Observing

Also observe notice while reversing in the staff car park.

Rallying again

3.55pm  Leave work early to go home (10 minute drive)
4.00    Major queue on Victoria Avenue. WhatsApp group says it is political rally in the park. Divert to  head back and into the market area to get past the park.

4.10    Arrive near market, traffic slow. Won't stop at cafe because it will close shortly and queue won't have died down.

4.30    Still in market but can see Police high-vis jacket up the hill. The President must be coming to the rally. Turn off engine.

4.50   No movement, BBC world service getting repetitive, no sweets in car, finished crossword.

5.00   Sirens, signs of movement at the crossroads, maybe President is coming and we can move.
5.10   More sirens but still no movement. Starting to rain. Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Years.

5.15   Thoughts of u-turns scuppered by minibuses forming four lanes on all available tarmac (and other surfaces).
5.20   Movement! Game of Chicken with minibuses to get into the lane I want.

5.30   So near and yet so far. Police at crossroads have let cars block the lanes so traffic can't flow.
5.45   Home!Call German colleague to suggest delaying our outing to the Christmas Fair, 4 minutes from home.
6.30   Can't get through traffic. Watch DVD at home.

Overtake any way you can.

8.30   Get through but find that very few stall-holders have arrived. Raining again. Electrician still rigging lights in the rain. Santa's grotto is lit but he's not at home.

Buy tasty mango juice from young friend trying to start his own business. Buy burger I don't really want (but it was good) and bars of soap to support the traders who have paid for their stalls. So, if you get soap for Christmas....
Decide not to vote for president.

Seasonal bugs

The approach of the wet season brings choruses of frogs and cricket-type things but also a range of bugs, flies, beetles, millipedes, mosquitoes, flying termites and flying ants. Here is a small selection from my living room, not counting the scorpion I found a couple of weeks ago.
A few weeks ago the fumigators came and sprayed noxious stuff around, inside and out. It was certainly noxious to humans and we got burning skin, inflamed eyes, and wheezing. Now, the insects seem to perish in contact with the floor or the ledges, so I suppose the lethal stuff is still there despite my housekeeper's weekly efforts with what he calls a mopping stick. He told me today that he wouldn't clean until tomorrow because he had to shave. (The lawn.)
I am told the flying termites made a great snow-like effect for the Santa in the shopping mall.
 

Traffic cones and police revenues

Today I was stopped at my local police road block for the first time. The young female officer greeted me cheerily and asked if I would be willing to contribute to new traffic cones to replace their old grotty ones which couldn't be seen from a distance. I replied that I could always see the police officers in their high-vis jackets and declined to contribute. Police sometimes do try to get money at road blocks, but usually by inventing an offence or charging for a real one. (Their speed cameras were withdrawn recently because not enough of the fines were making it back to HQ.) This was the most novel request I have encountered and I might even go and get a cone for a laugh!

Hey, don't leave me, what have I done?

One Woolly-necked Stork imploring another at Lengwe. Who said true love runs smooth?

Political dancing

It's political rally time as elections loom next May. There is always dancing, singing and speeches. (With enthusiastic dancers, unlike British Prime Ministers.) The costumed dancers below may just be elaborately clad or it may be part of a tribal ritual group such as Gule Wankulu which I find much more sinister.

Here's another fine mess...

Life here may resemble Laurel and Hardy at times but I don't know whenever this vehicle was in NE England. I don't know how many locals would have ever heard of the great duo. This is just round the corner from the Royal Mail bike shop. 

Parliamentary Chambers

Two students and I went to a Parliamentary Committee to talk about student welfare and the shortages that lead to hunger, prostitution, etc. Afterwards we were given a tour of the Chamber.

One very happy student after the meeting.

There was nowhere else to go it seems. Just had to be done.

Frictionless borders

On the left is Malawi's M1 but most of the rest is Mozambique. (Actually, Google Maps thinks the M1 is also in Mozambique and sends unwitting travellers on a long diversion to avoid the border!)

The gap is only 10m in places and here are my driver and two students entering Mozambique without passports. In places the border runs through villages, fields, football fields and even churches and mosques. Some have an entrance in Malawi and the body of the building in Mozambique.

Classroom repair

The screen must have broken so someone turned it upside down and tied it up to the casing.

 

Unfortunately, they tied it up with the cable that connects the ceiling projector to the laptop. Maybe all is not lost, that connector always was dodgy. However, when power goes off, we can no longer get at the blackboard for plan B! 
Students call lectures without projection, "a cappella"

Even Tear Gas is corrupt

Poly students on the highway making their point about the lack of water

and complaining about possible corruption in the purchase of inferior Tear Gas!

