which was good because what was available was small and soft. We also brought in six packets of great organic Oz tea, a pot of vanilla bean paste which is readily available in Australian supermarkets but not in South African ones, a goodly supply of Haighs chocolates, two bottles of excellent South Australian chardonnay and two of excellent South African which we picked up at the airport - essentials really.

There was no cream to be found until we got to the little shop run by the British expats (who have been here for 30 years) where I found one jar of local cream which I could use to make my half and half mixture for coffee.

Spar had no white sugar, only brown but Sana, around the corner was awash with white sugar so we will do a stock-up. I am thinking that with ongoing problems with Forex, fuel and food, we need to make sure we have our diesel supplies up to scratch and a well-stocked pantry of basics.

Photo: An average queue for petrol in Lilongwe.

 It might be a good idea to get a small chest freezer so we can have butter, milk, flour (safely stored away from weevils), frozen veg and meat on hand for even tougher times. And tins of powdered milk will be a good way to go if milk supplies are limited increasingly.

Not that they should be. It has been a good start to the Wet and the grasses are waist-high with a waving lushness which augurs fertile fields. The chopped and stunted stubs of trees have also burst forth in branch and leaf with that raging vitality which comes from wet, warm weather. This season is the salvation of places like Africa. But sadly, not enough of a salvation to prevent shortages and even famines. Malawi has suffered through some terrible famines and I am sure when things begin to get tough it brings back frightening memories.

Then again, no matter how tough it gets for us it will be nothing like what Malawians have to put up with. Our bottom line is that we go to Joburg on the company plane on a Friday with a few empty suitcases and bring them back full of food on the Monday.  I suspect my left-overs are going to be appreciated even more by Limited and Andrew.

But back to the local buttermilk which isn't buttermilk. I decided to use it in a bread and butter pudding which was probably a first and a last. It was okay but Chambiko is not really buttermilk, nor quite like yogurt or sour cream to which it is likened but a mix of all of them with a cottage cheese sort of taste. I am draining the remaining packet to make a soft 'cheese' which I can use in a dip. I don't think I would buy it again but usually we can get buttermilk anyway which comes in from South Africa.

It's been a busy week in that African way with things not working in that African way. The internet was down for the first two days but luckily one dongle worked; the inverter could not cope with a seven hour power cut and it took two days to chase down the technicians who were meant to come and re-charge batteries when we left in December and to do some other work but didn't; the small repair to the genset which was meant to be done has not been done and my email inquiring about this has been languishing for three days; the phone cradle seems not to be charging so I have to switch the phones around and charge on the one that is working and then there is the saga of the DSTV cable box which had some channels but not all.

Laurence our technician came promptly and said it had been hit by lightning which had fused the connections, some of them, actually most of them and we needed a new box for the princely sum of K125,000 - six months salary for Limited or Andrew! So he brought one the next day but when I went to turn it on I found it did not work so he came back and took it away and then returned this morning with a new box.

I blame myself totally because I did not pay enough attention when he showed me it was working - it was working, it had a picture and sound, but when I turned it on later I could see it was fuzzy! And then I saw that the box was not as big as the one we had before and looked awfully like an older version, which no doubt it was. So another phone call to Laurence - luckily we had not paid him the mountains of kwacha yet - and he said yes, yes, a new shipment was coming in tomorrow and he would come back and change it.

The interesting thing of course is that when he left after installing this box he said nothing about new shipments etc., and the assumption was that it had all been fixed. Kick self twice for forgetting that in Africa you always, always, always check thoroughly every single repair job. Still, at least we have a box which works overnight, albeit with a slightly fuzzy image.

But they are small things in the scheme of life here. On the good news front I have found that the generator will charge the batteries in about three hours but it won't run anything else other than the fridge. Still, the fridge is pretty important.

And on another plus side we hauled back an electric wok from Oz which will work off the inverter, although no doubt with discretion in terms of how hot and how long, but which means that when we lose power I can cook something other than a stew without using up our precious diesel.

All in all we are back in African harness and with only a six hour time-difference between here and Perth, no problems with waking in the night because of jetlag. It has been a case of down the wormhole again and into the Malawi dimension. So here I am for ten days before we head to Indaba, a mining conference, in Cape Town. Five days there and back for a longer and more settled stay.