Bad Moon Rising

When the newspapers finally reported the national fuel shortage, they echoed the Government’s claim that the ports in Mozambique and Tanzania were at fault. Congestion, they said. Technical problems. At the time, it seemed somewhat coincidental that two ports, separated by hundreds of miles, located in different countries and managed by different organisations, should experience the exact same problems at the exact same time.

Later that week, a delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) called for an end to the practice of arbitrarily fixing exchange rates. The Government’s overvaluation of the Malawian Kwacha, they said, was one of the reasons behind the country’s current shortage of foreign exchange, and hence its inability to purchase fuel on the international market.

A day later, the manager of Mozambique’s Beira port told journalists that the problem at the depot was not one of congestion, but of inactivity. Fuel supplies to Malawi had simply been suspended due to the fact that the country had defaulted on its payments. The manager went on to say that Malawi had asked to borrow fuel and that this request had been rejected.

The story was the same in Tanzania. The Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Development Corridor, which operates the port in Nacala and the railway system that delivers fuel to the north of Malawi, told the media that the country had run out of foreign currency and had been cut off.

Authorities in Mozambique and Tanzania were understandably annoyed by claims that their countries were to blame for Malawi’s fuel shortage. It has since been reported that Mozambique has withdrawn its support for a $6 billion waterway project that plans to link Malawi—and further upstream, Zambia—with the Indian Ocean. The landlocked countries are relying on Mozambique as the trade route would need to pass through several hundred miles of its territory.

The Nyasa Times, Malawi’s sole online newspaper, then reported that President Bingu Wa Mutharika had recently purchased a luxury jet. The press had not been officially informed of the development after some reporters responded negatively to the President’s earlier shopping spree, which saw six Hummers and 22 Mercedes Benz vehicles purchased at taxpayer’s expense and flown into the country for use by the President and members of his Cabinet. The Nyasa Times implied that these purchases might have contributed to the fact that Malawi’s foreign currency reserves are now well below the minimum level recommended by the IMF.

The next scandal to break was that President Bingu had leant $100 million to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and with just a month left until the loan was due to be repaid in full, not a single dollar had so far found its way back to Malawi. The President had freely leant $100 million to the corrupt leader of a bankrupt economy, sanctioned the world over by all discerning governments for his brutal disregard for the rule of law and human rights, and it is now the people of Malawi who are suffering.

Faced with such damaging accusations, the Government decided to act. They first called upon the middle classes not to purchase Christmas presents from abroad this year, a practice that would further damage the country’s balance of payments situation. “We are in a crisis,” stated the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Malawi. “In hard times like these, we cannot afford luxuries.”

As the debate about Government’s ‘extravagant use’ of foreign currency escalated, and with the Governor’s warning ringing loudly in the ears, the Minister for Youth Development and Sports travelled to Burkina Faso to watch Malawi’s final qualifying match for the African Cup of Nations.

After the team lost 1-0, but still qualified for the finals in Angola next January courtesy of the Ivory Coast’s victory against Guinea, the Minister hosted an all-night celebration for players and officials at his luxury hotel in Ouagadougou. The team, which was roundly criticised back home for its poor performance, was invited by the Minister to party all night at the taxpayer’s expense. Newspapers reported that player’s efforts on the dance-floor were an improvement over their efforts on the field earlier in the day.

The President then asked his troop of much-travelled ministers to restrict themselves to no more than six foreign visits per year, and asked that no visit should exceed 14 days in duration. Again, this measure was designed to restrict the outflow of foreign currency from the country.

The President attempted to set the example by refusing to attend a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago. Unfortunately, his gesture saved the national coffers very little as he sent two representatives in his stead. Malawian reporters, who had already travelled to the Caribbean to cover the President’s visit, flew home before the summit even started.

The Government then moved to put an end to the immediate shortage of foreign currency, and hence the shortage of fuel, by borrowing money from a regional development bank. Malawi borrowed $50 million in total, or about the same amount of money it would cost to purchase a luxury jet, six Hummers and 22 Mercedes Benz vehicles, and have them all flown into the country, express delivery.

Such comparisons do not make for comfortable afternoon debates in Parliament for the President’s governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The final chapter of this tale then tells the story of how the Government recently changed the rules in Parliament, allowing the entire House to elect the leader of the opposition.

By virtue of the fact that the opposition are, quite obviously, in the minority, they now effectively have their leader chosen for them by the governing party. The Government chose a young, first-time politician to lead the opposition, a man renowned only for being a DPP sympathiser.

A week later, a Government-sponsored bill on police reform was put before the House. The bill seeks to give the police powers to search without warrant, to prevent public gatherings and to enforce regional curfews. Ironically, the new legislation, which aims to limit human rights and empower the police to exert more control over the actions of civilians, will also see the ‘Police Force’ renamed as the ‘Police Service’.

Newspapers reported that Honourable Abele Kayembe, new leader of the opposition, gave his support to the bill.