 

Street plant

It is common to see a stick in a pothole as a warning device, or some odd fronds on the road, or a mud-filled pothole to smooth the road. But here near the town centre, someone has filled the hole with mud and planted something. I hope it survives!

Street School

Near my new home, someone is teaching Roman numerals to some boys at the side of the road.

Just a blackboard and a bench.

Mother and daughter

...on a very hot winter's day on Likoma. Heavy loads and quilted jacket.

Guard dogs...

... doing what they do best and conserving energy

Presidential races

I've written before about the Presidential motorcade which is large and travels on both sides of the road at high speed. Here we are pulled off the road while the first police vehicle passes by. The police line the roads and wait for hours for him to come.

School days

So, here I am on a remote Malawian island in Mozambican waters (Likoma), and I see this flash-back to school days. I never had a tin of Oxford instruments but I think my brother may have done. The boy's bemused expression is probably because I explained that we had those tins at school and I now live in Oxford. He didn't understand a word.

Trees and slaves

Slaving was common up to the19th century and Nkhotakota was a principal focus. This wall is from Malawi's first mosque, next to a stockade for slaves.

In 1861, Dr Livingstone sat under this fig tree to negotiate with local chiefs to stop the trade.

He sat under this one in 1863 and gave a chief an umbrella before sailing off to intervene in more slave trading.

Here the first post-independance president of Malawi, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, held his first political rally.

Crumbliest, flakiest.....

Certainly is.   Something of a rarity here and I can see (and taste) why demand might be low.

Lazy days, watching the world go by

A secluded spot from which to watch the world go by in Mulanje. Several happy hours spent here watching tea-workers, bicycle taxis, wood-carriers and anyone else. All while munching a pizza.

The one and only...

The only escalator in Malawi (if you don't count its twin just to the right) in the new Crossroads Mall. Not always working but used a lot by giggling children and their friends and parents who photograph them.

Wax removal?

A very old Kudu grandmother looks a bit resigned to the attentions of the Red-billed Oxpecker, and yes, it did go inside her ear. Parasite removal is thought to be beneficial.
  

Way of the Cross

Starting at St Joseph's in Chilimoni township

The way winds over the Michiru foothills to the summit cross (look carefully or click to enlarge)

past 14 iron crosses with bronze sculptures

to the final plain cross.

A hazy view of Blantyre in wet season. St Joseph's twin towers visible to the right.

Recycled lawnmower

Some of the kids who wave and call out to me every time I walk or drive past. They recently acquired two lawnmower frames to push around.

Hospital Fire

This post is not amusing but it is also not a tragedy.

Somewhere down the page, I posted items from Mangochi District Hospital, where we were due to take students next week.
Sadly, on Sunday there was a major fire caused by an electrical surge after a blackout. The out-patient area caught fire and is gutted. Family and maternity clinics were lost. The locals and staff tried to put the fire out but the town does not have fire-fighting equipment, so a whole building was lost.
Mercifully, no staff or patients were hurt and the rest of the hospital is OK. (The pharmacy store is on the right of the picture and the main pharmacy is just behind it, even closer to the flames. The wards are further away.)

60 years is a lot of time (pieces)

Yesterday, my watch stopped and I wanted to replace the battery.  Watch-repairers are to be found interspersed with tailors and shoe-shiners along Haile Selassie Street so I beetled along there to ask them to open the watch and replace the cell.
Sadly, the youngsters plied their pliers and failed to budge it.

Not really wanting to buy a new watch, I asked around last night and was told of "a little old man who sits near the steps" , so I went again today and found Mr. Waziri.

It took a long time (including waiting 40 mins for the shop where he stored his vice to be opened) and a lot of effort with his Swiss watch-opening tools, but it gave me time to chat and watch some high-speed games of advanced-level Bao. (I felt declining to take part was just sheer common sense.)

It turns out that Waziri has been repairing watches since 1958, which is indeed a lot of time-pieces...
   

Breakfast in Liwonde

Eating breakfast in the lodge at Liwonde can be a hazardous thing. Here is the anti-monkey patrol armed with water cannon

... and here is the planning committee working on a flanking movement

Perils of life

  

Er... there are crocodiles in this river. And all for scraping a living.

District work

Special facilities at a district hospital in Mangochi.

New bicycles for village workers (and an old bed frame).

Isolation facilities for examining suspected cholera cases

Official advice

Maternity ward