Escape from Blantyre

Slowly, for I have eaten a little too much, I make my way back to the lodge and the warm bed that waits for me. I pass the Petroda filling station on Glyn Jones Road. This was the last place in town to run dry of diesel. Earlier in the evening, as motorists and men with large gas cans fought for supremacy of the pumps, the police moved in to control the mayhem here. Masterfully, police officers settled the dispute by helping themselves to the little diesel that remained. The pumps now sit idle. Abandoned vehicles clutter the forecourt and the surrounding roads. All is quiet.

I quicken my pace as I walk beneath the railway bridge, holding my breath as the stench of human waste fills the air around me. Up the hill and left past the tranquil bus station I continue. It is dark now and all around there are cars and vans, trucks and buses, all sleeping peacefully. There is no fuel. There is nothing else they can do.

“Good evening, sir!” says the guard, welcoming me back to the lodge. And before I can respond, the calm is abruptly broken by the roaring of an engine. Like a large and powerful predator, a blood-red Mustang pounces through the gate. The car pauses directly beneath the solitary security light and settles to a gentle, growling roar. The number plate reads ‘WILD 1’. The driver cuts the engine and quiet returns. An elderly gentleman with white skin and silver hair emerges from one side of the vehicle wearing camel-coloured shorts and a light brown shirt. From the other side strides a dark-skinned young beauty wearing a dress of bright yellow and vivid green. The two head towards the bar. “Good evening,” I reply.

I wake early the next morning and begin to kill the useless hours with long walks around town interspersed with generous periods of poolside reading back at the lodge. I make a habit of visiting the fuel stations and quizzing the attendants on the likelihood of deliveries. Just like the day’s newspapers, they tell me nothing. I don’t know how long I will be stranded here. I begin to yearn for Sky News. I need my crises updated on a minute-by-minute basis, not day-by-day. But this is Africa, I remind myself, and things happen far more slowly here. I realise then that the national fuel shortage may well endure for a fair while yet. The unread pages of my book are diminishing at a great pace. I need to go grocery shopping and I need to find a bookstore.

Thursday ends much as it began. There is no fuel in town but it is the shortage of information that proves most frustrating. I saw the blood-red Mustang again earlier in the day. The old man knows something. There is fuel somewhere.

Friday. Dawn breaks upon another serene Blantyre day. Beneath faultless blue skies, I head out in search of breakfast. I walk out the gate and pass the station, noticing how the busses sparkle in the early morning sunlight. Not able to drive them, their owners console themselves with the fact that they can at least clean them. What else is there to do?

I walk on to the BP station and repeat the question I have asked many, many times over the last two days. The attendant regards me carefully, looks around and whispers in a conspiratorial tone: “9 0’clock... Maybe.” I sense the excitement in his voice, though also fear, like a General who has just received orders of an impending battle. “Thank you,” I reply. “I won’t tell anyone.”

The time is closing in on half-past seven. Though it struggles to start, the engine of my white Toyota eventually finds a little life and I manage to drive as far as the BP station on Chileka Road. I know I will be able to go no further than here, but I trust the words of the attendant. I have been starved of information and now that I have a little, I will not doubt it. There are no maybes today.

9 o’clock comes and goes without any sign of a tanker. My bookmark continues to work its way through the pages, getting ever closer to the back cover. I didn’t manage to find a bookstore yesterday. It is now 10 ‘o’clock. In my time in Malawi, I have been lied to on a regular basis. People here would sooner deceive you with false optimism than speak a disappointing truth. I should be used to it by now. There is still no mention of the fuel shortage in this morning’s newspapers and I begin to long for home where you are told the truth, nomatter how brutal or painful it might be.

And then I look up at the bright sign above my head, the letters ‘BP’ rendered in vibrant green. I remember what the letter ‘B’ stands for. I smile at the man in the navy shirt with the green shoulders, my faith instantly restored, because this man works for ‘British’ Petroleum, from the land of truth and efficiency! He smiles back, and right on cue a large tanker bearing the same initials thunders down the road towards the station, and continues right on past. I look back at the man. He is still smiling and nods to me and I suddenly realise that the tanker is simply turning at the roundabout at the bottom of the hill so it can enter from the other side.

I am in the van, the engine fires and I am first in line. Within minutes, the station is besieged with cars, trucks, busses, a fire engine, and men with fuel tanks, gas cans and empty bottles that at one time contained a large amount of vegetable oil. The fight is about to begin, but thanks to the General, I have the perfect position.

I leave the tumult behind, the blaring horns and the manic shouts, and drive on with a full tank of diesel. I feel sorry for the BP attendant who helped me out. He now faces several stressful hours trying to manage the battle and limit the casualties.

It is strange how something so ordinary and so mundane can leave you feeling so utterly ecstatic. I guess the lower you go, the more frustrated you become, the less you need to put you back on an upward trend. A small piece of good fortune is great news indeed for the unfortunate, while for those with everything, it is meaningless. And I think again of the old man with the silver hair and the blood-red Mustang.

I drive on. Will Smith’s ‘Gettin’ Jiggy With It’ is playing on the radio. I roll down the windows of the old, dented Toyota, increase the volume, and drive right on out of Blantyre like a Wild One!

There Are Worse Places to be Stranded

I have only been to Blantyre on two previous occasions, yet there is something very different about the city this evening. The great metropolis of the south does not hum with the same rhythm as before, does not throb to the same beat. The sidewalks are quiet and there is little moving on the roads. As dusk falls, the greatest action is in the air. Hordes of bats can be seen taking to the skies on their nightly hunting excursion; the action above contrasting dramatically with the lack of it below. There is a national fuel shortage in Malawi and the city of Blantyre is slowly grinding to a halt.

While making the 320-kilometre journey from the administrative to the commercial capital, I stopped at every filling station I could find in search of diesel. The conversation was always the same. “Do you have diesel?” I would ask. The attendant simply shakes their head. “Do you know when you will get the next delivery?” I continue, more in hope than expectation. The attendant would shake their head again, though this time with the added accompaniment of a forlorn, sympathetic smile. The fuel stations are all still open, yet it seems the attendants are now employed in a head shaking capacity only.

And so I coasted down the long hill into Blantyre with an empty tank, nothing but fumes and positive thoughts keeping the engine going. I was thankful to make it to the lodge, to get a comfortable bed for the night and to finally dispel the fear of having to sleep in the van that had plagued me for the last hour or more. Having driven with the air-conditioning turned off—to save fuel—I was thankful also for the chance to take a cool shower. And between a cool shower and comfortable bed there is only one thing I need. Walking to my favourite greasy spoon café, accompanied by a few stragglers and the bats above, I dream of piri-piri chicken and masala chips and think to myself, there are worse places to be stranded.

Workshop Syndrome

This article first appeared in The Nation newspaper on the 8th May, 2009. It was written by Muza Gondwe, a lecturer at the college of medicine in Blantyre.

“Workshop per diems and daily subsistence allowances have created a new breed of man–the career workshop participant (CWP).

A CWP is similar to a career student (someone who spends most of their life in university pursuing one degree or the other), but the CWP’s main occupation is to attend workshops.

A CWP, for the sake of argument, is usually a fairly senior person in an organisation who travels in a project Toyota Hilux 4x4, demands exorbitant fuel reimbursements, insists on lavish hotel rooms and drinks heavily during the workshop cocktail reception. A CWP turns up late every morning during the course of the workshop, has the audacity to answer his or her infuriatingly loud cell-phone during the session and knows everyone at the workshop having attended similar workshops several times. This person has an arrogant air of self importance and collects allowances before the end of the workshop as he or she has to rush to another workshop on a similar topic by a different organisation at another beautiful lakeside resort.

Everyday, workshops are being conducted under the premise of ‘capacity building’ to improve the provision of healthcare services, quality of education or turning around economic woes. During these workshops, payments in the form of per diems, daily subsistence allowances, transport reimbursement, sitting allowances or incidentals are paid to participants. The allowances, which range from K500 to thousands of Kwacha, are meant to cover the living and travel expenses of participants but it appears these stipends have gone beyond their intended purpose as they are used to supplement salaries.

Some, including myself, argue that in certain circumstances the money spent on a workshop could have been put into good use. It should have been used to build schools, buy drugs or develop infrastructure. I am saying this because the value and outcome of the workshop solely depends on whether the participant is going to implement what has been discussed, which, unfortunately, is not always the case.

The value of workshops is not the subject of this article, but my interest is in the culture of allowances that workshops have indoctrinated. On receipt of an invitation to attend a workshop, people gloss over the objectives of the workshop and focus on the amount of the stipend and the workshop venue. Attending workshops has become a trend, a lifestyle, an exclusive club where the ambition is to attend an international conference in an exotic location with a dollar allowance. Without allowances, people won’t attend, even senior officials who do not necessarily need the ‘salary top-up’. ‘Brown envelopes’ (allowances) are inducements or incentives that secure participation of delegates where the higher the monetary motivation, the more senior and dignified the official.

Involvement in this money-making venture is not limited to people working in the development sector—politicians, government officials and journalists too are culprits in this matter. I met someone at a WHO meeting who refused his per diem, saying it was excessive. He gave it back but the administrator said returning the money back into the WHO system was a lengthy process so he donated it to charity. The CWPs who were attending the same meeting forced the organisers to cut the programme to allow them an afternoon off so that they could go shopping with their ‘hard earned allowances’.

The practice of dishing out money, particularly to senior officials, is a contradiction to the themes of most of these workshops. Is it ethical for workshops to hand out fat brown envelopes if their noble cause is to improve the livelihoods of poor people? Who is really benefiting here? It is almost like CWPs are getting paid twice – a monthly salary and allowances.

If people working in the development sector are truly committed to and believe in their cause, it is high time their actions went beyond their grandiose conference speeches and workshop participation.”